Chapter 6
NARYA
Thunder cracked overhead as the rain began to fall, dragging the dye in my hair down my face and into my eyes. It slowed the flames that crawled closer to me. But it wasn’t enough. I sent up an unspoken prayer, but it wasn’t the gods who answered this time.
It was a king.
He landed in front of me, the sheer force of his wings sending a shockwave through the courtyard. The villagers had long since fled, only Moonstone warriors remained now. They were hurled into the air, crashing into stalls as a blinding white light flared across the courtyard.
Even with his back to me, I knew it was him.
Then I saw them. His wings. They weren’t feathers at all. Each one shimmered like black crystallised light. What should have been soft down looked more like a thousand razor-fine prisms, beautiful and impossibly bright.
When he moved, the air seemed to hum through them.
But then came the blood.So much blood that it covered the ground and soaked my skin, coating every breath I drew in as the Bloodstone King cut through everyone in his path.
He wore no armour—only black trousers clung to his hips, the fabric soaked with rain and ash.
His boots struck the stone like war drums, and across his bare chest crimson sigils flickered with magic, alive and pulsing.
They flared brighter each time he stepped between me and danger, as though his magic knew I was there.
Even the aelith in his crystal seemed to answer to me, shining through and wrapping down around his spear as he tore through the Moonstone warriors.
I was acutely aware the rain couldn’t hold off the flames forever, but even as my mind registered the intensifying heat had nearly passed the point of tolerable, I still couldn’t tear my eyes from the entrancing, violent death-bringer before my eyes.
From him.
He cleaved them apart like they were nothing.
Screams I didn’t make ripped through the air.
I felt every one of them vibrating through my ribs.
He stayed at my side the entire time, his powerful wings stretched in front of me like a shield.
He didn’t even fight like a man. He fought like a god intent on war.
Only once did he look away, when the fire finally found me, and I screamed as the flames burned my skin.
The ropes melted against my wrists and smoke filled my throat.
The scent of my own flesh blistering invaded my senses.
He turned his head to me, and then he was at my side, removing the ropes and sweeping me into his arms, his wings curling around us. The flames caught them but didn’t reach me, as if the fire died in his shadow. Only the gods had wings. Was the Bloodstone King one of them?
I collapsed against him, my head resting on his chest, and breathed in his scent.
My lungs ached from the smoke but I kept breathing in, trying to dispel it.
Meanwhile, he raised a hand, and a ball of crimson fire pulsed in his palm.
He hurled it at the burning roots, and the flames sank inward with a kiss, disappearing.
The moment he lowered me to the ground, something slammed into him from behind.
The lùnraith.
It tackled him down, and they hit the ground beside me with shattering force.
The lùnraith never stood a chance. Black thorns erupted from the ground and coiled around the creature’s limbs, yanking it down as it snapped and clawed at the ground.
The creature slammed down onto its stomach, pinned down by thick, writhing vines. It snapped wildly, but the thorns only tightened their grip on it, muzzling its jaw until its chains began to snap.
A deafening yelp ripped from its throat.
Then everything went quiet for a moment.
Rain hissed against the stone as the Bloodstone slowly rose.
He retrieved his spear from the mud without breaking stride.
He twirled it once, his grip steady, gaze locked on the snarling beast, and then he drove it through its skull.
The creature went silent, blood pooling from its body into the cracks in the ground. The Bloodstone King left his spear lodged in its gaping skull, like a mounted trophy left there for the gods, and surveyed the courtyard.
I followed his gaze, taking in the bodies that lay scattered over the flagstones running dark with blood. Not a single Moonstone warrior had been left alive.
The Bloodstone King’s wings slowly retracted, folding into his back until nothing remained. Was he a god? Or a demon? When he turned to me, something dark burned in his eyes. A heat I felt deep in my chest that I could not name.
Bones cracked under his boots as he made his way towards me.
I held my breath, unable to tear my gaze off him.
When he reached my side, he knelt beside me, and his hand, wrapped in burning runes, brushed my ankle with a gentleness that startled me.
My breath left in a gasp as a warm, tingling heat spread through my veins.
Red light swelled across the king’s hand, pulsing with ancient magic that felt forbidden in our world.
When I looked up, he was already watching me.
Blood covered his jaw, his chest, his arms. And yet, he was still beautiful.
Terrifyingly beautiful.
“You’re healing me?” I breathed. “Why would you—”
His eyes narrowed. “Even savages protect what’s theirs.”
I dropped my gaze, a flicker of shame running through me. Savage was what we called his kind. Cruel, barbaric, feral beasts forced to wander their cursed lands. He didn't seem like either of those things now, kneeling before me amid the ruin he just made.
A gust of wind swept over us, rustling what little leaves remained on the Justice Tree. Most of the flames had died out but some still clung to the blackened roots. The rest of the tree was scorched to the bone.
And the Bloodstone King…
I looked up at his face. He looked as if he was the one on fire—as if the tree had bled from his own veins. So much fury burned in the black pitch of his eyes.
“Found one.”
A Bloodstone warrior landed beside us, their wings disappearing, and threw a Moonstone captive at his king’s feet. Did all Bloodstones have wings?
The prisoner crumpled on impact, their arms still bound behind their back, gasping in pain as he lifted his head.
“Little rat was running away,” the warrior reported. “Caught him trying to slip through the gates. No sign of Gravyn.”
“Were there others?” the king growled, pulling his gaze from the tree.
“Not anymore,” Emerias replied, landing beside his comrade. “This one was leading them out.”
The king slid a boot under the warrior’s chin and flicked him onto his back.
My heart stopped and my hands instantly turned sweaty.
I recognised their captive immediately.
It was Verince, Gravyn’s right hand man. The lieutenant who was always sneaking around doing his captain’s dirty work for him. My neck stiffened as I looked at him. I struggled to breathe when he groaned and tried to lift himself. Too weak to kneel, he collapsed again, barely able to twitch.
The Bloodstone King stared at him for a moment, his face unreadable, before he seized Verince by the collar and dragged him up, bringing him within inches of his face.
“Where… is he?!”
There was no doubt who he meant. Gravyn.
A sweep of the courtyard confirmed it. Neither of them were among the dead. Not that I could see—and clearly, neither could the Bloodstones.
Had the flash of white light been one of them escaping? Or both slipping through the cracks while their soldiers died in their place?
“G-Gone,” Verince rasped. “Fled the moment you arrived.”
He spat blood at the king’s boots and glared through his bruised lids, before he suddenly laughed.
“So go on,” he said, blood filtering through crooked teeth. “Get it over with, you blood-drinking, devil-fucking bastards!”
His captor only sighed.
“Your kind are always so fucking predictable,” he said, lifting him higher.
Verince suddenly changed then. “Wait, please—”
The king moved faster than the words could leave Verince’s mouth.
“Now you beg? Now?” The king sounded as incredulous as he was enraged. “After what you did to her?”
Verince shook what he could of his face. “I didn’t know she belonged to—”
The Bloodstone cut him off by dragging him over to the tree and holding his face to the flames. The fire screamed with Verince, devouring his flesh down to the bone.
My eyes flicked to the dagger on the king’s belt. The one he gave me.
The one Gravyn stole.
Something cracked inside me then. A darkness I’d always known existed but never dared to touch it. I moved without thinking and grabbed for the dagger, felt my fingers wrap against its blood-slicked hilt and pull it free.
The Bloodstone king pulled Verince back, and I drove the blade into the side of his eye as far as it would go.
The same eyes that followed me since I was a child.
Eyes that had lit with hunger the night he helped destroy me.
I pulled the blade free and slammed it back in again.
Once. Twice. Again and again, until there was no eye left to ruin.
Until nothing of his face remained intact.
His screams had long since died by the time his body was dropped to the ground.
I was still heaving when the Bloodstone King’s fingers pried the dagger from mine.
“Feel better?” His voice cut through the smoke.
I turned to him, panting, and nodded. “Only four more... to go.”
He wiped the blade clean on his cloak. The edge of his mouth twitched.
“Name them,” he said.
I looked down at Verince’s corpse, my hands still shaking, and spat on him.
“Verince,” I said, nodding to him. “The spy.”
He hid in shadows and spun whatever secrets he could find.
“Fylip. The traitor.”
The archivist’s teenage son. The one who led the way, then he watched what they did to me and touched himself to my screams. A boy who learned manhood from monsters. I didn’t care that he was young. He tied the noose. That was enough to want him dead. And one day, he’d be rotting among them.
“Saer Davrin. The governor.”