10. Jia
The black dress Jia had borrowed whipped around her calves in the sharp wind blowing over the castle. Dark clouds stretched over the sun and casted everything into shadows. The dark clouds matched her mood.
She stood at the top of the battlements, looking out over the empty fields of the castle grounds. She turned the two letters she had penned over in her fingers, running her fingertips over the cursive names she’d scratched onto the front of each with her quill in black ink.
General Frostguard and Kiniera Kulltoug.
She had spent hours agonizing over the words, debating on what to tell her mother and the House of Ice’s spymaster. She had settled on the blunt truth, all of it. A variation of: Volla and I got married and were in love. General Crax and the House of Weather betrayed us, and we were attacked. Sahana and Volla are dead. Rorax is a Contestar. We are trapped at the Northern Castle.
Rorax hadn’t yet arrived at the castle where they would be essentially held prisoner. She was probably moving slowly due to the massive number of soldiers the Guardian had sent to ensure Rorax couldn’t battle her way free.
Extra guards weren’t the only precaution the Guardian had made. Jia’s arm was still raw where the Guardian had cut her for the Blood Oath. She’d made Jia swear that if Jia let Rorax run from the Choosing or aided her in any way, Jia would die. Once Rorax heard the terms of the Blood Oath, she would stay.
It was tempting really, more tempting than she would have believed to just pitch herself off the side of the tower where she stood, to both ensure the Guardian held no power over her friend and fellow Heilstorm, and to put an end to her grief.
Without Volla what did Jia have to live for, anyway? The sacrifice wouldn’t cost her a thing.
The only knowledge keeping Jia here was a threat from the Guardian. “If you don’t stay, I will slit Roraxiva’s throat before she can step over the threshold of the castle, and I’ll watch as her life blood soaks the earth.”
At least the Northern Castle was beautiful. As beautiful as a prison could be.
White granite stones made up the high walls and towers with large windows pocketing the surface every ten feet. When the sun was bright in the sky, the white stones gleamed proudly. The castle had four main towers and a tall center keep, all with four floors of rooms and barracks that connected the tall walls. A large viewing platform split the bailey of the castle in two. The castle guards referred to one side of the bailey as the Contestars” Courtyard because the Contestars would train there, and the other side held the stables. The castle guards also trained and monitored the comings and goings of the castle. Flags of the twelve realms decorated the walls and towers, the vibrant colored banners whipping around in the wind as hard as Jia’s dress.
There was an old Heir Ball arena repurposed for the Tournament of Houses at the back of the castle. The arena held thousands of people, had a grass floor, and the stands were made up rows and rows of rudimentary white stone benches.
Jia breathed in deeply as she tilted her head to look at the sky. She felt the warning sprinkle that always precluded rain. Her mother was going to be furious when she found out she had married inside her unit. Kiniera would be more so.
Kiniera would also be furious that they had kept the fact that Rorax was a Contestar a secret. She should send a letter straight to the King of Ice. Jia knew how the king felt about Rorax, and he was going to be the most furious of all of them. She thought it might be better to cushion the blow by sending it through Kiniera, who knew the king well, and would hopefully know what to say.
Jia turned from where she stood, and quickly moved to the rookery at the top of one of the four towers. The guards let her in, and she moved right to her Blood Hawk, Pyx, who stood out like a sore thumb amongst the significantly smaller black and white crows the other houses used.
Cobalt blue feathers ran over the hawk”s head and down its body. The bird nuzzled into Jia’s palm as she stoked her fingers down the bird’s head. Jia’s fingers trembled slightly as she curled the two letters into the silversteel capsule strapped to the bird’s back.
“The first letter is going to Kiniera Kulltoug, the Spymaster of House of Ice. The second goes to General Frostguard, my mother,” she told Pyx.
The big bird blinked in confirmation, yellow skin sliding over an electric blue iris, as Jia screwed on the top of the capsule.
Blood Hawks were exclusive to the House of Ice and were the fastest and most secure way to transfer messages in the Realms. The biggest birds in the sky, their feathers were made of ice hard enough to deflect arrows, and they would not release a message until they had tasted the blood of a recipient, ensuring they had the right person and not an imposter. They were born and bred in the Nest, a city in the House of Ice responsible for the breeding of not only Blood Hawks, but Ice Dragons as well.
Jia had been at the castle for only a day, and Pyx had shown up the first night, pecking incessantly at her window. She didn’t know how the bird had found her, or how she’d known Jia needed her, but Jia had been over the moon to see her, cooing at her and stroking fingers down her frozen feathers.
A sense of ominous dread filled Jia’s heart as she watched her Blood Hawk fly into the storm. There would be heavy consequences for their actions and secrets. She hoped they would survive them.