Chapter 48
Will and Eric were two small black silhouettes against the vastness of white.
With their hands buried deep in their coat pockets, they trudged through the landscape, fresh snow crunching beneath their boots.
On one side, the cliffs dropped steeply toward the sea; on the other, jagged mountains rose, while the rolling hills opened before them.
Duke Wilkinson had arrived, and the two men had decided they did not want to be in the house for the reunion of the betrothed couple, preferring instead to brave the weather for a walk. The castle was barely visible in the distance anymore.
“What did I see last night?” Eric asked after long minutes of silence. “In that second when the moonlight broke across the wave…”
“…you saw the Albatross.” Will bit his lower lip and squinted toward the pale patch in the sky that was meant to be the sun.
“He looks terrifying, but not as though he means you harm.”
“It's hard to tell. You came at the right moment.” Would he otherwise have accepted the offer?
Let himself fall into the intoxication of his magic and be carried away to whatever the god wanted to show him?
He shoved his fists deeper into his coat pockets and pushed the thought aside.
“What you said about Elodie last night was beautiful.”
Eric gave a low grunt and turned his face away.
When no answer came, Will sighed and looked up into the white sky. “So it was never a problem that I am not a woman.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Eric’s head jerk toward him, but he continued. “It is sad that it took a truth serum for you to explain yourself.”
“I owe you nothing.” Eric’s words cut like the wind. “But no, it was never a problem that you are a man,” he added more softly.
Before Will could answer, a long, mournful cry reached him, sinking all the way into his bones. He recognized it at once as the sound he had heard during the sleigh ride. “Did you hear that?”
Eric stopped beside him and lifted his head into the wind. But the world remained silent. At last, he called his dogs back, and they came bounding through the snow in long strides.
“What did you hear?”
“It sounded human… I heard it on the way here too.”
They continued, but kept silent so they would not miss the voice again. If someone had become stranded in the snowstorm, a carriage stuck somewhere… Perhaps someone needed help.
The sound came again, and this time Eric heard it too. With a click of his tongue, he sent the dogs racing ahead along the coast.
Will and Eric followed, but the calf-deep snow made progress difficult. The dogs barked, and this time the cry was unmistakable.
Breathing hard, they reached the animals at the edge of a small cove cut into the coastline. Wind-beaten rocks dropped several yards to the foaming sea below.
But what made both men stop was the figure stretched between long spears.
“An angel,” Will gasped.
The dogs fell silent. The angel’s cry of pain was barely audible above the breaking waves.
Six wings spread from his back, each ending in a ring by which he had been chained to the rock face.
His body was human, almost four meters tall, impaled on long poles.
Wounds disfigured his skin, his chest lay open, birds pecked at his organs, and the edges of his wounds were crusted with salt. Golden blood dripped into the sea.
Despite the ruin of him, despite the agony, Will could hardly look away. Six eyes, arranged across his forehead like the rays of a rising sun, stared toward the sky with white fire.
“I think we found Wilkinson’s secret weapon. That explains his strange fascination with angels,” Eric growled. “He is bleeding him for the toll. I read rumors about their magical abilities in an encyclopedia last night. But I never thought… that they were real.”
“Neither did I,” Will breathed. “We worship them in the Capitol as bringers of progress, but I always thought they were a metaphor.”
“Like vampires are a horror story about the barbarians of Bloodgrove?”
Will gave Eric a tired look. This was hardly the time to revive their old games.
“We have to free him,” Will decided. A narrow bridge led toward the angel.
“Why? Wilkinson will know it was us.”
“Do you want to leave him there to suffer? I do not think we can report Wilkinson when this gives him so much influence with the Red Hand and the king.”
Eric hesitated. Thoughts raced behind his sharp features, and everything in him seemed to resist the idea of defying the king. “Your heart is far too good. But fine. Wilkinson will defeat all of us with this advantage if we leave it to him.”
Then he drew a dagger.
“What are you doing?”
“Cutting him free. Only these chains and the elements are keeping him here. I have read about it. Supposedly, this is how humans once captured magical creatures.” Eric glanced toward the angel. “Do not look into his eyes.”
The angel did not seem to notice them. His lament rose toward the sky. His voice was as beautiful as sunlight in spring, yet carried the force of a thousand souls. Again and again, Will had to stop, unable to reconcile what he was seeing with anything his mind understood.
“Give me your hand.” Eric pulled off Will’s glove, tucked it away, and cut across his palm. “Concentrate on your blood. Do you feel the heartbeat inside it? Take hold of it and keep it there. It does not have to become a perfect blade.”
Will followed his instructions. The entire scene felt so far removed from reality that he did not question any of it. A moment later, he held a shard shaped from his own blood.
Eric did the same with his, and they set to work.
They began with the wings, uncertain how they would ever lift the enormous body from the poles.
Vultures circled above them, screaming furiously.
Will followed Eric’s instructions, and only when the chains began to fall did he realize that the tears on his cheeks had frozen.
“I read that the Golden Queen commands an army of angels,” Eric said after a while. Sweat stood on his forehead.
“An hour ago, I would have told you that was only a rumor.”
They cut through the final chain.
With one powerful beat of his wings, the angel sent the fine spray hanging over the coast whirling into the air and lifted himself from the poles. His scream pierced through bone. Will clapped his hands over his ears, but nothing could shield his soul from the pain.
Together with Eric, he fled back toward the mainland, but the moment they stumbled into the snow, the angel hovered above them.
“Human, in gratitude for your rescue, I will grant you one answer.”
Will dug his fingers into the frozen ground while the angel’s voice inside his mind threatened to split his skull apart. His body was too small for this consciousness. Great wings beat above him, drawing snow upward in their wake.
“The bargain with the Albatross gave you magic and made you his Silver Hand. At twenty-seven, you will belong to him, body and soul. He is the only one who can free you from it.”
Will tried to speak, but his mouth had gone dry.
Suddenly, another veil fell from his eyes, and he felt the glyphs the god had carved into his bones. They flared bright beneath the angel’s touch. The pain was unbearable, and his own scream sounded pitiful beside the angel’s.
He felt the angel withdraw, and it was both terrible and strangely sad. His mind felt raw.
When he looked up again, the sun was shining.
His gaze found Eric, who was also on all fours in the snow, tears in his eyes. Before Will could say anything, the ambassador was already on his feet and beside him.
Eric knelt over Will, who still lay in the snow. His fingers were wet with meltwater as he pressed them to Will’s cheek and stared at him with wide eyes. Here, beneath the glaring winter sun, his irises were almost white, encircled by a jagged band of deepest black.
“What did he say to you?” Will asked, but Eric shoved him down into the snow.
His lips crushed against Will’s.
There was nothing romantic about the kiss—only desperation.
It took Will’s mind a few heartbeats to catch up, but then he wrapped his arms around Eric and let himself be pushed deeper into the snow.
Cold flakes slipped beneath his collar, but he did not care.
His soul was still trembling from the angel’s voice, yet Eric’s mouth against his, the weight upon his chest, began repairing the torn connections to reality.
A new fire kindled in his heart, warm and alive, and he pulled Eric closer as though he could keep him there forever.
Will’s fingers slid into his hair, so much shorter than Elodie’s, damp with snow, spray and sweat.
He buried his hands in it and held on, as though he could stop Eric from changing his mind.
Their lips opened to one another, and Will tasted the salt of his tears.
Lips, tongues, teeth met in a storm, taking hungrily and desperately without finding satisfaction.
The furs, gloves, and coats were too much between them.
Eric buried one hand in Will’s hair and dragged him closer still, as though their mouths might merge and turn them into one body.
But as quickly as Eric had come to him, he pulled away.
His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, thick clouds of mist hanging before his lips.
“Damnation.” He hurried to his feet and whistled for his dogs.
“What?” Will blinked at him, confused. He had processed neither the angel's words nor the kiss.
But Eric was already fleeing back toward the castle without waiting for him.
He left Will lying there in the snow, and Will barely had the strength to understand what had just happened. Slowly, he pushed himself upright and followed.
One last time, he looked back toward the cliff, toward the poles now jutting uselessly from the waves. If the chains were not still hanging from the rocks and his skull were not pounding with pain, he might almost have believed he had imagined the whole thing.
His fingers touched his freshly kissed lips, then moved to the cut across his palm.
No.
All of it had truly happened.
But how could getting what he longed for hurt so much?
Just before the castle, he caught up with Eric, who turned toward him, his face as cold as the ice beneath his feet. “Not a word about what happened out there. I will deny everything.”
When Elodie opened the gate for them, Eric stormed past her.
“What happened?” she asked in surprise, looking between the two of them.
“Nothing.”
But nothing had ever felt more like a lie.