Chapter 4 #2
Within seconds, the sky opened up with a freezing drizzle. With my hands slick and the fabric soaked, the knots might as well have been forged of Fortosian steel. There would be no untying them now.
I shot a look over my shoulder. The black dot in the sky had grown, wings now visible on either side.
I had a few stones with sharp edges—I could saw through the fabric, but how quickly? If I was spotted, my sacrifice these past few weeks would be for nothing. And, if they knew I was alive, they might never come back. Then I might never get my chance to escape.
My focus darted back to the canopy. So many hours I’d spent gathering supplies, so many days spent weaving it together just so to prevent any leaks . . .
A visceral scream of defeat erupted from inside me as I clawed my fingers down the center. I ripped and I ripped, wielding my despair as destruction. A drizzle became a downpour, and the rain mixed with hot, angry tears to blur my vision as my hard work fell to the grass in tatters.
I gathered the shredded remnants and scattered them in the brush just as the drumbeat of gryvern wings cut through the storm.
Thump, thump, thump.
I dropped to my knees and bent my head low until I was shrouded in the grass.
The one good thing about the spell the Crowns had cast to trap me here was that it also kept their gryverns from flying overhead.
They could only come as far as the shore without risking their deaths—and they had, many times, searching for any sign of me from the air.
And so had Sorae.
Each time she’d returned to circle the island, I’d told myself it was too great a risk to let her see me—what if she sensed my poor health and couldn’t resist the urge to get closer? What if I couldn’t resist the urge to get closer?
And then, early one morning, Sorae landed on the Lumnos pier with Luther on her back. My heart had stilled as I watched him dismount and walk to the shore’s edge, the same place he’d kissed me goodbye before my disastrous coronation.
When I caught sight of those blue-grey eyes, my self-control vanished like smoke. In that moment, something feral within me took over, and all that mattered was making my way back into his arms—even if it cost me my life.
It was pure luck, or perhaps another twist in the gods’ cruel game, that he never saw me run toward him, thanks to an approaching patrol boat that pulled his attention away.
But Sorae did. Her sorrowful wail had cut through my frenzy and brought me back to sanity. I had been ready to risk everything for one look, one touch.
But I wanted so much more than one touch.
With Luther, I wanted it all.
So I’d slid into the foliage, clutching the gold necklace he’d gifted me and weeping as I watched him mount and fly away.
I vowed then that this pain would not be for nothing.
For every tear I shed, I would demand a year in return—a year without war, without the endless attempts of this world to keep us apart, a year filled with the happiness we deserved.
I let the tears fall freely that day, and I held on to that fragile, beautiful hope.
Today, however, it was a very different gryvern flying my way. And as for its rider . . .
I squinted through the rain, wondering if the isolation had gotten to me, but the closer it came, the surer I was.
There was no rider.
The gryvern was alone.
And I knew exactly which gryvern it was.
“Leave!” I screamed.
I shot out of the grass and bolted for the path. I had been dreading this day for weeks, praying it never came. Luther had warned me that a new Crown could not hide from its gryvern forever.
The Umbros gryvern soared toward the island, spearing like a creature possessed.
In a way, she was. The bond that enslaved her to the Crown forced her to heed one command above all: protect your Queen.
Unless I could get to her in time to contradict that order, she would find her way to my side—and die in the process.
“Turn back!” I shouted. I ran as hard as my feet could carry me, lungs and thighs burning with effort. I wasn’t going to make it. Even with the gryvern’s sensitive hearing, I would be too far away for her to hear me before she reached the perimeter of the island’s lethal spell.
But maybe she could see me.
I sprinted up the staircase that led to the dais of the Kindred’s Temple.
I summoned a lifetime of climbing trees in the Lumnos forests to scramble up the intricately carved archway of the Umbros portal.
The top narrowed into an obelisk capped with a cauldron of onyx flames, and my attempts to scale it fell miserably short.
My nails slid against the smooth, rain-slicked stone.
“Go home,” I screamed, pointing east. “Go back to Umbros!”
The gryvern caught sight of me. Instead of heeding my warning, her wings tilted downward on a deadly course straight for me.
My arm thrashed in desperate waves. “Stop coming! Go home!”
Her head cocked at my strange behavior. If she could see me, maybe there was still hope.
My fingers burned, fighting to keep hold of the arch. I waved, I pointed, I bellowed, anything to catch her attention. Finally, her wingbeats stalled, and she slowed.
My heart leapt.
And my grip gave way.
Too numb from the cold and too wet from the storm, my fingers slipped, and I fell, crashing hard to the godstone floor. My knee bent at an unnatural angle, and my skull bounced off the rock, leaving me dazed.
Though the island’s spell stifled the bond that would normally allow a gryvern to sense their Crown’s pain, the Umbros gryvern didn’t need it. She’d seen my injuries with her own two eyes.
And a gryvern always came to aid a wounded Crown.
The stars were still clearing from my vision when I heard the high-pitched shriek of a gryvern in distress, followed by a strangled noise that I knew I would never forget.
Then silence.
A terrible, awful silence.
And the thud of a massive body colliding with soil.
For the third time in Emarion history, one of these majestic creatures, whose only mistake had been trusting their Kindred masters, met its final end.
I gasped for air as rain pelted my face, knocked breathless as much by the loss as my fall. I don’t know her name, I realized in anguish. I’d met her in Umbros, even begged for her help, then reluctantly fought her over the sea during our escape, but I’d never asked her name.
She died. For me.
And I didn’t even know her name.
Tears mixed with rain on my cheeks as my head lolled to the side and came eye to eye with Yrselle’s lifeless corpse—or what was left of it after a grueling month of exposure to the elements.
Unlike Perthe, the Crowns had witnessed her death. If they came back, seeing her body moved would be a sure sign that I’d survived, so I’d had no choice but to leave her untouched.
Though my relationship with Yrselle had been fraught with threats, she had looked out for me when no other Crown would. It was her warning to stop taking the flameroot that led me to discovering the truth of who I was, and it was her vote that had secured my mother’s pardon.
A vote that had cost Yrselle, and her gryvern, their lives.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered weakly.
You deserve to suffer as my people suffered, she had told me. And believe me, you will.