Chapter 12 #2
Kinlear glanced up to find Hux, the Windmage Master, a male whose power was revered in the Citadel.
He was related to Soraya, and perhaps Kinlear’s Matching to her, and his grief after she’d defected, had made Hux feel a certain kinship with him.
Because of all the Masters, it hadn’t taken much convincing to get Hux to vote yes on this plan.
“May it find agony in the eternal emptiness it faces after this.”
“I agree,” Kinlear said. “In... less formal terms that I cannot openly express without fear of paying penance again.”
“You’ve had more than enough of that for both of us,” Hux replied.
He kept his blade drawn and ready as if the fallen rider would spring back to life.
A difficult thing to do, without a head.
Someone’s Sacred magic had severed it—probably a windblade from Hux himself, his specialty-- and probably long before the rider and the raphon crashed.
Other voices came from ahead in the shadows, his father’s soldiers...and the cry of the beast.
Agonizing.
Angry as all hells.
And yet, Kinlear paused, unable to look away from the headless rider.
A real darksoul...
One of the Acolyte’s powerful chosen. He’d certainly gotten every detail right in his dreams, when he slayed himself.
“Incredible,” Kinlear said. “It truly bleeds as black as the night sky.”
He’d never seen war the way Arawn had. Never seen one up close, like this.
“A stained soul,” said Hux. “It did not die easily.”
“They never do,” Kinlear said.
A lovely black blade was discarded at the creature’s side. A short sword, with raven’s wings for a hilt.
Kinlear sucked in a breath, then quickly covered it up with a cough.
A quick uncorking of his vial settled it.
“Prince?”
“It’s alright,” Kinlear said. “I just...it’s the first time I’ve seen one of them like this.”
“Monstrous, isn’t it?” Hux asked.
Kinlear nodded. He kept his face passive, trying to hide the elation he felt inside. He was dizzy with it, drunk with it, as his heart fluttered in his chest.
Because it was her blade.
The one he saw in his dreams...the one she carried on her hip. He felt closer to her now than he ever had before.
Kinlear knelt, reaching out.
“Prince. I urge you not to touch it.”
“We should keep it for study,” Kinlear said. “Perhaps the riders are given specific weapons for a reason. Perhaps the blade helps forge the bond to the beast?”
Black diamonds shimmered on the pommel. So depthless, their color, yet each one sparkled like they were spun from stars. He scooped it up, ignoring Hux’s warnings, and tucked it into his waistband.
It would be beautiful on her hip.
It would shine like her scars when they caught the glittering light.
“Looks like touching it didn’t change me,” Kinlear said, chuckling as Hux flinched. “Now...where is my beast?”
His strength was waning. The night was damned cold, even with his runed cloak.
Soon he’d have to sit down, to resettle himself from the gravity of a sickness he could not ignore. It was always there with him, a little whisper in the back of his mind. You’re tired, it hissed. You should lay down. You should close your eyes and simply quit.
But he wouldn’t stop. Not until he’d laid eyes on it.
Hux led him further into the woods, around the cluster of evergreens, where more stones glowed with Entrapment runes, each one inscribed just hours ago by the strongest of his father’s Scribes.
And right there in the center of the clearing, amidst piles of broken tree limbs and churned up snow, an obvious sign of a horrid impact...
Kinlear sucked in a breath.
A raphon.
The tip of his cane drove into the snow as he paused, utterly frozen.
“Gods above...” Kinlear breathed. “It worked.”
A shiver of delight ran through his veins at the sight of the captured beast. Half giant raven, half black panther, it was a perfect mashup of silken fur and sleek black feathers. Claws and beak...and a long, dark cat’s tail twitching as it released a mighty screech into the night.
Years of studying the raphons, years of watching them from the cliffside as they fought by night in the sky, and finally...
Mine, Kinlear thought. You are mine.
She was black as the night above them, fearsome as she growled, deep in her throat.
Her massive, dark beak opened, and she released a warning, or perhaps a cry for help as she rose on all four paws.
Kinlear couldn’t be sure which, but he felt the sound zing through him like a bolt of lightning, setting his edges ablaze.
She was beautiful.
She was deadly.
She was...he raised a dark brow.
Wrong.
Because she had no scar on her beak, not like the raphon in his dreams.
And she was bleeding.
“I said no wounds,” Kinlear growled.
A twinge of familiar fury ran through him at the sight of the blood on the snow as the raphon stood, took one step...and collapsed. He gasped and leaned forward as if he’d run to her. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”
The raphon cried out again, the sound laced in pain as she tried to extend her wings and take flight.
They were snapped in two, bent at a horrid angle as she collapsed. More blood gushed from her fur—it was too dark to find an exact wound, but even Kinlear knew the look of dying.
It was one he’d seen far too many times on the war eagles when they were brought back to the Citadel, lucky to be in one piece.
It was one he’d seen in his own mind, when he slayed his monster.
His eyes slid to Hux, who was charged with manning this entire mission. “I asked for a soft landing for the beast. What the hell did your soldiers do?”
“War is not the kind of thing that can be explained,” said the Master. “Nor are my methods, Prince. We did the best we could under the circumstances. No lives were lost.”
The darksoul’s corpse flashed in Kinlear’s mind.
Soraya’s came next.
He hid his own flinch.
It’s your fault, his conscience hissed. You should have seen her death and stopped it.
Will you ever amount to anything, Prince?
He shoved the thoughts away. If he focused on them too long, he’d find himself drowning in winterwine again tonight.
He’d find himself mourning for a future that was never truly his to begin with.
The scarred woman.
She was to be his true Matching.
He could feel it like a target upon his heart, and everything he did, everything he dreamt of...she was there, at dead center.
“No Sacred lives,” Kinlear said, and pointed his cane at the raphon. “But her life might be lost. Secure her, so we can get her to the Citadel to be tended to.” When no one moved, he growled, “Now!”
Something whizzed past his ear, seconds later.
A glowing arrow, freshly rune-marked with a stasis rune he knew all too well. It drove deep into the raphon’s back leg. A second of struggle...and then the beast fell silent.
Only the rumbling of the war could be heard.
“Quickly,” Hux commanded.
The Sacred Knights converged upon the raphon with ropes and chains, and just like that...
The beast was a prisoner of war.
Kinlear stood there in the snow, silent as the grave, as they dragged the raphon away. Her body was limp; her wings and tail spread behind her as a smear of dark blood stained the snow.
Pity filled his gut. A sense of wrongness settled in him, as if he cared for the beast...
Though he couldn’t quite tell why. This one wasn’t his.
But then he noticed the shape of the raphon’s belly as she was dragged past.
It was swollen.
Almost as if...the beast was carrying pups.