Chapter 20 Rhianelle
"The capital is under siege?" The words feel unreal in my mouth.
The burned scout nods, wincing with each movement. "The Herald of the Wild Hunt himself leads them."
I stare at him blankly. This can't be happening. Not now. Not when we've barely survived the sea.
"Your Highness," the scout continues, his voice cracking. "The council begs for your return. They say without their queen, the capital will fall."
I'm still on my knees, drained from summoning Nimue. My hands won't stop shaking, but there's no time for weakness.
"We have to go." I struggle to stand, my legs threatening to buckle. "Now."
"You can barely move," Svenn protests, catching my elbow to steady me. His hands are cold against my arms. I can feel the tremor in them. Three days of fighting the seadragon and keeping Coinneach manifested to protect the harbor. He's as exhausted as I am but he won't say it.
"The western regions…" the scout supplies, wincing with each word. "That's where they struck first. It's... it's gone, Your Highness. The entire duchy."
Three hundred thousand souls. Gone.
They have lives, families, futures. Had. They had those things.
I turn to Svenn. "Please, help me. My people are dying." I bite my inner cheek to keep the tears from flowing.
"Coinneach," Svenn says quietly.
His shadow ripples and takes form. It cuts through the air, carving a portal of pure darkness. I can smell smoke and death through the pathway.
The portal's edges writhe like living things. Coinneach is more than just a shadow. He is a piece of Svenn, a fragment of whatever darkness lives in his blood. Opening portals tears at him. I can see it in the tightness around his eyes, the way his jaw clenches.
"I'm coming with you," Aelfric says immediately.
"No, stay here. Protect Volundr." I turn to my knights. "Darstan, Aelfric, Garrett, the city needs you. Hold it until I return."
The three of them exchange glances, then nod in unison.
Darstan steps forward and places a hand on my shoulder. The knight who chose me when everyone else left. "Be safe, Your Highness."
I look at Rainer. "The city is yours to defend."
My uncle meets my eyes steadily. "As you command, Your Highness."
Something flickers across the hard lines of his face, softening it. I've seen that expression before. It's the look he saved for Aerin. I step forward and wrap my arms around him. His embrace is firm and steady. When I pull back, he squeezes my shoulder once.
I step toward the portal but a familiar rumble stops me. My little wyvern pushes past me and leaps into the shadow portal.
"Coral, no!" But there's no calling her back now. She's already through, swallowed by the darkness.
I turn to Svenn, eyes wide. Of all the times for Coral to be naughty.
"She's stubborn," I mutter.
Svenn doesn't say it but I can see it in his face. Like you.
I draw a breath and step into Svenn's shadow realm. The world folds in on itself. Three days of battling the seadragons has taken their toll on him. I can feel his exhaustion in every frozen pulse of the void. The place is colder than usual. It's disorienting, but I push through.
The void isn't empty. It's full of whispers, touches, and things that brush against my skin like cobwebs.
This is the Ysendral's realm. The space between spaces where shadows live. Every time I pass through, I understand a little more why Svenn fears what he is.
I find Coral in the darkness and grab her snout gently, forcing her to meet my eyes. "You stay close to me. Understand?"
She chirps once, soft and stubborn.
We emerge to a burning world.
The heat is immediate and overwhelming. It makes my eyes water and my skin tighten like standing too close to a furnace. I raise my arm instinctively, shielding my face.
Charred skeletons of homes collapse into piles of ash and ember. What was once a prosperous city is now a hellscape of blackened earth and smoldering rubble. The air scorches my lungs with each breath.
"Fifty thousand people lived here," I whisper, the number catching in my throat.
Svenn stands beside me, taking it in. The city spreads before us in ruins. What the fires didn't consume, they melted. We pass bodies burned beyond recognition. The worst are the ones that are still recognizable, twisted in their final agonies.
A small hand reaches out from beneath a collapsed beam. I stop to dig and remove the rubble. But when I look closer, I see the hand isn't moving. It will never move again.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'm so sorry I wasn't here."
Coral nudges my leg gently.
Wyverns streak across the horizon above the carnage, their leathery wings cutting through the haze. They look nothing like Coral. These are war-bred monsters, their ash-gray scales camouflaging perfectly against the burning sky.
I count them. Twelve in the first group, eight in the second. More circling beyond the smoke. There are maybe fifty of them invading this part of town. I can see the efficiency in their black-armored riders. This is what the Night Herons do. They bring death and chaos.
Movement catches my eye near the eastern edge of the ruins.
Three children flee toward the tree line, the youngest barely walking.
The eldest clutches a cloth bundle that might be a baby or all they have left.
They stumble through the rubble, desperate for safety.
A wyvern spots them and begins its dive.
The rider leans low in his saddle. He's letting his mount do the work. This is sport to him.
Gods please no.
My exhausted body moves on instinct. But I'm too slow, too far—
A wall of living darkness catches the creature mid-strike.
Coinneach erupts from the ground between the children and the wyvern.
Shadowy tendrils wrap around the beast's throat and wings.
It shrieks as it slams into the earth. The wyvern thrashes once, twice against the ground before going still.
Its rider tries to crawl free but shadows find him too. His screaming stops abruptly.
The children keep running. They don't look back.
Across the marketplace, another wyvern snatches up a knight and tears her in half mid-flight. Blood showers the remaining survivors below as they scatter. The rider makes another turn, leaning forward in his saddle with bow drawn and arrow nocked. He releases a volley toward the fleeing group.
The arrows never land.
Svenn's shadows surge upward, swallowing the projectiles into nothingness. The coiling darkness whips toward the mounted wyvern, hurling rider and beast from the sky.
They hit a collapsed building. The structure comes down on top of them. Neither moves after that.
A familiar chirping sound makes me spin around. Coral clicks anxiously, her head swiveling as she takes in the devastation. Soot settles on her hide, dulling her iridescent scales. She should have stayed in Volundr where it's safe.
"Stay behind me," I tell her.
Coral presses against my leg, trembling. She's never seen anything like this. Neither have I, really. Not on this scale.
I reach for the chalk in my pouch. My fingers are shaking so badly I drop it twice before I manage to grip it properly.
I try to trace the summoning lines. The circle needs to be perfect and precise. I reach toward the space between worlds.
Just one more string.
The burn starts in my chest. Before I can complete the ritual, Svenn's cold fingers wrap around my wrist.
"No." His voice carries that otherworldly echo it gets when the darkness stirs within him. "You've given enough of yourself today."
The power gutters like a candle in wind.
I want to protest and tell him that I can handle it. But the truth is my hand shakes so violently I can barely maintain the connection to the realm of the gods.
"The people are dying," I sob. "Children are—"
"I know," he says, releasing my hand. "I may not be able to stop the sea, but this? This I can do."
Svenn releases my wrist and steps away. He doesn't want me too close for what comes next.
The transformation starts in his bones. I hear it happening, the cracking and stretching. Claws burst from his hands and his legs reverse at the knee. Antlers spiral from his skull, sharp enough to pierce steel.
"Svenn?" I whisper, but the thing that was my husband doesn't seem to hear.
Wendy stands where Svenn knelt.
Twelve feet tall and gaunt as famine, skin like weathered leather stretched over bone. I've seen Svenn shift before. I've watched him become shadow and things that hunting parties whisper about around dying fires. But this... this is different.
Svenn has summoned another two beasts from Hel to merge with Wendy. His jaw unhinges, revealing teeth in rows. He breathes out and frost forms despite the burning heat.
This is what he hides. What he fears becoming. The thing that lives at the bottom of his consciousness, waiting.
He towers above me now, a creature of nightmare and hunger.
For a moment, his eyes find mine and I see the question and the fear. Not fear of the fae. Fear of himself and what he might do in this form.
"I trust you," I tell him.
His eyes close. When they open again, the fear is gone. Only purpose remains.
Without warning, he launches himself skyward.
The leap shouldn't be possible. Dark tendrils spread from his transformed body, writhing and coiling as they reach toward the sky. The shadows move with purpose and intelligence. They are extensions of his will made manifest.
He moves through the air as if it were solid ground. A rider spots him and pulls up sharply, shouting warning to his wingmates. Too late. Svenn is already there, materializing beside the wyvern. His claws flash once and the wyvern's head separates from its body. Rider and corpse fall together.
Svenn doesn't wait to watch them fall. He's already moving, already hunting the next target. Darkness carries him from one wyvern to the next with impossible grace.
I watch, transfixed, as he lands on the back of a diving wyvern.
The beast shrieks in terror as shadow-tendrils wrap around its wings, forcing it into a spiraling descent.
Its rider tries to turn his bow on Svenn, but those terrible claws rake across his chest, sending him tumbling toward the ash-covered earth below.
Another wyvern comes at him from the side, its rider's spear aimed for his heart. Svenn simply dissolves into shadow, letting the weapon pass harmlessly through him before reforming behind the attacker. His horned skull connects with the fae warrior's spine with a sickening crack.
The screaming as they fall is terrible.
I clasp my hand to my mouth anxiously as three wyverns converge on him, their mageriders casting fire. The green flames hit Svenn and simply... disappear. Absorbed into the darkness that is him.
Svenn laughs—if that sound can be called laughter.
Watching him tear through the sky, I'm reminded that I married Arescaine Darian Andras, the Vampire Prince of Morsyvenn.
A formation of five riders tries a coordinated strike, diving at him from different angles. It would work on anything else. But not my husband.
Shadows explode outward in a dozen directions at once. Three riders are impaled before they can react. The fourth loses his mount, the wyvern cleaved in half by living darkness. Their fifth manages to pull up in time, only to find Svenn already behind him, jaws closing around rider and wyvern both.
The crunch of bones is audible even from here.
A battle cry erupts from Svenn's throat. The sound isn't from this world. It's something primal and hungry that makes the surviving wyverns flinch in terror. But Svenn pursues them relentlessly.
No one escapes. The ones who flee, he catches. The ones who fight, he kills. The ones who try to hide in the smoke, the shadows find them anyway.
In just a few moments, half of the fae riders and their wyverns are dead or dying. The rest are scattering, formations broken, and fleeing in every direction. But then I notice something else happening in the sky.
Some of the Night Herons are attacking each other.