Chapter 27
After the third day of Ondra’s captivity, Attalus was finally allowed to assess the traitor. He’d been given strict instructions only to frighten her, that her interrogators had gleaned being caught in his mouth upon her capture had disturbed her greatly.
He was delighted to hear it—and accepted her interrogators’ instructions as friendly advice.
Attalus followed Marcades down into another palace pit. The stairwell reminded him of the one down to the grotto, but the dark cavern at its base was nothing like the ethereal place. If the faelands was smart, it didn’t reside down here.
Low firelight in rusting braziers cut weakly through the gloom. Although the miasma had burned away, this place retained an aftertaste of dust and soot. Fresh air hadn’t permeated down here in some time.
Cells had been hewn from the bedrock, stone on all sides except the door.
The fae being the fae, even the latticework of spelled metal that made up the cell doors was beautiful, in a twisted, stark kind of way.
The shapes of the bent metal created visual illusions as one walked past, allowing guards to see in but keeping prisoners blind.
Attalus was led all the way down, past a guard at every empty cell. He refused to let the unsavory memory of being thrown in a dungeon himself, not that long ago, spoil his mood.
His long purple robes fluttered around him when they at last came to a halt outside the final door on the right. Marcades stepped forward to run his gloved finger across the metal in a precise pattern, and the mechanism unlocked.
Pulling the door open, Marcades reminded him, “Two minutes, my prince.”
Attalus’s grin was his answer before poking his head into the cell. While unlikely, he didn’t think it totally beyond his wily mate to have him confined to a cell until this business with Araxos was concluded. Even after the council meeting, they’d yet to see eye to eye on the matter.
A figure crouched in the far corner, both ankles chained to either wall.
Attalus stepped inside the cell, pleased when Ondra shuddered at the sound of him coming. His talons on the stone were unmistakable.
“I’ve come to finish what I started, vroul.”
Ondra’s head shot up from the cradle of her arms, her eyes white-rimmed. Attalus laughed at her terror.
She looked far more hale than he’d anticipated. Only a few scratches and the grime of the cell on her face. Oh, her eyes were bloodshot and underscored by lines, but she had all her limbs. What exactly were these interrogators doing—or not doing?
She also wore the same clothes she’d been caught in, the garb that marked her as a servant of the palace. Attalus wondered which of the stains was his Leita’s blood.
Ondra lifted her chin defiantly, her lip curling in a sneer. Determined to be strong, it seemed, but her trembling hands belied her bravery.
“I’m not afraid of you, lizard,” she spat.
“Yessss, you are,” he taunted, letting his forked tongue hang on the ssss. He crouched in the center of the cell, taking up her vision and blocking the only escape.
“You’re nothing but a pampered dog.”
“But one that attacks on command.” Attalus peeled his lips back, revealing the maw of his throat glowing behind his teeth. Her false bravery fell away at the threat of flame, and she likely didn’t need him to tell her, “Fire is one of the worst ways to die. Did you know?”
“I’ll die one way or another,” she muttered.
“Indeed you will. You can spare yourself much suffering if you admit to the depths of your plot, though. Reveal your plans and your conspirators and you may yet atone for your crimes.”
Ondra snorted. “I haven’t come this far to spare her now.”
She jumped when Attalus’s humorless laugh boomed through the cell. The mad sound rebounded off the rock, growing louder with each pass.
“Spare her? They were wrong to tell me you aren’t mad yet. Leita doesn’t need sparing, vroul, for neither you nor your pathetic plotters will come near her again.”
“I may have failed, but we are many,” Ondra growled. “It only takes a single blade to change our fate. The faelands will be free.”
Attalus chuckled. “Free from what, precisely?” He didn’t wait for her answer, standing suddenly to loom over her.
“Your last Queen was a tyrant, I’ll grant you that.
But even she didn’t compare to my father.
I’ve seen true madness, vroul. Cruelty you cannot comprehend.
My father deserved his death, as Amaranthe did hers. Leita is nothing like them.”
Ondra’s lower lid twitched, and her mouth screwed into a line. A moment of conflict before she declared, “A Queen is a Queen, and the faelands must be free of them.”
“Your kind need a Queen. You’d fight your very nature and doom yourselves to ruin.”
“We aren’t drones to be commanded, we have a will and a mind of our own! Everyone will see it—without a Queen, we will be free, untethered from her chain. Magic will flow through all of us as it always should have—”
Attalus slammed his hand on the stone above her, his wings and robes surrounding her on all sides. He blocked out the light so that only the whites of her eyes broke up the shadow.
“And what if you’re wrong?” he whispered into the darkness.
“What if your blade had struck true and you’d condemned all your kind?
” The questions dangled in the cramped air between them, and Attalus heard her shudder.
Only after a long moment did Attalus straighten, little by little.
In the rush of stale air that came between them, he asked, “What then, Ondra Doombringer?”
A tear slid from her eye, and Attalus smiled on his way out.
Marcades shut the door behind him with a resounding clang. Attalus noticed the distaste souring the captain’s already severe face.
“What?” asked Attalus. “She’s still got both her eyes.”
As they walked back through the corridor of cells, Marcades spat, “Hate this business. There’s no honor in it.”
“Honor is a luxury, captain,” Attalus quipped. “So long as my mate rests easy and safe, I don’t care how it’s done.”
He could hear Marcades’s silent but loud turmoil, but that was the captain’s own problem to wrest with.
Honor was all well and good; it could sustain some when all else fled, and it sounded nice in songs and stories.
But Attalus had seen far too many innocent throats ripped out as good, honorable people stood on and did nothing to believe in it anymore.
Attalus was glad to be out of that dark stairwell, able to stretch his wings. When he and Marcades made the landing, another metal gate was swung closed behind them. He had a feeling that that place had been far busier under Leita’s predecessor.
“Well then, captain, are you done with me or shall I take command of your training yard? I could do with some skull-bashing.”
Marcades huffed—his version of a laugh. “But you’re dressed so finely today, my prince.”
“That should hardly matter, unless you and your warriors actually mean to give me a sweat finally.”
“As though you—”
“Dragons!”
He and Marcades came to a sudden stop, staring at each other. But Attalus was right here…?
Attalus broke into a run, Marcades close behind him. Through the corridors they ran, Attalus sailing down one grand staircase with two flaps of his wings. He made the front courtyard first to the deafening thunder of great horns.
“Dragons aloft! Take cover!”
As the horns blared and alarms raised, Attalus looked to the sky.
There, stark against the blue summer sky, were a formation of dragons. Higher than birds but low enough that they meant to be spotted.
And they weren’t just the armor-clad gorgoroi. At their head, Attalus could discern the gleaming golden scales of a diadochos. Erastus or Tychon, most likely. Araxos wouldn’t leave the Droplets himself with a throne so shiny and new.
His shriek of outrage burst across the courtyard. Was there to be no end to the indignities? They refused communications to instead indirectly threaten the faelands? Even the mad king hadn’t been so mad.
Enough.
As Marcades skidded into the courtyard, Attalus threw off his robes. The shift began from one blink to the next, bones elongating, muscle growing. Marcades watched grimly as Attalus took on the beast, flame already spilling from his snarling mouth.
Up at the sky he roared, a sound every Savrakae would understand. Here I am, you twats. Come and get me.
Attalus took three great bounds, wings pumping, and launched himself into the sky.
He didn’t care which brother this was—only the warm crunch of a throat would satisfy him.
Wings working, he gained height, the dragons above banking. They’d seen him. Good.
“Attalus, no!”
A white streak on his right caught the corner of his eye. Leita rushed onto a nearby balcony, catching herself on the balustrade. She thrust out her arm as though to pluck him from the air.
He shook his head. It must be done. His sentiment thrummed down their bond.
Attalus turned to climb higher.
“You can’t! Attalus—!”
A heavy band fell across Attalus’s back, forcing him down toward the ground. He fought its hold, doddering like some old seabird, wings flapping so hard the trees in the courtyard bent.
Another force caught him across his nape, pressing on him like a great hand.
He thrashed midair, struggling to be free, but the more he fought, the more magic Leita used.
Tears spilled down her cheeks as she hovered above the balcony, her wings buzzing so fast they were a purple blur behind her. Elbows locked and fingers splayed, she compelled him to the ground and kept him there.
Lashed by invisible bonds, Attalus could only watch while Leita turned skyward herself.
NO!
Attalus renewed his fight, refusing to let her face the danger he’d wrought.
The magic held as firm as she did. All he could do was shriek and roar, impotent and useless.