Chapter 40
The city isa vast ocean of star-sized lights as we make our way toward the palace, Kaira leading the way, Clio bringing up the rear, and in between, Myron and me. I can sense his gaze on the side of my face as he stalks beside me through the night like he has invented it. A true creature of darkness with unfathomable power. The way he snatched Clio’s sword away was startling and brutal, and so fast even my new senses had a hard time following.
A part of me wonders if the colors and nuances I now perceive will wear off, if I’ll return to human Ayna soon, but if anything Ephegos said is true, my human part isn’t the one I need to be worried about; it’s the Crow buried deep within me that was set free in the torture chamber.
“Ready?” Clio asks, keeping to the shadows as we follow a wider street where a few people are packing up what seems to be the leftovers of a market, loading it onto a wagon.
“To face Ephegos?” I shake my head. I’m not even remotely ready to run into the Crow, but I’m pretty certain that by now he must have noticed my absence. That might explain the increased number of soldiers drifting through the streets this late at night.
I dive behind a barrel, pulling Myron with me as one of said patrols rounds the corner across the square, their heads turning as they scan the wide space between the houses. Apart from some forgotten vegetables that made it off a market stand and the occasional city dweller, they don’t find much. We’re too fast to get out of sight and too good at hiding. We need to be, or we’ll never make it close to the palace. Once there, staying hidden will become an entirely different challenge.
Shifting into our Crow forms is off the table since I haven’t managed to even pull on the power that made me turn in the dungeon, and Myron won’t change without me, not that his ability has fully returned. All he can do is make a few feathers appear on his arm. The way he won’t leave my side is both sweet and terrifying. If we get caught, I’ll need him to leave me behind and run.
“So the plan remains the same?” Myron’s tone is smooth like he’s done this a thousand times. “Kaira gets us in and we use the servant corridors to get close to the dungeon entrance?”
“Unless you can magically get us in?” Clio drawls, her spirit back now that we’re finally in motion. “Much as I’d love to offer, my site-hopping ability hasn’t returned.” And she wasn’t willing to wait a moment longer once we were all strong enough to fight. I don’t blame her. I’d do the same if it was Myron in the dungeon instead of Tori.
“That would have been convenient,” Myron comments. “In and out in the blink of an eye. Would have solved all our problems.”
“We can’t afford to wait that long,” I remind him. “The moment Ephegos realizes you’re gone, Royad and Silas are in immediate danger of suffering his retaliation.”
Myron flinches almost imperceptibly, but I notice the way I notice everything about him. Every breath, every blink of his eyes, every time his mouth presses into a thin line when we discuss the dangers of our mission all over again.
Plan or no, we’re unprepared and weak. Thank the Guardians all but one of our opponents are human, or we’d be dead the moment we set foot into the palace.
Kaira leads us past a quiet street with mostly residential buildings before we step into the richer quarters where I recognize bits and pieces from my childhood years. A carved fountain here, an estate there, a statue…
It’s beautiful and overwhelming, and with matters at hand, so utterly inconsequential that I find beauty in the architecture of this city. The thought is still a mouthful to swallow, but I force it down whenever it pops up. It doesn’t matter what blood runs in my veins, only that I have a family to save before I get the hell out of what, in a different time, might have been my kingdom.
We keep our heads down as we march along the side streets, disguised as peasants. Myron is the hardest to disguise with his impossible height and build, but just like he’s an expert at drawing attention when he enters a room with the authority of an unapologetic king, he has mastered avoiding gazes when he needs to. All but mine, which seems to be glued to his bare shoulder where his tattoo stands stark against his moonlit skin.
The palace looms ahead, onion-shaped roofs towering over the rest of the city as we approach from the east. I recognize the same narrow side gate we used when we left earlier, and my stomach tightens.
“Julj is on duty every night this week,” Kaira says over her shoulder. If I knock a certain way, he’ll open the door for me.”
Myron pauses. “I thought Herinor would do that.”
So did I.
“He’ll open a different door.” Kaira grins, so very fairy of her even when only a minuscule part of her is Fire Fairy. “Having Julj let me in will get Herinor’s attention, though.”
Well, that explains the frown when Herinor reminded her of the signal. It also explains Kaira’s flirting with the guard.
“Hide there.” She points at a wooden fence separating a carriage shed from a backyard, and we dive in, careful not to disturb the water trough at the corner. Myron’s arm sweeps around me, pulling me into him as Clio crouches in front of us, keeping a close eye on Kaira, who’s striding right for the gate, head high, braid swishing in the gentle breeze, and her maid’s cap back on her head, like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
My new senses struggle to keep focus on the female approaching our gate into the palace when my side is lined up with Myron’s hard chest—his very bare hard chest—and his fingers are absently tracing the edge of my waist. I swallow the instinct to curl into him and ignore the rest of the world when we are so close to our goal—so close to danger.
“I expected you sooner,” Julj says by way of greeting, opening the door for Kaira, and the female slips inside, her servant uniform disappearing behind the coarse wood.
“Will you be all right?” I ask Kaira through our mind connection, reading a laugh right back.
“I’m always all right with Julj. He can’t tell left from right when it comes to a female’s body.”
I have no idea why that amuses me and scares me at the same time.
“Tell me you’re not about to offer him left or right or any part of your body.”I don’t add that Herinor might not like the idea, but she picks the thought right from my mind.
“Herinor knows what I’m about to do. He doesn’t like it, but he agrees it’s necessary.”Her tone isn’t as light as her bodily voice before, when she waved goodbye and headed for doom.
“Lord Ephegos’s tasks must have taken quite a while,”the second guard’s voice enters our conversation as her present situation leaks into her thoughts. I startle an inch into Myron, who secures his arm around me, his warmth the only reminder I’m not hallucinating all of this. It’s the same voice as when we left, and I can feel his hand on my hair like a phantom touch.
“I was looking forward to your visit yesterday,” Julj says, ignoring the older guard’s remark. I wouldn’t be surprised if his gaze was glued to Kaira’s chest.
“I was held up by other duties. But I’m here now. I actually have a few minutes right now,” Kaira adds in a whisper. “Why don’t you show me what you were looking forward to exactly?” In my mind, she says to me, “I will be fine, Ayna. Promise. I’ll let you hover in my mind though so you know when it’s time to run for the gate.”
She could have warned me sooner about this particular part of the plan. I didn’t like the way he sized her up when we fled the palace, and I like it even less how she’s willingly returning to his arms now—for me. For Myron and Clio, and the males still stuck in the dungeons. Perhaps a little bit for Herinor because he can’t help me. So she took on the burden for him.
Perhaps she took it on much sooner than I realized.
At the Flame estate, when she first brought me tea, she said she wanted to know me because I’m blood, but perhaps that was only part of the truth. She wanted to go with me to Meer—but she might as well have followed for the male. And here, at the palace … she already admitted that she has been helping him.
“You know I can hear every last part of your doubt, Ayna,” she reminds me, a low moan slipping into her thoughts, and it’s not her own. Julj must be enjoying the encounter already. “He better be because I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Whatare you doing?” Not that I really want to know. But now that she’s mentioned it?—
“Something you don’t want to see your sister doing, so shut up, and let me focus.”
I try to do exactly that while they seem to be moving through the corridors near the gate, leaving behind the older guard, and for a brief minute, it works. For a minute, I can ignore the groans and whispers Kaira channels my way to keep me informed about the progress of her mission. A mission I really wish she didn’t need to take upon herself, and not just for her sake. Then, another voice mingles with the sounds, and I almost leap out of my skin. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Myron shoots me a confused sideways glance, but I shake my head. I will tell him later about everything I just witnessed. For now, I need to fully focus so we don’t miss the moment we need to sprint for the inconspicuous door, praying that none of the guards manning the many small towers will notice us.
“Move your naked ass and step away from her. Because if you touch this female again, I will cut more than just your hands off.”
Oh, I know the voice. I know it too well, and I’m not ashamed to admit that the first time I heard it I was scared shitless.
“This shall be interesting,” Kaira narrates as Herinor’s growls sound through her mind into mine, and the soldier begs for mercy. I can only imagine what is going on by the grunts and swears waving through Kaira’s thoughts. I have the faintest sense of something wet spraying onto my shirt before Kaira’s voice returns to my head.
“Is the gate clear?”she asks Herinor, who grunts his confirmation. “All right, Ayna. Hurry. I’ll open the door for you.”
I don’t tell Myron and Clio how I know the gate is clear as I grab his hand and get to my feet, waving Clio along as we stumble from shadow to shadow to the steel-enforced rectangle in the wall that means safety for now—and a point of no return. Once we’re in, we must continue to the dungeon. And this first door will have been the easiest.
Despite the rush and the stop-and-go of our progress, my feet are light on the cobbled ground, my breath even and my focus clear. There’s something to say for those fae senses I have been gifted alongside a mate Mark, if that’s what the tattoo on my shoulder is called. Whatever the gods did, they knew exactly what they were doing.
We dodge eyes as we slip from one corner to the next, easy as ghosts in the night, starlight never touching us longer than a few heartbeats between the ripping clouds above. Thank the Guardians for bad weather.
The gate draws nearer, my heart pounding in my throat as I want to sprint the final distance to make it inside safely. The door is opening, and it’s not far enough away to risk another stop.
“Wait!”Kaira shouts in my mind the same moment Myron’s arm snatches me around the waist, tugging me against the wall beneath a narrow roof so hard it knocks the breath from my lungs. Clio is gasping for air on his other side, wriggling her shoulder out of his grasp and ready to complain when a male form steps through the gate, stalking toward the nearby bushes and?—
Fuck me—“Is he…”
“Peeing on the royal bushes? He is,” Myron confirms with that cold amused voice I remember from the early days we shared at the Crow Palace.
Clio laughs between deep breaths. “That was close.”
“It’s one single human guard,” I point out, catching my breath while I relish Myron’s touch, the way his fingers are splayed across my stomach. “Even I could have incapacitated him with my water magic.”
The look Myron gives me drives a shiver deep through my bones. “You don’t actually think I’ll let anyone who sees you in this palace live?”
He’s right. I know he’s right. If word gets around that I’ve returned to the palace—and with an escaped prisoner—there’s no way Erina won’t mobilize his entire army to keep me there.
“I’d rather you not become a killer tonight.” His gaze softens, and something like a blush creeps into his cheeks that makes him look utterly adorable while simultaneously horribly attractive—and the meaning of his words trickles through the haze his attention creates in my mind.
“You know I’ve killed before, on the Wild Ray. And at your own palace.” I no longer care to try to correct myself that the palace in the Seeing Forest was never actually his. We don’t have time for technicalities. The guard is done peeing and buttons up his pants before returning inside.
“I guess that particular one doesn’t care about the reputation of Erina’s court,” Clio comments, ignoring our ongoing conversation.
Myron’s gaze doesn’t leave mine as he uncurls his arm from around me, inhaling deeply through his nose as if scenting whether the air is clear.
“Kaira?”I reach out in my mind, ready for anything, but she hums in response, opening her thoughts to me.
“I’m all right. Hiding in an alcove but all right. He didn’t see the other guard’s body, thank the Guardians, which means I’m cowering right next to a dead man.”The image she sends makes me shiver, and I try not to show my distress in any other way.
“Is the air clear now?”
I wind my fingers through Myron’s, ready to inform him about everything I just learned through the magical channel connecting me to my sister, but Kaira occupies my attention again. “You need to hurry. The man poked around for a bit when he realized the gate was abandoned. It’ll be a matter of minutes until he reports and new guards fill in for the ones Herinor disposed of.”
So, he killed them both. I’m glad I didn’t have more to eat.
“Let’s go.” This time, it’s Myron who takes the lead, his senses stronger than mine perhaps and picking up more from the palace than me, or he just has an infallible instinct for danger. Does it matter when it gets us to the gate and the door opens, led by Kaira’s calloused hand, and she waves us inside?