Chapter 19
Nineteen
Hanna
We shifted as bloody dawn spread across the sky, and we’d been flying for three hours when the Shadow Weaver spoke.
“We’re going in the wrong direction.”
I banked slightly, adjusting for a wind current that tried to push me off course. Below, the Ice Kingdom spread out in endless white: forests giving way to tundra, rivers frozen solid, mountains sharp against the horizon.
“I doubt that very much,” I answered the goddess. All the terrain here looked the same to me. I depended on Kaelan, Dare, and Thorne.
Above, Kaelan flew with Ekardo gripped carefully in his claws, the mage’s body small against his massive ice-blue dragon form. He seemed miserable, which I didn’t mind. Thorne carried his mother on his back, her arms wrapped tight around his neck, her graying hair whipping in the wind.
And I carried Jaia and Azora and Finnias in a bag, because he was not a very good flyer.
“Jaia’s child is in danger. She’s being taken. Now.”
My wings missed a beat.
“Hanna?” Azora called, her voice barely audible over the wind. “Everything all right?”
I didn’t answer.
A vision overlaid my sight of clouds and sky.
A small cottage, hidden deep in a forest. A woman—middle-aged, scarred, capable—stood at a window, armed with a crossbow.
Behind her stood a tall, carved armoire, and then—through the goddess’s eyes—flashed back to a moment before, to the woman muttering desperate prayers as she closed the door.
The child had looked up at her with eyes full of fear, the hms of cloaks and dresses hanging above her, as she shut the door.
The soldiers outside moved forward with swords drawn, with orders that would end in blood.
“How do you know?” I demanded.
“Because some still pray to me. When they’re desperate enough.” The goddess’s voice was calm. Patient. Like explaining something obvious to a child. “When they need a miracle born of shadows.”
I didn’t trust the goddess. She must be lying to me.
“The child will be taken if you don’t trust me. One more loss for your friends. One more toy for Edric to dangle in front of you all. Coril, Alys, Vizia. All sent to different prisons where if you will not obey, he can murder them one at a time before you can respond.”
“No.”
“Then act.”
I reached out through my mental link. It was stronger, easier to access, when we were in our dragon form.
“The Shadow Weaver claims that Jaia’s daughter is in danger,” I told them.
“How would she know?” Kaelan demanded in return.
“She says some still pray to her.” She did sound delighted, which made me think perhaps it was true.
“We can’t trust her,” Kaelan said.
“I think I do.”
I severed the connection. Or the goddess did. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but Kaelan’s shock rippled us both before the last of the connection died.
I dove into the clouds before anyone could stop me.
“Hanna!” Jaia shouted, her voice sharp with alarm. “What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer. I flew fast, following the pull the goddess provided like a thread through my mind.
Jaia was shouting something. Azora too. Their voices were distant. Unimportant compared to the urgency thrumming through me.
Forest appeared below. Dense. Dark. Pine and birch so thick the white ground was barely visible. I descended fast, shifting mid-air: dragon to human in heartbeats, magic pulling my form smaller, condensing power into flesh.
The landing was rough. I hit frozen ground hard enough to crack ice, already human, already moving. Jaia and Azora tumbled off my back, rolling, scrambling to their feet. Finnias crawled out of the bag and hissed at all of us.
“What the hell was that?” Jaia demanded, breath misting white.
“Vizia is here.” My voice sounded flat. Wrong. Like someone else speaking through my throat. “She’s in danger.”
“You don’t know that!” Jaia’s voice cracked, desperation cutting through anger. “I don’t even know if she’s here! I haven’t seen her in months because that’s how we protect her!”
“The Shadow Weaver knows,” I said.
“How?” Jaia always looked so tough, fearless and smirking no matter what happened, but now there was fear and desperation and love all tangled together in her expression.
I felt nothing about any of it.
“Because some still worship me,” I said. The goddess’s words coming through my mouth without thought. “At least in their most desperate moments.”
Jaia went pale. “What?”
“Her guardian prayed. I heard.” I turned toward the house I could sense nearby, pulled by the goddess’s awareness. “We need to move.”
“Hanna—” Azora started.
“Now.”
I walked. Shadows whirled around my feet like living things. Serpents made of darkness. Responding to intent I didn’t consciously form. The trees seemed to lean away as I passed.
Behind me, Jaia and Azora exchanged glances. I felt their shared skepticism, but they followed.
The house appeared through the trees, built from logs weathered gray, with moss crawling up the walls. The chimney was cold and the windows shuttered. Vizia and her guardian must have been betrayed, because how else would anyone find it?
But soldiers surrounded it. Eight of them in black trimmed with silver, Edric’s colors.
The front door hung open. Broken. The wood splintered around the lock where they’d kicked it in.
The sound of steel on steel. A cry. A crash.
The shadows moved faster than thought. Faster than I could have moved on my own. They wrapped around the two guards at the door—men who’d been watching, waiting for orders—and pulled them backward.
The first guard’s head hit a tree trunk with a crack like breaking ice. His body went limp.
The second tried to scream. The shadows filled his mouth. His throat. Silenced him as they slammed him into frozen ground hard enough to crater it.
Neither got up.
I walked through the entrance they’d been guarding.
The inside was small. One main room that served as kitchen and living space. A fireplace, cold now. Table and chairs knocked over. Toys scattered on the floor: a wooden horse, a doll with yarn hair.
The blood on the floor, still spreading in a dark pool, had almost reached to stain the toys.
A woman lay in the center of it, a sword driven through her body. Her face was slackening, her eyes growing distant, but her lips still moved in prayer.
The Shadow Weaver practically purred in response. “Rest now. I’ll protect the child.”
Had I said those words out loud? Or had the Shadow Weaver?
She’d fought. I could see it. Three soldiers were dead or dying near her. One clutching a throat that bled between his fingers. Another curled around his stomach wounds. A third was simply still, crossbow bolts buried in his chest.
She’d almost won.
Almost.
The soldiers standing over her turned. Saw me. Raised weapons.
The shadows caught him before his hand closed on the hilt. Lifted him. Held him suspended three feet off the ground.
His feet kicked. Found no purchase.
“Where’s the child?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Just stared with fear written across his face.
The shadows tightened to crush him. Did they respond to my intent, or the goddess’s intent? I couldn’t tell anymore. They wrapped around his ribs and squeezed until bones creaked.
“Bedroom,” he gasped. “Back bedroom. Please—”
The shadows finished what they’d started.
Ribs cracked with sounds like green wood breaking. He tried to scream, but the shadows were in his lungs now.
When the shadows released him, he lay still and angular, and I stepped over him. Over the body of this woman who’d died defending a child. Over the soldiers she’d killed before they killed her.
My shadows moved ahead of me down the long, narrow hall.
A door on the left hung open. Another bedroom. Empty. Bed neatly made. Child-sized.
The back bedroom door was closed, and I pushed it open.
Inside, a man in commander’s colors held a child by the arm. Four years old. Dark hair that curled at the ends, her eyes wide with terror.
Vizia.
She was crying. But she was also trying to pull away, trying to fight as much as she could with her small fists. Definitely Jaia’s child.
The commander saw me. Drew his sword one-handed. Pulled Vizia closer, using her as a shield.
“Stay back,” he warned. “I have orders to take the child alive. But that doesn’t matte rif you threaten me.”
His blade moved closer to Vizia’s throat.
The shadows exploded forward.
They moved like living rage. Like vengeance given form. They ripped the sword from his hand, and there was a quick desperate series of crack, crack, cracks as his fingers broke, as the shadows tore the sword free. They tore his grip from Vizia’s arm. She stumbled away, fell, scrambled backward.
The shadows wrapped around his throat and squeezed.
He tried to fight. Tried to claw at darkness that had no substance to grasp. His face went red. Then purple. Eyes bulging.
The last of his bones cracked and Vizia screamed.
“Hanna!” Jaia pushed me aside and threw herself into the room, rushing to Vizia. She threw her arms around her. “Baby, it’s okay.”
The shadows still writhed around me. From the goddess’s ever distant perspective, one that always seemed to come tinged by gray shadows, as if her version of the world was smokier and darker than our own, I could see the scene.
The terrified child, the mother whispering desperate, soothing things, the way I looked in the doorway, cloaked in shadow and vengeance.
Jaia sank to the floor with Vizia in her arms. “It’s mama. It’s mama. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
Vizia fought to escape her. Jaia’s face crumpled, and then finally, recognition lit in the child’s eyes.
“Mama?” Small voice. Uncertain.
“Yes, baby. Yes. Mama’s here.”
Vizia and Jaia clung together as if they’d never be separated again. Jaia cupped Vizia’s head as she rocked her, whispering comforting nonsense.
Azora hovered, looking for something to do with herself now that there was no one to slay with the sword she carried.
“You saved her,” the goddess said. Satisfied. Certain. “Without me, she’d be dead. Remember that.”
“Hanna.” Kaelan stood in the hallway. Fury glittered in his eyes, was defined in the set of his jaw, in the way he held himself. “If you ever just leave me behind again, you will discover—”
He stopped, studying me. The fury drained from his expression. Replaced by something worse. Fear.
Dare appeared at his side, carrying a bloodied sword. Clearly, there had been more soldiers. “What happened?” he asked. Not to me. To Kaelan.
“I don’t know.” Kaelan took my shoulders in his hands, studying my face. “Hanna.”
“Yes.” Did this boy—no matter how handsome he was—really think he was going to scold and threaten me? The idea was amusing. I was ready to hear it.
“When she landed, she told us Vizia was in danger. And she was right,” Azora said.
“She saved your life, baby,” Jaia murmured to Vizia. But the little girl still looked up at me warily, as if I were a monster.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kaelan said.
“I’m sure I did.”
He frowned at the wording.
“You did, but we didn’t believe you.” Dare threw Kaelan a sidelong look. “And then you didn’t give us much time to argue before you took off on your own, did you?”
I didn’t remember any of it.
I stared around at the cottage. At the bodies. Through the doorway, I could glimpse more bodies.
But there was a hole in my memory, and that should have been terrifying.
I felt nothing.
When I remembered, I found only shadows. The goddess’s thoughts instead of mine. Her certainty instead of my choice. Her satisfaction instead of my horror. And it was her glee that came through in my voice as I said, “I saved Vizia.”
“I know. You did.” Kaelan’s voice was gentle. “But Hanna, do you feel anything? Besides pride?”
“Why does he want you to fall apart mewling instead of being the power you are meant to be?”
“I should be worried about Vizia. What she just saw…”
“The child is fine. Alive because of me!”
“No,” I admitted.
Jaia stood, her little girl wrapping her legs around her waist as if she would never let her go.
“You two, once we get to civilization, I want you to take Vizia and hide,” Kaelan told them. “I don’t want to risk losing you all.”
Azora shook her head. “You need us.”
Jaia threw a look her way, emotions flashing across her face too fast for me to read. Despair, maybe, at being torn between Kaelan’s rebellion and her daughter’s safety. Irritation at being spoken for.
“She wants to leave you all. Some display of gratitude.” The goddess was grouchy.
“I don’t want to know where you go.” Kaelan’s voice was harsh. “I’ll need you in the aftermath. Survive and meet me after I take the capital.”
“Thank you.” Jaia, in a rare display, lunged forward and hugged Kaelan, who seemed startled but remembered after a heartbeat to put his arms around Jaia and Vizia.
But Vizia kept staring at me, her head turned to regard me over her mother’s arm as if she didn’t trust me.
I supposed the shadows were still writhing around me in a way that didn’t seem entirely reliable.
“Thank you,” Jaia told me as she stepped back.
I wasn’t sure if she was thanking me or the goddess.
The Shadow Weave clearly couldn’t tell either. “Tell her to light an offering.”
She sounded far too pleased at the moment.
The shadows coiled at my feet. Waiting to be called upon again.