Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
The beams groaned as if they might collapse too. The tower was swaying.
Sick horror rolled through me. I would’ve climbed with Kiegan and Sera if I had known the tower itself might fall.
The floor above me fell. Some of the boards slammed into the frame, and I bit back a scream, pressing myself frantically close to the post. I clung to it desperately, feeling the impacts of the boards raining down around me as they shook my flimsy tower.
Then the storm was over. For the moment.
I opened my gaze, looking out toward the stands where Bismyth waited. I couldn’t see any of them from here. Curse my vision. But I could imagine Fieran’s exasperation at my fear of heights and Asrael’s cool lack of surprise that I could not, in fact, keep my pulse steady.
The thought amused me enough for me to start to calm down. I had to find my way off this platform. It wasn’t going to last. Once the last of the tower levels tumbled into the sea, surely the tower itself would fall too. We were being driven to take down the monsters.
The rope that Kiegan had anchored to one post when he hauled us up shook. I didn’t understand what was happening until Ensmeth’s head appeared as he wrapped one arm around the narrow frame. He heaved himself up on one knee, breathing hard.
I stared at him, stricken to have company.
He looked up at me, his eyes narrowing. “You’re still alive.”
“I’m surprised too.”
He climbed to his feet, balancing on the narrow beam. He was bigger than me but still looked far more comfortable.
Gold glinted over his bicep; he’d tucked a crown over his arm. His pockets seemed weighed down, his damp trousers sagging.
But his hair was still perfectly in place. It had to be an enchantment.
He might be a greedy fool, but he was the only other person on this tower in the middle of the water. “Maybe we can work together.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “What’s your plan?”
“I’m still working through it.”
“Well, keep me apprised.” He gripped the post with one hand, leaning back slightly to look around in a way that made my stomach pitch and roll again.
I closed my eyes to keep the world from tilting around me.
“Tell me something,” he mused. “Are the rumors about you true?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a gossipy little girl.” I didn’t want to disparage little girls—little girls like Lidi were bright wonders—but I thought the words would hit him as an insult.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, undeterred. Unfortunately. “Some people are saying you enchanted Fieran with a magical—”
“Maybe Fieran enchanted me.” I cut him off before he could name what parts of mine might be magical.
He smirked, clearly happy to have annoyed me. “But that’s not the interesting rumor. Some shifters have always amused themselves with mortals.”
The memories of the mortals in cages in the night market rose up in my mind. They were always too close to my mind. Somehow, I’d figure out how to help them, with Fieran’s help or without.
“They say your mark isn’t real.”
“I didn’t ask. You are quite chatty when we have work to do.”
“They say that you’re a fake. A distraction meant to stir up mortal hope.” He tilted his head. “But how much of a fake? Will you ever fly as a dragon, or will you just burn?”
I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. My balance was already fragile, and anger made me shake harder.
“They say some of the rebels think you’re a sign,” he continued, circling the beam, moving closer to me like a predator. “That if a mortal can carry a dragon mark, maybe the gods haven’t abandoned you mortals.”
Sudden fear spurted through me as I remembered his words about the queen ending me. Was that why he was on this structure with me?
“What do you want from me?” I demanded.
“I don’t give a rot how it happened. You’re mortal, and you don’t deserve the dragon mark.” He was still picking his way toward me, walking with careless ease on the narrow platform, as I edged away.
I didn’t want to let go of the post to try to flee to another side. The next level could collapse at any moment.
“If that’s true, then I’ll burn,” I reminded him.
No need to murder me yourself. Might as well take the lazy route and let me go up in flames.
“But you’re a problem,” he told me, and my heart dropped, knowing I was in danger. “You’re inciting a mortal rebellion.”
“I don’t know anything about a rebellion. I’m not inciting anything.”
“Oh, I believe that. You seem pretty stupid. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t the rebellion’s idol. The mortal girl with the dragon mark.”
He suddenly leapt across what had once been the floor. I gasped, but he managed to land on the framework, flinging out an arm to catch the post.
There was a split second when he was off balance, when I could’ve pushed him and had a chance; if luck were with me—and it was—he might fall without taking me with him. But the opportunity was gone before I had the chance.
“If you were born that way, you’re just a mistake of magic. But if you were made, and you don’t burn, or if they believe it…” He sneered. Our bodies were too close together; I didn’t have anywhere to go, but at any moment, he might reach out and push me. If I tried to flee, I’d be vulnerable.
“I wasn’t made. And if you think Fieran marked me, you are very bad at math, because he was a child when I was born.”
His hot breath was on my face. “Do you really think he’s going to make you queen of the mortals?”
“I don’t want to be a queen.”
He leaned even closer, as if he were telling me a secret. “I don’t think he cares what you want. He’s going to use you to raise a mortal army.”
The tower shook as more boards began to rain down. I didn’t dare look away from him, even as the fear of being struck from above twinged down my spine.
Then suddenly, he lashed one arm out and grabbed me. I thought he was pushing me to my doom, and I lashed out, clutching his arm, determined to bring him with me if I fell.
But he had the crown he’d been carrying in his hand now. “There’s no escaping a crown if Fieran wants you to wear one, but the mortals need to know what a queen will cost them,” he told me mockingly. “So you might as well wear this one into the water.”
I didn’t fight him as he put it onto my head. That wasn’t the step of this that mattered. The metal slipped down over my eyes, half blinding me, which was unfortunate.
Then his hand dropped, and he reared back, preparing to kick me off the tower.
But I was already crouching low. I dodged his kick, barely—his foot glanced at my cheek, knocking me off balance—and I yanked my boot knife free of its scabbard. I teetered unsteadily on the frame as I drove it into his calf.
He let out a grunt, but he lost his balance.
As he fell backward, he grabbed my arm. He yanked me with him, both of us plummeting through the air.
I screamed as the world flashed by.
He slammed into one of the posts as he fell, his body twisting in midair. Then he hit the water, and a heartbeat later, I was plummeting through the surface and into the deep black underneath.
I struck out frantically for two wild strokes—trying to drag myself to the surface—and then I slowed, trying to be deliberate, careful.
The water was so murky that I couldn’t see the massive sea snakes in the water.
But then I saw Ensmeth. He was still, his arms spread, his hair floating around his face.
I wasn’t sure if he was dead from that strike or still alive, but either way, hopefully he’d be the one the sea snakes ripped apart first.
But where was I even going to go? The arena was flooded all the way to the walls of the stands, which rose slick and smooth above the surface of the water; I couldn’t scale it. There were only a few ropes left dangling from the framework, and I already knew I couldn’t reach those.
There was another horn. Just like the first one that had started this terror.
Fear curdled in my stomach.
The insect nests on the posts were writhing, as if something inside were waking.
The sea heaved.
Some kind of monster—enormous, impossible to see—was loose. I couldn’t see it when I was down in the water, too, bobbing in the wake of something I couldn’t see; I kept losing sight of anything around me in the rocking water.
Then suddenly, it breached the water.
It was the largest fish I had ever seen—larger than our cottage—sleek and black.
And it threw itself over the edge of the stands. The wall collapsed under its weight, and screams rose, the audience scattering.
I felt a brief flash of satisfaction that the mortals had the far-away seats and that the asshole Fae nobles were the ones sitting close to watch us suffer.
“Snakes!” There came desperate, terrified screams.
The monster fish had knocked the barriers down, flooding the stands, and now the snakes were moving through the water amid the Fae and shifters. Were they working together?
The stands churned with fleeing Fae and blood.
I struck out, swimming as best as I could, for the wall. I didn’t want to go toward the monsters, but that broken space in the wall was my only way to get my footing ahead. But I didn’t think I could outswim that great fish, which circled the arena.
And then it launched itself up again, knocking down another wall. With it came a net, crashing into the water as its base came unmoored. I hadn’t even noticed the fine, transparent mesh netting until it collapsed in a barely visible wrinkle through the air.
But the bird-sized insects that filled the air with their screaming buzz had another place to go now. They swarmed overhead, and I ducked, ready to go underwater, but they flew overhead in one massive wave.
As if all these monsters wanted to make a meal out of our spectators.
I shook my head at myself. I was imagining motives that probably weren’t real. There was more prey that way.
A familiar animal scream—a sound that was almost human, but deafening in size—filled the air.
The griffin.
The dragons were shifting, launching toward the monsters as the Fae tried to run.
The fish turned toward me, an enormous eye rolling my way, and I came to a stop in the water. There was nothing I could do to escape. It was a hundred times faster than I was in the water, with force that could destroy walls.
But just as it moved, two dragons struck it.
Fieran slammed into the water beside me, his wings spread to either side. He caught me in his arms and pulled me up as the sea went wild, the dragons and the fish fighting in a desperate, churning battle. I would’ve drowned in that wild wake.
“Finally,” he muttered, which raised questions. “I hated having to watch.”
The griffin was turning toward us.
Not one griffin.
Three.
“I’ve got to get you someplace safe,” he said, flying fast with me. The world was a blur, but even if it hadn’t been, I didn’t think I would have seen one safe place.
“We’ve got bigger problems than my safety.”
“I don’t actually,” he disagreed. “I don’t give a damn if the Fae are devoured by the monsters they’ve preserved for entertainment.”
“Did you plot all this?” I asked suspiciously.
“Do you think I’m capable of such a thing?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The wind lashed my face as Fieran carried me higher, wings cutting through the air like blades. Perhaps even he didn’t know what to do this time.
Dragons dove through the clouds of steam rising from the sea, their scales flashing gold and crimson as they clashed with the serpents. The arena was collapsing in on itself, the stands folding up, sending Fae plummeting into the water with the monsters.
And then I heard it.
The griffin screamed again, high and fierce.
“I’m getting you back to the barracks,” Fieran told me.
“There are mortals over there! That’s where we’re going,” I told him fiercely. They were already being abused by the Fae; how could we treat them carelessly, too, abandoning them to their fates?
“You’re going where I carry you, given that I’m the one with the wings.”
“Fear. Please. I will never forgive you. Please.”
His jaw tightened.
“More clever than reckless,” he warned me, and I knew I’d won. I grinned.
He landed me in the wreckage near a group of mortals who were floundering through the water, trying to find a way out. “If something comes for you, I will drop them to get you, and I will not give a fuck what you have to say about it.”
He pulled his sheathed knife off his hip and handed it to me. His sword blazed into existence on his back, but then he grabbed the nearest mortals, a woman with a little boy, and he launched up, carrying them toward safety.
“Come with me,” I told the others, reaching to help them escape the water.
A young girl—barely older than Lidi—limped toward me, trailing blood. There was wreckage floating in the water, and then I saw the glint of the gold clutched in her hand.
They’d come down into the water willingly once they saw the treasure that had washed in with the monsters.
Something sleek and slimy slithered through the water toward her, drawn by the blood.
“Stay still,” I warned her, holding out my hand. “They don’t see well.”
There were tears running down her face as the thing circled her. I moved slowly toward her, and when it suddenly flashed through the water in her direction, I grabbed her hand and yanked her up and out of the way. Then Fieran was there, catching her up.
I lashed out with the knife.
The griffin plummeted down toward us.
I let out a scream—there was no holding that back—as the talons struck the water hard.
Water cascaded over me.
The griffin’s wings beat as it lifted up, an immense sea snake writhing in its talons.
And then the griffin gobbled it down.