42
Aire
Rage gave me wings. I stormed across a bridge, then past a veranda, and then another landmark I didn’t bother to acknowledge. Fury threatened to obscure my vision as I prowled down a stairway trimmed in amber mist, cracks marring the risers’ surfaces.
With every livid step, my pace quickened, as did the anger boiling in my blood. Directionless, I carved a path to who the fuck knew where. Anything to get away from her.
The winding treads spiraled, spiraled, spiraled. Leading no place. Deceiving me. With a hiss, I pivoted and climbed the way I’d come until reaching a level that threaded among the trees and ended at a ramp sloping downward. Dried leaves launched into the air as I fired past them.
As I hit the grass, raptors vaulted heavenward, their ascent rattling the branches. The flock trailed my trajectory, following as avians sometimes did. My brother once made this claim, that elements of the sky bonded themselves to me, a trait inherited by a long-deceased ancestor.
Raven.
I’d told her about him. I had confided my traumas, wishes, fears, and desires. I had given her my truths, my confessions, my fucking heart.
Every dishonest word. Every manufactured whisper, touch, and moan. Every fabricated moment. Every bodily embrace.
Every look. Every kiss.
Every treacherous deed. Every time she made the clan into fools.
Every time she offered false hope, friendship, loyalty.
Every window of opportunity in which she conspired with a monstrous king, a dictator who would see our crusade burned to the ground, who would condemn born souls to a life of torment, who had made attempts on Briar’s life, on Poet’s life, on Jeryn’s life, on Flare’s life.
On Nicu’s life. Even him, she had betrayed.
I should have seen this coming. Of all people, I should have known. Instead, besotted lust and budding affection had clouded my judgement.
The premonition had been right. I failed Aspen, failed to protect her from harm, only not in the way I’d feared. I failed to recognize her plight before it went too far, failed to help her out of this deception.
I failed Nicu too. I failed all of them.
My boots crushed acorn shells, breaking them open. I charged past hedges and stinging nettles until reaching the stable.
The warhorse’s head jolted upright from a bushel of apples. Sensing my blackened mood, the equine shifted toward me. Yanking open the pen door, I led the courser outside, then swung onto his back.
Like a spear, we shot into the wilderness. Belts of wind sliced through my clothes. Leaning forward, I urged the mount faster, farther.
Beyond the wooly creepers. Beyond the whispering fog. Beyond the gnarled boughs.
If I stopped, I would change my mind and return to her. Beg for a different explanation. Plead for her to say it wasn’t true. Convince myself to believe her excuses.
Either that, or I would heave the woman over my shoulder. Arrest her myself. Strap her in chains. Ride the female back to the castle and subject her to the Crown’s retribution.
I would fucking do it. I would.
And here, I never thought I would lie to myself.
The stallion fired ahead, speeding us deep into the night. Devastation drilled a hole in my chest, producing an emptiness beyond reckoning. It severed me in half, the grief incomprehensible.
Tears sliced from my lashes. Yet it was only the wind, only the wind, only the fucking wind.
While flying into the darkest corners of the woods, I let it out. The scream ground from my lungs, primal and tragic, echoing into the wild.
Something that sounded like heartbreak.