Chapter 36
The Expanse was harrowing from above.
Fitting, Ezer supposed, for a killing field.
She directed Six to the bottom of the cliff face. The towering black Snow Gates rippled with gold, the last remnants of the wards that surrounded Augaurde.
Six’s wings shot out from her sides at Ezer’s touch, and the drop became a bank, Six’s paws kicking up the snow as she just barely clipped the surface.
Climb, Six, Ezer thought, and the raphon’s wings fell into a glorious, steady rhythm as she caught the wind like it was an old, trusted friend. The wardlight rippled as they passed through.
And they were out.
Away from the Citadel, so fast she wondered why she’d feared this flight at all.
The sky was a glorious place for a woman with wings.
‘Gods,’ Kinlear breathed as they rose steadily, away from the snow and the frozen chasms, away from the tracks of countless soldiers marching north. ‘That was …’
‘Incredible,’ Ezer breathed.
And then she did something she thought she’d never do.
She threw her arms into the sky.
And screamed in delight.
Kinlear laughed behind her, the sound so joyful she knew he felt it, too.
Freedom.
The greatest gift they’d ever been given. Because of Six.
Hours ago, this very same sky was full of magic and shadows, darksouls and Sacred riders clashing. But in daylight, it was calm.
It felt like a reset, to know the daylight would not wane for three days.
It was as if the gods had chased night away.
It was almost quiet, were it not for the wind ruffling through Six’s feathers, a lovely sound she’d always appreciated from the incoming birds each time they landed in her tower.
Six dipped to the right as a gust of wind came through, offering them a glimpse of the view beneath her wings.
Ezer’s stomach flipped, but she held fast to Six’s feathers, trusting the raphon to hold steady. To never let her fall … or at least catch her if she did.
The frozen fog that covered the Expanse was lighter today, so Ezer could see the body collectors were already out as they soared over. Through the snow muddling her vision, she could see splashes of crimson and black, and large outlines that marked the fallen beasts.
‘It was somewhere out here that we lost Soraya,’ Kinlear said suddenly.
Ezer glanced over her shoulder to find him staring down at the Expanse.
‘What was she like?’ Ezer asked.
He chuckled against her back. ‘Bold. Daring. Beautiful. She was a lot like you, always content to challenge what is known.’ He sighed. ‘But challenging people does not bode well in the Citadel. Soraya paid penance quite often. And when the penance became too much to bear … she left.’
Like Zey, Ezer thought.
She hadn’t told a soul when she’d eventually packed Zey’s book in her cloak pocket. Some part of her couldn’t let it go, even though the pages were still utterly empty. Even though she did not believe the story of the symbols to be true.
She’d leave it somewhere in the wilderness on the other side. A tribute to the Eagleminder … because there would be no sword plunged into the snow around the Citadel’s ancient tree for her.
The wind shifted, and the snow began to fall a bit harder. Six held steady, heading towards true north, that ever-present ring of black mountains just visible before her beak. And the shadowstorm above it, with dark shapes swimming through the sky. It truly never stopped, no matter the time of day.
What sort of man, Ezer wondered, could handle such raw, endless power?
Perhaps Wrenwyn was right. Perhaps it truly was a god on the other side.
Or – she shivered – a devil.
‘The night she left,’ Kinlear said, and coughed as his sickness was spurred on by the frigid wind, ‘She claimed that the Acolyte could save me, could heal my ailments in ways that the magic of the Five never could.’
‘But … you said that’s impossible,’ Ezer said.
He shrugged against her back. ‘People deal with grief differently. Some run from it. Others try to fix it. Soraya was a fixer, even when we were children. My sickness was only another battle for her to fight.’
The shadowstorm rumbled, silencing his sigh.
‘I asked her for hard proof. She showed me a small black book. She called it the Shadow Tome and claimed it was full of promises and hope for healing. She said it was alive. That it called out to people. To those who were ready to see and believe.’ Ezer’s heart sank.
Soraya … another one lost to the darkness, just like her mother and father and Zey.
He paused, and she felt his eyes on her back.
‘Have you ever heard of a book like that, Ezer? A book that lives?’
She was about to tell him yes, of course she had, because she carried such a book in her cloak pocket now.
But something within her knew it was better to lie.
‘No,’ Ezer said, as easy as breathing. ‘What did her book say? Was it true?’
The distant shadowstorm rumbled again, and Kinlear tensed.
But Six stayed the course, unbothered, as if she finally understood the sound and feel of the Acolyte’s magic. Like it was calling her north, instead of warning her away.
‘Kinlear?’
For a second, she wondered if she was wrong to doubt the driving in of that knife, night after night.
He nodded against her back, and said, ‘I looked at it. Every page.’
Ezer’s breath hitched.
What if he was leading her north, all along, not to kill the Acolyte. But to try and discover him for himself? He was a prince without a ruling crown. He was doomed to die. What if he believed what Soraya said?
What if Ezer was wrong about him?
But then he said, ‘It was empty. Completely blank.’
It was an effort for her not to sigh in relief.
‘I knew then that her mind had been poisoned. She was going the same dark route others had before, defecting.’ His grip tightened as Six shifted, catching an updraft.
‘I wanted to turn her in. I wanted to keep her there in the Citadel, until someone could make her mind right again. But then I remembered the others that had defected. The ones who paid penance … until they couldn’t pay any more. ’
Dread began to stir in her gut. Because she knew what he meant. Six glanced back, sensing her unease.
‘They burn the bodies,’ Kinlear said, so softly it was nearly carried by the wind. ‘It is a traitor’s death, to us, the fire so hot that not even a finger bone is left behind. Nothing for the gods to seek … so that they can’t even make the journey to the Ehver when they die.’
It was sick.
She was going to be sick.
For all the things the Citadel stood upon. For all the talk of the gods’ grace …
She wanted to scream.
‘I confronted her about it. I think she sensed that our hearts were already on opposite sides. Because she left that night. Arawn was on watch. It was his fault she got out, his fault she got past him.’
His heart hammered against her back.
‘The thing I can’t figure out is where she got the Shadow Tome from. We searched her belongings after she left. It wasn’t there. But I have a feeling it’s because she’d already passed it on to someone else.’
Ezer’s blood went cold. What if Soraya had given the book to Zey, and now that very book, the one that had ruined Kinlear’s betrothal … was in her cloak pocket?
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said and shifted her weight nervously.
He could never know. It was too risky.
He nodded against her shoulder. ‘So am I.’
And then the sky erupted.
The boom was enough to feel in her bones. The shadowstorm was above them instead of before them.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Ezer breathed.
She pressed her hands to Six’s neck as the fear threatened to overtake her again.
‘Ezer,’ Kinlear said and suddenly reached for her hands as he held on to her waist. Inches from the black book. ‘I’ve known it from the moment I saw you with your hand on Six’s beak. Because of you, I won’t be forgotten when I die.’
She hated his inevitable end.
‘Because of you … I’ll slay the Acolyte,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring glory to Lordach. We’ll be remembered forever, the prince and the raphon rider.’
‘The warrior,’ Ezer corrected him. ‘Today, you are a warrior. Now let’s find the Black Door and the Acolyte.’
He nodded. ‘And drive in the blade.’
Three days before darkness returned. It had to be enough time.
His lips were inches from her ear. ‘Will you promise me one thing, Raphon Rider?’
She nodded.
‘When we make it back … save a dance for me at the next Absolution? I want every eye in the Citadel to see how victorious we are … together.’
Her heart did a nervous little leap.
But not in the way he would have wanted it to.
Because in the back of her mind, she still saw Arawn, how he’d looked as she flew away from him.
Broken.
She nodded. ‘My hand is yours. Though … I can’t promise I won’t step on your toes.’
‘Step on them all you want.’ Kinlear’s voice was nervous. ‘Break them if you wish it. I’ll bear the pain, so long as you dance with me.’
He suddenly coughed and released his grip on her as he went for his vial.
So Ezer took a deep breath and faced the shadows. Dark tendrils spilled from the clouds like reaching claws, but the shadows were also thick between them – a true veil of living darkness.
They were ten wingbeats away.
She could tell Six to turn back, and she knew the raphon would listen. She could fly them somewhere far away, leave this war behind and start life anew.
But Styerra’s words came back to her. There could be answers about her magic on the other side.
‘Ezer,’ Kinlear said suddenly, just before they reached the shadowstorm. She turned to look at him one last time, with his hood now covering his face. ‘Will you go with me into the dark?’
But before she could answer him, before she could fully register what that might mean, she felt her hair stand on end.
The tip of Six’s beak reached the shadows.
The light collapsed.
It was so dark, she could barely see her own hands held before her, even with her scarred eye.
Six soared right into the Acolyte’s magic.
And then through it.
It moved away – that dark veil of power. The shadows folded outwards around the shape of the raphon like the tendrils itself were told not to touch a feather upon her wings, nor a single tuft of fur upon her body. And as the shadowstorm cleared for Six, it cleared for Ezer and Kinlear.
Just as Kinlear’s intel had promised.
‘It worked,’ he breathed.
They were inside the Sawteeth, inside the Acolyte’s domain.
And Six …
She let out a victorious caw, and Ezer smiled as the darkness was whisked away. As light found them once more. She felt it in her own bones, her blood.
Six was finally home.