Chapter Thirty-Seven
Calroy banked wide, giving us height enough to see the battlefield.
The shoreline was in chaos.
Winged soldiers fought in the air and on the ground—clashing steel overhead, the crack of wings against the wind, arrows cutting upward from below from the Seelie queen’s soldiers. Those who flew made harder targets but not impossible ones.
One dropped as I watched, a shaft through the wing, spinning sideways before hitting the wet sand. Another folded midair and fell without a sound.
Calroy’s arm tightened around me. His jaw clenched. The energy coming off him crackled and I felt it to my bones.
I looked out toward the water as Calroy veered right, finding a safe place to land.
Ranis’s ships had come, twenty of them, broad-hulled and flying Varen blue, positioned off the coast with cannons already firing. The boom of them rolled across the shore, the sound arriving after the flash, smoke rising from the decks.
The queen’s ships outnumbering Ranis’s by double, returned fire and some of them were damaged, taking on water at the bow as few burned.
Ranis stood at the prow of the lead ship, unmistakable even from this height. He wore a long coat with gold buttons, his dark curly hair pushed back from his face, his posture different from the boy who’d left us not too long ago. He stood like someone who had remembered who he was.
Good, I thought. He found his footing.
I thought of the boy who held Jina on Theron’s ship so she wouldn’t fall, who had slept on a barn floor to keep two women safe, who had poured ale into our cups and toasted a name I’d only just chosen. That boy had always been courageous and honorable. He’d just needed a reminder.
The queen stood between the shoreline and the line of trees behind her, protected by the ring of soldiers.
She raised her arms toward the shore, and from her fingertips poured some dark colored energy, crackling, moving like lightning made of shadow.
It struck a winged soldier thirty feet in the air and he dropped like a stone.
She struck another and he spun sideways, his wing folding wrong, and hit the sand.
More winged soldiers crashed, some dragging themselves up, some not moving at all. Blood darkened the waterline, spreading where the waves pulled back and the tide pushed in.
Nam stood in the middle of the queen’s circle, Sohee behind her, and several of the girls from the cavern, all of them standing in front of three large blocks of onyx stones as tall as houses mounted on wagons.
Nam’s eyes swept the sky. Found mine. Just for a moment. Then her chin lifted slightly, and she looked away, and I understood exactly what that meant. Don’t do anything foolish on my account.
Too late for that. Nam, who had survived decades in that cavern with her spine straight and her dignity intact, the sight of her used as bait sent fury through my chest.
Calroy brought us down about a hundred feet from the queen, landing hard and fast, his wings snapping back the moment our feet hit the sand.
The onyx barrier hit us immediately. Calroy’s jaw tightened.
I still didn’t have my power back, but I felt the pressure building against my chest, like claws reaching in to steal my breath.
Around us the battle continued, the clash of swords, the blast from the cannon resonating, but no soldiers came for us. The queen hadn’t seen us yet.
Rowhan landed beside us, Palto a step behind, my friends coming up fast from the tree line where Oscan and the other spirits had delivered them.
“We have to get through that barrier,” Calroy said through his teeth.
“We can’t.” Rowhan winced from the pressure. “The onyx feeds off whatever we push against it. The harder we press, the stronger it gets.”
Minha scanned the queen’s position, jaw tight, dagger at the ready, calculating. “There has to be a gap. A weak point somewhere.”
“There isn’t.” Rowhan said. “I’ve already felt for it. The onyx runs the full perimeter.”
“So we just stand here and watch?” Fraya arched an eyebrow.
“We have to get her to release it.” Palto rubbed his temple, groaning. “But know that the barrier won’t hold forever. Power like this has a cost. Even for her.”
Jina’s eyes were fixed on the circle of prisoners—Nam in the center—and her lips moved as she pointed from the shore. “Soldiers are coming.”
Minha ran to me, her shell dagger drawn, and another dagger in the other hand. Fraya rushed beside her, sword out, scanning the battlefield. Jina went last, but she had changed—shoulders back, chin up, the hesitation was simply gone.
The battle swallowed them.
I almost went after them, every instinct pulling me toward the fight, but I couldn’t leave Nam and the others in the queen’s hands.
Palto directed Oscan and the other spirits toward the battlefield. They couldn’t strike, but they didn’t need to.
A soldier turned and found one hovering an inch from his face—formless and ancient—and dropped his sword and ran. Another stumbled backward into his own men, knocking them sideways.
The line of the queen’s soldiers broke formation with terror on their faces. They scattered. Some ran for the ships. Some dropped to the sand, too frightened to move in any direction.
Calroy, god of the sky, hit the air, wings spread wide and glorious. Thunder rolled across the shore, deep and violent, and lightning raced down from the clouds in answer, passing through him, veins of white fire tracing under his skin. Dangerous but at the same time breathtakingly beautiful.
Each strike left an afterimage burned into the eye.
He should have been unbearable to look at.
I couldn’t look away. Another strike, tearing through the enemy’s ships, splitting the mast of one clean in half, then forking down again into a cluster of soldiers scrambling across the sand, throwing bodies backward in a burst of light and smoke.
Through the chaos I spotted Selene, her blond hair unmistakable even in the middle of battle, dark wings spread wide, sword in hand, moving through the soldiers on land with an effortless stealth and grace.
Jina, Fraya, and Minha rushed back to me, breathless, ready to help me to reach Nam.
The queen’s voice carried across the space, but it faltered on the second name. “Theron. Calroy. Whatever you want to call yourself. Well played.” Her eyes narrowed, taking him anew. Then her expression smoothed back to boredom. “Stop this nonsense or I open her throat.”
The queen’s hand closed around Nam’s collar. The blade that appeared in her other hand was the same silver one she’d used to cut me in the throne room, the one that had drawn blue blood on white marble.
“And don’t forget I have your mother.”
Calroy landed beside me, his mouth curving. She was lying. Selene had gotten to his mother first. She was already safe, far from here, in the same house where Hellena and the girls waited. The queen had played that card expecting it to land. It hadn’t.
“What is your demand?” Calroy called out, his wings folding in at his back.
Her eyes moved past him, past the others, and settled on me with a look almost like satisfaction. “Send Yeri through alone. And the old woman lives.”
The energy gathering around him crackled, then sizzled. “No.” Calroy’s voice was flat and final.
“Calroy—” I started.
“No.”
“She’ll kill her.” My voice came out steady despite everything. “She’ll kill all of them, one by one, until I come. You know she will.”
“I know.” His jaw worked. “And I know what she’ll do when she has you.”
The queen’s blade pressed closer to Nam’s throat.
Nam didn’t flinch. She stood with her spine straight and her eyes forward, the way she always had—through Agusto’s whip, through every year of that cavern. She had never once broken.
I couldn’t let her die at the queen’s hand. Not for me. I would never forgive myself after all she’d done for me.
“I have no choice,” I said.
“Yeri—” Calroy looked at me with such tenderness, my heart ached as he caressed my cheek.
I pressed my hand to his chest. “Trust me.”
Anger moved behind his eyes. The storm that had been building in him shifted to dangerous.
He stepped aside. “I know I can’t change your mind, but I’m right here.”
Minha grabbed my arm before I could move. “Don’t.” Her voice came out low and raw. “Don’t you dare go. It’s a trap. Nam got you out so you could become Yeri. This is not what she would want.”
“I have to.” I covered her hand with mine. “I would never forgive myself.”
Her jaw worked, but she released me and took a step back.
Fraya said nothing, but she bowed in reverence.
Jina’s counting hadn’t stopped. She had her hand pressed flat against her chest, watching me with teary eyes. “Rescue our family and come back. I know you can.”
Palto pressed his fist to his heart and bowed his head.
“We’ll be ready,” Rowhan said. “The moment the barrier cracks, we move.”
I looked at all of them. My people. My strength. My home. Fate had brought us together for a reason I couldn’t fathom. I hoped our team was enough to bring the Seelie queen to her knees. Then I walked toward the barrier alone.
The barrier felt like walking through a storm—wind pushing against me, pressing me back with every step.
The farther I crossed, the heavier my legs became, each step slower than the last, like walking against a tide.
Whatever power had stirred in me since the land of the dead, flickered and dimmed, the onyx stealing energy I couldn’t hold on to.
I would not stop. Never stop. I kept walking.
The queen watched me come with that same unhurried satisfaction she’d worn in the throne room when she’d pressed her finger into my blue blood and smiled.
“Stop.” She didn’t lower the blade at Nam’s throat.
I halted twenty feet from Nam.
“I’m here. Release her.” My voice came out commanding, like a goddess throwing orders, and not the girl who had stood on an auction block.
Nam’s eyes found mine. “I always knew.” Nam’s voice was soft but steady. “From the moment you were born. I knew what you were.”
“I know,” I said. “I met your sister in the forest.”