Chapter 54
Chapter
Fifty-Four
TEAL
She’d been here. Her warm, cinnamon scent seemed to linger in the air, cutting through the acrid stench of smoke and something worse—the sweet, cloying smell of death that no amount of ash could mask.
“Who did this?” If Flynn expected an answer, he was disappointed. The rest of us stared in shocked silence, expressions fixed in disbelief, unable to speak as we processed a ruined village.
Grayson’s gaze landed on something glinting in the ash-streaked snow. He dismounted and bent for a closer look. “Fuck.” His face grew stonier with each passing second until he looked more like a statue than a man.
Pierce, who’d been scanning the fallow fields, the forest, and the bony black remains of the villagers’ houses, shifted his gaze. “What is it, Gray?”
Grayson picked up a dagger. “Guard issued.”
We all stared at the weapon, trying and failing to find a good reason it should be here.
Grayson’s hands shook. Grayson’s. Hands. Shook. He knew what this meant.
I did too, and the pale light reflecting off the blade cut through me. “This makes no sense.” The words felt hollow. “Why would guards attack a village?”
Why would someone bind our powers? Why keep us in the dark?
Pierce’s face had gone ashen; his faith in everything we stood for was cracking in real time. “Because someone ordered them to,” he croaked.
With his lips drawn in a thin line, Grayson shook his head, stubbornly denying what was in front of us. “There has to be another explanation.”
I wasn’t so sure of that. We’d built our lives on the certainty that we were the good guys.
Sure, the guard had its problems. No, Legacia wasn’t perfect.
But, as guards, we stood for something—honor, courage, and protecting the lives of Legacians.
As I looked at the large rectangle of freshly turned earth that was surely a mass grave, that certainty crumbled to dust.
If Legacian guards had done this, Haven had been right all along. We were villains. The thought settled in my stomach like lead. All those years of believing we served an ideal, that we protected the innocent, had been a lie.
There was nothing in the ruins of the village that could make this better. The one thing we could do—bury the dead—was already done. “We should ride on.”
We mounted our horses in heavy silence. What was there to say? We’d been fools. Haven had pointed out the guards’ flaws—not these flaws, but flaws—and we’d dismissed her, certain we were on the right side. We’d been wrong.
The road split on the far side of the village, and Flynn broke the silence. “Which way should we go?”
Did it matter? Everything we’d believed in was meaningless. Well, almost everything. I still believed in my brothers. Maybe, away from the smell of death, I could find a way to put us all back together. I rubbed my chest, hoping to ease the pain in my heart.
A crow wheeled above us, its harsh call cutting through my grim thoughts. Its dark presence felt like an omen.
Flynn tracked the bird’s flight as if he, too, felt the portent in each flap of its wings.
Grayson pointed at the wider fork. “Talin is that way.”
“The other direction?” Pierce asked.
Grayson scowled at the narrower path as if it had offended him. “No idea.”
“I say we ride toward Talin.” It made sense. Why would Haven take the secondary road?
Caw.
Flynn flinched as the crow flew closer. “I hate those damned birds.”
The crow flew at Flynn’s face.
Flynn squealed and batted his hands as if he were in a childish slap fight. When the bird retreated, he turned toward me. “Did you see that? It attacked me!” He held up two fingers. “Two words. Evil. Bird.”
I rolled my eyes. “Three words. You. Have. Fire.”
Flynn tilted his head toward the sky and yelled, “Hear that, crow? Come at me again, and I’ll fricassee your ass.”
Caw.
“I think you made it mad.” Crazy as that sounded, I meant it. The crow circled lower, its black eyes fixed on Flynn with an intelligence that seemed almost … deliberate. Like it was studying him.
“Look.” Pierce pointed at the sky. “It brought friends.”
Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw.
The crow had brought lots of friends. A veritable wall of black feathers descended, settling on the branches of the trees lining the road to Talin.
“Nope.” Flynn pointed at the crows. “I’m not riding through that.”
“Grow up, Flynn.” Grayson lifted a hand and directed a gust of wind at the birds.
Not a single crow was affected. They remained perched on the icy branches. Flapping. Cawing. Staring at us with beady eyes, as if awaiting our next move.
“That’s not natural,” said Flynn.
He was right.
Pierce shifted in his saddle as he assessed our latest problem. “Maybe they’re trying to tell us something.”
“Just freeze them,” Flynn demanded.
Pierce quietly scoffed. “Do your own dirty work.”
“Flynn.” My voice carried a warning.
A warning he ignored. He shot flames at the crows.
They were mostly unaffected; the fire seemed to slide off them like water off a duck’s back. But twenty or thirty crows took to the air and flew at Flynn, fast and straight as arrows.
He shrieked, covering his head with his arms as the birds yanked at his hair and pecked at his clothes.
This was a man of fire, one who fought fearlessly, unbothered by the odds, the size or number of his opponents, or the fear of losing. And now he cowered before a flock of birds.
I couldn’t help myself; I laughed.
“Help!”
Even Pierce grinned. “What do you want us to do?”
“Save me!”
I bit back another laugh. One laugh could be chalked up to gallows humor; a second was in bad taste.
“Man up, Flynn. They’re just birds.” Grayson didn’t find this nearly as amusing as I did. Of all of us, Grayson was the most tied to the guards. I doubted he’d find anything funny right now.
“Wrong!” Flynn wildly waved his arms in front of his face. “They’re evil harbingers of gruesome, painful death.”
That, or they heralded pulled hair and a few pecks. It was all about perspective.
The crows attacking Flynn retreated in a cacophony of caws that sounded like laughter, leaving Flynn with hair that looked like a rat’s nest, a few drops of blood on his face, and an impressive amount of bird shit on his cloak.
Grayson rubbed a palm across his chin. “Teal, can you get a read on those birds?”
I closed my eyes, and long seconds passed as I prodded the birds’ energy. It was unlike anything I’d ever encountered—almost supernatural. Which was eerie. They were birds. “They don’t mean any harm—unless we attack first.”
“You can sense that?” Grayson stared at the birds before shifting his gaze to me. “Anything else?”
“They don’t want us to go to Talin.” I sensed that clearly.
Grayson gave a single sharp nod. “Then we’ll take the road less traveled.”