35. CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 35
Noa
Where caves were concerned, the one we entered was more than acceptable. I did my part and surged a spark into the stack of dry firewood. Four wolves—including Levi—prowled around the arching interior. Fire-driven shadows flickered on the cave walls. Angel sat on a chair-sized boulder, going through her pack. The tall man spread Levi’s wet clothes over rocks closest to the heat while the three other Blackfish who’d remained in human form inventoried the supplies.
We had food and water. Weapons. Those who had shifted opted to remain that way. They would scavenge for clothes in the town Angel talked about. She said the small settlement guarded Amal’s fortress. The houses were like the outer rings of peasant huts, guarding medieval castles. An enemy would first have to battle through a town of civilians, face ambushes, burning buildings, debris thrown into the road. Fleeing innocents hiding combatants.
In the sand, the Alpha of Blackfish drew a crude map showing streets and certain buildings. Likely spots for traps or open fighting. By now, Mace’s fighters would be attacking. Everyone expected strong resistance from the hybrids in reserve and the conscripted Cariboo recruits. The abominations the queen created in the depths of her stronghold.
“Here…” Angel drew a line with her finger. “A narrow bridge, leading to a heavily fortified gate. This… a drop off, over twenty feet. You land on rocks with iron spikes, so don’t fall.”
Once inside the gate, a murder-holed tunnel led to an open square with multiple exits, all barred and guarded. Get that far without dying and then start all over again. An enemy had to find the right door. Battle through. Amal’s army was deadly, but they were under her thrall and fought with no will of their own. Set them on a course and they charged blindly.
There’d be chaos in the streets. Bells clanging in two warning towers. Mace—along with an Alpen commander—would keep the fight to the streets, where his men had the advantage. Fallon had ambush teams for those who streamed from the hidden tunnels. Anson Salas and Elijah Stone led the Carmag assault teams. With any luck, Amal’s focus would be on the raging battle.
While we slipped in through a backdoor that time had forgotten. “One of those rat holes,” Angel said.
I sat in the sand, counting the arrows I had left. Checking the blood bag for damage.
Men settled in for the night. With the fire, the cave was surprisingly warm, and as the embers guttered into a rosy glow, a comradery eased the weight between my shoulders. Angel sat nearby, drawing a whetstone along the edge of a blade, and I asked, “What was he like?”
Three long, deliberative strokes of the blade filled the silence before she answered. “It’s a child’s memory I cherish most. How he would tip his head when he laughed. Bump my shoulder with his when I was sad. Tug on my hair like… get over it, brat. He took me into the forest, pointed out plants I could use for food. Those that were medicinal. The poisonous berries to avoid. He told me to always be prepared because enemies never waited—and I screamed at him. After he died. About why he hadn’t been prepared.”
Another slow, hard swipe across the whetstone. “He said he valued hidden beauty, although sometimes he was willing to destroy it. You have his eyes. That stubborn little lift of your chin. Sometimes, I see you move and think it’s him. I didn’t learn about you until years later. Fee told me.”
I swallowed dryly. “You’ve met the King of the Forest?”
“The Green Man—yes. For years, I believed he was a strange old man who became my mentor. He found me where I was fostering. Took me on adventures in spaces he called wrinkles. He taught me secrets, and when I was old enough, skilled enough, he told me what I was destined to do. Find the men who betrayed my brother and kill them.”
“You’re a one-eyed mercenary,” I said, even though my heart was racing at the hint of challenge—to an alpha. “Wasn’t that a foolish thing to do?”
“Was it?” Her canines flashed. “I have one good eye, but I also have a wolf, and she’s a vindictive, scary bitch with two good eyes and crazy courage. She never hesitated when the magic asked.”
I tipped my head, watching the emotions play across Angel’s face—the face of my aunt, my father’s sister. The closest I would ever come to seeing him . “How many did she kill before the others gave up the challenge?”
“Three.”
“And those who betrayed your brother?”
“Dead.”
I reached into my pocket and fished out Amal’s rune. “Once I’m close enough to Amal to show her this, I can end the suffering. Pelonie misused the seidr magic to trick the queens. She set a never-ending cycle in motion, corrupting every wolf’s life. The nymphs, the witches. Fee’s power gets wonky in the Carmag because of the magic. Failles have no wolves because of what Pelonie did. We’ll never have peace… until it’s ended. Until I end it.”
“What is it like?” she asked. “To not have a wolf? I’ve tried to imagine.”
“It’s a knowing,” I said. “My mother described it as a black empty space inside me, and if I ever went there, I might never come back. I used to think a monster lived in the dark. A monster who strengthened every time Grayson was near. And then I met Caerwen, Effa. They told me what it was, the faille’s gift—to become the weapon needed to end the curse. The sins of the kings and queens. To end Amal and put the magic right.”
I swiped my damp cheek while Angel bent her head to study the carved and eroded rune. “These marks remind me of that tattoo on your wrist.”
“A dread lord’s sigil,” I agreed. “Same magic.”
“How are you going to defeat Amal?”
“I’m going to find Grayson. Become his weapon and kill her.”
The storm resumed overnight. When we left the cave in the morning, the weather was miserable. Blowing snow stung my face. Each inhale pushed frost into my lungs. Levi had dressed hurriedly in his still-damp clothes, but the three wolves stalked ahead, often racing into the trees, searching.
We kept to a trail Angel plotted out, using landmarks I tried to memorize. The exercise kept me focused. When we reached a rise above the town, I saw stone houses, multi-story, with slate roofs and smoke drifting from some chimneys. More smoke marked smoldering wreckage, buildings blackened, carts blocking the roads. The scents in the air mingled; threads of cooking food mixed with wood smoke and something charred and unnatural. At the edge of town, blackened mounds remained too warm for the snow to stick; I knew of the usual practice for the dead.
I didn’t want to think about it. What worried me was Amal’s rune, if it might rouse when we got close enough to the queen’s energy. Instead, no flicker of life touched my palm. Nothing from the imprisoned wolf. With Amal still alive, the wolf would not die, but she might have faded to a mere spark with no sight of blue sky or sunlight. No fresh air to breathe, or space to run, to stretch her legs. Howl for the pure joy of living free.
During the night, I’d crooned to it as if that made any difference.
It didn’t. The stone was cold and silent.
In the distance, faint cries rose from the town. Hardly worth sorting through when the clashes were not from a battle. We slipped back into the trees, climbing a slope, while the three wolves disappeared. Angel said they’d be scavenging for clothes and would join us later.
Levi contacted Mace through the pack bond, said Mace was his usual brusque self, in battle mode. He’d said something about “showing up late” and “eye on the target,” and I wasn’t sure if Levi was sanitizing it for my sake.
But I’d be worse than a fool if I underestimated the cunning power of the enemy. The dregs of her screams were in my head, although I hadn’t heard her voice in months. Hadn’t watched disasters through her eyes. I might have lost the advantage.
An explosion startled everyone, even Angel. A plume of black smoke rose from the town. Levi was quick with the reassurance: Mace was attacking the main gate. He would keep Amal’s defenders busy now that we were here.
“He said to move our asses. He’s not doing our job and his own.”
“This way.” Angel slipped into her Alpha role and turned to the cliff, slate gray and morose in the storm light.
Below, men battled on the narrow bridge. Bodies fell—those at the top, swarming down—defenders and not Mace’s wolves. He drew the enemy’s attention, buying us time. I turned to the steps carved into the rock, narrow and steep. I put a foot on the first step and heaved my body upward.
We climbed while I refused to look down. Despite the glacial wind, sweat pooled at the base of my spine. Against my back, the bow and arrows reminded me of what lay above and what was happening below. I curled my fingers over a lip of rock, pulled myself up, each step higher, steeper than the last. Muscles in my thighs quivered by the time we reached the flattened top of the parapet and rolled over the rim.
I flopped on a rough walkway hugging the cliff face—and if this was a backdoor to Amal’s kingdom, then it was close to useless, cluttered with rocks and the remnants of birds and predators alike. Snow dusted the gray stones, accumulating in the corners and cervices, but at least the wall blunted the angry wind.
“Keep low,” Angel hissed for my benefit. “Move quickly.”
Levi was already crouched and moving. The others spoke through a pack bond.
“You think she’ll have guards stationed?” I whispered to Angel’s back while mist closed in, turning everything a milky white before vanishing.
Her voice was strained. “I don’t think she’ll waste the manpower. Not for an air shaft leading into the dungeon.”
“Aren’t we too high for a dungeon?” The talk of dungeons sent alarm down my spine.
“Dungeon isn’t the right word.”
“Give me some right words.” My voice was gravelly as I crept behind her.
“Everything beneath the glacier was hewn from the stone centuries ago. We’ll be going in through an exterior section with barred cells and solid oak doors. Where she experimented and kept the resulting monstrosities until that shit went down with the Cariboo males all gathered. The monsters got loose, swarmed. I popped in once, after it happened…”
I choked on her use of the word popped, like she’d popped into the grocery store on her way home to pick up some milk. “Find anything interesting?”
“One or two poor souls, abandoned and still in chains. Too far gone to think about starving to death. I ended their misery. Saw too much damage for Amal to repair, not after that escape. She moved everything else deeper beneath the glacier.”
“How deep?”
“Get through the great hall and find out.”
I slid my fingers along the arctic stones. “That’s your plan?”
“It’s fluid.”
We were silent after that, moving stealthily. Ahead, a rectangular opening cleaved a solid wall, impaled with bent steel rods—a grid—demolished when something large escaped. I followed Angel inside, careful not to snag my clothes. Levi maneuvered behind me. Then the three men climbed through with enough athletic grace to prove they’d done similar things in the past.
The musk of a dungeon hit hard, reeking with vicious memories of wet straw and slop buckets. I pressed a palm across my nose to blunt the stench. Behind me, Levi gagged; he turned it into a cough while I refused to think about a grate in the floor and the sad pile of clothes that had once been banshee girl.
“Amal’s part vampire,” I whispered over my shoulder. “I’d expect no less from her.”
“Maybe they can’t smell things.”
Shadows loomed with unexpected shapes, making haste precarious. Faint light from the outside highlighted messy webs draping in the corners and over fallen wooden beams. The cold was so penetrating, I no longer noticed.
I listened to the breathing, and each footstep that scraped hollowly against the stone—mine, because the Blackfish moved like assassins. I was clumsy by comparison. We passed cell after cell. Sad, silent, each one a Memento mori .
Like the rune stone, created by a selfish woman, ambitious, cruel, and judging by the evidence surrounding me, Amal had not changed.
She learned nothing about love or compassion in her centuries of immortal life—what failles were fated to learn. The way dread lords were fated to find the wolf-less girl and heal what had been broken.
And I wondered if living a fated life meant paying the price. If great courage and fierce convictions paid off in the end. If it countered the numbness in defeat. If it was enough to give up everything for heroic love.
If devotion was not really an obsession.
I needed help to cross a fallen pillar. A Blackfish man held out his hand, and as I took it, closed my fingers around his and wedged one foot in a crevice, I asked, “Why are you helping me?”
“The Blackfish blood is in your veins,” he said. “He would want us to help.”
My leg scraped over the broken stone. “I never knew him.”
“You are like her, and she is like him.” The man waited until I’d steadied myself, then drew a sword—he had two strapped across his back—and held it out, hilt first.
“The blade is silver, soaked in wolfbane. Wounds weaken the hybrids. Remove the heads once they’re down.”
“I have silver arrows soaked in wolfbane.”
His grin widened. “You’d be an hour sawing off a head with an arrow tip. Take the sword. Or I’ll follow and deal with what you leave behind.”
“Follow,” I said. “I’ve never trained with a sword, and now isn’t the time to learn.”
“She’d probably cut off her foot.” Levi gave me a shoulder bump as he passed. “And don’t let her touch you if she’s mad. She’ll end you by accident.”
The skin at my nape prickled. Angel entered a murky corridor, twisting to motion us forward. The Blackfish moved into flanking positions. I gripped Levi’s hand, wanting to feel his warmth, to find the clever Pied Piper beneath his somber expression.
But his fingers were colder than mine. His lips thinned. The light in his eyes glittered with determination.
“Levi?”
“Gray needs hope,” he hissed. “You need to fix things.”
My steps faltered. “I’m trying.”
“I meant you have this need to fix things. Put them right. Justice—it’s in your blood, Noa.”
I glanced at the muscular men in front of us. “I’ll never be an assassin.”
“But you need them. Need this. To feel in control and not be a victim.”
“I stand up against bullies,” I admitted. “But…”
“When that moment comes?” Levi’s glance locked onto mine, and even in the darkened corridor, I saw the way he gripped the spear. His fingers shifted constantly. As if he played an instrument, one made of blood and death, and he’d memorized each keystroke.
“Can you kill her?” he asked, his voice low and sharp. “ Will you kill her?”
And for an endless minute, my heart beat erratically…
“Fuck,” Levi ground out, his voice thick. “If you can’t—”
“I can.” My face felt ashen, devoid of life, of warmth, but the doubt crept in like a thief ready to strip me bare. “I killed her pigs. I’ve fought her illusions. I gave Grayson my promise to protect him, and I can’t… fail.”
Levi shook his head. “There’s no shame, Noa. No one thought this would be easy. I’ll be at your side and help you do what needs to be done. The Blackfish will, too. Angel.” He was scanning the shadows that lightened and revealed wide steps leading down to another level. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
I rubbed the black sigil on my wrist. I’d never be alone—although, when I reached out through our mental bond and gently whispered Grayson’s name, I found nothing but an abandoned silence. Until a distant jangling intruded. Grunts and the scrabbling of hoofs against stone.
Recognition raised the hair at my nape.
Creatures were coming.
Their stench tainted the air.
The golden glow from torches wavered on stone walls, casting improbable shadows.
Angel took a stance. The Blackfish angled themselves in front of me, scanning the stairwell. Tension brought a clammy sheen to my skin.
An unlikely keening rose that sounded like my name.
“Go, go, go!” Angel’s order hissed between her teeth, but was no less powerful than if she’d screamed. The first creature she met lost its head without breaking its stride. As the body flopped to the side, the Blackfish swarmed as they had before, fighting with cruel efficiency and a silent, lethal speed.
Levi charged in front of me, clearing a path. I pulled energy from the air and through my feet as I ran, readied the building pressure, let it run down my arms, tingle in my fingertips.
The tusked pigs were ponderous, running with heads angled down, exposing the hump at the base of the skull. I counted less than a dozen, guessed this was a patrol stumbling on the unexpected and not an organized attack.
A three-legged gray monstrosity ran behind, legs pumping in a disorienting, drunken stride until Angel took its head, her body pivoting with the momentum of her sword.
Behind the monstrosity, a girl ran, her dark hair confined but not enough…
Levi took a fighting stance, drew back the spear.
Brin screamed. She pushed her hands out, fingers clawed. Light jolted from her fingertips and I met it head on with a wave of what I’d summoned in the vampire dungeon. The shield I’d struggled to build, never realizing how she struggled to tear it down.
Her body flew backward, hitting the stones hard, but not enough to stop her. She regained her feet, threw one hateful glance at me, then ducked as Levi’s spear barely missed her head. As it clattered to the floor, she turned and ran.
Levi turned to me.
“Go,” I shouted. “Find me when you’re done.”
He dashed off, followed by the wolves, while Angel grabbed my arm. “This way.”
“They know we’re here.”
“Always a matter of time,” she said. “Focus on your goal.”
We branched off, running down another echoing hallway, this one with high windows in one wall. The light made everything look drab, with details lost in a lifeless gray. The squares of light falling across the floor grew monotonous and disorienting with the flickering light-to-dark-to-light. My eyes hurt with each change, the struggle to notice movement hiding in the shadows.
Angel took another turn. “The great hall is just ahead, where she performs her rituals. Where she pinned the vampire to the wall.”
And Grayson? Would he also be on the wall? Shackled like the other alphas the Cariboo refugees described? I reached out for him again and swallowed back the disappointment.
Refused to attach meaning to his continued silence when it would only be speculation.
“If Grayson isn’t there,” Angel added, “I have another place to look.”
“How do you know?” How long had her popping in exploration been? Hours? Days?
Angel laughed, as if she’d guessed what I was thinking. “I bribed a tavern girl in the settlement. One of Amal’s conscripts smuggled her in for sex in a storeroom. She paid attention, and I asked her to draw me a map.”
“I’m guessing it was accurate.”
“As accurate as that dead patrol cluttering the hall.”
I’d forgotten the assassin part in the Blackfish story—which might be mere rumor—but their rise to fame came from selling intelligence others kept secret, and making things happen in ways that were never explained.
“Your silence is telling.” Angel paused in an alcove, still scanning, tense and ready. “Bron wouldn’t want me entering this fortress blind. He wouldn’t send you after an enemy uninformed. And he wouldn’t give a shit if you were upset if he had to spill a little blood to keep us safe.”
“Did he tell my mother the truth about who he was?”
“You know what she was like. A dreamer. She hid in trees, reading her books. She believed in a life he’d never have—but one he cherished. He told me he refused to ruin the fantasy she spun by revealing the truth. What they shared had to last a… lifetime for him.”
I closed my eyes, listened to my heart beating. “I think she knew exactly who Bron was and loved him anyway.”
Angel looked away, pushing a hand at her hair. “I’d like to think you’re right.”