Chapter 27
Power and Price
Flora
C
hyr spins from beneath the Grey’s blade, flame bursting from the tips of his fingers like an extension of himself. The movement is so fast it’s glorious—a dance of limbs and light. The Grey screams as fire hits her, blinding her. Chyr drives in for a deathblow to the heart. She darts aside.
The Grey’s ashen skin is charred black and angry red around her uncanny eyes. She drops the Ravenhound’s leash and flings fire back at Chyr. He bends and whirls. His blade slashes, severing her hand at the wrist.
Eyes burning, flames dripping from its teeth, the Ravenhound races towards me. There’s no time to draw my dagger.
I throw my hands up, reaching for air the way Chyr does. Wanting to shove the Ravenhound away.
The air doesn’t move.
The Ravenhound leaps to attack. With a whispered prayer to the Mother, I throw my hands up. And suddenly there’s resistance against my palms. The air feels as if it has weight and substance. I gather it and slam it into the Ravenhound’s chest. The monster hangs mid-leap, unable to reach me.
Then Chyr’s sword flashes, and the Ravenhound falls.
I stand staring, my chest heaving.
Chyr runs towards me. “Did it bite you?” he asks. “Are you hurt?”
I shake my head.
Movement surges from the trees. My heart misfires and my breath snags as I turn. But it isn’t another threat, only the two Shadehounds I left to guard the horses.
The Ravenhound hasn’t moved. The Grey lies crumpled on the ground, her body a heap of misshapen limbs, her head lying a foot away.
My stomach heaves, and I double over to vomit the remnants of my dinner. I stay there, hands on knees, bile stinging my throat, gasping for breath.
Chyr stands beside me, and I don’t dare look up.
If he offers me sympathy, I’ll break. If he offers me some male word of so-called wisdom, I’ll break him.
He gives me another moment before he speaks.
“I have to check the top of the hill and find out how the amulet worked. They may have more patrols and beacons. Can you look through the ashes to see if there’s anything left of the amulet?
” The lines of his face are drawn, his skin leached of colour.
His hand reaches towards me, then he drops it to his side.
I straighten, spit, and wipe my mouth. Push my shoulders back. “Signal fires are meant to be answered by another beacon. I didn’t see any others, so maybe no one was sure they’d seen the fire lit.”
“We’ll talk about how you did that later,” Chyr says grimly. “My bigger concern is how the Grey arrived so fast. It’s dark—no light, no shadows. They must have some new way to travel.”
My hands clench back into fists. “You think more are coming?”
“Maybe.” His hair has come loose from its warrior’s knot and falls around his face. He rakes a hand through it, then shakes his head. “Find the amulet, then wait in the woods until I come back. Will you do that? Hide in case more Greys arrive.”
I don’t bother arguing. He should know better than to think I’ll ever hide.
I’m shivering and weakened, but not because my magic is empty. The flame inside me feels bright and hot, and I have more magic than I should, considering how much I’ve used.
I’ve killed two men, and I’ll let that unravel me later. But the magic? I’ll claim that now. For the first time, the magic feels like it’s truly mine, an extension of myself that connects what I am—who I am—to the world outside, to the earth and wind and sun and rain.
Chyr gently lifts my chin to make me look at him. “Stay safe. Do you hear me? You’re stronger than either of us suspected, Fierceness, but you’re not invincible.”
Heat sears my cheeks at the memory of the purring growl in his voice and the look on his face when he said it.
“Spread your legs for me, Fierceness.”
Shame threatens to buckle my knees, but I refuse to show it. Turning away, I search the ground for a stick to stir the ashes of the fire.
Chyr’s gone when I look up. The clouds overhead have thinned as if I’ve drained them, but the sky still offers little light. I scan the steep gully that climbs towards the beacon hill. Nothing moves, and I cross the few steps to the fire pit.
Chyr’s gone when I look up. The clouds overhead have thinned as if I’ve drained them, but the sky still offers little light. I scan the steep gully that climbs towards the beacon hill. Nothing moves, and I cross the few steps to the fire pit.
The ashes are hot and dry. Chyr must have smothered the flames, with air magic or something else. Yet another question to set aside for later.
The broken amulet isn’t hard to find—two shards of green serpentine, the colour of new birch leaves, veined through with butter yellow. Sacred stone from our Sacred Isles. Even the runes etched into it are similar to the talismans of fertility and protection passed down through my family.
I rub the pieces on the hem of my skirt, but there isn’t enough light to read them, even if I knew how.
What I do know is that Vheara is corrupting even our stone against us.
Tucking the shards into my pocket, I turn and find the Shadehounds behind me, Shade and Shadow, the male large and dark, the female smaller and lighter grey.
“So much for guarding the horses like I asked,” I say. “But you came to protect us, didn’t you? I can’t fault you for that.”
Shadow edges forward and presses her cold nose into my hand. Shade cocks his head hopefully, as though asking my forgiveness.
I scratch them both behind the ears, wipe my dagger on a clump of moss, and slide it into its sheath. Then, although I tell myself I’m not following Chyr’s orders, I walk back into the trees and sit on a fallen log, my back against a young birch that grows beside it.
The Shadehounds lie down nearby, and I am wondering whether it’s worth trying to convince them to return to the horses when they stiffen, jump to their feet, and growl.
Silently, I move behind the birch trunk and pull my dagger out again.
I wait. For a minute or two, I hear nothing.
Then there’s a sense of intrusion, a presence.
The feeling swells, and I try to isolate it, opening myself to the air and sky and the small creatures and growing things.
The woods have fallen into a hush. Then I hear a low murmur of voices that grows steadily louder, until they’re close enough that I can make out words.
“I swear I’ll kill them when we finally catch up,” a male voice says. It’s deep with a hint of a growl to it.
“It isn’t them. As injured as they are, they couldn’t be moving this fast,” another male says.
“I can feel Chyr nearby, and who else is it going to be? We’ve been tracking bloody great explosions of magic all over the place for days. The Greys wouldn’t be fighting each other like that.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t all feel like the Greys’ ugly magic—or ours.”
“Then maybe you should have paid under the table to have my sister do your runes after all. The ones the palace smiths gave you must be fucking useless.”
“Will you two shut up, for Pit’s sake?” a third male snarls. “If you don’t stop circling around the same conversation, I’ll ram moss down your throats so deep you’ll be picking it out of your asses. Now pay attention. We’re getting closer.”
The Shadehounds growl softly as three Evers emerge from the woods above us.
The first is the tallest. He’s dark-skinned and russet-haired, his stride sure and soundless.
The two others follow immediately behind him, one with dark hair and the other with bronze-gold hair that shines in the dim moonlight that’s beginning to ghost through the thinning clouds.
All three wear boots, breeches, and coats like those Chyr and the dead Evers wore when I found them in the Sacred Wood.
They drop to a crouch as they spot the camp along the gully. The blond vanishes so fast he must have cast an illusion to hide himself, but the others stare at the camp a long while, then there’s a whispered conversation I can’t make out.
The tall one moves ahead, bent low but walking fast, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
Runes glow down the back of his neck, revealed when the wind stirs his russet hair.
The dark-haired one follows. He’s built less powerfully than the blond, but he moves with a feral, elegant grace as he creeps in the direction of the camp.
Intent on watching the Evers, I don’t notice the fox at first. It’s a large female, nearly the height of the herding dogs. She trails the Evers out of the trees, but pauses when she spots the Shadehounds. Then she sees me and gives a high-pitched yelp before ducking back among the birches.
They reach the camp and find the bodies.
Giving up on being stealthy, the blond makes himself visible again.
The tall one crouches to examine the Grey and the Ravenhound, while the others check the sentry and the soldier who threw the amulet.
Then they separate to check the three shelters where Chyr and I killed the sleeping soldiers.
They emerge, and the clouds part to reveal the moon. Light glints on the blond’s shining hair and a row of runes etched from one side of his jaw to the centre of his chin and down the column of his throat, marks that remind me of the glowing runes in the oathbands around Chyr’s arm.
The dark-haired one hurries to join them.
He pulls out a knife from somewhere, and flips it idly across the back of his hands and into his palms like a nervous tic as the three engage in a heated conversation.
Runes glimmer on the knuckles of his hands, a couple of them glowing brighter as the knife skips across them.
I’m more surprised by my reaction to the Evers than I am by the knowledge that they are Riders. Or rather, my lack of reaction.
In their own way, each of them has the same fearsome beauty as Chyr.
There are differences: a long, lean face compared to a broader one, a sharper chin, hooded eyes versus ones set deeper, darker skin or hair versus lighter.
But I’ve spent time with Chyr now. I’ve discovered the danger in that beauty, learned the way Evers can lure you in.
None of these three has the pull I felt almost from the first with Chyr, but I sense the power they all wear as easily as a cloak.
Seeing them makes me think of Chyr’s grace, his speed and strength as he killed the Grey, the fire streaming from him as if he was part of it and it was part of him.
His pain and weakness hid most of that in the beginning and made him seem less dangerous.
I turn to go back to the cover of the trees. The fox is still there, watching me. She yips another warning.
I glance back towards the camp, and all three Evers are staring straight at me. Then they begin to run. The tall one is only fifteen feet away and approaching fast.
It’s too late for me to escape.
Heart thudding, I palm my dagger and stand up from behind the clump of furze. The tall one stops, watching me as though I’m a deer he’s afraid to spook.
The dark-haired one has no such worry. “Well, now. What have we here?” he drawls, walking to me with a hint of swagger to his step and the knife now held lightly in his hand. “Who are you, sweetness? And where did you come from?”
“Leave it to Chyr to find the only mortal as beautiful as a Siorai,” the blond one says, coming up beside him. “You suppose Chyr brought her with him?”
“She has his smell on her,” the dark-haired one answers, with a dry drawl.
“Shame. I wouldn’t have minded,” the blond one says.
“There’s no one you would mind, Daire,” the dark-haired one says.
“Not you, Lorcan. I have some standards.”
“Shut it, both of you,” the tall one snaps.
He shifts brown eyes from me to the two growling Shadehounds who have come up behind me to stand like andirons on either side.
There’s intelligence in the way he studies me that reminds me of a wildcat on the hunt.
And like a cat, his colouring—from his bronze skin to the rust-red hair tied back with a leather cord—is taken from the shades of earth.
The other two seem more reckless. But the power and arrogance make them doubly dangerous.
General Mora’s letter to the rebel king—to Chyr—suddenly makes more sense. My teeth clench at the thought of my brothers, the rest of our warriors, having to fight beside Evers so self-important that they talk about us as though we aren’t standing right in front of them.
“Easy, love. We aren’t going to hurt you,” the tall one says, his hand out in a gesture of calm, his voice soothing, speaking to me the way I would speak to a wounded animal.
I turn and run back towards the horses as if I’m the half-feral creature they believe me to be. I’m not even sure why I’m running. Only that I have to. That the earth and air and magic around me need me to run.
The pain in my shoulder flares like it did when I put out the signal fire. My blood thrums in my veins, drums calling me to war.
Footsteps sound—behind me, I think—as someone gives chase. That only makes my legs fly faster.