Chapter Two #2
In the far distance, the fireball hits the sparkling water and, even above the roaring sea wind, I hear the screams rising from the beach.
I close my heart to the awful sounds.
Any village that harbors the Oracle deserves this pain.
Leaning right, I head in the direction I saw the Frost Fae disappear. Their path will have taken them toward the center of the village, as good a place to start as any.
I have no concerns about my sister’s ability to make the Ember coward pay.
She’s already chasing him, deftly standing tall on her eagle, evading his next fireball, multiple arrows aimed and ready to shoot.
My two other warriors have reached the serpents in the distance—their fight also taking them closer to the village.
I quickly focus on the town itself. The humble buildings. The maze-like paths and streets. The boats in the distance, some of them now in flames. The villagers running for safety where there is none.
Ember fire is a devastating force, as I know well.
My lips twist with fury at the anguish their flames have caused my family and my kingdom.
Ember Fae have burned entire fields of crops, subjecting my people to the threat of starvation.
It’s a slow death, unlike death by the fire itself, and that’s not even the worst of it.
These villagers now face a terrible death.
Again, I remind myself. They’ve harbored the female Oracle. If there were any pity in my heart, I would not spend it on these lowborn. No matter if their cries make me wince, while the sizzle of fire fills my ears.
Baring my teeth, I urge my eagle closer to the maze of streets, forcing myself to focus on searching for the Oracle.
She must be here somewhere.
A moment later, an explosion of ice hits one of the fireballs in the air ahead of me.
The blast is too far away to do me any harm, but I follow the ice-storm’s trajectory, seeking the location of the fae who conjured it, my search drawing me north of the village’s center.
There they are.
It’s good to know their location, but I can’t let them distract me from my sole focus.
Scanning the fleeing villagers, all of the lowborn running across the beach and spilling into and out of buildings, I continue to search for her. The female Oracle I must bend to my will.
The False Queen was the only other female Oracle in known history, and she was fabled to be seductively beautiful, able to beguile even the most guarded heart and mind. At least, so say the stories, but I’ve never doubted their truth.
How else could she seduce the Serulian King into her bed?
How else could she curse this land to shatter and break and descend into generations of bitter war?
Surely only with beauty and guile.
So I seek the female Oracle’s perfect countenance amid the dull complexions of the scattering lowborn, searching for hair so brilliant it would shine in the dark and a face so lovely a single glance could fell me.
I’m prepared to face her. Far more prepared than either of my enemy kings could possibly be, because my heart is already filled with poison, ready to deny her charms.
Of course, she’s probably cowering inside one of the buildings, hiding behind villagers, allowing them to pay the price for her presence.
Well, if I have to tear this place apart to find her, I will.
My eyes narrow because the Oracle may not be in plain sight, but the Frost Fae are now ahead of me on my left, and it will only require a small detour to take them down and leave Stellen on his own.
They must have left their wolves at the base of the mountains because they’re on foot.
As I hoped, Lilis is among them.
She’s cornered a female lowborn in the street, surrounding the woman with ice that will tear the lowborn’s skin apart if she touches it. The trapped woman is backing toward the stalactites, as if she’ll risk the physical damage to get away from Lilis.
Perhaps she’s familiar with Lilis’s vicious reputation.
Of course… my reputation is even more brutal.
Luckily for me, Lilis’s lowborn prey is providing the perfect distraction, because Lilis is no longer looking up.
I tap my bird’s neck twice, a signal he knows well.
He immediately dives steeply, sharply, a blur of speed, heading straight for the Frost Fae.
As the wind rushes past me, I move fast, snatching my axe from my back, waiting another heartbeat, and then…
I leap into the air, crashing down toward Lilis, a perfect trajectory to cleave her head clean off.
She jolts as I fly toward her.
Above us, my bird continues on its path, its talons raking across the two men standing behind Lilis. If their reflexes weren’t so quick, they, too, would have lost their heads.
I should be single-minded. Should be focused on Lilis’s exposed neck. Particularly because her power has already gathered around her hands, and she’s a heartbeat away from releasing it.
But…
Fuck me…
The lowborn woman catches my eye, her face raised to mine.
In that instant, I take in her pale cheeks. Her hands raised in self-defense, the calluses on her palms in full view. Her dull hair, lank with seawater. Her faded-blue eyes, slight frame, and average height.
She’s nothing like the Oracle I seek.
Her features are unremarkable. She’s a mere lowborn. No glow. No seduction. And yet…
She’s furious.
Her rage nearly stops my poisoned heart.
The anger in her eyes is so fucking justified, it’s breathtakingly beautiful.
I haven’t seen anger like that in a long time.
Not since I looked in the mirror on the night my father was killed.
Now, in a single heartbeat, this woman’s fury beats me down like punches.
How dare we hurt her people?
Have we no conscience?
Where are our hearts?
There’s no time to tell her: Our hearts are corrupted. We lost our honor long ago. Do not believe, even for a second, that we are capable of anything but cruelty, because we are not.
Then I’m past her, released from her gaze and the accusations in her eyes.
My blade sweeps the air, its iron edge grazing Lilis’s throat as she attempts to leap back from me.
Her scream fills with pain.
Blood blossoms at her throat, along with the scent of burning flesh, but her desperate lurch and my momentary distraction saved her from death.
I control the swing, landing lightly and darting to the left, evading the blast of ice Lilis releases at me. It’s clearly more of a reflexive action on her part because her power flies wide, ice splattering the side of the path.
Her scream turns to rage—a garbled command roared at her men. It sounds like she wants them to kill me.
As if they could.
My blade cleaves the air in a whirlwind of iron, cutting through their silver armor, whipping across their chests and arms, even their thighs, as I duck and dart between them until the nauseating scent of burning fae flesh fills the air, and both men drop to their knees, their icy power splashing harmlessly across the ground.
I’ve nicked them in countless places, and it’s only because they’re quicker even than most highborn that they’re still alive.
The only fae capable of challenging me are Stellen and Maxim, a final battle I’ve contemplated many times, and every fae in the three kingdoms knows it.
We are the three kings.
Each of us is determined to take the female Oracle for ourselves and change our fate.
Maybe today we will finally face each other in a battle to the death that has been fated for generations.
Lilis launches herself at my back, reaching for me with her icy palms, but I spin to her, my blade slicing the air, each of my blows cutting her armor and driving her toward the side of the nearby building until her final step presses her up against it, right beside the alleyway blocked in ice, and my final blow will take her head.
Through my battle rage, I’m conscious of the lowborn woman, the way she’s poised on the balls of her feet, keeping clear of the fight, ready to run. No doubt, she’ll bolt as soon as she sees her chance.
But we’re blocking her path, and a hint of desperation enters her eyes before she darts a glance at the stalactites obstructing the alleyway.
It looks like she’s contemplating climbing over them.
She’ll burn her palms down to the bones if she tries that, but—
Fuck me!
She’s going for it, one small hand darting out toward the nearest sharp protrusion, her knees slightly bent, her balance perfectly adjusted so that she can hoist herself upward and—only with a miracle—leap over the icy spears.
She’s guaranteed to lose her hand in the process.
With a roar, I sacrifice my killing blow and veer to the right instead, my axe smashing through the icy barrier, blocking the lowborn’s escape.
I act before I even think about it, shattering the stalactites with a single blow, sending chunks scattering across the ground.
The lowborn woman’s faded eyes widen, and that’s all I see before I spin back to Lilis.
She’s slipped away from me.
I catch sight of her disappearing back, her white hair flying as she and her men race away from me further along the street. All three of them.
I lower my weapon, letting them go, and then I check on the lowborn woman.
She, too, is bolting away from me, her high boots carrying her along the narrow passageway in a flash, her dull black hair blending with the gloom.
The shadowy pass quickly fills with smoke, and then she’s gone from sight. Vanished from my life.
Her furious gaze remains burned into my memory.
For a moment, I consider whether there might be a little goodness in my heart after all, but I immediately banish that possibility.
Even if I can make the female Oracle break the curse her ancestor placed on the three kingdoms, there’s no escaping the poison in my heart or the endless pain it brings me.
I remind myself: Pain keeps me alive.
As I turn away from the shadowed alley where the lowborn woman disappeared, I tip my head to the sky, identifying my eagle soaring down toward me. There isn’t enough room for him to land, but I don’t need him to.
When he swoops toward me, I leap upward as high as I can, deftly catch hold of the bone at the front of his wing right where it meets his torso, and swing myself onto his back without upsetting his flight.
I learned long ago how to fight and fly in my heavy armor, so well, in fact, that this steel may as well be a second skin. I even sleep in it.
I thump my heart with my fist and accept the pain the punch causes me, the searing knowledge that this cursed war won’t end until I find the female Oracle.
Her and the blade upon which the False Queen placed the curse.
That cursed blade has been concealed and withheld by every male Oracle who existed since the False Queen, and now the female Oracle must either have it or know where it is.
I’m ready to defy her beauty.
I will bend her to my will, take what I need from her, and then I’ll fucking destroy her.