Chapter 59 Thyra
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Thyra
The wind whips around us, and a new dread builds as we soar toward Mount Vividari.
It isn’t the majestic, gray mountain that chills my blood, but the darkness looming so close behind it.
The bloodlands.
That boiling mass of dark clouds, black mountains, and impenetrably inky air.
Even now, the hungry screams of vampyrs echo sharply in my memory, the way they’d begged to drink my blood. The burning scent when Antony harnessed his starlight power to keep them at bay.
When we started flying west from the temple and then veered north around the Starlit City, I assumed Mount Vividari would be located near the city.
Instead, we flew on, and now I judge that our destination is only a few minutes’ flight from the edge of the bloodlands, while a single guard tower sits between the two.
I twist to Antony, and I don’t doubt for a second that he reads my apprehension because his arms tighten around me.
“When the curse first struck, the Vividari moved their homes from the east to this mountain in the west,” he says, his steel-covered cheek pressing to mine while he briefly lifts his hand from my waist to gesture at the highest peak ahead of us.
“The Vividari chose to become a first line of defense between the vampyrs and the main population. Unfortunately, it now puts us closer to the bloodlands than I would want us to be.”
Far to my right, if I squint hard enough, I imagine I can make out the icy border between the Iron and Frost Kingdoms.
As well as being closer to the bloodlands, we’re also much closer to Frost than I’ve ever been before.
“Don’t the Frost Fae fear the vampyrs?” I ask, suppressing a shiver.
“They don’t need to,” Antony replies. “The darkness that washes over my kingdom never extends north. It is a blight only upon my territory. If we were near the border, we could escape it simply by stepping across a few feet of marshy earth. Only for the Frost Fae to strike us down. But they have their own challenges.”
“What kinds of challenges?”
“Aside from the threat of starvation, there are whispers of malevolent creatures living in the northern wilds who are as feral as beasts but have the intelligence of fae.” He shrugs against my back. “Possibly only rumors.”
In the distance, the sun sinks toward the horizon. We’re flying straight toward it, but the bloodlands block its rays, and, as we approach, Mount Vividari is finally cast into shadows.
Lights immediately twinkle to life across the mountain’s top, but they’re too small for Galla to have ignited them, and, in any event, the sun is still shining to our left and right. I doubt she’ll harness her power until her full might is required.
As we draw closer, I make out an immense, white structure, five times the size of the temple in the east, consisting of four walls in a rectangular shape but without a roof.
It appears like a series of battalions positioned around an inner platform, while one wall, on the side facing the bloodlands, is only partly closed in.
On both sides of the structure, platforms containing perches stretch left and right, nearly every perch appearing already occupied by an eagle.
We’ve timed our approach to ensure we’ll arrive last.
The less time between our arrival and sunset, when Galla’s attention will be on the sky, the better. Also, less time for her to realize Rohan is no longer shadowing us.
But it isn’t our timing that concerns me now. “Antony?”
“Yes?”
“Know that I’m here,” I say, reaching back for him. “If being here hurts, let me carry it. I can carry the pain. Will you let me do that?”
His head bows to mine as he accepts the press of my palm to his cheek. “Yes.”
I take a deep breath and prepare myself, mentally and emotionally, for the fight that lies ahead of us. “Then let’s make an entrance.”
The darkness lifts from Antony’s eyes, a savage cold entering them before he calls to the monstrous eagle. “Azul! Make some noise!” And to me, “Remember that I’ll never let you fall.”
I’m not sure what he’s now planning, but I give him a nod.
Then Azul surges ahead, responding gleefully to Antony’s command, switching from a stealthy approach to sweeping his wings with a mighty beat.
Spearing down toward the inner platform, where highborn in glittering clothing are dancing, he shrieks so loudly, it drowns out the music being performed by musicians on the platform’s far side.
A single throne sits on a dais at the nearest end of the inner platform.
Galla Vividari sits in it, as if she is the queen of this kingdom.
Azul shrieks right across the air above her, and she jumps so badly that she spills the drink she was holding.
The dancers scatter beneath the threat of Azul’s longer-than-normal talons, although he’s high enough that he’s in no danger of hurting them.
He swoops upward again, screeching and banking sharply.
“Ready, Thyra?” Antony asks me, his arms tightening around me as he draws us upright to stand on Azul, me still facing outward.
“I’m ready.”
As Azul swoops down again, this time toward the throne, Antony steps from his back out into thin air, holding onto me.
There’s a brief drop. Weightlessness as my stomach lifts. Another tightening of Antony’s arms as he bends his knees to take the force of our descent.
Then my feet gently touch the ground as he sets me down, and I step forward out of his hold.
Seamless.
Up on the dais, Galla is as stiff as stone, her empty glass gripped so tightly in white knuckles she might shatter it. Her green eyes are like glittering stone, the ivory dress she’s wearing overlaid with a silver mesh that clings tightly to her corset before forming a train at her back.
All ten of her lords are dressed in white. Quintus doesn’t bear a hint of the injury Rohan inflicted on him this morning, so he’s either hiding it well or the healers did marvelous work. His golden hair is slicked back and his head held high, his narrow chin elevated.
Galla’s lips part, but whatever she says is drowned out by Azul sweeping overhead once more, shrieking loudly before alighting on the wall directly behind her, where she won’t be able to keep him in her sights.
She may have technically spoken the first words, but the way even the nearest fae craned toward her indicates they couldn’t hear her.
Now, the highborn are all too busy lowering themselves into kneeling positions around the edges of the room, their lowborn entourages struggling to place mats on the floor quickly enough.
The moment Azul falls quiet, Galla’s lips part again, but I’m quicker.
“Remove yourself from the throne, Galla Vividari!” I roar. “Or Azul will remove you for me.”
She can’t know I’m talking about the eagle, and the way her focus darts around the room, as if searching for some new warrior who will magically appear behind me, confirms it.
Still, she tips her chin haughtily at me, not budging an inch. “Welcome, Thyra, to my celebration.”
Ignoring her greeting, I purse my lips. “Oh dear. Azul!”
The blue eagle responds to my call, launching himself, talons outstretched, at the back of the throne. Silently this time.
The wind puffs at Galla’s back.
Her eyes widen as the threat appears to register.
With a scream, she launches herself out of the chair, just in time for his talons to rake across the plush surface, tearing through silk before closing around the chair’s wooden skeleton, ripping it wholly off the dais and into the air.
He flies past the nearest wall, leaving Galla hunched at the edge of the dais, her arms thrown around her head.
The would-be throne makes a heavy thud as Azul drops it unceremoniously from his talons before he returns to the wall behind the dais.
A heavy silence falls.
“Darling Galla,” I say softly. “I did try to save you from this embarrassment. If only you’d done as I asked.”
She raises herself up to her full height, but now her focus is on the darkness looming behind us, the boiling bloodlands.
It doesn’t matter how hard I fight to break her control of this situation—she still holds the power.
Smoothing down her dress, she glides toward us, making the briefest bending motion with her legs, as if that will suffice as kneeling to Antony.
He has remained silent and motionless behind me, giving me free rein, but I sense the increasing tension in his body as Galla approaches.
“Where’s Rohan?” she asks, aiming her question at him.
Antony merely stares back at her.
I’m acutely aware that her lords are all gathered on the left of the room while her ladies are on the right, all of them now rising from their kneeling positions.
I identify Emiliana, her face painted white but without the glittering stars on her cheeks, the slowest to rise, her legs appearing a little unsteady. Next to her, Lady Delphina wears a sickening smile, her cheeks painted with golden stars and her cunning eyes bright.
“Where’s Rohan?” Galla snaps.
I clear my throat, pointing to her dress at the location of her lap. “Galla, darling, there’s an unfortunate wet patch where you spilled—”
“Where’s Rohan?” she screams.
Slowly, Antony reaches up to his helmet, and even more slowly, he pulls it from his head.
Gasps sound around the room. Then a new hush falls.
Wide-eyed highborn stare at their king, possibly seeing for the first time his adult face, although he never told me how old he was when he started wearing his armor.
His dark hair falls in jagged strands across his cold green eyes, and his smile…
So dangerously perfect.
“Rohan isn’t here,” he says.
When I first witnessed Antony’s uncovered face, I truly understood how much the metal he wears cages his brutality.
I felt intense fear in that moment.
And now it seems, the highborn are experiencing it too. Many of them edge backward, scooting on their knees, bumping into those behind them. Some of the ladies have even looked away, trembling where they crouch.
Cheeks deathly pale and breathing shallow, Galla is frozen. “You… I…”
I see my chance to seal Rohan’s freedom, and, hopefully, Cassia’s freedom with him, but I need to act fast because Galla is already drawing a deep breath, and I’m certain she’s about to rally.
My hand lands on her arm, and whatever poison she was about to spew dies in her throat, a mangled sound, as she wrenches herself away from my touch.
I take a single step after her, and Antony follows me, staying close to my back.
“Galla darling, I’m sorry you’re upset about Rohan, but he was following us around.” I widen my eyes at her. “It was so very tedious. I did ask him to stop. I did warn him.”
Her face is pale and her voice shrill as she forms the assumption I hoped she would. “You…killed him?”
I stretch my lips into a grimace and lift my shoulders in an apologetic shrug. “I didn’t think you’d mind. He was marked for death tonight anyway, was he not?”
“But, I—”
“You wanted to see it happen. I understand. How disappointing for you.” Without taking my eyes off her, I gesture to the left. “Perhaps one of your lords will volunteer to take his place?”
At the corner of my eye, Antony’s smile grows even more menacing.
Galla shakes her head, a side-to-side motion she can’t seem to stop making as she backs away from Antony and me. A darkness falls across her features, a deepening shadow as more of the sun’s rays slip behind the horizon in the distance.
“All of them,” she whispers.
A quiet hum starts up through the crowd. Even Galla’s lords don’t seem to understand her meaning, shuffling where they stand.
“Mistress?” Quintus asks.
“All of you!” she screams, pointing at me with a furiously trembling hand. “Kill that witch!”