Chapter 53
Fifty-Three
Cara
“Fear.” I grabbed his arm to halt him from sweeping me off to safety. He paused, his arm around my waist, to watch.
Mortals made their way past us. They were moving in the direction of the eerie singing.
A man and woman passed us, still dressed in their night clothes. A woman carried her baby in her arms, both of them silent as they walked down the hill. No one was speaking or rushing. They weren’t running from something.
The music was beautiful. Unsettling, but lovely. For some reason, it made me think of being welcomed to a celebration. Like the solstice parties in Stonehaven.
An older man and woman walked with a little girl holding both their hands.
“Where are you going?” I called, trying to get their attention, but they never even looked at me.
Fear stepped in front of them and repeated the question. They paused, moved politely to the side, went on without answering.
“Come on.” I caught Fear’s hand in mine, not wanting to let go of him.
“Hold,” he warned me. “What if it’s an enchantment that works on mortals? What if it works on you?”
I raised my hands to cover my ears. “Then it will work on Tay too.”
I could still hear my voice and the singing beyond it through the muffling of my fingers. Then I noticed the tavern across from us, the door left gaping open as the last man out staggered toward the sea.
I ran across the cobblestones, ducking and weaving between the crowd. Fear was at my heels.
Inside, the room was smoky and warm. Full flagons and plates were left abandoned on the tables.
There were candles burning on the tables. Frantically, I pinched off the softened wax. Fear understood immediately and went to work doing the same. By the time I stuffed my makeshift earplug into one ear, Fear had another for me.
“Go,” I told him, unable to hear my own voice.
He reached out his hand, and I took it. I didn’t want to lose him in the crowd. As soon as our hands latched together, we were running.
We threaded through the mortals who were continuing their slow, steady walk.
The road suddenly opened up to the sea spreading before us under the moonlight.
The Fae stood at the edge of the sea, singing.
And the mortals walking toward them.
I didn’t understand at first. It was Fear who understood, who cupped my cheek so I would turn to him and read his lips. “The Fae are commanding them. Marching them toward the sea.”
Children. I counted three before I stopped counting because stopping was the only way to keep moving.
A woman with a baby held against her chest, walking as her arms still cradling the child even as her legs carried her somewhere she hadn’t chosen.
Tears tracked down her face, but she didn’t even look away from the sea when I tried to stop her. An elderly couple.
Fear was already shouting directions, given fast and specific, with no word wasted. I read bits and pieces from his lips.
“Bismyth. Form a line. Carry them back. Not yet.” The last two words landed separately, weighted differently from the rest, addressed to the part of the clan that had already seen the Fae. Not yet meaning: I see them. I know. We are not touching them yet.
Bismyth moved.
They were extraordinary, my clan, moving into the line of marching people.
I ran toward the water.
The woman carrying her child was just ahead of me. I got around her and grabbed her shoulders with both hands. She pushed forward against me, her tear-streaked face suddenly close to mine.
Then Kiegan was there.
One precise, sharp hit and the woman went down, safe, his arms taking her weight before she could fall wrong, the baby in her arms now wrapped in his too.
We looked at each other for one beat.
He ran to bring her to safety.
I was alone again. Ahead of me, Bismyth had formed a line; no one else would pass them. But there were still those who were already walking toward the dark surf, behind the line.
How long could this go on? If we attacked the Fae contingent, then it would be open war. If we did, how could we stop the Fae’s punishment?
We were not going to be fast enough.
I knew it. Fear knew it. Bismyth knew it, working as hard and fast as they could, and it wasn’t going to be enough.
I saw the older man ahead—closer to the water than anyone else, almost at the wall, almost at the gap in the breach—and I ran.
I didn’t reach him.
He walked into the sea without breaking stride, and the water came up to his knees, his waist, his chest.. I splashed into the water, but it was too late. His head sank, and I could not find him.
I kept moving back toward the beach.
A little girl was coming toward me. I picked her up, though her legs kept moving. Dairen appeared from somewhere and took her from my arms without a word, already turning, already carrying her back.
Coming toward us, over the mortals, were two dragons. Smoke curled around their faces, obscuring them; they were coming for the Fae. Fear must have ordered the attack. There was nothing else to do.
The woman with the baby was still walking.
I ran for her.
And somewhere in the running, between one step and the next, I understood.
This was the queen’s punishment for refusing her offer.
She couldn’t touch me. So she was touching everyone around me.
This was what my choice had cost. I was watching people die for it anyway, and I couldn’t stop it.
It had been the right choice. But I would pay for choosing myself, for choosing freedom.
The dragons dove, belching flame. There were all eight of them now, standing at the edge of the water. Tay stood beside one of the Fae. I could not see his face.
I dared not run to my brother. I grabbed another mortal and wrestled him back from the edge of the sea, pushing him down the beach. He did not fight me, but he didn’t stop pushing forward, either. As I struggled with him, I looked back for the dragons to incinerate the Fae.
One of the diving dragons shifted in midair. He tumbled over and over, his body slamming into the surf.
The shadows moved. The Nightwalkers moved in on him. Shifters ran toward them, and it was a matter of who would arrive first.
The other dragon was diving. The man pushed past me and made it into the surf. I grabbed my knife in one hand, hilt gripped to harden my knuckles, and punched him across the temple. He kept walking. He could not be stopped.
The other dragon fell to earth like a shooting star, smoke and flame clinging to them for a moment before it extinguished. She plunged into the sea.
The Fae were still singing their beautiful, terrible song as mortals walked past them into the sea.
The Fae looked unmoved. They were watching the chaos with the composure of people who had never in their lives had reason to be anything else.
They were untouchable. That was what their faces said. I wished I could see Tay’s face. Would this moment turn him back to me?
Shadows rose over the beach. More dragons flying toward the Fae who seemed untroubled.
How did we stop the Fae? I drew my knife, resolve hardening in my chest. The Nightwalkers were protecting them, but there had to be a way to end their song. Even without Lightbringer.
“Fine. You’ll do.” Lightbringer’s voice was aggrieved in my mind.
There was a snap within me, like a door catching a strong wind. Warmth and strength lit in my chest, then rushed through every muscle. It was the feeling I’d had with Lidi, multiplied a hundred times over.
My hands raised toward the Fae of their own volition. “Teach me to take their power.”
Fae faces turned toward me. Their mouths were no longer open, singing. They no longer looked bored.
I reached out without fully understanding how. My vision shifted, sharpening in that snap to a dragon’s eyes; I could see every detail of their faces. Their gaping mouths. Their beauty and the cracks in it, the glowing of the enchantments they carried, the purple blood in their veins.
Their magic arced around them, visible now.
“Mine.” I wasn’t sure if it was Lightbringer who said it or me who thought it.
I pulled, and their magic slowly pulled away from them, arcing toward me. It was as if their magic were tethered to them, and I was drawing the line out. Then suddenly, it snapped away from them, as if the line had broken.
Their power flooded through me in a rush. It was too much. Power, but with it a wave of heat and pressure rising from within. I didn’t know what to do with it, and sudden panic raced through my body. My pulse jumped, my breath coming in gulps as I tried to figure out what to do.
“Breathe, child. I know what to do. And you will learn.” Lightbringer sighed, clearly exasperated—perhaps by me and by herself in equal measure.
The sense of heat, pressure, panic all began to fade. Finally, I could take in what was happening.
The Fae: shock first. The shock of those who had thought they were superior, untouchable.
Then horror.
Then they were running.
They were scrambling, the power still wisping out of them as they ran, still flowing into me. They couldn’t stop it any more than the mortals had been able to stop walking.
Tay was running with them.
Magic wisped off of him, too. Shock rushed through me at the sight of my brother stumbling with them through the dark surf, blue magic still smoking between him and me.
The last of the magic left him, a last thread flowing quickly between him and me until it snapped into my body.
Tay fell in the surf.
He was not the first. One Fae, then another, lost the last of their magic and fell. The other Fae were running now, fleeing along the broken seawall.
I looked out over the city, picking out one mortal woman calling to others for answers, then a man, crying out as he saw his child. He wrapped the child in his arms. Mortals filled the streets, confused and distraught and alive. Bismyth had saved almost all of them.
I found Fear, running from the city down toward the sea, still shouting orders to Bismyth.
There were bodies bobbing in the water below, being pulled slowly out to sea. Asrael had one of the fallen shifters and was dragging him out of the sea. Near him, Kiegan and Sera were chasing down the fleeing Nightwalker who had tried to finish off the shifter.
Below.
My gaze snapped down.
I was above the scene. Above the eastern wall, above the sea, above the fleeing Fae and the city we had saved.
There was a shadow to either side. The sensation from my shoulders slowly came to me, something heavy pressing down on me. I looked to my side and caught a glimpse of my enormous spreading wings. They were the color of copper, bright and shining under the moonlight.
I used to be afraid of heights.
Then I found Tay.
He was on the ground, fallen like the Fae who had been singing, stripped of whatever the queen had given him.
One of the Fae ran past him, and he stumbled up to his feet.
He turned to check behind him—to see if dragons were pursuing them—but it was not the dragons sweeping after the Fae who caught his attention.
He stopped on the beach, his fine clothes drenched and dark against his body, and gaped up at me. Our eyes met.
The distance between us felt more vast than it was. It was was every choice that had taken us to opposite sides of this war. I had always been able to read his face. I could not read what was happening behind his dark brown eyes as he stared up at me.
The powerless Fae were scrambling away from what I had become. From the dragons sent in pursuit.
Tay went with them.
I watched him go. Only for a moment. He had chosen where to be.
Instead, I looked to find Fear.
He was below me, standing still in the midst of the chaos, looking up at his wife.
I wasn’t sure how to get back down. His wings spread, and he launched himself up to meet me.
His arms wrapped around me. His smile of triumph might’ve been for his own plots bursting to life, or they might have been full of pride in me.
Or both. I’d known Fear long enough to know it was possibly both.
Suspended in the air above the crumpled city, he held me, but I no longer needed his wings. I rested my hands on his shoulders anyway. For once, we were eye-to-eye without effort. His golden eyes were full of joy as he leaned forward.
Our lips met in a soft brush of a kiss. Then, the next heartbeat, it deepened, and I wasn’t sure which of us had changed it.
I was alive, and Lightbringer was mine, and so was Fear.
We were both smiling when we separated. Distantly, there were cheers, and my smile widened. Bismyth, of course.
“What do we do now?” I asked, then pulled the plugs from my ears and tried again. “What do we do?”
I meant because we were orbiting each other far above the ground, where an entire city could see us suspended, our wings arched above in black and copper.
Fear’s smile was radiant. “Now you light the stars.”
Continue the adventure with Crown of Ashes