Forty-six
Ariadnne
Drifting through blissful nothingness, Ariadnne had the vague sense that something had been wrong. There had been a struggle—but now she was released of all pain. It might have been death, but if it was, it wasn’t unpleasant. The thought came through treacle, blurring pleasantly at the edges.
There were voices nearby. She thought she recognised one of them. Whoever it belonged to had mattered to her, she was sure of it.
It was a beautiful voice.
She could drift and listen to those melodic tones for eternity, but a sudden, searing pain jolted her out of her trance, interrupting her peace.
No. She fought—this wasn’t allowed in death!
She shrieked as the pain shocked through her once more, dragging her from her thick, comforting haze.
It started low in her leg and spread rapidly through her body, setting her veins on fire.
She screamed in agony and heard a distant, muffled sob.
A cool hand touched her skin, soothing the blaze of her cheeks.
She leaned into it, needing the contact, the touch.
A low voice was chanting, the sound enveloping her, soothing the burn with a wash of iced air.
Then the voice turned harsh. Water flooded her lungs.
Drowning. She was drowning and unable to gasp air into her body.
She needed to swim, to rise above the flood.
Up. Up. Until the realness of the world felt as though it was pressing on her eyelids.
She cracked them open to blinding light.
‘Ari… can you hear me, Ari?’
It was the familiar voice.
‘Nieve?’ she croaked, her voice brittle and dry.
‘Come back to me, Ari...’
‘Am I dead?’ It seemed like the right question to ask. The light was too bright to open her eyes more than a slit.
Nieve laughed tightly. ‘Not yet, my love. Not yet.’
The deeper voice’s chanting continued, moving through her with a rhythmic beat.
With each pulse of sound the pain subsided and she forced her eyes open wider.
There was the familiar ceiling of her bedroom.
Plain stone walls. Nieve’s beautiful, pale face swam into view, brow drawn and worried and Ariadnne thought she might be dreaming.
‘How are you here?’ Ariadnne’s tongue was like a dry strip of leather.
She focussed on Nieve, who was dirt-streaked, still wearing a tattered prison tunic.
Ariadnne vaguely remembered that she was supposed to be languishing in a cell.
‘They didn’t release you, did they?’ she muttered and closed her eyes again.
‘No, Ari, they didn’t,’ Nieve murmured softly.
‘I’m so sorry, but as soon as they notice we’re gone they are going to be banging down your door, so we need you right now.
’ Nieve’s arm trembled where it held her.
‘I need you to focus on getting stronger. Quickly...’ She touched Ariadnne’s cheek and Ariadnne turned her head into the touch.
Gods, her head was foggy... her mind struggled to form coherent thoughts.
‘We?’ She opened her eyes again and leaned slightly to look around.
There, at the foot of the bed, was the source of the chanting.
With shock she recognised the black-faced prisoner from the cells.
Adrenaline made her sit, and she scrabbled back up the bed, her whole body screaming at the sudden movement.
His people killed Han, and Ariadnne was too weak to defend herself, or Nieve.
‘Easy, Ari…’ Nieve said, voice low as if calming a wild beast. ‘Liren saved your life. He’s a friend.’
Ariadnne didn’t miss the unspoken ‘For now’. With reluctance, she let herself be calmed. If Nieve trusted this ‘Liren’, then she would. For now. She didn’t have much choice, in all honesty. Nieve motioned for Liren to come forward.
‘Liren needs to dress your wound. Will you let him?’ Nieve’s eyes were round. For me, they said.
‘Fine.’
Ariadnne eased herself back and Nieve exhaled, fingers tightening around Ariadnne’s shoulder. Sascha stood by Liren’s side holding a basket of herbs and dressings. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. Ariadnne tried to offer her a weak smile but felt like her face contorted into more of a grimace.
‘Thank you,’ Liren said in a low, heavily accented voice. He took the basket from Sascha and murmured, ‘You would be wise to barricade the door. We must be running out of time.’
Nieve gave Ariadnne’s shoulder a final squeeze before releasing her.
‘I’ve got this, don’t worry,’ she said, and gestured for Sascha to join her in sliding what heavy furniture they could to the door.
‘This will probably hurt.’ Liren turned to Ariadnne. ‘These herbs will help with the healing, but I need to seal them under your skin in case we need your other form to escape.’
Ariadnne glanced at the open iron collar lying beside her. Her hand rose to her neck and felt the welts there.
‘Was that thing—’
‘It was.’ Nieve materialised at her side, pushing the collar further away from her. ‘Liren removed it and I swear I will never let them put it on you again.’
Ariadnne swallowed. Nieve couldn’t know how much those words meant to her. If she’d woken wearing that…
She turned back to Liren with a crooked smile. ‘Well, this can’t hurt more than what I’ve just experienced.’
She was quite possibly wrong. She gripped the bedsheets as he cleaned the wound, barely able to stop herself crying out as his hand brushed her poisoned flesh.
Gentle as he was, he might as well have been ripping her leg into pieces with each sweep of the cloth.
She blinked and Nieve was there, pine scent enveloping and protecting her.
Ariadnne seized her hand, squeezing till her fingers hurt.
She let her head tilt to rest on Nieve’s chest.
‘I thought I would have to tear the castle walls down to free you,’ she murmured.
‘This is less messy, at least.’ Nieve’s said with a smile.
Ariadnne snorted. ‘Since when have you cared about the easy path?’
‘I would choose any path that led to you.’
‘And if it ends with me?’
Nieve’s eyes flicked to Liren, engrossed in his work, and to the door; trapping them in as much as keeping them out. She lowered her voice. ‘Then I will forge a new path with you in the next life.’
Mixed emotions blossomed, the truth of those words resonating in Ariadnne’s bones; she would follow Nieve anywhere, but equally she refused to be the reason Nieve’s vibrant life was snuffed out. Whatever it took, she would see them free.
Pain flickered across her mind as a recent memory resurfaced.
‘Are you okay?’ Nieve frowned.
‘Kayla. It was Kayla who betrayed us.’ Ariadnne hung her head under the weight of the betrayal.
Beside her, Nieve stiffened.
‘I had her confession. It made no difference—’ Ariadnne continued, but Nieve shook her head.
‘You don’t have to tell me now. We will have all the time in the world once we get out of here.’ She squeezed Ariadnne’s hand.
A new, biting pain pulled Ariadnne from the moment with a hiss.
Liren had finished cleaning the wound and was pressing a poultice of herbs into the gash.
Her vision wavered. With great concentration, Liren held up the needle and chanted to imbue the thread with runes.
She recognised the old words for ‘permanence’ and ‘malleability’.
She was about to assume he was a healer when a tendril of shadow escaped his lips and settled on the thread, activating the runes. That was no healer’s light.
She glanced at Nieve, who didn’t seem surprised.
Liren stabbed her leg with a grim smile, his tight, white lips highlighted by his inked face.
‘I fear we are out of time,’ he said, his accent thickening as he glanced at the door, drawn by the sound of a distant crash—the main door had burst open—followed by the thud of booted feet. A firm voice rose in command, demanding that every corner be searched.
No. No. No. Ariadnne’s heart pounded. They only had seconds before the guards found the barricaded door.
‘Please tell me there’s another way out of this room?’ Nieve begged, fist tightening on the hilt of her sword.
‘Oh, gods.’ Ariadnne’s thoughts came sluggish and slow. ‘I don’t know. Sascha?’
‘Not this room.’ Sascha wrung her hands together. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Well. Damn.’ Nieve drew her sword, turning to Ariadnne with a look in her eye that Ariadnne absolutely did not like. ‘Ari—’ She faltered, choking on her words. Instead, she placed a lingering kiss on Ariadnne’s cheek.
‘Nieve—’ Ariadnne didn’t like what was happening.
Nieve strode to the door, shifting into a warrior’s stance.
‘No, Nieve—’
Nieve’s smile tightened. ‘I will buy you what time I can. You slip past and escape.’
Flames of ice skittered down her blade.
‘No! We escape together or not at all!’ Ariadnne tried to swing her throbbing leg over the side of the bed, wanting to stand by Nieve’s side, but the effort made her dizzy.
‘We can’t fight our way out of this, Iceling,’ Liren’s voice grated. ‘We will all die. Ariadnne must carry us.’
Everyone’s gaze snapped to Liren. Incredulous expressions plastered on their faces.
Fly? Ariadnne stared at the walls surrounding them. ‘How? There’s no room to shift without bringing the tower down around us.’
‘Well, that’s a risk we’ll have to take…’ Liren started, but Ariadnne stopped him.
‘I won’t risk Nieve or Sascha like that.’ She gazed around in desperation, before settling on the window. A thought speared through her fog of pain. ‘There is another way.’
Nieve followed her line of sight.
‘Ari, I don’t think any of us can scale that—’
‘No, you don't need to. But you do need to trust me—’
The guards outside had discovered the barred door and were shouting at each other as it buckled under their blows. Nieve shot a glance to the door, her breaths coming quickly.
‘I trust you, but I don’t follow—’ She looked again at the window. Waves crashed against the rocks below, spurred by the blowing storm.
There was a crunch and the door moved an inch, armoured fingers reached round to grasp the side of the door.
‘Trust me.’ Ariadnne stood, clenching her jaw against the pain.
‘I’ll jump. You follow. Leap as far from the wall as you can.
Fast.’ She didn’t let herself think about the practicalities of this plan, or if she could catch them.
She certainly didn’t think about whether they could hang on in the rain with no harness.
She had to catch them. There was no other choice.
Sascha looked terrified, huddled back against the wall gazing at the window with wide eyes.
Nieve swallowed. ‘You can shift before you hit those rocks?’ she asked quietly, taking her by the elbow as Ariadnne stumbled.
‘I have before.’
Understanding lit her eyes. ‘Oh—’ Her brows rose, and beside her Liren glanced between them.
‘We need to move now, whatever we do,’ he hissed. ‘I will make this leap, but it happens now.’
Ariadnne swallowed the fear churning in her throat. The clamour of the guards filled her ears, but in her mind there was only one person who mattered.
Nieve met her gaze with her beautiful, unfaltering, earth-shattering ice-blue eyes, and the world both ended and began in the reflection of those crystal waters.
‘We will be hunted from one end of this earth to the other. You do know that don’t you?’ Ariadnne murmured.
Nieve smiled, a few tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’m game if you are.’ With a sharp breath she pulled Ariadnne close, seeking her lips one final time in a collision of ice and fire, laced with longing.
The guards were coming.
The lingering heat of the kiss remained as Ariadnne tore herself from Nieve’s grasp, a million unspoken words on her tongue, and limped to the window.
A hideous thought blazed through her mind; it had been a few days since her last dose of the antidote.
The curse. She’d never told Nieve. She had, perhaps…
ten days before she sickened? That was ten days to get Nieve to safety. Ten days to spend with her mate.
Her soul cleaved at the thought of such limited time.
But she would see Nieve safe, if it was the last thing she did.
She turned to Sascha, the only other person she had left who meant something to her. The maid was backing up, twisting her hands together. Her eyes darted from the window to the quivering door.
Ariadnne frowned. ‘You’re coming?
‘I… I can’t.’ Sascha shook her head.
‘You must! They’ll know you’ve helped, that you’re a part of this. I don’t know what they’ll do—’
‘I can’t make that jump!’
The door was banging and screeching and grinding against the floor and Ariadnne held Nieve’s hand tight as her heart broke. She could see in Sascha’s eyes that she was terrified.
‘Please. I don’t want to leave without you.’
Sascha’s throat bobbed, and her chin dipped in a curt nod. ‘Okay.’
Thank the stars. Ariadnne exhaled and looked at Nieve.
‘Are you ready?’
Nieve smiled. ‘I—'
Crash. The door fell open and four, six, eight guards all charged into the room, armour clattering as their eyes took in the scene before them. There was no more time—it was now or never.
Ariadnne spun on her heel.
She released Nieve’s hand, hauling herself through the window and flinging herself free.
Rain lashed her body as it struggled, desperate, to change, wind tugging at every limb.
The rocks loomed closer with every second, every jagged peak taunting her.
Her dragon was faint; the dragonsbane had sent it into a deep and dreamless slumber.
Ariadnne screamed into the void it inhabited and dug her talons into its hide.
She wouldn’t fail. Not now. Not when they were so close.
Shrieking and snarling she dragged her dragon from its sleep, forcing it into her body like a hand into a glove, and slowly—too slowly—it took.
Wings erupted. Beautiful, essential, life-saving wings that swept downward in a powerful stroke as her body exploded into sinuous scales.
Thud. A weight landed on her back; a scrambling weight that scrabbled to cling to the rain-slicked ridge of her spine.
Thump. A second. Another body that kicked and clawed till it found purchase between her spines.
She waited. There should be another… any minute there would be another.
Her wings strained to hold her in place.
The sea spraying against her belly and threatening to send a wave large enough to drag her under.
Nothing. The third person never fell. Or never landed.
Ariadnne’s eyes swirled black and she tugged on her bond to reassure herself that Nieve was there.
Nieve was safe. There was an answering icy touch on her scales.
She closed her eyes, only for them to shoot open as the klaxon call to arms sounded.
She could wait no more.
Her dragon heart roared as her wings swept toward the sky.
Let them come. She was ready.