39. Aldrin
I am falling, falling, falling.
The air rushes by, tossing my hair up into my face. My stomach lurches. We are spiraling through the sky, and it is sheer blind luck that we haven’t hit a building or platform yet. The bolt through Ezekiel’s back narrowly missed me, but he is out cold, wings flailing uselessly.
Edmund and Caitlin left us behind after Ezekiel took the first bolt, when he was forced to turn back from our mad flight to the palace. When we could still do so safely and I could leap on the back of another dragon.
They didn’t see the second and third strike.
All I can hope is that they were able to get Keira out of that damned golden cage.
I throw out my magic, trying to weave ropes of air to anchor us or send forth thick vines to catch our fall, but they keep snapping under the force of our descent. My heart races frantically.
I refuse to die here.
There is still so much left undone.
Keira—oh gods, Keira is still within the clutches of my greatest enemy.
The air is forced out of my chest as a great weight slams into us from the side. At first I think we have met the ground, but then another equal impact hits us from the other side. We are very suddenly no longer falling, but rising upward instead.
To my left, Bartholomew’s massive form props up his father. Red blood spills from Ezekiel’s wounds, trickling in rivulets from his gold-and-white scales onto the midnight galaxy of his son’s. On the other side, a red dragon shoulders the rest of her king’s weight.
The flight is awkward. We lurch violently downward multiple times; Ezekiel’s blood-soaked form is slick and difficult for the other dragons to hold on to, but we finally reach the rooftop garden of my secret base and land with a rough thud.
I immediately leap from Ezekiel’s back as the dragons converge on him.
More land around us, making the ground shake.
They roll their king so the bolts piercing him are accessible.
Wisps of light matching the color of each dragon float from their forms into Ezekiel as they transfer their essence to him, but it isn’t enough.
Bartholomew rears up on his hind legs, wrapping his front claws around one of those protrusions, ready to yank it out, when I dart forward.
“Wait!” I yell. “Let me heal him while you remove it.” The dragons pause, noticing me for the first time, and I rush to place my hands on Ezekiel’s neck.
The scales beneath my touch are deceptively smooth and rock-hard.
Beneath, his breaths are labored and his pulse is worryingly slow.
I channel my healing magic into him, down the threads of his muscles and across the network of his arteries, until I reach the broken flesh of his shoulder wound.
I pour my power into knitting together the cut blood vessels around the metal bolt so he doesn’t bleed out the moment it is removed.
“Now!” I grunt to Bartholomew.
With my magic threaded through Ezekiel, the tear and tug of the metal shaft leaving his shoulder reverberates through me, but the pain doesn’t leach to me. Ezekiel roars with agony as his whole body seizes up.
I am in over my head, panting with the effort to frantically weave muscle back together.
To reconnect arteries and veins whose pathways were sliced open, then blocked by the bolt, now sloshing blood everywhere.
It is like being attacked from multiple sides with not enough hands or swords to fend off each blow.
I am painfully aware of how I need to get back to Keira.I can hardly focus for the desperation of it.
I cannot expend all my power here.
I send out my awareness into the building below, finding any Spring Court fae who haven’t yet entered the battle on the streets and calling them to me.
I use my royal compulsion, so they have no choice but to obey.
The pounding of boots on the staircase and the slam of the door as it opens register in some distant part of my mind as I struggle to hold on to Ezekiel’s life force.
A sigh of relief floods me as the magic signatures of half a dozen other fae enter the dragon’s body, their healing magic wrapping around his wounds. Gentle hands grip my shoulders and pull me back from the dragon.
I turn to find Klara’s violet eyes trained on me. She is saying something, gesturing frantically, but her words just aren’t registering. Her magic enters me, healing me and topping up my reservoir. Within a blink, she has pulled me outside the crowd of healers.
“My husband. My son. Where are they, Aldrin?” She grabs me by the shoulders and tries to shake me. “Are they safe?”
I looked for Klara when Keira disintegrated in my arms. I tried to find her in the mass of fighting people, but she was still too far away. How do I tell her the truth of what has happened? How I failed them all?
I take her trembling hands in mine. “Titania has discovered the truth of Drake’s identity. He is in a golden cage alongside Keira, hoisted on the palace wall. Rainier is in the dungeons to cool off, but Titania doesn’t suspect his shifted allegiance. We will get them back, Klara.”
She shoves me hard and I stumble backward. “We do it now !” She pushes me again, toward the door, then walks past me, every muscle tense and twitching with aggression. I do not hesitate. Every inch of my being screams at me to save Keira. I send a single glance over my shoulder toward my dragon.
Go, Ezekiel growls in my head. Go find your mate, before I recover enough to bite your head off for dragging me into this infernal war.
We fly down the stairs, taking them in twos and threes, while I reach out my awareness to my people fighting in the streets.
It is so damned easy to decipher which belong to my cause and which are the mob turned feral.
Those who have disciplined, calculated thoughts whose essence I can grasp, and those who are in a wild rage, only caring to kill and destroy, riding adrenaline like a drug.
I recognize the signatures of my closest friends and call all of them to me.
By the time Klara and I step out into the brutal violence of the streets, we are no longer alone.
Kai bounds around a corner with two other kelpies flanking him in their half-humanoid, half-horse forms. He rears back on his hind legs, kicking his front hooves into the heads of two fae that charge him, wearing the makeshift uniform that mimics the Truth Templars.
They immediately collapse to the ground.
Silvan and Jasper materialize from around a corner, their faces and armor already covered in soot and sprays of blood, fighting a crowd back-to-back as they move toward me. Jasper’s Royal Guards spew out from behind them.
I take a few more steps into the fray, sword drawn and not yet used, when Hawthorne drops down from the balcony above with Lilly at his side, three dead Truth Templars falling with them and crumpling at their feet. Klara steps out of the door behind me, hands smeared in blood.
“Tonight we kill the High Chancellor!” I growl as I point my sword in the direction of the palace. Our dragons already circle around it with fae on their backs. “Tonight we get Keira, Drake and Rainier back. No more spies. No more pretending.”
We march through the chaos of death and destruction.
People fight everywhere.
Professional Spring Court soldiers against rioting civilians. Truth Templars clashing with Assassins of Belladonna. Low fae facing off with the members of Titania’s cult who want them dead. We no longer care for the intricacies of who is a civilian and who is a warrior.
All who stand in our way this night shall die.
Around me buildings burn, clogging the streets with smoke, ash and a constant murky rain created by fae desperately trying to quell the fires. The stone of the streets and balconies runs red with blood, and the many gushing streams are tinged pink.
I lead my regiment down a main boulevard.
Our numbers grow as my supporters recognize the crown of horns of my primal form and flock to me.
Those who oppose us die. I send out my royal compulsion among my enemies, who are still sworn to this court, and they falter for long enough to fall to our blades.
The tear of my sword through flesh, the spray of hot blood across my face and the crumpling of bodies around me do not give the satisfaction I crave.
I would butcher thousands of my people to get to Keira.
To keep her safe. It doesn’t mean I need to enjoy it.
They fall before my sword again and again, the fools charging at me.
Some wearing the clothes of common people and others the helmets and battle scars of professionals.
I do not care who dies as I clear my path to her.
We become bogged down in the crush of bodies as wild fae charge down streets and into this main thoroughfare to meet us.
I can barely swing my sword. I sheathe it, favoring my dagger.
It plunges into chests and guts again and again, each adversary hardly hitting the ground at my feet before another rushes in to take their place.
I manage to take a few small steps over piling bodies with each kill I make.
Hawthorne pants to my left, long streaks of blood running down his face, his eyes keenly focused on his next victim.
That gentle, kind man turns into someone else during the heat of a battle.
Silvan and Jasper work in unison at my other side, moving like they are locked in an intricate dance together, quickly dispatching the same target before moving on to the next.
I glance up and my heart sinks. This boulevard leads right to the palace, but it is completely choked with enemies. I don’t have time for this.Keira is up there and alone.
An impotent rage fills me.
I see red.