Page 15

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A red sun rises over the tall rock formations that wrap around the back of the sprawling city as we leave the castle grounds. The red light reflects against the canal to our left, making the rippling water look like blood. I suppress a shudder.

Trying to shake off the sudden ominous feeling that crawled up my spine, I turn to my companions, who have all stopped on the street a short distance from the wrought steel gates of the castle.

For a few moments, the rushing water from the waterfalls behind us is the only sound that fills the brisk morning.

Then Isera snaps, “Why did you interfere?”

Both Lyra and Galen start slightly at her sharp tone and glance uncertainly between her and Draven, but Draven doesn’t seem particularly offended by her harsh demand. He just shifts his gaze to her furious face and locks serious eyes on her.

“Because Orion likes to play games,” he replies.

“Since he’s always hiding behind his wards, I’ve only had limited interactions with him, but even then it’s impossible to miss.

He fucking loves to play games with people.

Talking circles around them, making them admit things they never wanted to admit, pulling them into dangerous bargains, getting them to do things for his own amusement. He lives for it.”

Isera clenches her jaw, but she sounds more annoyed with Orion than angry with Draven as she presses out, “I can handle that arrogant little pretty boy king just fine.”

“No, you can’t,” Draven says, though not unkindly. There is no cruelty in his voice as he holds her gaze. Only simple facts. “We all saw how badly his nightmare powers affected you.”

She flinches, and for a moment, I swear I can see embarrassment flash across her face. Then the rage returns. “As if you didn’t?—”

“I’m not saying that we weren’t affected too. I’m saying that whatever memory he was using against you is worse than what he was using against us. It affects you more than our memories affect us. And part of being a good soldier is knowing your own limits.”

“I’m not a soldier. And I don’t give a shit about limits.”

“Then you will die before this war even starts.”

“If you think?—”

“Is it true?” Galen suddenly interrupts.

The question jolts everyone out of Draven and Isera’s argument. Blinking, I turn to face him, but he is looking at Alistair. The sudden change seems to confuse Isera as well, because the burning fury in her eyes banks a little as she also turns to frown at Galen.

Another brisk morning wind whirls between the pale stone houses, and somewhere on the street next to ours, several doors are opened and closed. The faint thuds are almost drowned out by the rushing waterfalls.

I flick a quick glance at Draven who, just like everyone else, is looking at Galen. But as opposed to the rest of us, he doesn’t look confused. Instead, he is studying his friend with an expression I can’t read. Shifting my gaze back to Alistair, I find him looking strangely guilty.

“Is what true?” he asks, glancing uncertainly between Galen and the rest of us.

“What he said in there,” Galen says. “Was he right when he said that you don’t even want to be here?”

Alistair starts, looking caught for a moment. Then he draws his pale brows down in a scowl and crosses his arms over his chest. There is a note of challenge in his voice as he replies with a single word. “Yes.”

That moment right before we crossed the border into the Unseelie Court drifts through my mind. That moment when we were all moving towards the wards while Alistair glanced around the open grasslands instead.

So he had been about to leave.

Cocking my head, I study him as he glares back at the rest of us. I wonder why he stayed.

“You don’t care about freeing the Seelie Court?” I ask, making sure to keep my tone neutral and without judgement.

“Or getting revenge?” Isera demands.

She, on the other hand, isn’t checking her tone. Her question comes out like an accusation. It immediately sets Alistair’s anger aflame too.

“No,” he practically spits the word back at her. “I don’t.”

“But you said that we would kill them all,” she growls back at him. “You said that you hated them.”

“I do hate them.”

“Then why?—”

“Because I hate everyone!” His chest heaves, and he uncrosses his arms and instead throws them out wide in a show of frustration.

“I hate everyone! I hate people.” Dragging in a deep breath, he rakes both hands through his hair.

And suddenly, he just looks… exhausted. A hint of desperation creeps into his green and orange eyes as he says, “I just want to be left alone.”

The pain and desperation and tiredness in his voice as he says it throw me off so much that I don’t know what to say. Apparently, everyone else is struggling with the same thing, because we all just stand there, staring at him for a moment.

When the awkward silence begins to stretch, Alistair clears his throat and drops his arms. That desperation disappears from his eyes in a heartbeat as he instead draws his eyebrows down in a scowl once more.

“Remember when you asked me what I would do if I won the Atonement Trials?” he demands, looking at me and Isera.

“You never answered,” I reply.

“My plan was to buy a huge fucking mansion in some remote place far away, and then I was going to live there alone for the rest of my life. Away from everything and everyone. Forever.”

The silence that descends over our group pulses with tension.

Isera looks like she’s about to punch him in the face, and Alistair is glaring back at her as if he is daring her to try.

It makes my chest tighten and my stomach roll with nausea.

I hate it when people who are supposed to be friends fight like this.

It reminds me too much of how my parents always fought.

And just like those times, I get ready to mediate in order to deescalate the conflict.

But before I can so much as open my mouth, someone else breaks the tense silence.

“So you’re a little grumpy,” Lyra says in a light voice. “That’s alright.” Her black dragon scale armor shifts slightly as she reaches into one of her belt pouches and pulls out a small pastry, of all things. Holding it out, she offers it to Alistair. “Here, have a snack.”

Alistair stares at her as if she has grown a second head.

To be fair, so do I.

If it had been anyone else, I’m pretty sure that Alistair would have turned them into a pile of ash at this point.

But Lyra didn’t say it mockingly. It wasn’t a taunt or an insult.

Instead, as I watch her hold out that absolutely ridiculous little pastry with a smile on her face, it becomes crystal clear that Lyra is being completely genuine.

Alistair seems to realize that too, because he hesitantly reaches out and takes the offered pastry. Lyra’s grin widens, and she brushes a few crumbs off her hands, while Alistair just stands there, holding the pastry and looking even more bewildered than before.

“Well, are you going to eat it?” Lyra asks, and nods towards the pastry.

Blinking, Alistair starts in surprise. When she just raises her eyebrows, he slowly lifts the pastry and takes a bite.

“There you go.” Her eyes glitter in the morning sun as she nods. “My grandma always says that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

Alistair chokes on the pastry. Coughing violently, his entire chest shakes as he tries to breathe and dislodge the bite of food at the same time. His face is bright red.

“And besides,” Lyra continues, and gives Alistair’s back a brisk thump. “My oldest brother always gets hangry too, so I know how to recognize the signs.”

The firm thump in his back makes him at last cough out the bite of pastry that had gotten stuck in his throat. He gulps in a breath and then straightens before turning to stare at Lyra once more. His cheeks are so red that I swear he’s about to catch fire any second now.

For a few moments, no one seems to know how to react.

Then Draven bursts out laughing.

It’s such a wonderful sound of genuine mirth that it fills my entire soul. Goddess above, I could live off of that sound for weeks. Warmth floods my chest, and I once more find myself swearing to any deity that will listen that I am going to carve out a future where Draven laughs like that often.

“God, I’ve missed this,” he says while dragging in a deep breath and composing himself again.

For one glorious second, both Lyra and Galen grin brightly. Then in a heartbeat, their smiles dim, and shame and regret slam across their features instead. Draven immediately notices, of course, and in the span of a few seconds, that wonderful atmosphere is gone again.

“You—” Draven begins, but he never has a chance to finish.

Alarm crackles through my veins as an arrow suddenly speeds through the air straight towards the side of Draven’s head.

“Watch out!” I scream, shoving him straight in the chest.

I normally wouldn’t be able to push him back like this, but he must trust my warning because he doesn’t try to keep his balance. Instead, he stumbles backwards from the shove.

The arrow speeds past in the space where his head used to be a moment later.

My heart jerks in my chest as I whirl around towards the attacker.

Panic lurches through me as I find a horde of fae soldiers pouring out onto the street. They swarm around us like a flood. Half of them are carrying bows and the other half is?—

Before I can even finish the thought, a blast of water hits me in the chest. It slams into me with such force that I fly backwards, crashing into Draven who was trying to straighten from my earlier shove.

Air explodes from my lungs as my unprotected back hits his firm chest and the hard dragon scale armor that covers it.

Since Draven was already off balance, the hit makes both of us crash down on the ground in a heap of limbs.

Shaking my head to clear it, I try to blink my surroundings back into focus and scramble off Draven at the same time.

My stomach lurches as someone grabs me by the arm and hauls me off Draven’s chest. I just barely have time to see Alistair being hauled off Isera in a similar manner, both of them on the ground, before I’m shoved down on my knees so hard that my teeth rattle.

A moment later, cold steel is pressed against my throat. I still.

“Don’t,” someone warns from a few steps behind me to the right.

Since there is a sword across my throat, I can’t turn my head fully, but from the corner of my eye, I can see Draven on one knee, as if he had been about to get to his feet. Two Unseelie fae soldiers are standing behind him, and one of them is pressing a sword to his throat as well.

When I shift my gaze back, I find that the rest of our companions are in similar positions.

And suddenly, the street is dead silent.

People who look like normal civilians have cracked open windows all along the street, and they are watching us with a mixture of curiosity, confusion, and anticipation on their faces.

Footsteps echo between the pale stone buildings, coming from the direction of the palace. And even though I’ve barely spent any time with the guy, I already know who it is before he even reaches us. The simultaneously lazy and commanding footsteps give him away.

“This is how you would repay me?” Orion Nightbane demands, his voice echoing across the whole street as he strides around our captured group so that he is standing in front of us.

He is wearing the same dark blue and black garments that he wore when we left him in the throne room a few minutes ago, and his dark blue hair lies neatly down his back. As if the wind itself wouldn’t dare to rustle a single strand of hair on his royal head.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Orion?” Draven growls back at him. “We had a?—”

Before he can finish the sentence, the second soldier behind him shoves a gag into his mouth.

I barely have time to even open my mouth before they do the same to me.

Isera almost bites the finger off one of her captors, but with a sword to her throat, she can’t do much else as she and the rest of our friends are gagged tightly as well.

The Unseelie King watches us all with a wicked glint in his eyes. I snarl a curse at him through the fabric of the gag, but it only comes out as garbled mumbling. And it makes the soldier behind me press his sword harder against my throat. I glare at Orion but make no other attempt to speak.

Once all of us have been firmly gagged, Orion continues speaking. And just like before, he talks loudly enough for the entire street to overhear.

“We had a deal,” the Unseelie King declares. “I allowed my healer to save Selena’s life in exchange for information about the Icehearts. I helped you, and you repay me by trying to weaken my court.”

I draw back, staring at him in confusion.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he continues, and spreads his arms wide to indicate the city around us. “This is my court. I have eyes everywhere. And I know that you murdered one of my people last night. Several guards even saw you do it.”

My mind spins as I try to figure out what in Mabona’s name is going on.

“Danzo Wolfstalker was a high-ranking member of my court and an asset to this city,” Orion says, stabbing an accusatory hand in our direction. “And you sought to undermine me, undermine us all, by killing him.”

The expression that descends on his dangerously beautiful face is so cold and cruel that I would have shivered if I wasn’t so angry.

Instead, I glare back at him, my eyes blazing with rage.

He is the one who told us to assassinate that guy.

We upheld our end of the bargain, and Draven said that Unseelie fae always honor the deals they make.

So why the hell is this backstabber arresting us for it now?

That ruthless expression remains on Orion’s face as he stares us all down. “You betrayed my hospitality.”

A few of the soldiers start putting on thick gloves before pulling out something that clanks metallically.

My stomach drops as I watch them approach us with iron manacles.

The Unseelie King flashes us a cruel smile.

“Let me show you what we do to traitors in the Unseelie Court.”