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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A zrail’s heart quickened as he searched the peak above the fortress town, his skin itching and hot even as his insides remained cold. And there it was, stabbing the dark sky like the broken teeth of a giant, blotting out the stars watching over Kraeva. The saints' circle.

“Why are we here?” he breathed, panic spreading through him so rapidly that his voice shook. He wished he could hold onto his rage but he was too cold, too afraid. “You couldn’t break the last circle without hundreds of beastkind and fae to sacrifice.”

“True,” Samlyn agreed, as if they were commenting on the weather and not mass murder. “But magic runs deep in the veins of Jakahrans. Even the lowest born have enough to contribute.”

“Contribute,” Az repeated with derision. With disgust. “You’re speaking of murdering—”

“I don’t require a moral commentary, thank you, forsaken one.”

Az’s mouth snapped shut.

“And the time for chit-chat has ended. They’ve finally spotted us, so command your spirits to sail. We’ll meet this armada head on.”

It would never work. One ship against that many? They didn’t stand a chance.

But Az’s mouth opened and his voice filled the silence, rich with power. “Sail. Meet the armada head on.”

They weren’t his words, but that was his voice, and the dark swell of magic was his, too. Any doubt he’d had that the spirits had been raised by his power died when the ghosts leapt to obey him, snapping open sails with hands that shouldn’t have been solid enough for purchase, manoeuvring the ship out of their hiding place. The cold spread through him, his skin cooling.

“You are forgetting,” Samlyn said with cruel relish, “that you possess the power of a saint. It matters not how many ships we have when we have magic at our command.”

Our command. Not Azrail’s—his. He hated it, hated the saint, and hated the ghosts who sailed them closer, out into the open where they faced Kraeva’s ships.

He waited for Samlyn to raise his hands, to draw on the same twisted magic that compelled Az to obey. He waited for horrors and nightmares so severe they would haunt his sleep forever, images he could never unsee, screams he could never unhear.

“There are many ways a death can be dealt,” Samlyn remarked as the wind carried them further, faster. The warm wood seemed to hum beneath their feet. “A dagger can wound, but so can a fist with enough strength behind it. Cold can kill every bit as well as fire. And a storm can shred sails, can create hailstones large enough to blast holes in the hull of a ship, can summon a lightning strike worthy of a sonnet.”

Azrail’s skin began to crawl.

“Summon a storm, forsaken one.”

No. Az ground his teeth and dug in his heels. The command had his hands raising, power roiling from inside him, but he panted, clenched his jaw, and resisted. He screamed inside his head and thought of Jaro and Maia, of Ev and Zamanya, of Ark and Kheir and Isak and Bryon. He fought as he’d told Jaromir to fight, as he’d fought when he heard Maia scream.

“This again,” Samlyn sighed like he was being tedious. “You’re only harming yourself, you fool. There’s no fighting it; you’ve consumed our blood.”

Consumed their—

Fuck. No. The dark, bitter liquid forced down his throat. Herbs and brackish water and… the blood of saints.

Azrail’s response was so severe that his body actually twisted towards the railing and he vomited into the sea of the Massac Bay, momentarily freed of the weight of Samlyn’s command. It returned in the next moment, crushing and cruel. Az grunted at its ruthless grip, the sound dangerously close to a whimper.

“Like it or not, you will draw a storm around those ships,” Samlyn said, brushing a long finger over the railing, his fingernail scratching the wood. Az could have sworn the wood bled. “Oh look, their gun ports are glowing orange. Do you think they’ll fire?”

He spoke as if he didn’t care either way, but Az saw the curl of amusement in his mouth, the bright flare in his sunken eyes. He loved having Azrail under his control, loved watching his torment.

“If I were you,” Samlyn commented, angling his head closer to Az as he thrashed inside his own body, digging claws into his magic, refusing to let it obey the saint, “I would unleash that storm now. Before they blast holes in our ship and I leave you to die here, unremembered and unloved.”

Az gnashed his teeth, his breathing coming quicker. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t snap all the vicious words he wanted, so he held his power tighter, howling inside his head, screaming at his magic to resist. The life and earth that lived in his core was frantic to sink into the rotten wood of the ship, to rip it apart . In the end the command was stronger, the saints blood shoved down his throat was stronger. It was his dark magic that unfurled in a slow curl of smoke from his palms, covering his skin like swirls of ink.

Stop! Azrail wrenched on the power, begging it to fight the compulsion even as fighting began to hurt, even as warmth trickled over Az’s upper lip, bringing with it the taste of copper. He pleaded and screamed and held tight to his magic, but it was like trying to hold back the tides of the ocean, like a single fae against the force of a tsunami.

“Oh, dear,” Samlyn said with a little tut. “Do you think that will strike us?”

Az’s head snapped up to look at the cannon blasting through the air, glowing as red hot as a poker. The split second of distraction cost him. Dark power erupted from him in a wave so strong it knocked him back from the railing. His head spun, but the dizziness seemed to overpower his command to be silent because the roar inside his head finally poured free. His shout shook the clouds that rolled in, shook the waves beneath them until sails swung and ropes danced, shook his rib cage as Azrail wavered on his feet.

A spiralling column of shadow knocked the cannon away before it could pierce the ship, ripping a gasp from Azrail’s chest. He hadn’t chosen to do that, hadn’t reached for his magic and told it to intercept the cannon. Samlyn did.

Az dug his fingernails into the wooden railing, grabbed his magic, and wrenched it back, smothered it, kept it trapped where it couldn’t rise to Samlyn’s command.

The saint groaned. “I’m getting tired of this. I came here to do a job, and you’re becoming irritating, forsaken one.”

Azrail’s face twisted in a sneer as he held tight to his magic, ignoring the pressure that built in his head and chest. Pain shattered his skull, bringing tears to his eyes. Blood flowed over his lip, trickled from his ears, his nose, but he held on. He would die before he obeyed a fucking saint.

“Unleash the storm, and I will get you a meeting with your precious mate.”

A gasp cut through Azrail’s snarl and he spun to face the bastard. “Swear it.” With the command pressing on him, forcing him into Samlyn’s control he shouldn’t have been able to speak, but Maia was his strength. She was the core of steel fortifying him when he grew weak, the fierce defiance in his heart, the unwavering faith in his soul. While he could still move his hands, Az raised his arm and gave the saint his middle finger. For Maia.

Samlyn was getting irate now; it was there in the flare of his nostrils and the way his eyes kept darting to the naval force getting closer, the fortress town just beyond the shore, the circle of stones atop the hill—his true goal. If he wanted that circle, he’d make this vow. Az wished he could feel the satisfaction of victory when Samlyn drew a sharp fingernail across his own palm and held it out, but all he felt was pressure and pain and the command ripping his insides apart. He carved a sharp fang through his palm and slapped it against the saint’s, close to vomiting into the sea again.

“Use your power over death to wreck those ships against the shore and kill any survivors, and I will secure a meeting with your mate.”

“I want at least an hour with her.” The words were guttural, twisted by pain as blood ran faster from his ears, his nose. He could bear it. For his mate, to see her again, to hold her, he could bear it.

“Thirty minutes,” Samlyn countered.

It was more than Az had expected. “Fine,” he ground out, his back bowing under the pain of gripping his magic. It was a force for death and right now it didn’t care if it killed him.

“As a saint of honour, I vow this,” Samlyn said with a rough squeeze of Az’s hand.

“As a fae of honour, I vow this,” Az rasped, the dark control over him allowing to speak those three words and only those three before it rushed back in and silenced him. The second the vow flowed into him, dark and bitter but rife with promise, with ironclad magic, he released his grip on the writhing power inside him and onyx shattered the night around them. His magic was so thick, so dense with pain and sheer potency that he gasped.

Samlyn grinned. “Much better, forsaken one. Much, much better.”

Darkness hung around them, covering the thick stench of decay for a moment with the sharp, biting tang of power. Pure, unlimited power. The earth magic was his, had always come from him, but this? This was the legacy of a saint, and for the first time Azrail began to wonder just how much magic he might actually possess, and what he was capable of with it.

Blood ran over his lip, itched on his cheeks and his neck, but it felt good to use his power after so many failed attempts in his prison cell. No matter what he tried there, his magic was stifled and locked away. But here, he was death itself. Shaping the power into a storm came as easily as any network of vines and tree roots he’d used with his earth magic, and that ought to be unsettling—to so easily wield this level of power—but instead it was liberating. Exhilarating.

Darkness formed clouds overhead and thunder roared, smothering the sound of Samlyn’s low laugh. Azrail would kill him. That was a promise. But he had to time his blow perfectly, had to get the saint’s guard down, so for now he let this power roar, let it cover the sky until rain crashed onto the deck in a sudden downpour. He barely felt the cold; his blood was full of ice, so why would rain bother him?

“Rip their hulls apart,” Samlyn said eagerly, leaning forward with a new light in his eyes.

Azrail’s power responded without his guidance, dropping fat, destructive hail stones from the sky over the Jakahran ships. The shouts of their crews carried on a vicious whip of the wind, air slicing past Az, driving black hair into his face as it whistled between masts and ropes and rocked the ship. He hadn’t asked where this ship came from, and when a hailstone slammed into the deck beneath him, blood spurting from the site of impact, he decided he didn’t want to know.

Cannon ports glowed orange, but Azrail lifted his hands, taking full command of his power, and cut the dark sky with a lightning strike. It burst across the night in pure, white-blue light, struck the tallest mast, and split the ship in two. The cannon fired into the water, impotent. Samlyn’s smile settled deeper into his wrinkled, papery face.

Az directed thunder and lightning like a symphony his parents took him to before their deaths, using arcs and swoops of his hands to shred sails with hail, flicking his fingertips to drive a squall of wind into three ships until they crashed and flotsam covered the surface of the water. Screams rose higher.

These were innocent people who’d done nothing to Az. But their deaths gifted him thirty minutes with his mate, so he’d find a way to live with it. The cries and shouts would follow him for the rest of his life.

Now, his instincts encouraged, and Az didn’t let his body language shift, didn’t dare to even look at Samlyn as he ripped a lightning strike from the sky and dragged it down, down, directly to the saint.

It hit so close to Az that hairs rose all over his body and he shuddered, electricity crackling in the air, tingling on his tongue. Had he done it, was the saint—?

Samlyn stood a few paces away observing the charred mark on the deck. Unlike the other ships, this one had withstood the strike. As if whatever it had been made of absorbed the power instead of being destroyed by it.

“You missed,” Samlyn said with a whisper of laughter.

You moved, asshole, Az snarled, still unable to speak. He gathered another hot rush of power but Samlyn clicked his tongue.

“No more trying to kill me. That will get old very fast. Push the ships back to the shore,” he commanded, leaning over the railing like a kid trying to catch a glimpse of sailboats on the Luvasa on regatta days. Azrail swallowed bile and pushed the Jakahran ships back with a surge of black, lethal wind. Samlyn was right; death could take any form. Death was the mast collapsing on a man, crushing his ribs. It was the woman impaled by a plank, the brothers struck by lightning, the old, weathered captain who clung to the helm as the sea devoured what remained of his ship. Death took many forms, took all forms.

It took less than twenty minutes to drive the shattered ships and survivors back onto the beach of Kraeva, and then it was done. Az sagged against the ship’s railing, all energy sapped from him until his chest was hollow and his knees weak. He’d wrecked a small armada and he was winded, tired, but he could do it again in an hour. He wished he’d never wondered how powerful he was. The answer was horrific.

Samlyn was watching him expectantly. What? Az wanted to snarl.

“If you were paying attention, the vow was twofold. Use your power over death to wreck those ships against the shore and kill any survivors, and I will secure a meeting with your mate. Those were the words. You’ve wrecked the ships. Now, kill the survivors.”

Az’s lip curled, a threat in his vicious teeth, in the low rumble Samlyn could never quite silence. That had not been the agreement. He never meant to kill any survivors, only to destroy the ships. Shit. Thirty minutes with Maia, he reminded himself. Plus, there was the little fact that breaking a vow between fae was so painful it often caused death. He didn’t want to know what breaking a saint’s vow would do.

Samlyn leaned back against the railing, his pale robes flapping in the wind around his ankles. “The Dead Lands are close enough that you can reach them. I made sure of it.”

“No.” The word was deep, bestial, and ripped from so deep within Azrail that the dark liquid and Samlyn’s power couldn’t silence it.

“People commend Enryr for his strategy,” Samlyn said cordially, “but mine are almost always stronger, and far more effective. You’ve shattered their armada on the sea. Now, you’ll command the dead to rise and sweep into Kraeva, trapping them between the dead and the beach. There’ll be nothing left of this sad little town.”

Azrail was going to throw up again. He thought he’d agreed to kill hundreds. In truth it was thousands. There was a difference between murdering sailors and warriors aboard ships and slaughtering innocent children in their beds.

But he’d vowed. And he’d had vials upon vials of herbs and blood forced down his throat. He could fight and resist all he wanted, but his power wasn’t his to control anymore.