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CHAPTER FORTY

I sak sat stiffly in the rickety wooden cart as it crested a hill towards the huge, crystalline walls around Saintsgarde, the whole city behind them. Smoke spiralled in thick towers from the port, the tell-tale orange glow of fire crawling across the towers and wooden warehouses. Isak had landed there only days ago. His stomach cramped.

“The darkness will come next,” Rassicus murmured, the youngest of Harth’s guards sitting beside Isak with his hand on the hilt of his sword and a tense expression on his young face. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, or maybe not even that. “That’s how it goes. The people are slaughtered, homes and businesses sacked, and then the darkness comes.”

Yeah, Isak remembered the stories Anzhelika told him. Pure, endless dark that devoured the stars and blotted out the moon, followed by funnels of black magic that caught up any survivors, dropping monsters in their place. He knew the saints’ magic when he heard it. He scanned the sky as the cart rattled closer to the gate in the wall, searching for pockets of darkness, for a void sweeping in to shut out the sun. There was nothing yet, but even from here he could see the ships that approached the bay, black and skeletal and big enough to dwarf every other vessel in the port.

“I’ve never seen ships like those before,” Harth murmured, the general enforcer’s gold eyes fixed the port, too. “What kingdom do they belong to?”

“None I’ve seen,” his father, Kaladeir, remarked. Isak wasn’t too happy to have Maia’s dickhead father in tow, but they didn’t have time for arguments so he’d simply climbed onto the cart and given the bastard a filthy look. Who sacrificed their daughter to a court they knew would hurt her, torture her? Who fucking did that? If Isak had a daughter, and the whole realm’s peace depended on her sacrifice, he’d let the realm burn. Blood and family were the most important thing in any kingdom, and Isak looked forward to one day spilling Kaladeir’s blood in revenge for how he’d treated his own.

Fucking prick.

“What direction are they coming from?” Arna, a.k.a. Grumpiest, demanded, the silver-haired woman rounding out their little expedition. Wylnarren. Fucking Wylnarren. The box and sword couldn’t have been in some cute little glade in the middle of a harmless forest? It had to be at the sight of a massacre so bloody people still spoke of it in whispers.

“Every direction,” Kaladeir bit out, his jaw clenched as he watched more and more ships convene on Saintsgarde. They all watched, only the driver of the cart keeping her eyes on the upcoming wall. “It’s an ambush. The first ships arrived from Port Crystellion, carrying only the dead.”

“It was full of corpses?” Isak asked, his stomach turning. He white-knuckled his new walking stick.

“Living corpses, walking and groaning like any living fae,” the king consort growled.

Well.

Shit. Now they had the living dead to contend with? Where were the king and queen of the chasm when Isak bloody needed them?

“The first ships,” Harth repeated, gripping the edge of the wooden cart when it jumped over a pockmark in the road. “There was more than one wave?”

Kaladeir sighed, and for a split second Isak felt sorry for him, but then he reminded himself this guy swapped his daughter for his niece to cement a peace treaty. “The second seemed to come from Jakahr, full of gold-armoured fae, but we hadn’t confirmed that before I left. Strange reports came too from Lisille but—”

“What kind of reports?” Isak demanded, sitting straighter.

Kaladeir clearly didn’t like Isak’s tone, because he didn’t bother answering. He opened his mouth to continue conversing with Harth, but Isak wasn’t having it.

“In case you’ve forgotten, this whole fucking continent is overrun with saints, their twisted magic, and their monsters. I know more about that than anyone else in this cart.” Rassicus startled like he’d been struck, giving Isak a panicked glance. Right, the guards hadn’t known what was threatening them. Well, someone had to tell them. “So I’ll ask again. What kind of reports?”

Kaladeir ground his jaw, but he must have realised Isak was right because he answered, “Shapes in the water. Shadows.”

Isak groaned, sitting back. He gritted his teeth at the jolt of the cart, impact shooting up his fucked leg, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. “I don’t know what they’re called, but I know what they are. Huge, dark scaly things, usually in water but they can cross land, too. They’re vicious, love to shred people to bits, and any scratch or bite is usually fatal because of their venom. If you’ve heard reports of them, people need to be warned to barricade their doors and windows, especially if they live on the coast. They kill indiscriminately, but the saints can control their movements, guide them to their desired target.”

“How do you know all this?” Kaladeir asked, eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Isak gave him his most unhinged smile. “Because I was the captive of saints, and I was tortured by them in every possible way you can imagine. I fought those monsters and survived.”

Kaladeir didn’t show his surprise, but the sharp assessment in his eyes shifted. Isak couldn’t read what it shifted to and that pissed him off. He wasn’t sure what to think when the king consort reached into his sturdy pack and drew out a sheaf of paper and a pen.

“I’ll hold that for you, your highness,” Rassicus offered, taking the pot of ink so the king consort could scrawl a hasty letter. When Isak realised he’d taken his advice to warn the border towns, his eyebrows scaled his forehead.

A shitty father but a decent-ish leader, Viskae commented.

Well, aren’t people just full of surprises? he drawled. Can you feel anything from those ships?

Wrongness. Black, leaking poison to warp and corrupt the world.

That sounds familiar.

Indeed.

“How can they be killed?” Kaladeir asked, lifting his head to give all his attention to Isak.

“Only two ways I’ve found,” he replied, keeping the memories away with grit and brute effort, though images broke free—black blood, vicious teeth, a powerful tail. “By ripping off their head or doing the same to their tail. An arrow wouldn’t be enough, but decapitation would do it. Magic probably would too if it’s combative enough. Not a clue about fire—never got a chance to try it.”

“What about a bolt or cannon?” Arna asked, looking, if it was possible, even grumpier than she had before. Wrinkles bracketed her extreme frown, her brow sitting heavily over deep brown eyes. “Some of the border towns have defences against ships, designed to shred sails and rudders.”

“That would work,” Isak agreed. “Their tail’s the ultimate weakness, so aim for that.” He would have died if Viskae hadn’t been in his head, telling him exactly how to kill the damn things.

“Any insight on the ships and the dead?” Kaladeir asked, dipping his pen—made of the same crystal as the wall—into the pot Rassicus held.

Isak shrugged tightly. “Never seen them before; those must be new.” He rubbed his thumb over his stick’s gold handle, missing the familiar grooves of his old one. “But there are old stories, legends really, about ships manned by the dead. They were the fleet of the Wolven Lord.”

“I don’t believe in this nonsense about saints being real,” Kaladeir huffed, scribbling something on his paper. Isak stifled a snort; Viskae did not. “Let’s stick to facts and experience, not children’s tales.”

“Even if we’re living in one?”

Kaladeir’s dark brown eyes rose, meeting Isak’s for a long moment. “We’re not. Creatures made by dark magic and twisted experiments, I believe. The second coming of saints that likely never existed in the first place, I do not.”

“Suit yourself,” Isak replied with a shrug and a little smirk, glancing up when they reached the gate in the pearly wall. The driver was already jumping down, displaying a scroll emblazoned with a golden Nysavion seal to the gatekeepers. Unlike Isak’s last trip, they were allowed through without issue.

He drew a deep breath into his lungs, unsurprised when the tight grip of anxiety refused to let them fill more than halfway. It would take a handful of hours and then they’d be in Wylnarren, and this whole thing could be over. Jaro would be safe, Maia would be free, and the others would be out of the grasp of the saints. It would be over.

Isak ignored Viskae’s dubious murmur, refusing to let that negativity pierce his mind. For once, he’d decided to be optimistic.