Page 60 of Crown of Wings (Fang & Fire #2)

A pproaching the Eighth House feels exactly like riding into a graveyard—for all that I know this one is technically empty of the souls the skrill have claimed.

I’m slightly surprised that my horse doesn’t balk as we approach, the mare’s strides long and sure as we gallop up the slow-rising grade to the main gate, which remains open, and into the grand courtyard.

The horse that Fortiss commandeered is standing at the ready, though her bit has been loosened enough to allow her to enjoy the open bag of grain he’s left for her.

Dismounting quickly, I scan the courtyard. Is this the last place he stood? Is the warmth in the air still his? What if he’s already dead and ash in this house of horrors, lost to me?

No. That’s not an outcome I’ll ever allow.

I tie off my horse next to his and choke down my fear long enough to run up the stairs and into the front doors of the Eighth House, which has been opened wide.

Now I see the foyer more clearly—the leaves scattered through it not the result of a sudden gust upon our arrival, but the first signs of a house falling into decay without the constant upkeep from an army of servants.

I smell the staleness of the air that I simply didn’t notice yesterday and wonder how I could have missed it.

“Fortiss?” I call out. I have to make a second effort when my first attempt is little more than a whisper. “Fortiss!”

When there’s no response, I weather a wave of panic that roots my feet to the stone floor and force myself not to just tear off running through the keep.

Yesterday, this place was filled with illusions—perhaps it still is.

If this house is hiding Fortiss from me, no matter how many rooms I storm through…

I blow out a hard breath and reach out to Gent, imagining Fortiss lost in some shadowy chamber in this place. “How am I going to find him?” I whisper and receive his hooting reassurance in return.

Still, Gent can’t help in this, not really—unless I want him to pummel the Eighth House with his mighty fists until he shakes Fortiss loose. And if I don’t find Fortiss before too long, that’s exactly what I’ll ask him to do.

I’m halfway down the main corridor by the time I receive Gent’s full response.

With an earsplitting cacophony of coos and chirps, a gaggle of hummerlets explodes through the front door and sweep toward me down the hall.

I gape, then force myself to imagine Fortiss while shouting his name aloud.

The fluttering, twittering creatures look at me questioningly as if I’m a fool, then dart off through the castle, their bellies lighting up as the way darkens.

I follow them as best as I can, almost crying out with relief when I round a corner and realize a torch has been lit and placed into a sconce on the wall.

Not willing to trust my own eyes, I dash up to it, lifting the torch free and drawing it close to my face.

I can smell the burning wood, feel the heat of the flame, and my heart thuds with new hope.

This is real, I think. Fortiss was here.

A hummerlet pops out of a side chamber, nearly scaring me to death, then trills at me with an attitude of clear irritation as she bobs up and down, belly glowing.

She darts off down the corridor. Emboldened by my torch, I dash off after her, and together we wind our way deeper into the castle, heading up, not down.

Not returning to the talonstone vault, then, but… where?

We reach the floor where our sleeping chambers were, but the hummerlets draw me away from those rooms and up a second set of stairs.

I’m heartened to see another torch lit, and after pausing briefly to make sure that it, too, is real, I dash along the corridor, moving swiftly until the hummerlet in front of me suddenly stops midflight and poofs into nothingness. She’s gone.

I stare, mutely for a long second more, with nothing but the soft crackling of the torch for company, and then I hear it.

Weeping.

Swallowing hard, I move forward toward the large open door at the end of the corridor.

Light plays out in a rosy glow from the chamber, and when I peek my head around the door, I’m hit with the eye-wateringly awful smell of rotting meat.

Then I see a large grate with an oddly red flame, walls lined with books, a bulky pile of blankets stacked in a corner…

And Fortiss kneeling over a body.

“Fortiss!” I gasp, shoving my own torch into a holder just inside the door and rushing toward him. A large pool of dark liquid has stained the rug around the body, and the scent of death in the room is as thick as winter fog. “What are you doing?”

“It’s my father.” He hunches over the corpse, shielding the man’s face from my view. “Daggar said the truth was made plain to him in this chamber of prophecies, that all who entered would see what they couldn’t face. I had to see.”

“Fortiss…” I try again, edging closer to him. His shoulders are shaking, and the sight of his abject sorrow is nearly my undoing. I’ve never seen him so distraught.

I draw in a steadying breath. “That wasn’t actually Lord Daggar talking to you. It was an illusion created by the skrill to deceive us into spending the night in this place of death. Where they could kill us in the middle of the night, when our guards were down.”

“But he said—I—would know the truth,” Fortiss manages, his voice cracking. “And he was right.”

I bite my lip as he doubles over again, but he’s making no sense to me. I don’t want to startle him into attacking me, though, so I drop into a crouch, edging toward him bit by bit. “All right, so you came here to learn what you needed to learn. That’s good, then. That can help us.”

“My father didn’t die in a fall,” Fortiss moans. “Rihad killed him. He’s been planning this so much longer than we even realize.”

He pulls away from the body, and I see the telltale gray-flanged arrow sticking up out of the chest of what is clearly a great warrior—or was.

Now the man is soaked in his own sticky blood.

I reach out a shaky hand and grip Fortiss’s arm, gritting my teeth as I realize how violently he’s shivering.

“He—he said Rihad needed Szonja for…for the winged crown, the one that was l-lost.”

Fortiss gasps, clearly struggling for breath.

His gaze swings to mine, eyes ravaged by tears, and I jolt as something—magic?

Emotion? Some combination of the two?—leaps between us, a cord that winds around my heart and binds me fast. In that moment, I am one thought with Fortiss, one breath, his aching well of sorrow so deep we both may drown in it.

I feel his pain as surely as it is my own, the loss and devastation of a betrayal that has stretched from an orphaned boy to the man I hold today.

“That’s why—Rihad kept her all those years in the caverns.

My father told me that. And then he d-died in front of me. ”

“Oh, Fortiss,” I whisper. I lean in even closer, wrapping my arm around him, intending only to draw him away. But I can’t resist the ghoulish urge to glance toward the face of the corpse in front of me—even though I know it’s an illusion, even though I know it’s…

My breath dies in my throat.

The man lying in the pool of blood hasn’t been pierced through with a flat gray arrow, but with an arrow of pure silver, whose feathers gleam with dyed flanges of silver struck through with the faintest brush of green.

And the man whose mouth sags open, his eyes staring up sightlessly at the ceiling, isn’t some dead, hallowed warrior I’ve never met.

It isn’t even Merritt—who, I realize, is what I most expected to find. Merritt, who I failed.

It’s Fortiss. A mirror image of the man trembling beside me, one whose eyes are filled with the past, and one who’s dead by my own hand.

He’s wearing the crown of wings.

“Stop it.” I yank Fortiss back so hard that we both go sprawling, and the image vanishes at my feet. I shake Fortiss roughly, slapping at him when he stares at me dumbly.

“ Stop it,” I yell again in his face. “You came in here for a reason. What was it? What did you think you would find in these chambers? What was worth being trapped by an illusion?”

“Not trapped,” Fortiss insists, still dazed. “Not trapped.” But he’s shaking his head now, peering around wildly.

I haul myself to my feet and pull him up as well. “You looked trapped to me. What did you think was going to be in here?”

“The reason the Divhs came here in the first place. The crown of wings.”

I stare at him, hard, then back to where the illusion of his own dead father had so ensnared his attention. Now there’s nothing there, of course. No father, no Fortiss. Had I truly seen the crown of wings on Fortiss’s head? If so—what did that mean? I had won the winged crown, not him.

“I thought you said Daggar never indicated that the crown was here,” I say carefully. “Only the talonstones.”

“But it has to be here.” Fortiss shakes me off him, finally seeming to come back to himself as he turns to glare at the walls of books.

“Rihad can’t have been hiding it all these years.

He’s too proud. He would never have missed an opportunity to display it at the First House.

He would have wanted to study it, delve into its powers.

You forget, in the past month since the tournament, I’ve read his books, I’ve memorized his notes.

I know more about his research than I ever wanted to.

Rihad wasn’t just looking to control Divhs.

He was looking to command an army capable of helping him take over the Imperium.

He wanted every scrap of power he could bend to his will.

And he’s been planning this for far longer than I even realized, and at a much higher level than I would have thought possible. ”

“Maybe—but maybe not,” I counter. “You don’t know if what you saw just now is anything but what the skrill wanted you to believe.”

“No.” He grimaces. “That’s not how they’re made, Talia.

They don’t lie, they don’t think. They don’t read minds and then manipulate what they learn to greatest effect.

Divhs are summoned, not pushed, right? Well, skrill are drawn to darkness.

They see it and they reveal it—that’s all. We see what we’re meant to see.”

He’s still scanning the walls, moving around the room, apparently oblivious to how much it still smells like a slaughterhouse.

“Do we? Think about what happened here, Fortiss. Daggar and his entire family were killed. His guards. His staff. Now we’re the ones being manipulated by the skrill—singled out specifically and manipulated, because of our connection to our Divhs. ”

“But how is that even possible?” he complains, sounding genuinely aggrieved. “How can the glory of being connected to a Divh be a worthwhile target? There’s so few people that are connected to Divhs.”

“Today, yes. Five hundred years ago? The only people alive, certainly the only people attacking the skrill, were those affiliated with Divhs. Maybe that’s the only way they know how to connect with us now.

The only reason why we succeeded in batting them back last night was because we caught them by surprise.

They couldn’t manipulate us. Tonight might be a different story, depending on what Syril sees. ”

“We’re blinded by the only thing that can save us,” he mutters, while I lean back against the wall of books.

“You’ve read Daggar’s accounts. How is it the skrill have gone so long without attacking?”

He waves that question away. “Because no one has been able to summon them until Rihad. And even then, because he’s no longer connected to them, they haven’t moved with any sort of speed.

If we find the crown of wings, we can control them.

I’m sure of it. And I’m beginning to think they want to be controlled, Talia.

Just like the Divhs want to be banded, the skrill want to be allowed into this plane. ”

He glances around. “There just has to be something here.”

“I mean…” I watch him a little helplessly as he moves around the room, opening drawers, sifting through parchment pages.

I slant my own gaze to the far corner of the room where the blankets are stacked and head that way.

Maybe there’s a crate beneath them, filled with more books—or even the crown of wings? Maybe that’s…

I stop in my tracks.

“Fortiss,” I croak, though the words die in my throat, barely loud enough to make a soft, gusting huff. I force my feet to lurch forward one step, then another. “Fortiss,” I try again, my eyes peeling so wide, I feel like they must take up my whole skull. “ For ?—”

“ Light , Talia, what?”

I hear him turning, but I can’t hear anything else.

The horror in front of me is so loud, so terrible, it consumes all my senses.

My ears, eyes, mouth, nose, hands are weighted down with the sight of the hand that flops out underneath the red-soaked blankets stacked against the wall, the thinnest curl of a tail slipping out between the gnarled fingers.

It’s still moving.

“Blood and stone!” Fortiss rushes by me in a whoosh of air, so fast it almost feels like I’m falling backward.

I see the blankets peel away, the den of fat snakes flopping and undulating—too gorged on the guts of their victims to do more than ooze out of Fortiss’s way.

The two men’s faces that gradually emerge as the serpents depart are little more than gore-covered skulls, but there’s no doubt in my mind who they are.

If Syril’s warnings weren’t still ringing in my mind, the fact that the snakes’ skins are now a luminescent orange would demonstrate their unholy link with the defenders of the Eighth House.

“Let’s go.”

Fortiss is in front of me again, yanking me away from the lolling snakes, pulling me around to face him. His voice is hard as granite. He shakes me, hard, and I come back to my senses.

“We’ve got to go , Talia. You’re right. There’s nothing else here, but they’ll be coming now. They’ll find us, kill us, and use us to fool the others, so we’ve got to go !”

“Go…” I finally manage, but any more words than that fail me. I let him drag me out of the room. I stumble a little until I can get my feet underneath me—then I match him stride for stride.

We race back through the Eighth House and out into the courtyard, and I’m more relieved than I expect that the horses are still there.

The sun has dropped behind the Meridians and shadows even now are lengthening across the open ground, which only spurs us on.

We tighten the horses’ tack and swiftly mount up, then turn them toward the gates…

That are now shut tight, a broad bolt clamped in place across thick, unyielding metal doors.

We’re trapped.