Page 14

Fourteen

Ayna

Immortality.

“One doesn’t simply choose immortality.” Royad is brushing the settling dust from his cloak with his free hand, but in the other one, he’s tucked me to his chest in a copy of what Myron would do after the God of Crows, of Darkness, and whatever else anyone wonders Shaelak could be the god of, swallowed and isolated me in his cocoon of night.

I could swear, beneath his composure, he’s shaking.

“Especially not if two deities are refusing to actually help with it,” Kaira seconds his sentiment.

We still haven’t fully recovered from the shock of Shaelak’s presence, but apparently, I’m the only one still shocked enough not to have words to contribute to the conversation. Kaira and Royad are already in full-on troubleshooting mode, talking through eventualities.

If I age in this form and die… Myron will die. His life is tied to my lack of immortality. Of course there is a price for what I’ve become. He was willing to lay down his life for me when I broke the curse on his people. Of course now his life is tied to mine, if only in its mortality.

What a vicious pack those gods truly are.

“Couldn’t agree more.” Kaira, naturally, picks the thought right from my head while I’m still shaken from facing a fucking god in the flesh.

I barely dare ask, anxious Shaelak will come back to life, but I need to know. “You heard the whole conversation?” I already know the answer but still ask for that flicker of hope they might not have heard the full extent of the drama.

“Every last syllable,” Royad confirms, his expression grave as if he’s already bemoaning his cousin’s death.

Cautious not to disturb the silence that has settled over the temple once more, Kaira elbows the male harder than I’d ever dare, shooting him a warning glare. “At least, now we know how to get you back, Ayna,” she whispers to me with a too-cheerful expression that sets me on edge all over again, my poor heart kicking back into a gallop. If Shaelak decides to smite us for lingering after his appearance, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, “You merely need to become immortal.”

“Piece of cake,” I think at her without humor. “Tell me when you find out how exactly that works.”

“He said you need to accept your destiny and give up on the mortal world,” Royad reminds us as if it were a recipe for that fateful cake .

Before I can full-on launch into panic about damning Myron to mortality with my inability to turn back into my human form, Royad brushes his thumb over my head in a soothing gesture. “You broke the millennia-old curse of a goddess; you beat the odds every day you survived at the palace in the Seeing Forest; you survived the battles with the Flames. You’ll find a way out of this, too.”

I’m glad someone has faith in me because, right now, vanishing in a void of despair sounds like a really great option to me.

Kaira slides her hand across the altar, tracing the symbols covered in Myron’s blood, eyes darting back to the carving of the God of Darkness every other moment, lest he come back to life. “How about a blood sacrifice?”

Royad sucks in a breath to object, but the door bursts open, splintering into a million pieces and revealing the view of Myron’s powerful form. Feathers float around his shoulders, slowly gliding to the floor as the debris settles around him, and his too-calm face is a mask containing the ire, the fear, the terror that he’ll unleash on the world if he finds even a scratch on my body.

“I’m fine, Myron,” I think, Kaira having the good sense to channel my words to the Crow King.

And the mask crumbles as he falls to his knees.

“Ayna—” His voice is hoarse, a tear sliding from his eye as Royad opens his hand and lets me launch into the air. “I thought…” He shakes his head, black strands dancing into his face. “I don’t know what I thought when Clio told me where you’d gone.”

“Nothing rational, I assume.” A hint of humor surfaces in my mental voice, but it’s as forced as the smile forming on Myron’s lips as he takes in the expressions on Kaira and Royad’s faces.

“How can I hear you?” He sounds as flabbergasted as Royad the first time I demonstrated, but the relief in his tone is genuine.

“Thank your sister-in-law for being amazingly gifted,” Kaira chimes, stepping away from the altar. “And, no, I’m not going to relay her sweet little nothings to you.”

Myron’s lips twitch marginally, as if physically incapable of a full smile, but that slight curve of his lips… That’s real.

“What by Hel are you doing here?” he finds his words again as I settle on his outreached hand, claws digging into the leather protecting his forearm.

“Long story,” Royad says before I can launch back into despair at the thought that this male will die if I fail to shift back, and I’m yet again grateful for the friend I have found in Royad.

“One I’ll hopefully hear.” Myron is speaking to his cousin even when his finger is brushing my neck, my back, the top of my head in gentle strokes, and the order is clear in his tone. Gods, how I’ve missed that sense of connection coming with him hearing me. How I’ve craved the understanding in his eyes as I speak to him in my mind. The tender warmth in his eyes speaks volumes of what this moment means to him, no matter my being frozen in this form, and my heart flutters in my chest like white dove wings.

Myron won’t force Royad to tell the truth, but as his second in command, he’ll be required to spill all secrets—the same way I asked Myron’s secrets of Royad.

It occurs to me in this moment that perhaps Royad wasn’t telling me as his friend but as his queen.

How I’m supposed to feel about that, I’m not sure, but I shove it into a compartment at the back of my mind where all those moving parts seem to be contained and save it for later.

“I was interested to see what Shaelak has to say about my being stuck in bird form. You know, since he was so talkative the other day in the forest. So I thought I’d seek him out—and before you ask, I took Royad and Kaira as a safety precaution.”

Kaira grumbles something unintelligible that sounds like she’s offended, but the grin on her face suggests proud is more like it. For so many decades, she was told she’s not good enough—not good enough to participate in the hunting trips of the Flames, not good enough because her magic supposedly wasn’t strong.

She is good enough in this court, though. In my court. Bird or no—I am its queen, and Kaira is one of my most valuable assets. And my beloved sister.

“I heard that,” she whispers into my mind, and I sense her invisible embrace like a physical touch as she steps to Royad’s side, looping her arm through his. “Let’s get out of here before that grump of a god decides he isn’t done with us.”

Royad leads the way, me flying overhead while Myron follows on silent feet, falling into a dangerous quiet when his demand for what that’s supposed to mean goes unanswered until we’re all safely back at the Fairy Palace and assembled around the dinner table with the others. This time, the Fairy Queen is sitting next to Recienne, taking my usual spot, while I simply perch on the edge of Myron’s plate, picking berries from his salad and dipping my beak into the red paste that smells surprisingly like spring and winter all at once, and which I’d promised myself before the battle with the Flames I’d inquire the origin of if I survived it.

“Winterberry,” Sanja says as if reading my mind when she watches me gobble down one beakful after another. “It took me months to get over the perfection of it when I first had it,” she amends, and her cheeks blush slightly when Recienne reaches for her hand, whispering into her ear that he remembers something else she couldn’t get over the perfection of for months when she first had it.

“I’m still not over that one,” she merely tells him with a wicked grin that makes me wish I were that bold, and the Fairy King’s usually so composed facade crumbles as heat fills his golden irises.

“Not again,” Clio groans. “One would think you’d be over it after a Guardiansdamned century.”

That costs Tori a laugh, and Herinor glances uncomfortably at the ceiling like a little, innocent flower. “You never get over it.” Tori’s fingers graze Clio’s as he reaches for the bread basket, and color stains her cheeks as he stares into her eyes rather than where he’s grabbing.

Silas clears his throat so loudly I almost choke on the winterberry paste, and Sanja rolls on as if nothing happened, “So what news from the prisoner have you gathered?” Her eyes are on her mate, curious and warm, and full of that silent expectation that tells me whatever she asks, the king of this realm will lay it at her feet.

Recienne composes himself, heat turning to warmth as he glances at Sanja’s belly, then to calculated cold as he meets Myron’s gaze, then Tori’s. “It seems this realm is no longer safe in the way we assumed it was.”

Not a surprise after the incident in the forest, but still?—

“Gus says about five hundred soldiers have infiltrated Askarea over the past weeks,” he continues, passing the word to Tori with a nod.

The thought of so many sneaking into these lands undetected chills my blood.

Features stone-like, the general says, “They slipped past our men in Ansoli, disguised as merchants and commoners.” Before anyone can comment, he adds, “I’ve already ordered reinforcements and port patrols to ensure we cut off the stream of soldiers.” Studying the Fairy King, he tilts his head. “According to the Flame, they are hiding near the mountains north of Aceleau. That alone is a problem in itself, but we also need to consider that Erina will be expecting a response from Recienne soon enough. If we kill Gus, Erina might give the order to attack before we’re ready. He might have already given it, knowing the negotiation was a suicide mission, and the troops are merely waiting for a given period of time to pass before they attack.”

“Can’t we find them and destroy them before they have a chance?” Kaira suggests over her plate brimming with greens and a thick slice of mushroom tart. “You’re already gathering your own army east of the city, so it would be easy to march them north.”

“And dangerous to attack an enemy hiding in the clefts at the foot of the mountains,” Tori adds, like he’s merely continuing her thought rather than dismissing it as not feasible. “Enemy forces wouldn’t be the only danger.”

“Besides,” Herinor interjects, leaning back in his oak chair and running his hand over the cream-and-pine colored napkin beside his half-full plate, “if they carry the magic-nullifying serum with them, there’s no way we can ambush them with a small force in a surprise attack. We’d need an army double their size to stand a chance, and still they’d easily pick us off one by one between the rocks and canyons at the foot of the mountains.”

Clio shoots him a sideways glance. “You know quite a lot about Askarean geography for someone supposed to have spent the past centuries confined in a forest.”

A shrug is all Herinor gives as an excuse. “It gets boring being among a pack of broody males night and day—unless you favor that type, of course.” A grin splits his lips as he scans Silas’s form then Royad’s, and, at last, his king’s with the interest of a male who could imagine acquiring such a taste. “Not sore on the eye, my kind, are they?” The last comment is directed at Kaira, whose own eyes are on Herinor’s broad shoulders as he turns to the side, staring directly into her eyes.

I can’t help cackling a caw, and Myron shifts in his chair like he’s having trouble biting back a comment, but Herinor isn’t done. “Ephegos is Erina’s general, and we know Ephegos enough to anticipate his preferred way of fighting.”

“With a knife in our backs,” Royad finishes for him, and despite all the good defining the male sitting to my mate’s left, I can see a hint of the monster he’ll become when he faces the traitor Crow again.

Silas nods his agreement, white-knuckling his dinner knife as he slices into the lump of butter on the side of his blue and gold plate. “If only we had made progress with the antidote.”

It’s the first time any of us has brought up the topic so openly since the initial discussion after the battle, and I’m surprised no one is voicing more frustration with the lack of an actual antidote.

“The healers analyzed every last part of the substance. Crow blood, some herbs, purified water. Nothing that would be difficult to acquire, and yet, it seems impossible to find something to break the magic on the substance itself,” Recienne explains, gaze on Herinor, who was there for the development of the drug when Ephegos and Jeseida initially worked on it.

The male shakes his head. “Ephegos never explained how he binds the components together, and when they were testing the different variations, I was too far gone from being constantly drugged to really tell anything that had been going on.”

A pang of sympathy for the male boxes me in the stomach, and I wish that I could break his oath to Ephegos for him so he could freely do whatever he wishes without fearing he’ll be forced to betray us all.

Herinor doesn’t meet my gaze, nor does he meet Kaira’s, who is staring at him from the side like she wants to throw her arms around him in consolation.

“Have you at least tried to replicate the serum if you can’t get an antidote out of it?” I ask into the silence following Herinor’s words, relying on Kaira to transport my question to the rest of the table.

All eyes snap to me as they actually hear me, only Clio, Myron, and Royad looking unsurprised.

“A little something I’ve been working on,” I tell them before they throw questions of their own at me, “ and which Kaira is luckily capable of helping with. So what about replicating the drug to use it against Erina’s forces? Even if most of his army is merely human, we could still use it against the Flames and the Crows in their ranks.”

Silas raises his brows as if in confirmation that this, indeed, would be a smart move, but Herinor says before hope can flare, “We don’t know how to create the drug, and all our experiments so far haven’t led anywhere. If Gus was telling the truth”—his gaze flicks to the Fairy King, who gives him a look daring him to question his methods of interrogations—“then we have days before we can expect an attack.”

Not a threat but a fact assessed by a creature old enough to have outlived even Tori by millennia, with the experience of countless battles and the ruthlessness to win them at all costs. I’m not surprised when Tori nods at the Crow’s remark, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair as if there is nothing else to be said on the subject.

Despite the dire situation, it’s good to be part of the conversation, to be able to ask questions of my own without waiting for anyone to repeat them.

“We should have thought of this little trick much sooner,” Tori speaks into my mind as he follows my train of thought, my own shields barely existent with the absence of my powers, and his gaze drifts from me to Myron and back to me. “Hopefully, it will make things easier for the two of you.”

“Thank you, Tori.” It’s all I can think to say as I glance behind me at Myron, whose eyes find mine as if he could feel my attention on him, and his mouth tightens with held-back words, questions, accusations, I don’t care as long as I can respond to any and all of them with my own words. I still have to tell him the truth about what Shaelak revealed at the temple, and I’m not looking forward to the disappointment or, worse, resentment when he learns his existence is now bound to my brief birdlife. But the tenderness entering his eyes whenever our gazes lock remains, and I know he won’t give up on me—gods be damned, if they don’t help us, he will find a way, even if it means destroying himself.

“So what do we do?” Silas asks, surprisingly not grumbling any sarcastic comment for once, and I half-believe he’s responding to my thoughts, but his focus is on Recienne and Tori, the two males making the decisions about the Askarean armies. “If we can’t count on a magic-sedating weapon of our own or an antidote to the one Erina is using, it will be like the last battle with the Flames or worse when we clash with Erina’s forces again.” There is no doubt in his tone that it will indeed come to that. “So we need more soldiers.”

“If we could reach Andraya and Pouly in time, the rebels might be willing to fight at our side,” I offer, even when I know those aren’t trained soldiers, their cause an entirely different one from defending the fairy realm.

With a nod of appreciation, Recienne considers, but before he can come to a conclusion, the Fairy Queen announces with a grave tone, “I think it’s time to contact my family in Cezux.”