Page 42 of Realm of Crows (Wings of Ink #5)

Thirty

Ayna

“Put me down; put me down!” I thrash in Royad’s arms as he carries me from the hallway and I can no longer see Myron.

“Not a chance.” The Crow’s grasp tightens as he approaches the window, probably pondering the merits of simply tossing me outside and forcing me to shift.

Silas is right behind us, hatchet following him on a silver string from where he pulled it out of the dead traitor with his magic. “Myron gave an order, and you better not make us regret we serve to protect you and this court.”

I want to snarl at him, but panic has a tight grasp on my throat, and my breathing won’t calm.

Myron—Myron is in there. And Herinor.

“We need to—” I pant through my teeth. “We need to go back and save them.”

“We will.” Royad’s tone is as calm and professional as only the king’s cousin can manage, and I want to scream at him, ask him if he has never heard about such a thing as loyalty.

Then, loyalty is the exact reason he is acting the way he is. If he allowed himself to feel, he wouldn’t leave Myron out of his sight for as much as a heartbeat.

“Royad—”

His voice is weak, gravelly, but it’s unmistakably Myron.

When I twist and struggle this time, I slip from Royad’s grasp like an eel underwater, and I scramble to my feet in record time, ambling for the hallway, where the noise of fighting has died down.

“Myron!” Royad is right behind me, and so is Silas, his hatchet back in his hand and vengeance in his eyes.

I make it to the threshold first, my knees buckling at the sight of Myron folded over his knees between corpses, vomiting up his guts.

“They took—” He heaves a raspy breath. “They took Herinor.”

“Fuck!” is all I manage to squeeze out as I throw my arms around my mate, tears filling my eyes at the thought of how close to getting captured we were. Had Silas missed his shot, the fairy would have had me.

A fairy?—

How could this have happened? Askarean fairies site-hopped in to fetch us for Ephegos .

A wave of guilt washes over me as I sob into Myron’s shoulder blade, tears soaking his bloodied leathers. He doesn’t manage to sit up, but his hand finds mine on his chest where my palm rests against his mate mark.

“It’s all right, Ayna,” he whispers. “It will be all right.”

“We need to get out of here.”

Silas is right, but none of us have the strength to do anything but breathe as we realize what has happened.

We find Kaira in the stables a few minutes later on our search for Clio and Tori.

“Herinor said they must have taken the horses and bolted,” she explains, rubbing her red-rimmed eyes.

She took the news of his captivity too well to be authentic, but who am I to judge?

I’ve been putting on a brave face since the moment the second wave of Crows assaulted us.

It’s my fault. All of it. Had I not indicated we take the opportunity and get to Erina, we wouldn’t have lost Herinor.

Tori and Clio would be right here, ready to site-hop us back, and Myron wouldn’t be vomiting in a corner.

Of course, I don’t mention a word of what I’m thinking. Right now, all we should be focusing on is how to get home.

“Any idea where they could have gone?” Silas is still in his warrior calm; at least, on the outside, it seems that way. When I look a little closer, a whole world of doubt and rage opens up in his black irises.

“The forest?” is my best guess, but we really can’t be certain unless we follow the hoof prints leading from the stables.

Before anyone can question if I’m right or agree that the forest is indeed where they must be hiding, I add, “Does it matter? We can’t stay here.

Ephegos might as well send back those traitor fairies with a new group of soldiers, and next time, we’ll be fucked. ”

Royad eyes me over the piece of leather armor he’s adjusting on his shoulder, grumbling his agreement. “They’ll come back for us, though, and if they don’t find anyone at the inn?—”

He doesn’t need to finish the thought. They’ll either believe we were taken or are long dead.

“They’ll believe we kicked ass and fled north,” Kaira corrects me, and I realize she must have read it from my mind.

“Are your powers returning?” I don’t want to hope, but I can’t help it.

Kaira dips her chin an inch. “I’m still weak, but I definitely heard your thoughts.”

All eyes are on her, Silas’s nearly piercing through her, that’s how intensely he’s studying the part-Flame.

“If you’re recovering this fast, Myron should be, too,” he muses. “He only touched an already used, coated arrowhead while you got a full dosage, right?” I don’t think I imagine the flicker of hope in his eyes. “That also means Herinor’s powers will be back in full bloom any moment.”

It’s Royad who places a comforting hand on Silas’s shoulder. “I don’t think it will matter much whether the drug is lifting from his powers when he faces Ephegos.”

Beside me, Myron hangs his head, shoulders sagging and back resting against the crooked stall wall where we’re sitting on a spread heap of straw.

“Once Herinor faces Ephegos, there will be little he can do about anything.” He doesn’t pause to acknowledge Kaira’s flinches and the tears finally spilling from her eyes.

“It will be brutal. And if we ever face him again, we’ll need to be prepared to put that arrow through his heart. ”

With a nod at Kaira’s quiver, he indicates he means the drug-coated arrows that saved us today.

“I’m sorry, Kaira,” he adds, looking up at her. “I never wanted it to come to this either. Despite all the mistakes he made, I consider him my friend and a valuable member of this court.”

My sister holds Myron’s gaze through streams of tears, unafraid. “Not if he does Ephegos’s bidding, he won’t be a valuable member of this court. He’ll be its demise.”

She means every word, yet I know she will never shoot him herself. And I can’t blame her. If anyone asked me to kill Myron just because he was unwillingly working against us, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Probably not even if he were to kill me instead if I hesitated.

For a long while, the stables fall silent, the tweeting of winter birds and the wind singing in the dead treetops the only sounds. It’s almost peaceful—almost.

“So what’s the plan? Are we leaving this shit hole?” I ask when I can stand the silence not a moment longer.

Silas scoots closer to my side, leaning around me to scan Myron. “He doesn’t look ready to travel far, but we can’t stay here, you’re right.”

“I can walk,” Myron grumbles, lifting a shaking hand to smooth back his hair. “I was hit by the drug, not stabbed in the chest. ”

Before they start fighting about whether Silas should carry him, I get to my feet and turn north.

“We should head this way.” I point with my hand at the single small window allowing a view on the edge of the forest. “It’s the closest thing to cover we’ll find out here, and the horse tracks seem to head that direction anyway. ”

No one challenges my choice as they all scramble to their feet, Silas helping Myron up so subtly the Crow King can lean on him with dignity—right after puking in front of his feet.

Royad runs back into the inn to collect provisions—a bundle filled with three loaves of bread, some hard cheese and dried meat, an apple for each of us, and three waterskins.

It’s enough to last us for a few days if we ration it.

And we can always find more water on the way; this isn’t a desert after all.

Finally, we sneak out the door, filing along the side of the inn, our senses scouting the area as best we can in our exhausted state, and when nothing stirs, we dash along the trail the horses took.

It takes about three minutes until we melt into the line of trees, our leathers blending perfectly with the dead winter landscape. Myron leans against a tree trunk, doubling over and bracing his hands on his knees as he gasps for air.

I don’t know how long we wander through the trees, our eyes directed north while we count our heartbeats, but it feels like an eternity, even when the sun hasn’t dipped behind the rim of the world.

My feet are tired, my legs aching, my magic refuses to do more than flicker in my palm, and no matter where I look, no sign of Clio and Tori.

No more Crows or Fire Fairies either, thank the gods.

The past hours allowed me to think through what happened since we site-hopped from the battlefield at the border to the inn. We definitely surprised Erina. He wasn’t prepared for our attack, or he’d have waited for us with the magic-nullifying drug and a couple of manacles at the ready.

He has Askarean fairies working for him—probably those soldiers loyal to Tata, who were working for Ephegos all along. My stomach turns, and I need to pause and breathe through the onslaught of nausea.

“You all right?” Myron’s hand finds mine, thumb rubbing soothing circles over my fingers.

“Just exhausted.” Not a lie, but not the full truth either.

“It’s been a long day.” It sounds like a phrase to get me to forget what actually happened, but I know Myron. He isn’t saying it to soothe me—he knows I can handle the ugliest of truths. It’s for himself. An excuse to admit to himself the weakness he feels is his responsibility.

I slip my arm around his waist, tugging him close to my side as we continue walking. “A long day indeed.”

He almost imperceptibly leans into me, and I take the weight when I know this is the only way he’ll allow himself to admit to his weakness.

In front of us, Kaira and Royad lead the group while Silas takes the rear, keeping his eyes open for any danger possibly lurking out here .

“I know we gave up on trying to find horse tracks on the forest ground a long time ago,” Royad says, squatting at the side of the narrow path we’ve been following.

“But I think this is what we’ve been looking for.

” He sniffs the air like he could make out Clio and Tori’s scent after hours of wind blowing through the trees.

“Yes, this is definitely what we’ve been looking for. ”

When he straightens, he holds up a dead leaf with something very thin, very copper wrapped around it.

“Clio’s hair?” I’m gripping him by the wrist, guiding the leaf under my nose to inhale what’s left of Clio’s scent. “How in all the gods’ names did you spot that?”

It smells like ice and bad humor and entirely too much sass, and my heart makes a leap of hope and joy.

With a shrug, Royad steps past me into the thicket. “It’s what I do.”

And he’s right. He’s always been the attentive one, looking out for tiny details that will change our situation for the better.

“They went that way.” His voice stirs the thick silence of the forest, summoning us to follow into the dense evergreens. “Right there.”

When we break through the trees, the dark opening of a cave awaits us like a gaping mouth, sharp rocky teeth hanging from the top and jutting out from the bottom like it’s ready to take a bite out of whoever dares enter.

Horseshoe prints cluster at the threshold, indicating a horse or two were reluctant to enter.

“Hello?” Royad sets a cautious foot over the line of rocks, listening for the echo .

“ Hello-hello-hello, ” it grumbles back at us.

If this is where Ephegos and his Crows are hiding, we’re dead.

“They are not,” Kaira speaks into my mind, her ability fully returned to her with the drug having left her system nearly completely after so much physical activity.

Whatever new version of the serum this is, it works fast like a hammer and wears off better than the versions we experienced before.

I can see the change in Myron, too, his magic flickering into a thin shield as he approaches the cave mouth.

I only realize I’ve been holding my breath when Clio’s wind-chime laugh sounds from the darkness and her copper head appears a few feet ahead.

“Ayna! Kaira!” She doesn’t seem to be noticing any of the males as she runs toward us, folding both of us into a hug with widespread arms.

I don’t know if the tears I’m crying are from pain and exhaustion or from the relief of seeing her alive, but I don’t stop them from falling.

“You’re alive. You’re all right,” she repeats over and over again. From the background, Tori’s baritone sounds through the cave entrance.

“Come in and rest. We’ll get out of here in the morning.”