Page 52 of Realm of Crows (Wings of Ink #5)

Thirty-Eight

Herinor

This little torture chamber becomes like a second home to me over the next few days.

Whenever Frenius and Ennis pick me up for my chats with Ephegos, I pretend to despise them.

I never fight, because there would be no point in running—even if they’d let me slip away, there are hundreds of guards in this fortress, human and magical, who will make sure I don’t make it out alive.

Gorrey is never there with us when my new allies watch Ephegos carve me up just to prove a point, but I endure the pain more easily because I know he’s out there while the traitor Crow is busy, delivering messages to what few Crows are on our side.

I won’t lie—it was a surprise to find the three Crows hand-selected to guard me to be the ones most unhappy with Ephegos’s plans, but I’m not complaining.

If what they told me is true—and it has to be since Crows can’t lie—they’ve spent the past weeks since Silas and I got away from the freezing camp conspiring against him while simultaneously convincing him of their utmost devotion.

Hiding their true intentions is the only way to trick the magic of bargains.

“Focus,” Ephegos hisses, his talons digging into my bicep just for the fun of it, and I remember where I am.

The candle-lit stone room comes back, pushing aside the place I like to retreat to when he watches me pant in agony, a victorious grin on his face.

“I’ll need you at your best on the battlefield, so you better learn to focus under duress. ”

“You—” I cough blood, my breath rattling in and out of me as I fight the sensation of drowning. I don’t care that he punctured my lung earlier by driving a knife between my ribs and letting it sit there. The wound won’t seal until he retrieves it. “You … call this … duress?”

Baring my teeth at him, I focus my energy on healing the slash on my thigh and the cut on my forehead. Those injuries will leave scars since they were induced by Crow claws. New additions to my already vast collection.

“What would you call it?” Ephegos prompts, gaze darting to Ennis, who is pinning my arms above my head today.

The male shrugs, putting on his best blank expression. “A little much if you want him to function on a battlefield,” he suggests, gaze cutting to Frenius’s, who nods his agreement, fingers tightening around my ankles .

They both apologized to me multiple times for taking part in this torture, and I told them to keep doing it.

They can’t blow our cover, or we’ll never make it out of here alive.

And I really need to be alive to warn Myron of what’s coming for him.

War contraptions. There is no way they are prepared for that.

Their numbers won’t matter if Ephegos can order the drug rained over Askarea’s armies.

The shadows gobble up Ephegos’s chuckle like creatures of their own.

“Let’s get him back to his full strength, then.

The battle is coming, and I’ll need his services.

” With those words, he pulls the knife from my ribs, and I nearly choke on the fresh blood gushing into my lung as I cough from the pain, my healing powers setting in a bit slowly for my taste.

If I were stronger right now, I’d attack.

Perhaps Ennis and Gorrey would attack with me, or I’d lose my life in a fool’s attempt at neutralizing the traitor Crow.

But even if I hurled my complete powers at him, they’d break along his armor coated with magic-nullifying serum.

Frenius told me Ephegos never goes anywhere without that armor. Fucking bastard.

“What … services?” I ask instead of driving a spear of silver power through Ephegos’s head.

“Oh, I have something beautiful in mind, Herinor. You’ll know soon enough.” He doesn’t look back when he leaves the room through his preferred exit in the shadows behind the table.

The moment the door clicks shut, Ennis and Frenius release me from their grasp, and their binding magic retreats from my ankles and wrists, their healing powers flowing into me instead. It takes a good minute until I can take a full breath and my chest no longer spasms at the attempt to sit up.

“This was bad,” Ennis comments, sitting down beside me at the table, unfazed by the pool of my blood drying up next to his hip. “I haven’t seen him this vicious in weeks.”

“It’s because of the upcoming attack.” Frenius helps me sit up, his warm palm a comforting weight on my shoulder even when it was pinning me down for torture not even two minutes ago. “He wants all his chess pieces in place, and Herinor is one of the major players.”

“For what?” My voice still sounds like it’s been dragged through gravel, but at least, I can speak without losing my breath.

“What does he want me to do? Or am I his next sacrifice? I’ve heard he’s big on praying to the gods these days.

” Or one particular god , I amend in my mind, half-expecting Kaira’s mischievous voice to comment on my thought.

Frenius sits down on my other side, all three of us facing the door to the main corridor, which we will need to take back to my room. “He hasn’t shared that information with us. I guess he no longer trusts anyone properly in this place.”

“He’s right not to do so.” Because he is, and if Gorrey is doing his job, we’ll have over twenty Crows ready to fight at our side by the end of the day.

Well, not exactly fight because Ephegos will use the bargains he made with us to tie our hands against directly hurting him or his followers, but no one can keep us from destroying those battle machines.

Ennis gives me a glance that tells me he agrees.

“When are we marching?” It’s all that really remains to be asked .

“He said the armies are already on their way. Erina is leading them. They will arrive at the Askarean border tonight.”

Tonight. My chest tightens all over again, my heart beating furiously at the picture forming in my mind: fairies losing their powers on a large scale under the rain of the drug, fairies on their hands and knees as they vomit their guts up, and in between, my court.

Myron and Ayna. Silas, Royad, and my little Flameling.

Unable to defend themselves. Rogue crying over Sanja’s broken body, blood spilling from her split womb. The youngling dead.

They are prepared. They have trained to combat without their powers. They will survive this. All of them.

My mind isn’t ready to listen to itself, the image spreading wide and wider, until I see Aceleau burning under the Fire Fairies’ power, and in the palace, on the throne that should belong to Rogue and Sanja and their child, Ephegos lounges with a smirk.

I’m standing next to him, looking down on the Fairy King on his knees, on Kaira and Royad, begging for mercy for Myron, who’s being held over a butchering block Ephegos had brought in.

The new Emperor of Crows holds an ax in his hands instead of a scepter.

It’s Silas’s axe. The one he picked from Rogue’s armory, I realize with horror.

And then I spot my friend, headless at the foot of the throne.

“You are looking at one possible future.” The voice fills my head like a thunderclap, and I startle so hard I slide off the table, barely catching myself before I hit the floor face first.

“You all right?” Ennis plucks me from the floor by the arm, setting me on my feet .

A quick nod is all I manage. “Just dizzy.”

“Probably the blood loss,” Frenius muses, taking my other arm as they sit me down on the table together.

“Your court is not as prepared as you think, Herinor, and your king and queen both know they are marching to the end of what they had hoped would be their era.”

I know that voice. Its deep rumble, the patronizing tone.

“You know me, Herinor. You have cried my name in the bedroom and have cursed it on the battlefield. Will you dare speak it to address me?”

“Holy fuck?—”

Both Ennis and Frenius eye me questioningly as I grasp the edge of the table hard enough to pulverize the wood.

“What’s going on, Herinor?”

I don’t care which of them asked as long as I get that voice to continue talking.

“Shaelak!” I think at the God of Crows and Darkness—the traitor god who gifted Ayna immortality yet made such a horrendous deal with Ephegos to ensure the survival of his creation.

“Smart Crow. I knew you’d figure out who I am.”

“What do you want?” It’s ill advised to speak like this to a deity, but Shaelak has already proven unreliable even when we worshipped him. There is little that can get worse than what’s already happening.

“Want? Are you asking your creator what he wants?”

“I guess I am.” It must be the blood loss like Frenius said, or I wouldn’t challenge Shaelak like this. I’m going mad.

His laugh rumbles through my head, reverberating in my chest, my limbs, my skull. “Have you ever wondered who we all answer to—even Vala and I? ”

I haven’t because it’s never occurred to me that either of the gods answers to anyone.

“Hel.” Shaelak’s laugh turns to ice. “Hel, Eroth, Zotarr. Call our father whatever you want, but it’s him we all answer to when our time comes. As will you on the battlefield.”

“I will die?” I’m not ready to hear this, let alone process it. “I’ll die in the battle for Askarea?”

“You will answer to Hel the way all creations do when their time has come. You will not escape your fate.”

If this is a god prophesying my future, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to die.

“If you want your court to live, you’ll make a sacrifice.”

Nausea climbs up my throat like boiling foam.

“Herinor, can you hear me?” Ennis’s voice is a faint background noise as I fight the darkness settling in my mind.

If Shaelak hadn’t made that deal with Ephegos, we would have a way out of this that wouldn’t involve Ayna ending up as Ephegos’s plaything. It would be something worth dying for if I knew at least they’d be happy.

“You mustn’t ponder the whys of my decisions, Herinor. The game the gods play is older than time and will outlast you even if you live forever.”

“Not exactly a comfort,” I grumble in my mind, but the swagger is fake, and Shaelak sees right through it.

“You are afraid, Herinor, but you are also strong. You’ve worked for what you believe is right even when you are bound to what you despise.”

“You. I despise you.” I really shouldn’t be saying this to a god, but I can’t help it.

It would take a flick of his imaginary fingers to put us all out of our misery.

He could smite Tavras with his thumb or slit Ephegos’s throat with less than a thought.

Erina’s supposed magic would be something he could take away on a gust of wind and deliver it to stand with the Askarean armies.

He could render the magic-nullifying drug useless on a whim.

Yet, he’s adding to our misery, and now he is putting a target on my back.

“Why?” I nearly whimper. “Why couldn’t it have ended with making Ayna immortal. Why not allow your creation an era of peace? Why make us suffer over and over?”

For a long moment, Shaelak remains silent—so silent, in fact, that Ennis and Frenius’s voices break through to me as they ask if I’m all right, if I feel faint or if I need a glass of water. Or something stronger.

Then, the haze in my mind closes like a veil falling over reality, and I’m stuck in my head with the God of Crows once more.

“There is a future for the Crows. Only the strongest of you will survive this war, those worthy of their purpose. The rest of you will face my father before their time.”

I’m about to say something I’ll surely regret when he interrupts me with a hiss.

“Fret not, Herinor. When I made the bargain with Ephegos, I gave a splinter of my power to your king to level the playing field. May the best Crow survive that rivalry—and may the Crow Queen be mated to the worthiest of males so the first Crow born in millennia will be powerful enough to bring about a new era.”

My head is about to explode from questions and doubts, from anger and accusations I can’t get myself to speak—and probably don’t need to since Shaelak is right there, in my head.

“Can you stop speaking in riddles?” I finally ask, but the haze on my mind is already clearing, and the torture chamber is coming back into focus.

“Let’s get you back to your room before you faint like a youngling,” Ennis says, half lifting me from the table, slinging my arm across his shoulders and heaving me forward.

I don’t fight when they march me back to my room, and the pitying glances I earn from the guards tell me I might have a few more sympathizers in their ranks than I’d hoped. But now is not the time to figure out how many. The God of Crows just told me I won’t survive this war.