Page 11 of Heart of Night
I don’t get as far as to try it, for he has my arm in his grasp within a heartbeat, lowering the knife to my skin. But when it connects, it’s not the sharp edge biting into my flesh, it’s the flat of the blade he slides along my biceps, tracing the same line as on my other shoulder.
“I’ll make it look like I cut both sides, he explains as he traces his fingers along the tender area beneath the gashing wound on my other side with surprising gentleness. “If I smear enough blood and etch a thin line on your skin—nothing as deep as on the other side,” he throws in when I flinch under his touch, “I can make it look like I partly healed you, and no one will question why I carved the line on your other shoulder.”
“Why?” It seems it’s the only question that ever matters with all those Crows. It was the question Myron wanted me to ask; it was the question I should have asked when General Katrijanov first let me live instead of killing me off like the rest of the Wild Ray’s crew. “Why are you doing this to me?”
The bargain, he said. Hurt me or show mercy for me, a nobody to the Crows now that Myron is dead, and pay with his own life for breaking the bargain with Ephegos. But there has to be more. There is a meaning to his words I can’t fully grasp with pain clouding my thoughts.
“Because I did wrong by Myron. I didn’t trust him enough to believe when he said he knew what he was doing, bargaining away the right for new brides in exchange for the fairy princess’s help with your magic.” He shakes his head, gesturing at my forearm. “I need more blood.” He doesn’t ask, simply slices into my wrist.
The new pain shocks me into silence, and he makes quick work of smearing the welling blood along my arm and neck, letting it spill over my skirts, before he places his hand over the wound. Warmth spreads where his magic knits the tissues back together, and before I can comprehend what’s happening, he’s done, stepping back, and assessing me like a particularly difficult piece of craft he’s been working on. A frown is etched between his brows, giving him an expression of strain as he takes in the sight of pain and devastation.
The bonds of his magic fall away, and I almost tumble out of my chair. He catches me with a strong, efficient arm.
“I’m sorry, Ayna. It’s the best I can do for you.” His hand smooths back the hair that’s fallen into my face, and I’m certain I have a trace of blood along my hairline as well. “I’m your ally. Probably the only one you have in this place, so play along. Pretend to hate me and curse me to your Guardians and back, to Eroth and Shaelak and even Vala. Just don’t be stupid enough to tell a soul I spared you.”
A pained chuckle escapes my lips as I try to comprehend what just happened. “I wouldn’t call carving me open sparing me.”
“It doesn’t matter what you’d call it. If I did everything right, you’ll understand soon enough.” He doesn’t look at me as he turns and gently leans me back into the chair, careful not to rest my weight against the injured shoulder. “Just trust me. Trust me like you trusted Myron.”
With those words, he strides to the door, knocking his large, bloodied fist against it, and his expression turns back into that cold and menacing one he wore when I first entered the room.
It promptly swings open, the Flame guards’ curious faces appearing on the threshold as they peer inside to make out the mess Herinor left on my skin.
“Take her back to her room.” It’s an order, and judging by the way the Flame guards flinch under Herinor’s stare, they don’t want to upset him and end up on the receiving end of his particular skills.
Wordlessly, they scramble down the small flight of stairs and grab me by the arms. My scream of pain isn’t an act when they lift me out of the chair, dragging me across the dusty floor past Herinor, who gives me a warning glance. But his eyes are soft when they track the smear of blood along my forearm right above where he cut into my wrist.
Before the pair of guards shove me over the threshold into the hallway ahead, I dare a last glance over my shoulder.
Herinor simply places a finger over his lips as he watches them drag me away.
Seven
Myron
The landscape I’m glancing down at is the same one I’ve been staring at for the past centuries and centuries, yet flying feels different when I know I can land and make my wings disappear at any time. Where a palace used to stand, rubble and debris cover the large circular clearing. The gardens are devoid of life as is the scorched ground where the explosion hit. What I’ve called my home for longer than I care to remember has become a wasteland at the center of magical greenery.
Turning my eyes from the site of destruction, I lead the flock across the thicket of the Seeing Forest, letting my mind drift to the lands I cannot reach—the ones that lay beyond what my bargain with the King of Askarea allows. I no longer care for that bargain. The wards on the borders have long been unwoven by the unique magic of my people, and the ancient magic working such bargains hasn’t fried the Crows who left, or we’d long have been rid of Ephegos and his treacherous ass. All I care about is finding a trail, anything that will tell me where they took Ayna.
My chest aches at the thought of her name, right where my friend’s blade pierced it, and I try not to allow myself to think of the sensation washing through me when she told me she loves me.
Of course, I fail miserably. The pain intensifies one hundredfold at the mere memory of her voice, desperate and full of the redemption I’d been craving for longer than I can think. I’m a marked child of an era of wars and destruction wreaked by my own people. There is no such thing as peace in my heart. But with Ayna, I had a glimpse of what it could be like to finally let go, to forgive the ones who made us unworthy of Vala’s absolution or Shaelak’s forgiveness.
Below, movements catch my attention, and I bank right, into the treetops, my cousin following suit, as do the five other Crows who came on this trip to scout the location where the era of Vala’s curse was ended by the only creature in this world who will ever have my heart.
A fissure runs through said organ at the thought of Ayna in Ephegos’s claws, and the pain is no easier to bear in my crow form than in my fae one.
Royad flutters ahead with a few powerful wingbeats, his focus honed on where mine should lay, but I’ve been a shadow of myself since my death and resurrection. Like there is a hole in my body that’s dripping energy into the nexus between realms. Royad darts through the branches before he lands on one high up in a nearby tree, head cocked and beak pointing down to where two males in brown leathers are sneaking through the forest. It’s the third time we’ve seen this particular pair. Like all Fire Fairies, they wear slender blades at their hips. What’s new are the crossbows they carry in their gloved hands, ready to shoot something from the sky within a heartbeat. I assume I’m not wrong in guessing that they are on a hunt. A hunt for large, black-feathered birds. Shifter ones in particular.
Nodding at Royad, I land beside him while the others settle a few branches up. In our bird forms, we are small enough to blend in with the trees, still difficult enough to kill with our magic and smaller targets, but we’ve come across dead crows—the real birds, not shifter ones like us—lately. Looking at the sharp bolts poised on the crossbows, the holes puncturing the bird carcasses make more sense. They’ve been systematically shooting crows from the skies, and it’s only a matter of time before they’ll catch us instead of some poor unaware creature who has no fault in the decline of the Fire Fairies or their residence.
While the previous times, we’ve simply followed them around, observing whether they’d drop any words of Ephegos or Ayna, this time, I’m too restless to simply wait and see. Giving a flutter of my wings, I signal the others I’m about to shift. Then, I let the magic wash through my body, let it eat up all the feathers but those of my wings. My weight pulls me out of the treetops, but I beat my feathered arms enough to break the fall while I send bonds of invisible power at both Fire Fairies, ripping their crossbows from their hands and shoving them to the forest ground where they wrestle the strength of my magic with an onslaught of flames.
I break the first one’s neck with a tug on my power before I even set foot on the rock-scattered moss of the forest ground. The second, however, I pin to the ground with a boot to his throat, menace raging within me at the mere thought that he is one of those creatures who took Ayna from me. My self-control hangs on a thin thread threatening to snap at one wrong word, one too-deep breath of the Fire Fairy.
“Where is she?” I shove the flames he sends my way back into his face, watching his deep brown eyes flare with terror as he realizes who is upon him.
“Myron,” Royad’s baritone sounds from a few steps ahead, a warning not to forget myself.