Page 12 of Heart of Night
We’ve talked about that, since the land won’t give away which direction they hauled Ayna off to, it’s time to find a different source of information. I guess the Flame male writhing beneath my power is the lucky one.
Well… not really. The one I killed on the spot was. For there is nothing worse than the wrath of a Crow King who’s been robbed of the woman who saved him.
“I don’t … know … who you’re … talking … about,” the fairy stammers, gasping for air in between words.
I lean down, blocking his attempts at singeing me with his fire with half a thought now that my fae powers have been freed. By Shaelak, I still marvel at what I’m capable of. Had I thought I was powerful before, now that the curse is broken, it’s like someone lifted a veil on everything I am and everything I’m capable of.
My senses are sharper, my instincts more pronounced, my thinking quicker, and I’m not even starting on the physical strength. It took me a solid day to gain full control over that, and I’m still struggling with keeping my magic on a tight leash lest I hurt what few are left of my people.
“Don’t play stupid.” Royad is at my side, his steady presence calming as always. But the face he shows the Flame is that of the beaked monster he wore so bravely for all our lives. He crouches a few feet away from the fairy who’s still trying to free himself, and graces us all with a display of his violent side. “You heard my king. Where. Is. She.” He doesn’t even phrase it like a question, just a series of growls that could belong to a beast. Perhaps some of the monster is still left in all of us. Even when we’re free of the curse and redeemed of our ancestors’ wrongdoings, it doesn’t mean we aren’t ready to commit our own.
In this case, none of it is wrong. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to get Ayna back, so I don’t think as my magic curls tighter around the fairy’s neck. I merely pull back my foot and stand over him, watching his face turn blue while his flames snuff out at his fingers without any of them having touched Royad or me.
“I’ll spell it out for you because I’m having a gracious day.” Not exactly a lie. I was gracious this morning to let Royad have half of my breakfast, but the Flame doesn’t need to know I’m anything but gracious when it comes to my Ayna. “Where is my queen?”
The fairy moves his head an inch to the left, then to the right. That’s how far my power will allow it, but it’s a clear shake of his head.
“You don’t know? Or you don’t care to share your knowledge?”
The fairy shakes his head again.
“So, you don’t want to talk?” I loosen my hold just enough to give him a chance to prove me wrong.
It’s enough for him to grasp his blade and stab for my thigh. The tip collides with my leathers, right above my knee. A sharp pain runs through my flesh, and I tighten my magic around his throat before I yank him off the ground and throw him against the nearest tree trunk.
I don’t know who is more shocked, Royad or me, when the male slides to the ground, head lolling to the side at an odd angle and chest no longer heaving for breath.
“You killed him,” my cousin notes, and I can’t tell if there’s accusation in his tone or simply surprise.
“I didn’t mean to.” It’s the truth. I meant to force those words out of the Fire Fairy before I sent him straight for Eroth’s Veil, but my power is overwhelming, and it seems I have no control when it comes to Ayna. Finding her is the priority, and I’ve just destroyed our chances by accidentally killing a potential source.
Royad doesn’t say anything else, neither do the others as they land around us, shifting into their fae forms as they touch the ground. The sight of all of them bare-chested and bare-armed, no feathers, no beaks, no sign of bird other than the few tattoos some of them bear is something I yet need to get used to. I haven’t gotten used to how naked I feel without a layer of feathers protecting my arms and shoulders either, the sensation of wind and sun so much more intense on my skin than on my feathers, but it’s a good feeling. Proof that this is real. That the curse is broken.
Now, all I need is to find my wife, and I’ll never look back on the torment that my life has been.
If only I knew where to find her.
When we sit by the fire that night in the cave near the Silver Stream that marks the western border of the Seeing Forest, the twenty Crows still left of my people chew silently on their roast meat. We brought back a few hares from our scouting trip, and some of the Crows helped prepare them. With our magic fully returned, it’s easy work, and with our Crow urges lifted by the breaking of the curse, raw meat is no longer a craving any of us possess. My mind drifts back to my last wedding banquet, to the horror in Ayna’s gray eyes as she’d observed the way my people hacked away on bloody meat with their beaks. It’s a miracle she sat through that dinner without throwing up.
“Thinking of her again?” Royad nudges my leg with his knee where the thin cut is still visible in my leathers. The small injury beneath has long healed, but I didn’t bother to wash off the dried blood.
“We need to change our strategy,” I tell him instead of confirming my mind lingers on Ayna. Because we both know it always does. “It’s only a matter of time before the Fire Fairies find us here, and if they come in numbers, we might not be able to defeat them.” Even at our full strength. I don’t need to add that. We all know twenty normal Crow Fairies and two royal Crows don’t necessarily make an army. We are deadlier than ever, but we aren’t invincible, I’m fully aware of that.
“Glad you still have your thinking straight,” Royad jokes, giving me a wary smile that makes his scar tug awkwardly at the corner of his mouth. We try not to talk about how my father sliced his face open to punish him for being kind to a bride. Even when Crows heal fast, that wound had been too deep and brutal to seal without a scar.
He notices the stare, and a silent understanding passes between us. We’ve gone through all of it together, his scars and mine, but the curse was never his to shoulder. It was always my burden, even when he treated me like we were in it together, too. Under different circumstances, many of the brides might have preferred his humorous personality and warrior’s body. But my deal with King Recienne had left me the only Crow allowed to marry even when I truly didn’t want to damn any female to being bound to a monster like me—and by that, sentence them to die.
A shudder rakes through my body, the chill from the cave walls creeping along my naked back even when the fire warms my front.
“We’ll find her,” Royad reassures me the way he’s always reassured me that things will work out for the best.
Why is it that I have trouble believing him when he’s always proven to be right? He’s the one who told me to keep trying, to show Ayna some of my more charming character traits so she’d at least get the chance to see the real me.
The real me meaning bottomless darkness where countless deaths coat my hands with blood.
“We need to get out of this fucking forest to find her.” Silas inserts himself from a few feet away. The male is one of the oldest among us, having only a few decades on Royad and me. So, he had been still considered a child when the curse hit. He remembers more than all of us others as well. More of the violence from the first years after the curse, the way my people had sought a new home after Vala took everything from us to protect her humans.
The irony that it’s a human who saved us doesn’t fail to conjure the dark grin on my lips, which I’ve perfected to scare away my brides.