Misrule, page 7
His accent is ominous and musical at once. And I’m taken aback by his casual manner. Most of the Fae ooze with arrogance. But Aelfdene looks entirely at home in his cramped cell. Like he is happy to be wearing leathers splattered with the remnants of the cream puffs that must have been thrown at him when he arrived. And I’m reminded of what Malakar said about finding him waiting for our army in his palace. Mysterious behavior, indeed.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I say dryly.
“No matter. But I was having the most interesting dream. Would you care to hear it?”
“Not particularly.”
The corners of his lips pull down. “A shame. It is customary to exchange dreams at my court, especially at a first meeting. I would be intrigued to hear one of yours.”
The last thing I’m going to do is share a dream with this Fae. Especially since mine are typically about Aurora. My cheeks heat slightly, and I swiftly change the subject. “We have far more important matters to discuss, Aelfdene.”
I expect him to physically react to the use of his true name. But that maddening grin only broadens. “You found my mirror. How clever of you.”
“Aye.” Malakar pushes forward. “And now you will tell us what Oryn is planning. Spill every one of his secrets.”
He lifts a shoulder. “I regret that I have none of those to boast. Oryn does not much care for me, you see.”
“You’re a High Lord,” I say. “Which means you were Marked. Oryn must have approved your position.”
Markings are one of the most important and sacred traditions of the Fae. When an Etherian’s body dies, their power is capable of living on after them. As such, exceptionally gifted Fae, like the court rulers, are expected to Mark their successors to ensure that their power both strengthens and survives. We don’t know the particulars concerning a Marking, but it largely entails an Etherian shedding a small amount of their blood directly onto their chosen heir’s body, where it is absorbed into their skin. Later, when the power is released at the Fae’s death, their magic seeks out that other piece of itself and melds with it—much like how Mortania was able to combine her power with mine when she escaped her medallion prison.
“Oh, High King Oryn approved.” Aelfdene’s sticklike fingers stroke the shimmery symbol of the Court of Dreams embroidered into his leathers. “But that does not mean he was happy about it.”
Confusion flickers in my mind. Oryn doesn’t strike me as the kind of ruler who can be persuaded to do anything contrary to his own desires, much less agree to the appointment of a court ruler he disliked. “How could he approve of you and not be happy?”
“A thorny subject.” Aelfdene licks his lips, as if speaking of the matter is delicious. “Rulers Mark multiple candidates, you see, to ensure that there is a surviving heir at their demise. My elder brother and I were both Marked by the previous High Lord, as a sign of honor to my family. But when the court lord or lady dies, the power itself chooses which Marked one will carry it next. Everyone—especially Oryn—assumed my brother would be selected by the fallen lord’s magic. He was the stronger Fae. The worthier vessel. But the magic came to me instead.” He smiles, a slash of white in the dimness. “It made for very awkward family gatherings afterward. And Oryn despised me. He does so hate being proven wrong.”
We hadn’t known Fae can Mark multiple heirs. This absolutely explains why the court rulers are so arrogant. They believe they are chosen. I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“Your court is closest to Oryn’s,” Regan insists. “You must know something of the High King’s mind.”
The gems in Aelfdene’s crown brighten and dim. “Close in proximity, perhaps. Never in confidence.” He taps his chin. “But I do know of one thing you might find interesting. A prophecy. One forbidden to be spoken aloud in the Fae courts.”
I step closer, intrigued. “You will tell us, Aelfdene.”
This time, he does flinch slightly. And I wonder what exactly would happen if he resisted. Would the words come pouring out of him against his will? Would he shrivel, curling in pain until he complied with my order?
He doesn’t seem keen to experiment with the consequences. Aelfdene’s leathers creak as he leans toward us, a conspiratorial edge to his tone. “Ages hence, a member of my court dreamed a vision. It would come to pass that the High King of the Fae would lose his throne. That a new age would begin when the Etherian Mountains crumble.”
A thrill jolts through me. Regan and I exchange a glance.
“You could bring the Etherian Mountains tumbling into the sea,” Kal had said. The shadows of the hall seem to swell. To reach for me. I step closer to the torch, craving its light.
“Of course,” Aelfdene goes on. “The prophecy did not specify which High King would fall. So perhaps it will not yet come to fruition. Time will tell, as the mortals say.”
But Mortania stirs, and her excitement canters through my limbs. It will, pet. We will make sure of it.
“You don’t seem especially perturbed at the fall of your king,” Torin comments. “Nor at your own predicament. You must know what will happen to you here.”
“That I shall perish?” He gives a dismissive wave. “To me, death appears as a very long dream. And I am the ruler of dreams.” He laughs again, Fae teeth shining in the orange light. And then those gilt eyes lock with mine. “Are you certain you would not like to hear the dream I was having? You might appreciate it.”
“No.” But my mind begins to wander. I cannot help but think of Aurora. Is she dreaming? About what? Me? A shudder raises the hairs on the nape of my neck.
“May I inquire as to a different subject, then?” Aelfdene continues. “One court leader to another?”
His voice sounds farther away, though I haven’t moved.
“What is it?” My tongue is slow, and there’s an inexplicable heaviness in my body.
One spindly fingered hand wraps around the bars of his cell. “Why did you do it—burn the realm down? Oryn thinks it spite, but I am not so convinced.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” But I’m not sure I actually speak those words. I hear them, but I don’t feel my lips move. My thoughts are hazy, bumbling things. The dungeon looks somehow unfamiliar. I cannot recall why I came down here to begin with.
“Oh, do not mistake me,” Aelfdene goes on. “I very much admire you. The Court of Dreams, after all, is the realm of sheer possibility. And you are the impossible brought to life. What made you, Nimara?”
As if pulled from the depths of the sea, a memory surfaces. I see Aurora’s hand meeting the spindle. Feel the weight of her body when I caught her as she fell. Her marble-cold skin. Her still lips, which have not moved in a century, but that were once pressed against mine on a night when the whole world came crashing down and rebuilt itself in dazzling glory.
“The princess?” Aelfdene murmurs. “But why would she have…”
The Fae lord is nothing more than colors smeared together on a canvas. Images of the curse-breaking come wheeling back to me. Aurora’s bedroom. The library. Our limbs tangled, and the smell of her clinging to my own skin.
“True love.” Musical Fae laughter skips along the curves of my skull. I try to shake my head to clear it but am too dizzy. “What a farce. I assure you, there is absolutely no such thing.”
But that isn’t right. I fight against his words, but my mouth will not open. I should lie down. I should…
Something jostles me. My own name pierces through the fog of my mind. Like breaking through water, my senses crash back to me. I gulp down a breath, then two. And that is when I feel it. Something in my mind that does not belong. The faint scent of honey and spring roses fills my nose. My magic races up, shoving it out.
“Enough, Aelfdene!”
The thing that is not mine slithers away. Aelfdene hisses and recoils. But then those Fae eyes twinkle. “And I was just getting to the good part.”
“What”—my chest heaves—“was that?”
“His latent magic.” The answer comes very close. And I’m startled to realize that Neve is gripping my arm. She must have been the one to break me out of the trance, or whatever it was. “Did you think of a dream when he asked?”
“No, I—” But then I curse myself. I’d thought of dreaming itself, and of Aurora dreaming. That must have been enough of an invitation. The Fae wield most of their magic with their staffs, but they possess certain innate abilities. A prisoner from the Court of Earth, for example, was able to coax the stones of her cell walls into rearranging themselves so that she could escape—temporarily. Aelfdene, ruler of the Court of Dreams, must have some control over minds. “Only for a moment.”
“It was enough for—”
I wrest myself free of her. “I realize that.”
But I feel like a fool. And Aelfdene is grinning at me. “It was not real, Nimara.”
Unease slinks through my belly. The others appear oblivious to the exchange that passed between us, and for that I’m relieved. But a cold sweat prickles beneath my clothes nonetheless.
The “it” Aelfdene referenced wasn’t what just happened. He meant Aurora and me. That our love wasn’t real.
My power unfurls, rich and intoxicating as it was on the day I took Briar. The scent of charred steel and loam explodes in my lungs. My power slithers up the wall and coils around the beechwood bark of Aelfdene’s staff. The light in the orb begins to swirl. His jaw tightens.
“I know you have more to tell us about Oryn. I command that you speak, Aelfdene.” I draw his name out, savoring each syllable as I watch it scrape over his skin.
But that unnerving smirk does not slide from his features. “Ah. But I am afraid that I have sworn my oath to the High King. And, like all my brethren, I am bound to honor it.”
And before I can do anything else, Aelfdene sticks out his tongue and bites down on it. Golden blood squirts from the wound and spatters onto my face. I leap back, too shocked to scream. Aelfdene is howling, bent over himself in the narrow space. And a moment later, something flops onto the ground. All the food I’d eaten that day comes hurtling up my throat and I vomit onto the grimy stone.
Aelfdene’s tongue sits like a slug in a pool of his Fae blood. He’d bitten it off.
Malakar spews a string of curses. He slams his tooth-studded cudgel into the bars of the cell, the impact ringing around us. “There are a hundred other ways we can use your name. And when we’re done, we’ll drain your magic out of you drop by drop, and—”
An echo reverberates down the corridor, muffled by the stone.
“What is that?” Regan asks.
I sharpen my hearing so that I can pick it up. But it’s Neve who deciphers it first.
“The sentries,” she says.
Three notes, a signal I’ve not heard in the whole of this war.
An attack.
CHAPTER SEVEN
We sprint back down the rows of cells, into the main palace, and through to the courtyard. Outside, the Demon sentries are shouting to one another. Some of them have already transformed into shadows and are streaking into the horizon. What initially appears as a formation of birds begins to take shape. Fae steeds. At least a hundred. Winged wicked beasts with armor clamped around their necks and flanks. Even from here, I can see the glow of their riders’ gilded breastplates, the pulsing light from the orbs of Etherian staffs.
Regan musters her Vila and they bolt to the battlements. I hurry after them. Malakar is close behind, barking orders at his Goblins. The sentries are readying their arrows. Never before have we encountered this many Fae warriors so near the palace, and I ache to show them who is mistress. To protect our home, which they have stolen once already.
They will not do so again, pet. Mortania snaps and sparks in her cave.
No. They will not.
“What are you doing?” A hand pulls me back. Regan. “This could be a trap to flush you out. We need you safe.”
I tamp my power down, the struggle like swimming against a strong current. “I can’t leave all of you up here on your own. You wouldn’t.”
She lets out a frustrated breath. But she knows I’m right. “Damn everything.” With a short whistle, she calls two other Vila. “Protect her at all costs.”
They jerk their chins in agreement, flanking me. And then Regan melts into the throng as the whinnying of the Fae steeds grows louder. A swarm of shadowy Demons masses like a cloud in front of the battlements, acting as a shield.
The Fae battalion gallops through the currents of air, their mounts’ wings—the length of two human men stacked together—feathered with what look like crushed stars. Their armor, comprised of twisted and knotted golden branches, gleams in the murky sunlight. They stink of Fae magic, nectar and meadow and damp grass.
The beating of wings is like the roll of thunder as the Fae battalion soars over the palace. Demon arrows fly, striking the thighs and bellies of the steeds. Two beasts spiral to the earth, riders pinwheeling from their saddles. Imps operate the cannons, climbing atop one another’s shoulders to stuff down the ball and powder. Booms rattle my teeth. Smoke creeps across the battlements. Goblins hurl their hatchets and spears, wield their specially designed crossbows that fire five bone-tipped bolts simultaneously.
I add my power to that of the Vila. Inhaling the scents of soldered metal and rich wine and pungent, rotting earth. Mortania’s satisfied laughter skips behind my sternum. My power connects with a beast instantly, puncturing its heart of magic so thoroughly that the creature collapses without a sound. Another and another, until the palace grounds are a graveyard.
And it’s then that I realize the Fae aren’t fighting back.
The sky should be lashed with gilded arcs of Etherian magic. The riders should be swooping low, aiming for the Demon sentries and Goblins crowding the edge of the turrets. Yet they remain aloft. The translucent, golden spheres of their shields expand from their bodies when a Demon gets too near. Most of the Goblins’ shots bounce off those glittering surfaces, though some are quick enough to sink into a hindquarter or neck or flank. But there is absolutely no retaliation from the Etherians.
“What are they doing?” I shout over the tumult.
The Vila beside me are too absorbed in their attacks to reply. The horde of Fae arranges itself into formation and circles around the palace. A blur of black and blue plummets from a saddle. There is a final war cry, and then they’re flying back toward the rose-capped peaks of the Etherian Mountains.
I grip the edge of the battlement, the moaning of the fallen Fae swelling from below. None of ours appears to be wounded. I race down the stairs and into the courtyard, where a crowd has already convened around whatever the Fae left behind. It’s a bag. Some sort of silky midnight blue fabric, cinched at the top with a gilded rope of laurel leaves.
Malakar followed me from the palace, filthy with cannon powder but otherwise unharmed. He kicks the bulging sack with the toe of his boot. “Don’t feel alive. But there’s only one way to find out.”
He yanks the bindings loose. The fabric of the sack slackens and several objects spill out—stumps smudged with a tarlike substance, black and oozing. Malakar picks one up and abruptly drops it. If my stomach wasn’t already empty, it would void again. That isn’t tar pooling on our land. It’s blood. And there’s only one sort of creature who bleeds like that.
“What is it?” Neve maneuvers her way to the front of the crowd, her starling-feather cloak billowing behind her. She’s stunned into stillness for a moment, and then she rushes to the bag, knocking a few disgruntled Imps out of her way before dropping to her knees.
The wind whips in from the sea, salt stinging our cheeks. Neve does not sob—doesn’t make a sound. She stares, vibrating slightly around her edges as she gently touches the pieces of the Starlings. I can’t tell yet how many there are, but they’ve been hacked to bits. The scent of decaying flesh is thick enough to chew.
Torin hurries to Neve’s side and throws her arms around the Shifter leader.
Do something, she mouths to me.
“Neve, I…” But the words stick in my throat. She picks up a hunk of flesh. Black Shifter blood rolls down her wrist and splatters onto the ground. “We all grieve the loss of your—”
“Our,” she corrects, her fist clenching. “These are our kin, Nimara. Yours as well as mine.”
My face heats. “I was going to say your Starlings. We’ll have a ceremony to honor them. You can preside over it. We’ll do whatever you want.”
A cold wind lashes between us. “Whatever I want,” she repeats flatly. “Do you not even know the burial rituals for our kind?”
Silence hums. I do not know. I’ve read hundreds of books about the Vila. Listened to countless stories from the Goblins and Imps and Demons describing their own traditions. But the Shifters…they don’t remain long enough at the palace for me to learn anything about them, I tell myself. But the excuse is feeble. I’ve no desire to learn because I already understand enough about Shifters to last my whole life. In my mind’s eye, I can see Kal Shifting into my body to lure Aurora to the spindle. Laughing as she fell. Using me because it was easy to do so.
“We will do whatever is required,” I say.
But it isn’t enough. Neve swallows, and the expression on her face could melt stone.
“Over here!” From behind us, an Imp shouts. “One’s still alive!”
I turn, grateful for the distraction. The Imp is waving wildly, indicating a Fae steed. There’s an arrow in its hindquarters, and its lips are frothing, star-bright eyes rolling with fear.
“Shall I kill it for you, Mistress?” the Imp asks excitedly.
“Wait!” Demons part as Derek elbows his way forward. “Don’t harm the horse.”
“It’s not a horse.” Regan removes her knife from her boot. “It’s Fae. And it has no place here. Rather like you, actually.”
