DRAEWULF STANDS THERE WATCHING ME, WEARING Eogan’s body like a shroud.
It’s all I can do to fumble forward and grab the wall to my left and hold on, hold still, and pretend that the grief washing over me is any less painful than that a week ago in Faelen’s castle when I believed Eogan was dead.
I scoot as far from him as possible, to the large window in front of us that overlooks the ocean, and press my cold spine against the glass. Keeping my face toward the beast. “Why?” I whisper, and it comes out all jagged.
“Why did I kill him? I think you know the answer to that. Or are you asking why I’ve not killed you too? I think it’d better behoove you to wonder why I shouldn’t,” he muses. “Except perhaps the simple fact is, keeping you alive is far easier than offing you at the moment.” He slinks backward to a chair, which aside from a small table is the only piece of furniture in the black-carpeted, wood-paneled room.
My gaze follows him as he drops into the cushioned seat and rests his chin on his fingers. I refuse my tone to shake with the anguish near-cowing me. “You seem to have found it easy to kill my kind in the past,” I say bitterly. “So I’ll ask again—why? What am I a vessel for?”
“I can assure you, your kind were hard to kill as well, especially early on in the war when they were more numerous. Although a pact with your kingdom definitely eased the burden of eliminating them myself over the last hundred years. Placing them in your ‘safety’ camps was brilliant, really.”
He sniffs and looks back at me. “You’ve never met one other than yourself, have you?” When I don’t reply he adds, “Curious. I always suspected they’d saved a few in reserve. Funny though how things work out. If I’d known sooner what your kind were useful for . . .”
“They didn’t even know I existed.”
“How lucky for me. In that case, I shall tell you the male Storm Sirens used the elements very effectively, but not as effectively as you. You can call them forth on a plane unparalleled.” He levels a leer at me. “Or, should I say, you used to be able to call them forth.”
I settle a glare right back at him, but his gaze takes on a distant expression and drifts to the window behind me. I shiver even as the emptiness in my blood flares in my chest. The irony doesn’t escape me that this is more about Elementals, about myself and my race, than I have ever heard, ever been allowed to talk about in my life. And here he is, the animal I hate, explaining myself to me.
From the corner of my vision I see him twitch his hand and suddenly my eyelids drift heavy.
Keep your eyes open, something whispers from the depths of me.
But I can’t. My lids are suddenly too heavy and my head too sleepy.
I feel my body slump to the carpet.
My eyes flutter open. Morning sunlight spills across a room of white curtains and windows, with a wooden ceiling much higher than my head. I peer down at the bed I’m curled up on and trail my hands over the cool sheets before wandering them up to touch the sun particles the breeze is lifting through the air. I take a deep breath. The air tastes delicious. Like homemade bread and citrus.
Eogan moves from his spot against a window frame where he’s watching me. The honeyed light slips down his messed-up bangs before shimmering along his black shoulders. “I thought I might have to shake you awake.”
I rustle my hair and smile.
“Good dreams?” he asks.
“The best one yet.”
His smile broadens suggestively, and my face warms before his expression turns stiff. He walks over as I slide my feet from the bed, but before I can stand he’s bending over, taking my cheek in hand and willing my gaze to center on his. “Don’t get up.”
But I want to. I want to be with him. This is the future I want with him.
“I have to go alone this morning,” he whispers into my hair.
Go? What is he talking about? Go where?
As if reading my mind, he tips his head toward the open window where the sunlight’s pouring through. I squint to see beyond it, to the valley that looks familiar and foreign all at once. There’s sweet air coming from it—that honey-blossomed scent—and entwined in that scent is music—an ancient melodic refrain wrapping its notes into the breeze and ruffling around Eogan’s beautiful black hands and face and gaze.
My heart nearly jumps through the roof of my mouth.
“No,” I tell him. “You can’t leave. Not like this.” I will not allow it. I will not lose him this way.
He brushes my fingers against his lips and inhales. I try to yank away, but his hand grasps mine to hold it in place as he raises a brow and smiles. “There are worse ways to leave, trust me.”
He leans down and draws his lips across mine, his mouth caressing my own in a kiss.
It tastes of life. And death.
It tastes of good-bye.
Abruptly his face blurs. “Get away from Draewulf. Or I swear I will haunt you with every last breath in me.” His words begin to shudder, then slur. “It’s time to let go, Nym. Open your eyes.
“Open them now.”
I’m blasted awake into a darkened airship room and a cold presence hangs over me. It’s so opposite the warmth and color of my dream it takes a minute to recall where I am. When I do, I freeze only to have my soul shatter all over again.
He’s gone.
I look around for Draewulf. To hunt him, to hurt him for what he’s done. Where is he?
The room is lit only by the stars out the windows and the lamp-lights along the rim of the airship’s deck below. Just like the other airships farther out lighting up the night. They twinkle like yellow fireflies—reminding me of the forest back home. My heart pitches. I wince and grit my teeth and, stretching my muscles, feel around the room until I reach the door.
Locked.
I twist, kick, shove against it, but it’s stuck tight. I slump against the wall and beg the darkness to either release or reclaim me, I don’t know. At least until we get there, when I will end all of this.
Because I will end all of this.
“Nym?”
Kel.
“Are you all right?” His small voice carries beneath the door.
“Kel, let me out. Unlock the door.”
A hesitation. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Just open it! Eogan is dangerous and—”
“I know but I can’t. He won’t—he’ll just—” His voice drops so low I can barely hear it. “Do you need anything?”
Oh buddy. “Kel, you need to stay away from Eogan.” My throat tightens even as I say his name. Eogan. I force myself to ignore it. “He’s not safe for you.”
“I know. Are you sad at him, Nym?”
I don’t answer that. I can’t. Unless I want my chest to bleed out.
A scuffle against the door. He curses. “I gotta go. I—”
“Wait, Kel!” But his footsteps are already padding away.
Bleeding litches.
I lean against the door and try to listen through but can’t hear anything further. I turn my head and stare at the dark.
Keep your eyes open, something whispers from the depths of me.
I glance around.
“For what?” I mutter back. Assess your surroundings and finish the plan.
Or what? I’m not sure it matters anymore.
Assess your surroundings and finish the plan, Nym.
Fine. I go to rise. Except that strange heaviness sets in again along with the scent of magic and I pitch over.
And fall back asleep.
Something is ticking and clacking, disturbing my sleep. The spider is beneath my skin, scratching and tapping its claws like fingers on a wall, as blazing daylight strikes my face.
I open my eyes to find Draewulf leaning against the window exactly like Eogan was in my dream. He’s tapping his fingers against the wall, still wearing my trainer’s handsome body like a rumpled suit of victory.
I stand and curl both hands into fists. And bite back the nausea.
He smirks.
Where’s Kel?
Assess your surroundings and finish the plan, Nym.
I gulp. “Where are Rasha and Myles?”
“Under guard with my wraiths.”
“Under guard with your wraiths? Or being turned into wraiths?”
He utters a sound between a chuckle and a sneer. “Does it matter?”
“To the people you’ve made wraiths I imagine it does,” I growl, inching my way toward the tiny window that overlooks the main deck on the opposite side of the room. Through it I can see the airships surrounding us and the area where the soldiers stand side by side with a group of gray-shrouded wraiths that look more ghoul-like than ever. “Tell me, how is it that you do it? Turn them, I mean?”
He smirks. “I kill them and chop up their bones, then fuse them with stronger beasts. They don’t question or challenge, they simply obey. Rather ingenious, don’t you think?”
I hold back the urge to claw his throat out.
Focus, Nym. “Can they feel?” I eye how many ships are around us and try to calculate how many children like Kel are flying them. “The wraiths. Do they know what you’ve done to them?” Did Eogan know in his last dying moments?
He shrugs. “People ultimately embrace being controlled for the sake of safety. It’s a trade-off.”
“A trade-off for death?” I snort and peer at the soldiers on our ship’s deck. Will he turn them too? Has it already begun and they just don’t know it? Perhaps we’re all already being turned and just don’t know it. “Is that what the plague is for—to make them beg for it?”
“The plague is an unfortunate by-product. Experiments in magic can be so . . . unpredictable.”
A movement catches at the edge of my vision. The biggest Bron guard is hoisting something from the forward rim. Lord Wellimton. They’re giving him food and water, and he looks rather frozen, but beyond that—his mouth is moving so fast and his face so red that his temper’s clearly none the worse for wear.
Draewulf steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “It repulses you, yet given the chance you’d embrace whatever it took to live longer too.” His piercing words feel aimed at my skull. “In fact, you have. I suspect even now you can feel it. The power you took on—the way it flows in your veins—scratching and begging to make you more. To live longer. Stronger.”
Keeping my eye on the soldiers I narrow my gaze. “The power I took on was to save Eogan.”
“Careful, Nym, or your arrogance will deceive you. Because if you truly believed that, you’d have tried to die in this room two days ago when you realized Eogan was truly gone.” He unfurls from the windowpane and pads over to me, his movements much like the dog owner number ten used to own. I hated that dog.
If he notices my tightening jawline, he doesn’t acknowledge it. “When I took on this spirit, I believed it was with the intention of delivering my people from oppressive rule. It’s what I told myself for years every time I morphed. Until the day I realized what it was costing me. In that way you and I aren’t much different, you know. Except what I’ve sacrificed is more than you can imagine.”
“How pathetic then that you’ve failed. You can use the kings’ blood to become human again, but in the end it won’t save you from dying.”
He snarls and starts to reach for me but stops. He retreats and folds his arms. “True, there’s always a price. But who wouldn’t give anything for what I have—for what I am? My abilities allow me to dissolve like a spirit and invade a person’s body.” He leans in. “And what I’ve learned since then . . . well . . .” His mouth twists into a cruel smile as his gaze drops to my owner circles.
I lift a hand toward him. It won’t help you if I kill you now . . .
A challenge glints in his eye just as there’s a shout from the other room. “They’ve seen us,” the boy captain who is not Kel yells, making me hesitate at the youthfulness in his voice.
Draewulf jerks his head toward the window where the clouds have parted to reveal Faelen’s mountains to the right of us.
What’s left of Faelen’s warboat armada is on the side of the pass we’re travelling through. We’re too high to see in detail beyond movement on the decks, but with this many ships in the air, I doubt the boat captains have to guess our intention. And from the straight aim we’re flying, they’ll get it soon enough. My chest tightens for my home.
Our airships don’t even dip or shudder toward Faelen. We simply keep on course for Tulla’s cliffs looming up from the white froth waves like flat polished tombstones in front of us.
“So you will destroy everyone,” I mutter bitterly. “Is that your plan? The Tullan people? They have loved ones and children just like Bron and Faelen. And you’ll end them for what?”
“At some point you learn that the love of another is iffy at best. At worst, it will destroy what you thought you were. You should be thanking me for sparing you that discovery firsthand.”
His voice is cruel, but it’s the look on his face that grabs me. I don’t know why but it strikes something in me. Isobel’s words come back. “I will remove the thing that pains you, Father. I will make it so you won’t feel her betrayal anymore.”
I stare at the tall, snow-frosted mountain tips of the Fendres. Then glance away as a wave of confusion lashes against my ache and my anger, with the words Draewulf said earlier—that he’d originally only been trying to save his people too.
I press one palm flat against my legs as if I can force away that thought. This is different. He’s different. He’s a monster whom I’m fated to destroy.
“You could choose differently,” I say through tight teeth.
“And why would I want to do that?”
“It’s not like being evil has seemed to go well for you.”
He smirks even though his eyes are still staring out over the ships. “Evil is in the eye of the judger. What you judge as evil, I see as progress.”
“Progressive for whom?”
He waves a hand. “There’s an entire army out there—”
“Half of whom are following Eogan, not you.”
His expression darkens and he turns his face to stare directly into mine. There’s the barest hint of a shaky undercurrent as he growls, “They’re following my guidance, my planning, and my army.”
I smile. I’ve angered him. Perfect.
“But if they knew who you were?” I allow a hint of mockery in my tone. “You had to take on another man’s persona just to get others to follow, and now you’re dependent on a power you needed me to absorb. And why? Why couldn’t you get it yourself?”
“You would do well to watch your step.” His voice is shaking harder now.
“Until what? You kill me?” I snort. “No wonder your wife left you.”
He whips toward me so fast, I press against the window frame preparing for him to slap me, but he seems to have frozen in the moment. Staring at me as if terrified of what else I might know. Of what I might say. Even through the hatred and aching bones and muscles and energy cracking inside me, I can’t help but feel the smallest flicker of suspicion. It stirs that hint of compassion blossoming without consent in my soul, swearing that the root of who he is still exists. Is that the betrayal that pains him? That he made himself different—better, in his mind—but in the end his wife couldn’t accept him?
I open my mouth. The realization abruptly pounds through my soul—she couldn’t accept who he’d become. My eyes connect with his and stumble across something there I don’t want to see. The smug awareness of how easily that could be me—not accepting the curse I was, always hoping for better. And didn’t I take the “better” when it was offered—by Eogan and then Myles? What if Colin or Eogan had suddenly decided they couldn’t tolerate me? I swallow and feel my expression soften.
The window frame behind me begins shaking. I look down and the quaking is from Draewulf’s hand shoved against the wall beside me as his body’s shivering, as if building into a rage. I stiffen and start to scoot away just as a beam of sunlight glances off his face. He doesn’t look angry, he looks in pain. What in—?
I reach toward him, but he utters a bark and bends over just as a black wisp uncoils around his feet and winds itself up his legs and around his chest. As if protecting him.
From what?
I look at my no-longer-gimpy hand. It’s pulsing, pumping with the blood hounding beneath my skin and bleeding black into my veins. I inhale and his wisps start to curl around me. And then my spine begins to shudder, then burn, and my head screams that now is the time. Now is my chance.
I could kill him before it’s too late.
I reach for him.
The horn overhead blares.
I shove my hand against the side of his neck.
“We’re nearly there,” Kel’s voice rings out beyond the door. It sounds strong and angry.
Draewulf spins and slams me into the wall. He snaps his fingers and the door flies open before he barks at the wraith waiting beyond. “Get her downstairs,” he growls. “Tie her up along with the princess, and if she even lifts an eyebrow, slit the half-breed’s throat.”