Sleep for the anguished. Dreams for the hopeless. Darkness for when the light hurts.
~ A dinzah dealer’s promise
“DON’T GO!”
I snapped upright so violently I threw myself off the bed and onto the floor. No, wait. Our blankets had been on the ground already. This wasn’t our bed of rubble in Velderrey. I knew exactly where I was.
The memories—or not memories exactly, but the sensations—of the road-worn wagon flooded me, more potent than any liquor: the almost musical creak of the wood, the vibration under my palms, the smell of canvas and herbs. I was a child, safe, loved…
“No!”
I shoved upward, only to sprawl again, unsettled by the sway of the wagon and my stomach. Impossible that such a tiny swig of honydka had wiped me out. I smacked my dry, sour lips.
Dinzah.
He had drugged and dazed me, not with bittersweet words of longing or the precious drink of ancient kings, but with the desperate forgetting of the hopeless.
Worse than the lingering taint of the drug was the vile draught of his lies.
He’d left me. He’d said he would not, and then he left me behind.
The broken oath of the Dragon Prince made me want to howl. Oh, I could already hear how he would say, to be strictly precise, he hadn’t left me behind; he’d packed me up and sent me away. And anyway, he had only promised the night. As if we were rival kings brokering carefully worded treaties we intended to ignore. As if we were lors hypocritically parsing the souls of innocents we planned to destroy. As if it had not been just the two of us, holding each other fast in the night, however dark or shining.
Bowing my head, I breathed shallowly which did nothing to keep the betrayal from sinking deeper. It only leached through me like the dinzah, stealing all sensation and leaving me numb.
Dully, I glanced around wagon. Some daylight filtered through the gaps in the wallboards, so I hadn’t been dinzah-dreaming too long. Unless I’d been out for a whole day or even two? No, I would’ve tasted the drug immediately if I’d had that much. Piled around me were the chests and caskets I’d seen prepared for the caravan to Maru Deep, to sustain the refugees on their way while the fighters would be riding fast and light, the Dragon Prince with them.
With Dyania and Lisel, even Imbril. And without me.
Without me.
He’d left me, not knowing what would become of me, sending me away without a choice.
Seething anger curdled in my belly like a neglected motherwort turned to poison. The wagon was so crowded, there was scarcely room for me, as if I was just another burden, unsuited for the fight. Not a weapon, not a blessing—just a problem to be sent away.
A wounded part of me wanted to keep going, stay hidden in the wagon, forget him—run away. But I could not. I’d come too far, maybe to the end of my thread, and changed too much.
I crawled to the back of the wagon. The door was secured from the outside, but I popped the latch with my blade through the narrow gap without fumbling.
Neh, so maybe I hadn’t changed that much.
As I swung the hatch wide, a memory assailed me of Dyania flinging open the silverleafed door of the Sevaare carriage, poised to escape. And I hesitated there too.
Staring at my father.
He was guiding a hart and chariot, not a road trader’s common mount though he steered it well enough. The beast nodded sullenly, the pace of the refugee cavalcade far too slow. More conveyances were stretched out behind, but as he called a word to the drover, the wagon pulled to the side of the road.
“Feinan,” he chided, and my heart broke again at the lilt to the word that had been lost to me for so long, the name and the love given to me by my mother in the old tongue. “I see the wildness in your eyes. Would you break my pledge to Prince Aric?”
The wagon paused, and the rest of the cavalcade passed with only incurious glances, those aboard and astride clearly averse to any distraction from their escape. My aunt hastened around the side of the wagon on foot and exclaimed when she saw me.
My father just shook his head. “The dreaming didn’t hold.”
“Don’t try to stop me.” I still had the animdao blade in my hand, though despite my warning I knew I would never use it against them. “I have to go back.”
Stopping beside the hart’s shoulder, Aunt Karligh pressed the fingertips of her hands against her lips, her eyes welling. My father sighed. “By the amaranthine light, he wanted only to protect you.”
“But instead he went to fight for the Living Lands.”
After a moment, my father grinned. “Yes. So let’s go.”
Aunt Karligh boggled at him. “Aegusto Vaifaire, you are too old to be a fighter. And even when you were young, you sang when you should have stabbed.”
The cocky edge to his smile remained, but a mournful light touched his eyes—earthy brown, like mine. “Won’t get much older if the kingdom falls. And I don’t want to waste the time I have left.” He gazed at me. “I’ll spend it with you, daughter. On the road or in battle, together.”
My heart clenched again, as if it wanted to curl away from his loving look, to protect me from being hurt again. But this was no time to indulge those past tragedies.
And no time to hold back what I wanted to say. “I love you,” I said simply, gesturing to include my aunt. “All those years, I missed you, and I was hurt and angry. But I never stopped loving you. And now…now I finally understand why you left me.” I jumped down from the wagon, the winter-withered dirt as hard as a faithless heart beneath my heels. “This is all our fight, but not the same way, and our threads weave different patterns. We’ll come together again someday. But I’m going back alone.”
For a long moment, I thought they would argue, but Aunt Karligh lunged forward to wrap me in her arms. I ducked my head against her shoulder—she was shorter than me, so maybe I’d eaten better in Sevaare’s alleys than she had on the road—and then my father was embracing us both.
“Your mother would be so proud,” he whispered. “Khaedry would never let you go alone.” But even as he spoke, he shook his head. “That’s not true. She would’ve done anything for you, including letting you go.” Stepping back, he put me at arm’s length with a fierce scowl. “If she had locked you in, you would be there still. She was a master of locks.”
I laughed, maybe a little shakily. “Now I know where I got it from.” Giving Aunt Karligh another squeeze, I straightened. “Will you stay in Maru Deep?”
She nodded. “Until…until we know.”
My father thrust the hart’s reins at me while Aunt Karligh quickly released it from the chariot. “The hart is no easy riding beast, but it will take you even faster than the army’s steeds, if you can stay astride.”
“I’ll be fine.” The antlers waved uncomfortably near my face, making a lie of my words. But that close, I caught a glimpse of a familiar etch on the exposed bone. “Nars?”
The hart froze, then nudged his muzzle into my chest, knocking me back a step.
“May he carry you bravely,” Aunt Karligh said as my father brought out his own knife to shorten the chariot reins.
Lisel would kill me for bringing her favorite beast back to the fight. But judging by his impatient hop as my father boosted me up, maybe Nars had his own ideas about being sent away.
I dared not loosen my grip on the reins to wave, but I circled Nars once to look back. My father and aunt were holding each other and did not wave either. Because this wasn’t goodbye. I wouldn’t let it be goodbye.
Spinning Nars toward the earthbone road, I weaved between the last few stragglers from Velderrey, and we sped back toward the High Keep and our fate.
Other than various lovers, I’d never ridden astride, and apparently I had no instinctive skill. Or maybe Nars was particularly boney in the spine. I jerked and jolted and tried to swear, the curses jouncing out of me with even less fluency than our headlong run.
At least he was fast.
Maybe the earthbone absorbed our urgency—as was said to happen sometimes, according to old songs—because the road seemed to blur under us. Though this was my third time upon it, I scarcely recognized the route, tears streaming from my eyes, ripped by the wind in my face and the regret in my gut, both so cold. Because my father thought Aric just wanted to protect me, but I knew the prince had other considerations, and our time together in the ruined lightkeep had showed him just how little the world beyond his dark tower could give him.
And that meant me too.
But I wasn’t running back just for Aric. My friends were there, fighting for the kingdom, and maybe they didn’t need a thieving street-stray, but they’d have to take one, wanted or not.
Just as earthbone began to crack, broken by the rise of the foothills, I caught a glimpse of the slowest army stragglers. I didn’t even have to urge Nars onward; he lowered those runed antlers and put on a burst of speed that rocked me back. I crouched against his outstretched neck, and we passed the first marchers. As we climbed, the earthbone broke more apart, and we slowed some.
“What news from the lightkeeps?” someone called as I sped past. “Do the conscripts come?”
But I was already flying past. Just as well I didn’t have to explain that I wasn’t a messenger returning on relay, that I had no dispatch of more fighters and hope. No tithed conscripts, just me, willing but weak.
As Nars carried me up the ranks, though, I slowed him even more. I couldn’t just charge to the front. Aric had drugged me and banished me, and if none of my friends had convinced him how not acceptable that was—not that I thought they’d have a chance of changing him—then I couldn’t risk getting caught again. Better to stay back here with the anonymous masses.
That was what I’d always been, after all.
Nars yanked his head, pulling at the reins in disapproval as I angled him in among the last of the riders, who were still ahead of all the marchers and most of the conveyances. They made room for me with only a few sideways glances.
“Heyo, Sevaare. What’re you doing here?”
I glanced over at the nearest rider. He was on a steed, a better mount than my hart, not that it had gotten him any farther or faster. It took me a moment to place him as the guard on the door to the Sevaare quarters in the palace. He’d been on guard against us that first night, our jailer. Not that I bore him any ill will, and not because I’d become any more noble after my time in the High Keep, but it seemed somewhat irrelevant now.
I gave him a nod. “Come to fight for the Living Lands,” I said, and though the words sounded momentous, my tone seemed more wry.
He tilted his head, not quite a nod back. “Captain Vreas’s told me before to watch out for you, yet here you are on her hart?”
Captain… Lisel must’ve been granted a promotion at some point, although I didn’t doubt she’d hate the circumstances as much as she wouldn’t want to see her favorite beast in danger. “I never meant to cause any trouble,” I told him somewhat honestly. “If I can use it against our enemy…” I shrugged.
He gave me a lopsided grin. “Trouble, like the light, is everlasting.”
We rode on for a while in silence until I cleared my throat carefully and asked, “I was toward the back after the honydka,” I explained. “Did I miss… That is to say, is there a particular plan?”
The soldier on the other side of my erstwhile jailer said, “Charge when told. Don’t die.”
I nodded, in some way relieved. “Seems simple enough that even I might obey,” I said solemnly.
Neither the newest captain nor the new marshal rode down the line, to chivy or to encourage, and the dark swallowed us. As tired as the ragtag army was, there was no place to rest on this road, no way the horde didn’t know we were coming. And I’d ridden harder than any of them, coming back from what seemed like half way to Maru Deep on my frantic ride. Nars was faltering, even his great strength and eagerness to rejoin Lisel insufficient in the face of exhaustion.
I fell back from my temporary companions, letting Nars stumble to a halt. The column of soldiers continued to pass me as I dismounted.
After so long astride without any toughening experience, my legs crumpled beneath me, dropping me unceremoniously to my knees. Since I was in the dirt anyway, I took the opportunity to run my hands down the hart’s legs to its hooves, as I’d seen Lisel do. I didn’t know much about burden beasts, as I’d complained before, but I thought, considering the plummeting temperatures, there was too much heat there. Or maybe my hands were freezing? I hoped he was just overtired, not lamed.
“Ah, lovely Nars. You’ve brought me so far, and bravely, as promised. And yet now I will do to you as was done to me.” Rising painfully, numbed parts of my anatomy coming back to life and screaming about it, I stripped the tack from him, including the harness pad that had served as my seat. Heyo, it was every bit as thin as it had felt over the leagues.
Nars whuffled in my hair. At least the warmth of his breath was welcome.
“I hope you find your way to the high fields,” I told him. “With Claeve turning his monsters against everything living, you’ll have better luck there.” Even though I’d said I didn’t believe in luck. “May the amaranthine light shine upon you until we meet again.”
Was that the first time I’d ever voluntarily said a blessing? Neh, brave Nars deserved it more than most.
“Go to the field,” I told him. “Wait for Lisel.”
Of course he couldn’t understand me, but to my surprise, he stepped delicately toward the sparse trees. An eerie haze drifted there, and it seemed to reach out to him with ghostly fingers, and the points of his antlers glimmered with ethereal lightning.
The kindling of an eldritch storm, as I’d seen from high in the palace.
Aric hadn’t said the unbound auric energy was dangerous, but coming as it did so close to the attack on the High Keep, I had to wonder what it presaged.
Blade to bone, apparently now I believed in luck and omens.
Nars stood poised against the silent tempest for a heartbeat, staring back at me. Then he turned and vanished into the mist.
I looked at the empty spot for a moment, wondering if I’d done aright. The hart had believed in me more than my friends.
By the time I rejoined the column, I was back with the foot soldiers again. Which was fine, as I’d never warranted better. I put my head down and marched.
There was no golden glow to warn me this time. The gravel of the final approach to the High Keep was just suddenly beneath my boots. I looked up…
But there was nothing. No lights from windows. No sanctified chimes to welcome us. Only the pall of smoke—and a waft of something danker and wilder that made the little hairs on my nape prickle.
Demon stink.
I half expected some late-rousing instinct to arise, urging me to flee. But there was nothing there either: just a stony resolve that I’d never experienced before.
Aric… No, the Dragon Prince had taught me that.
I knew even less about military maneuvers than I did about harts, but it was clear enough from those around me that we wouldn’t have time to rest or eat.
“Not even a rousing speech?” I muttered.
A soldier nearby shot me a fleeting grin. “Gotta get here earlier for those,” she said. “All the important folk and anyone with a steed has been here for hours. They’ve heard it all.” She shrugged. “Of course, so have we, just in a different way.”
She wasn’t a watch guard or army soldier; I recognized her from the kitchens where I’d stolen my first High Keep sticky bun. Neh, she was a fighter now, same as me.
And then we were moving again, taking up positions that probably meant something to someone who’d studied such things. At least the land around the bailey was mostly flat, unlike the steep climb to get here. At some point in the planning—apparently when I’d been dinzah dreaming—it seemed almost everyone else had gotten a sword or a pike. I had only my knives.
A shout from somewhere ahead made us all stiffen, but it was rousing, not screaming, so we all charged.
Except I wasn’t sure what we were charging at. And maybe it reflected poorly on my recent experiences in the High Keep that I felt crossly as if someone should’ve consulted me.
Or maybe every soldier felt that way?
Through the chaos of running and fervent shouting, I realized we were attempting to seize the baileys, which would put us in place to retake the palace itself. Why did we even want the palace? If we wanted haunted ruins, couldn’t we have stayed in Velderrey? Although here we could lay claim to our very own hellhole verge….
Nothing opposed us. A few demonic shrieks that sounded more mocking than anything echoed from the empty windows of the palace, but other than that, except for our own noise, it was quiet.
We quickly set up a defensible perimeter that looked a little too much like my first visit to Velderrey and our stand against Claeve at the site of the caravan attack to make me feel actually comfortable. But the others took their places and settled in readily enough, so what did I know about defense. It was only then that I began to hear whispers of the plan, filtering back to us commoners.
“Ancient reliquaries in the depths,” was the whisper, and I wondered if our nobles and leaders knew just how accurate gossip could be. “Storm the tower… Seize the luminarci…”
Oh, did no one among those higher-ups know how to steal? Storming and seizing were certainly a choice, but as any thief worth her tainted aura would know, stealing was quieter.
I slipped away from my fellow fighters—not that I actually had a position of my own since no one had made arrangements for me—and I crept my way to the fore of camp. I would say this for the king: he was putting himself first in this battle.
I had some hazy thought that I might tell someone about my philosophy on storming, seizing, and stealing and then fade back into the darkness, but I’d barely crossed the line of torchieres when a deep, dark voice growled behind me, “What are you doing here?”
I didn’t even bother turning around. “You ask me that all the time,” I complained. “My answer is always the same: whatever I please.”
“And that is?”
Now I turned slowly to gaze upon the Dragon Prince. Because he had pleased me. And angered me too, of course.
Severed from the dragon, he’d also left behind the heavy armor and cloak, going to battle instead clad in swordsman’s garb. All black, of course, from his fine leather boots to the thick vambraces around wrists. A tight, padded gilet protected his broad chest while leaving his arms bared, and my gaze lingered on the taut bulge of muscle in his biceps.
Heyo, he pleased me still. Which only angered me the more.
“Feinan…” My name was a despairing sigh on his lips. Just what I wanted to hear from him after chasing him across the Living Lands. “This can’t be what you want. To fight here, and die?”
“Blight and spite,” I snarled. “You may be a prince, literate and learned, with life and death laid out for you. But you have no idea…” I curbed the rest of what I so desperately longed to say. Because that didn’t matter right now, not when he was about to sacrifice the rest of the army to this mission.
I gave my head a hard shake. “Do you all really plan to rush the walls and dash yourselves against the gate?”
His wintry gaze never wavered, a deep pool frozen to the heart. Neh, if he was cold, he should’ve chosen a shirt with sleeves instead of taunting demons and tempting innocent thieves with his fierce beauty. “This is our last chance,” he said without inflection. “We know what they will do from here.”
“So I taught you nothing?” I complained. “If you plan to take the luminarci, you should just sneak in now.” I gestured around us. “There’s plenty here to cause a distraction while we creep in through the unguarded gate.”
Finally he blinked. “Unguarded gate?”
Which was how I found myself back with my friends—neh, and with the king and no’Maru and poor baffled Marshal Elaf as well—explaining the passageway that had dumped me from the haloric tower out beyond the bailey.
“You always were trouble, Fei,” Lisel murmured to me as the plan was quickly unraveled and woven again with my suggestion.
I lifted my chin. “Even my troubles have kept me alive,” I reminded her.
To my surprise she didn’t scoff, only nodded back. “And this time might save the Living Lands.”
So it began.
Elaf was to assail the palace, as originally planned, to distract Claeve. “And if we can make headway, all the better.” He shrugged. “Marshal Vreas drilled us well on how the High Keep might be attacked. Now we will use that knowledge against this Claeve.”
I wondered if he knew that some demon might’ve feasted on the marshal and taken the man’s wisdom for the horde. Would knowing that even matter?
At the same time, Lady Dyania would stage an auric distraction against the horde. “We have enough Chosen here to ignite the runes we found when the walls started to crack. Maybe we too can make a difference.” She smiled at the marshal, who blushed a little and ducked his head.
Lisel and I both made tiny snerking noises under our breath. Too bad for the lady that her every kind glance won her admirers.
Meanwhile, King Mikhalthe was pacing between the torchieres, swinging between them with such force that the flames bent toward the thick waves of his hair so I feared he would set himself alight. Such would make an interesting read in the history books—or maybe an inspiring tavern song.
“Enough talk,” he rumbled. “We fight now.”
“Your Illuminance, the people have followed you, but they are wearied.” No’Maru had been so uncharacteristically retiring, I hadn’t even acknowledged him. But the odd expression on his face reminded me to pay attention since I’d never gleaned his intent. “And it is still dark. Come the dawn—”
“If we hesitate now, the dawn may not come,” Aric said. “The king says we fight.”
For a moment, the king and prince stood side by side. They were nothing alike, and yet somehow I could see the boys—and yes, brothers—they had been.
Before anyone else could express doubts, we were scattering to our disparate missions.
Dyania grabbed my arm before I could go. “Fei, I’m so sorry. After we departed Velderrey, Prince Aric told me what he did to you. I told him you were no Chosen whose fate he might command.” She bit her lip. “And he looked at me, just…broken. He knew he was wrong, and yet he would not change his mind.”
I swallowed hard. “Neh, that was his choice. But as you say, I didn’t have to follow the path he laid for me.”
Tentatively, she held out her arms. “A blessing?” When I nodded, she didn’t speak, just drew me into her embrace.
We clung to each other for only a breath.
“I would not be here without you,” she whispered.
“That sounds more like a reason to curse me,” I whispered back.
Her chuckle was little more than a sigh. “This is the hedron I’m holding. And I’m grateful you cast yourself into my carriage.”
I let her go just as Lisel stepped up.
“I’m with Elaf’s crew,” she said. “My lady…”
“Fight, and live. Do not fail me in this.” Despite the harsh words, Dyania framed the tall hartier’s face with both hands and pulled her down to press a kiss to her brow. “Come to me when it’s over.”
Lisel was swept into the group of fighters marching toward the wreckage of the palace doors.
She did not look back.
“My lady.” The humble bid was so quiet I almost didn’t recognize Imbril. “I’ve not Lisel’s strength or reach, but I will stand with you and the Chosen Ones to ignite the runes.” He bowed his head, giving us a glimpse of the dark roots of his hair outgrowing the haloric bleached white. “The rest of the haloria went with Numinlor Berindo to Maru Deep. I wish…” His gaze slid to me. “No, I do not wish.” He straightened. “May I walk this path with you, light or dark?”
She held out her hand. “Come then, my friend. Let us cast our auras—light or dark, as you say—against the horde.”
Then they too were gone with the rest of the Chosen brought to the High Keep for a Devouring only to be pardoned from that macabre fate…and now choosing for themselves.
I had no more excuses not to join Aric, peevish though I still was. I couldn’t refuse either, not when I’d given them this plan.
It’s not wise to take offerings from the Dragon Prince.
So Dyania had told me at the start. But what was the risk to the Dragon Prince, taking anything from a street-sneak like me?
He stood unmoving, watching me come. As if he still held the moral high ground after what he’d done to me.
I marched right up to the tips of his boots, which had once been very fine and now were markedly less so. I glared up at him. “We go quiet and quick,” I said. “Follow me.”
As we left the bailey to find the hidden door to the haloric hall, the distant shriek of demons followed us too.
“The battle is engaged,” Aric said. “Body and aura, they fight.”
Even when we left that horrendous sound behind, the silence was more disturbing. We passed the dawn well, a place meant for the worship of the amaranthine light, now clogged with corpses, human and demon both, fallen together.
Averting my gaze, I swallowed hard. Body and aura, they died.
Once past the walls, we circled back along the mountainside. I’d only been this way once, and during daylight at that, but my life-honed skills of skulking and noticing did not fail me. Aric let out a hard breath when I pointed out the disguised portal.
For a moment, I almost doubted myself as I examined the seal since I had accidentally locked myself out when I left. If I’d brought us this far for nothing…
And to my grim amusement, I discovered that the auric damage that had cracked the palace walls within had shifted the stones here enough to give us a way back. With all our fingers—and minus one of my fingernails—we pried the doorway ajar.
From this angle, the holy white spire was just a black hole.
“Feinan,” Aric started.
Whatever he said next, I didn’t hear it as I left him behind and plunged into the dark.