Lingering high above the broken branches of the sacred nest, Cassi watched Lyana leave, unsure if her queen had even noticed her presence. She and Rafe had been consumed by each other, as they always seemed to be, the rest of the world fading whenever they were close.
Maybe there was a reason for that.
She thinks I’m the King Born in Fire.
His words crashed across Cassi’s mind like a boulder through glass, shattering her every belief, leaving nothing but broken shards behind. He’d been speaking of her mother, Captain Rokaro. It explained so much. Why she’d turned her back on Malek to ferret Rafe from Da’Kin in the dead of night. Why she’d been avoiding Cassi for weeks. Why she’d risked so much for a man who wasn’t even blood.
She must believe it.
Cassi knew her mother. She wouldn’t have told Rafe unless she thought it was true, not when it was obvious he’d tell Lyana and both of them would hope beyond all else for it to be real.
And I don’t think she’s the only one.
Malek knew or at least suspected. He’d been crazed the past few weeks, manic even, not like himself, losing his composure and letting his emotions take him. Cassi had thought Lyana’s absence had been his undoing, but this was a far more convincing reason. Everything he’d ever done, every order he’d ever given, every ruthless mission he’d ever carried out had been in the name of saving the world. He believed without a doubt he was the King Born in Fire. It was his foundation. His rock. The role upon which he’d built his entire life.
And now, maybe, he’d been wrong.
I have to know.
Cassi shot out of the sacred nest, up and into the misty sky, her spirit cutting through the fog with haste. She’d told herself she wouldn’t be the first to break, not this time, but she had to know, and one look into Malek’s eyes would tell her the truth. It was time to face him. It was time to dive inside his dreams and turn his waking world to a nightmare.
Last she’d seen him, he’d been on his ship in the middle of the sea—but as she followed the tug of his soul, she found herself back above the familiar streets of Da’Kin, making for the stony castle in the center of the city. He was asleep when she soared into his bedchamber, his face cast in shadow. Shock tore through her as she neared. If not for the familiar scent of his spirit, he’d be unrecognizable.
Bruises marred his pale skin. Bloody red lines were carved across his face. One of his eyes was completely swollen shut, and his lower lip was twice the normal size. And that was just his face. Buried beneath clothes and sheets, the rest of him, she had to imagine, looked the same. He’d been beaten—but how? He was an aethi’kine. He was untouchable. No one could even get close.
No one except Rafe.
Cassi retreated as the realization burned through her. In all the time spent focusing on freeing Elias, it seemed she’d missed a lot. That was why Malek had been out to sea. That was why her mother had finally fled to the House of Peace.
Malek had gone after Rafe…and he’d lost.
Was that proof enough?
No, she thought. Lyana deserves the truth. The world deserves the truth. And I can uncover the truth. All I need to do is face him.
Determined and unafraid, Cassi dove into his dream. She didn’t know what propelled her, but as the scene came together, they were standing on the outskirts of the House of Whispers. Howling winds whipped over the edge of the isle, riffling through the forest. Her clothes were moist and sticky, her hands stained red. His cheeks held a spattering of freckles and his skin shone golden in the sunlight. They were back in the place where they’d last faced off, in the moment right before he’d stolen her sky.
Maybe it was Cassi’s way of trying to change her past.
Maybe it was just a message—this time, don’t back down.
“Kasiandra.”
He addressed her with his arms crossed, smug as always, as though they weren’t fully aware that outside this dream his body and spirit were broken. Cassi didn’t give him time to say anything else. She marched across the distance between them until their noses almost touched and his midnight eyes were all she could see, giving him no space to hide.
“Is Rafe the King Born in Fire?”
Malek flinched. His walls crumbled, revealing the terrified, lonely man underneath the royal title. It was all she needed to see to know the truth. A sound escaped her lips, half a gasp, half a laugh, as she stepped back, knocked off balance by the revelation. “He is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Malek snapped, trying to recover, but it was too late.
“He is,” she repeated, voice airy with shock. “Rafe is the King Born in Fire.”
“Kasiandra—”
She snapped her attention back to him, a sneer pulling at her lips. “How could you try to hide this, Malek? How could you try to cover this up?”
“It’s not—”
The smack of her palm against his cheek rang through the forest. A red imprint stained his sun-kissed skin, lingering as he lifted his fingers to the spot, his eyes wide.
“You who ordered me to cut off his wings, who ordered me to kill a man, who let countless people suffer and die all in the name of saving the world—you knew this, and kept it to yourself? Why? Because you might not be the hero of the story anymore?” She spat at his feet, her anger like a dragon unleashed, making her want to spew flames across the sky. “I followed you because I thought you would do anything to save the world. I believed in you. I trusted you. I gave you everything—”
“Not everything,” he cut in, matching her fury with his own. “If you’d given me everything, if you’d done what I said, Lyana would be with me right now.”
“To what? Stand by your side as you watched the world burn?”
He opened his mouth, the veins in his neck thick and pulsing. No sound came out because he had nothing. No excuse. No explanation. His words were as empty as his soul.
“You’re a fraud,” she seethed. “You’ve spent your entire life claiming you want to save the world, and now, when you have information that might do that very thing, you throw a tantrum like a scared little boy whose favorite toy got stolen away. Well, now I know the truth, Malek. I’m going to tell Lyana. And for once in my life, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Kasiandra.”
He dug his fingers into her forearm, holding her as a golden shimmer rose to his skin, seeping into the air. But this was her dream, and his magic held no power here.
“Goodbye, Malek. Good riddance.”
Cassi tore out of his mind, leaving him sputtering on his bed as he bolted awake, a groan escaping his lips as his body no doubt cried out in pain.
“Kasiandra,” he wheezed. “Kasiandra!”
Not pausing to glance behind, she fled into the fog, only one thought in her mind.
Lyana.
Lyana.
Lyana.
The queen was still in the House of Paradise. Cassi found her kneeling over an injured priest, his green robes stained red with blood as he shivered in her arms. The broken end of a severed branch protruded from his leg.
“Shh,” Lyana whispered as she pressed her palms to the man’s chest, letting her magic do its work before she removed the blockage from the wound. “Shh. I’m here. The gods are here. They’re with us. They never left.”
His trembling eased.
In that brief moment of relief, she yanked the branch out. He screamed, the sound ripping through the forest and echoing across the trees. Cassi sank lower as golden light filled the air, blindingly bright against the gloomy midnight fog. The man passed out, going limp in Lyana’s arms even as she fought to heal him.
“Not now, Cassi,” her queen finally said, sparing a glance in her direction. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
She felt for the priest, for the injured, she really did, but this was too important to wait. Shooting like an arrow across a battlefield, Cassi flung herself into Lyana’s mind, a single demand blaring so loudly from her spirit she had no doubt her queen would hear.
Now!
Magic dug into her soul and tossed her away. Lyana frowned and glared toward where her spirit hovered in the sky.
“Not now,” she repeated, a tone Cassi recognized from so many years of being bossed around by a princess who had more stubbornness than sense. There would be no getting through to her tonight, not while the injured still cried out for help.
Spirit groaning, Cassi spun toward the next closest soul and shot across the forest toward Rafe. He sat in the sacred nest, his eyes closed and his breath even, but he wasn’t sleeping. The flames on his wings simmered. She tried to sink into his thoughts, to take control, but his mind was like steel, impossible to penetrate. His focus was so acute there was no way to break through. He was speaking to the dragons, she realized upon sensing the presence of something else inside his head, something foreign.
This was hopeless.
Xander, then.
Cassi changed tactics. That’s where Lyana said she would go next. If Cassi couldn’t give her queen the message, or her new king, then telling Xander was the next best thing.
Magic carrying her faster than wings ever could, Cassi catapulted through the sky, a weapon unleashed as she broke through the fog and into the clear expanse of the world above. Within moments, she was racing above the House of Song toward the raven camp. The night was silent, hardly any movement between the tents erected across the clearing, the only light the silvery glow of the moon.
Yes, she thought. Yes.
Yet when she burst into the royal tent, Xander was nowhere to be found, not in the bed, not on the floor, not even huddled over his desk. She followed the trail of his spirit back into the woods, seeing the subtle orange glow of firelight long before she saw him. Xander stood with ten others in whispered conversation, Helen and Lyana’s small army listening raptly as he told them of the House of Paradise’s fall. Trapped in her spirit form, Cassi cursed—a silent thing no one else could hear.
Gods alive! Doesn’t anyone sleep anymore?
The ship. The crew. They were her last hope. Surely at least one of them would be dreaming. There were nearly a dozen mages in the group. All she needed was one measly soul to bear witness to her confession. One person, and she’d save the world.
Come on, Cassi urged as she raced across the sky. Come on.
When she burst through the crystal walls of the raven guest quarters, relief surged through her. Captain Rokaro lay in bed, a caramel wing arched back as if in flight, her eyes closed in slumber. After weeks of evasion, her mother was finally there waiting, as though somehow she’d known that tonight of all nights her daughter would need her.
Cassi raced across the room, reached out with her magic, and—
She froze.
Awareness burned at the edges of her soul, like the dawning of a new day. Somewhere far away, water splashed cold and damp across her cheek. Screaming filled her ears, words she couldn’t quite make out. Pain flared, the sting of nerves firing up after a long, corpse-like absence of life.
He healed me.
No. No. No!
That bastard healed me.
Cassi reached for her mother, clawing at the air with her magic, uselessly trying to grab hold of the captain’s mind. As if she were a puppet on a string, her master pulled and she had no choice but to follow. Her spirit slipped back and back and back, no matter how she fought to move forward, until she oozed through crystal and into the frigid air of the House of Peace.
No!
The next thing she knew, she was back in Da’Kin, groaning on a wet floor as her body spasmed, her mind sputtering awake despite her magic as another icy blast of liquid shocked her skin.
“Leave her alone!” Elias shouted, his voice raw, as though he’d been screaming for a while. “Don’t hurt her!”
Cassi blinked, the world a blur through eyes unused to seeing. A warm finger trailed a path down her cheek, making her wince. She knew who it was before he even spoke.
“Welcome back, Kasiandra,” Malek crooned, the sinister sound eliciting a shiver. “Welcome home.”
Cassi tried to yell, to shout, to scream, but her protests came out as garbled sounds, her vocal cords weak from little use, her body and mind slow to reconnect after such a long separation.
Malek stood, the heat of his skin retreating as the shadowy outline of his face disappeared. His boots clicked loudly against the stone as he walked away.
“Keep her awake,” he ordered, his voice growing softer with the added distance. “Whatever you have to do, for however long it takes, don’t you dare let this prisoner fall asleep.”