ARWEN
WE HURTLED FROM THE MONSTER like arrows through a thick veil of mist. Practically blind, utterly senseless, but quick. Deadly quick.
Wyn dove behind something before I could see what, and yanked me after him. We landed beneath a jagged, rough-hewn boulder just as a raging shriek rent through the cavern.
No, not a cavern. A den. One of the monster lairs.
“Is this not an exit?” I managed around my racing breaths. Wyn shook his head. “I have no idea.”
But that light…that light was coming from somewhere.
The feathered creature spread its hunched, heavy wings and roared, fanning our faces with the pungent scent of rotten meat. Through the darkness, I could just make out the tips of each giant, plumy appendage meeting either stone wall with ease—brushing, stooping against the ceiling. This creature, whatever it was, had even more power, even more strength than could be used in this dank, dripping den.
Those claws—stemming from long skeletal arms, hidden underneath the demonic wings—stained red from tearing into years’ worth of prey, prowled toward us, talons scraping across the dirt. Despite the owllike wings and legs, those rippling feathers, and angled, pointed ears, the creature’s face was…eerily human. Or, humanlike. A flat, gray, misshapen nose. Bony, low
cheekbones that nearly jutted into a lipless maw. And when it shrieked— rows of teeth. Not fangs, but teeth—dozens and dozens of them.
And yet it was those narrow blinking eyes that told me what the behemoth goblin bird was. Eyes I’d seen go around before a rubber ball or drift shut at the foot of Kane’s bed. I knew what we beheld even before Wyn uttered, “It’s a strix.”
Not quite like Acorn. Far larger, far more angry…
And this strix appeared to have been driven completely mad.
We scrambled back when it lunged, narrowly avoiding those treacherous claws. The close call offered me a glimpse of the strix’s eyes. Not brown and warm like Acorn’s, but milky white, with pale, gray scars over thin eyelids. Scarring that carried across the bridge of the strix’s nose and protruding brow, where no plumage grew at all.
This strix was blind.
It wrenched open its bestial mouth and roared, spit and flecks of whatever rancid meal it had last eaten flying toward us. Wyn leveled his hands at the strix, soft, velvety lighte brimming in his palms.
“No,” I hissed, seizing his arms in my own.
Confusion rippled from his hazel eyes, which I could only make out due to the light spilling in from the other side of the rocky lair. Not moonlight, but yellow city lights. The exit Wyn had spoken of. I could almost hear the cries of citizens, likely witnessing their grand palace swallowed up in flame.
“They’re not violent creatures,” I told Wyn. “Not unless they have to be. This one’s been blinded. It’s afraid.” If I didn’t despise Lazarus for all he’d done to me, to Kane, to his people—the blinding of this innocent creature would have cinched it for me.
With another shriek, the strix snapped those teeth not an inch from my face. Wyn and I dove backward, and watched the beast’s milky, scarred eyes whir. The strix rammed into the wall where we’d just been and howled so loud the rock behind me shuddered.
Wyn and I scuttled over each other to stand. My guard frowned up at the disoriented beast. “We cannot let it kill us out of empathy.”
“I’m not suggesting that,” I breathed. “But we can get to the other side without harming it.”
I’d been wrong. It wasn’t a lair, but a cell. That corridor—far too small and too winding for the creature to get through, especially without its sight. But not so small that the smell of a city—chimney smoke and sulfur and meat roasting—couldn’t waft through. Torture for this strix, unchained here but unable to reach the freedom it smelled and heard each day and night. Such utter cruelty.
I didn’t wait for Wyn to agree. I sprinted across the puddles of what I knew from the scent were years of waste. Hurtling, dodging the flaps and claws—
But Wyn was not fast enough behind me.
The strix tackled him, leveling the guard to the ground with a garbled grunt and driving those claws into the arm Wyn raised to block the blow.
Horror blurred my vision into spots.
Wyn blasted the creature back with his swirling violet lighte. I raced for him, bracing my hands on his wet, sticky arm and feeling the skin there stitch back together. The glow from my lighte lit the entire cave.
Finally, some of my power had returned. Maybe just enough to—
The strix flew toward us with that horrible, many-toothed smile. It was the smell. The metallic smell of Fae power. The creature dove for us.
This time, though, I ran toward the feathered beast. I wasn’t sure if enough power had returned to me, but I had no other ideas. I’d dig deep and see what I could mine…Aiming for one of those wings, I tried to grasp on to the feathers, dodging the claws—
But the strix must have sensed my footfalls or heard my racing breaths, and it clawed through my dress and sent me flying backward into cold, hard stone.
“What was that?” Wyn screamed, rushing to my side. “I was wrong,” I gasped on an inhale.
“You think?” Wyn spit blood onto the ground, his sweaty, dark brows highlighted by faint city lights.
“Its other senses are heightened.” The strix shrieked again and debris rained down above us. “Do you think you can blast the passage open wider with your lighte?”
“Yes, but—”
“And can you distract the beast? I think I can climb its wings.” “Why would you do that?”
I gritted my teeth and pushed myself to stand. “I have an idea.”
“An idea that will result in our dismemberment?” Wyn’s voice was edging on hysterical.
I considered his question, backing up as the strix prowled closer, claws outstretched. “I hope not.”
Wyn sighed and leveled his gaze at the beast. “Hurry.”
I didn’t give the kingsguard a chance to change his mind as I hurtled for the other side of the cavern. That exit, that corridor illuminated with streetlight.
“Here, birdy!” Wyn called out to the blind creature, his voice echoing against the cavern walls as he rapped his fists against them. “Over here!”
Another deafening shriek. That howl so violent it shook the bones beneath my skin. The strix took off after him, flapping wings that couldn’t move quite well enough in the space, shuffling those deadly, clawed feet.
And I waited.
Waited, as my heart thundered in my ears, unable to inhale a single breath. Until the creature flung its wing out, scrambling toward Wyn with those terrifyingly gangly arms.
I dove, latching on to the feathered, owllike wing, holding tight as it swung me this way and that. I climbed, fingers digging through the plumes until I sat atop the howling beast. And as it thrashed and screeched, I held my hands across the strix’s dry, empty eyes and pushed any lighte I had left through my fingertips.
The creature balked and stumbled backward, its spindly arm swinging up to swat at me and lash a single razor-sharp claw across my midsection, ripping me open.
Even as pain exploded in me—I held on to the creature’s eyes through clenched teeth and felt my lighte bloom behind its eyelids.
This was what my power had always been for. Not destruction. Not fear. My lighte glowed and I swore I heard the sharp intake of Wyn’s shocked breath before the creature bucked once more and I toppled to the ground in
a heap.
And then… Silence.
Wyn’s hurried footfalls sounded behind me. He fell to the ground and held a hand to my stomach, repeating over and over that he never should have listened to me. That we should have killed the beast when we had the chance.
But all I could hear was the silence. The sound of a strix that I knew— knew in my very soul—was blinking eyes open to see for the first time in who knew how long. That silence, that freedom continued to echo through my ears as Wyn scooped me into his arms. “Oh, Gods above,” he murmured.
I knew what he meant, even as my eyes rolled back in my head. And try as I might, the more I pressed my own palms to the weeping tear in my stomach—there was no healing power left. Any meager lighte that had regenerated since I blew the receptacle had been used on the strix.
Unlike the Fae king, by all accounts, I was not immortal. My life was not tethered to the Blade of the Sun by prophecy, like his. And while full- blooded Fae lived longer than any other beings, and my healing abilities had gotten me out of more close calls than I could count, there were some injuries and ailments that took their toll faster than any Fae could heal.
I was half-aware of Wyn’s flash of violet lighte. There was a mighty rumble and the sound of boulders groaning as he split the rocky corridor open. Once it settled, he carried me through the winding corridor until warm fog kissed my face and ashy, mild air funneled in through my nose.
And over the sound of my own labored breathing, my own teeth chattering—
Feathered wings flapping.
We peered up and witnessed the strix, with its newfound sight, soar into the muggy night sky, high above those smog-tinged clouds. Bright, jubilant shrieking echoed from its lungs.
“He’s free,” I told Wyn.
“It’s a she,” he said with a grunt. When I peeled my eyes open, Wyn’s nose was bleeding down onto his lips.
I squeezed my eyes shut to quell the nausea. Not squeamish.
I wasn’t squeamish. I was…dying.
That dragon’s roar I’d heard in the atrium ripped through the cold night air once again. A roar of fury and anguish and pure night-black power. Rising up into the sky.
The rush of relief bowed my heart inside my chest. Such a beautiful, harrowing roar. The roar of a conqueror, the roar of a king. A grin that tasted of blood split my face.
Not Lazarus.
That was my dragon. Tears burned my eyes.
Go, Kane. Do not come back.
“I don’t think he can hear you,” Wyn grunted before we stumbled backward.
The ground shook as Kane landed before us, and my eyes cracked open wide to behold the enormous night-black creature—blade-sharp, glittering talons, scaled obsidian wings, hooded silver eyes that gleamed like a harvest moon as he cocked his enormous head at us, nostrils flaring. Horrendous, spectacular, beauty and nightmares incarnate…
Guards in that thick layered armor were already hurtling toward him. They’d been waiting at the perimeters for me. The gilded arsonist who’d set their capital ablaze.
Fools, I thought. They were fools with their weapons raised high into the air—
Lighte flew out of their crossbows and swords and my dragon reared up on hind legs and spread his marvelous wings wide. He bellowed out with each painful blow, blocking us from the assault.
But blackness spotted across my vision until all I could see was the darkness and all I could feel were Wyn’s jagged, desperate inhales and his grunt as he deposited me onto something cool and textured. A small, pathetic noise split from me at the touch. My hands grasped aimlessly for Kane’s familiar scales.
Those guards hastened toward us, roaring. Their heavy footfalls drawing closer and closer—
Wyn’s pleading cries seized my stomach as he begged Kane to get me help.
With strength I didn’t know I still had, I forced my hands tightly around Kane’s back just in time for my stomach to hollow out at the sight below. We shot into the air, past the swarm of silver guards who converged on Wyn, and up into the night-dark sky.
