Copper-colored hair.
Annoyingly perfect mouth.
Heart-shaped birthmark on his chin. It was definitely Carrion.
Kingfisher took one look at him and shrugged. “I tracked your bloodline. It led me right to him. I asked him who he was. He said he was Hayden Fane. Ergo, I brought you Hayden Fane.”
“Were you pinning him against a wall and holding a sword to his throat when you asked him?” I demanded.
“No. I had him in a headlock. I hadn’t even drawn the sword. Not then, anyway.”
“No wonder he lied to you about who he was! He probably thought you were a debt collector or one of Madra’s men!”
“Debt collector?” Fisher fumed. “Look. Let me ask you something. Do you recall where the gate is in Zilvaren?”
“In Madra’s palace.”
“Correct. And what do you think was there waiting for me when I stepped out of that silver?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fifty trained guardians and a unit of archers armed with iron-tipped arrows. I had to fight my way out of there, cross that scorched, disease- ridden shithole you’re so desperate to get back to, find your brother, then get back across the city, back into Madra’s palace, back into that cursed hall,
and then back into the quicksilver in under an hour. I did not have time to interview the prick! Now, will this one do or not?”
“No! He will not! Our deal—”
“Our deal stands,” Kingfisher snapped, stooping to pick up Carrion. He threw the lifeless black-market trader over his shoulder like he weighed nothing. Fisher glared at me with the intensity of a thousand suns. “I hate that fucking place, but I went there for you. I got stabbed seven times in various parts of my body. For you. This prick said he was Hayden. His blood said he was Hayden. I did what I said I was going to do. Now move. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“I’m not going back to my rooms—”
“We’re not going back to your rooms. First, I’m finding a healer. Then I’m going to find Ren, and then we’re getting the fuck out of here.”
 |
Fisher had spent the better part of his youth in the Winter Palace. He knew the place like the back of his hand. He opened concealed doorways and stomped along hidden passageways, charging up a ridiculous number of stairs, ignoring me when I pleaded for him to slow down. I wanted to dig my heels in and refuse to move, but my body wouldn’t listen. He told me to follow, and follow I did, even though my heart was pumping like a piston, and I felt like I would pass out any moment. I didn’t have a choice. Onyx squealed, doing backflips in the bag the whole time, inconsolable.
Finally, Fisher stopped after what I guessed was twenty-three flights of stairs, and dumped Carrion down onto the cold stone at my feet. “Stay here. Wait for me until I get back. Do not make a sound.”
I unleashed a string of foul curse words at him, only they didn’t make it past my lips. As he’d commanded, I didn’t make a sound. What the hell had he done to me? Why was my body not my own?
I seethed as I waited. In my head, I screamed at Carrion to wake up and do something about this, but it transpired that the smuggler was just as infuriating when he was unconscious as he was while he was awake. The idiot didn’t stir once.
An hour passed, and Onyx grew bored and fell asleep. When Fisher reappeared in the hidden passageway, the tears in his shirt were gone, as
was all of the blood he’d been covered in. Fixed up, good as new, he carried something long and thin under his arm, wrapped in what looked like a curtain.
“I couldn’t find Ren. I left him a note,” he informed me, picking up Carrion. With no further preamble, he set off back down the stairs.
I said nothing.
I didn’t move a muscle.
He only realized I wasn’t following him once he’d turned the corner and disappeared from view. “Come on, Little Osha!” he called. “Keep up. You can speak again, but no complaining.”
I descended the stairs, my temper white-hot and brilliant as I scowled at the back of Fisher’s head.
Down forever we went. I was dizzy, and my thighs were burning when he led me out of the palace, across a covered courtyard, and into a dark, drafty building with wide doors open at both ends. On either side of us, stalls stretched off to the left and the right. Over some of the stall doors, huge horses tossed their heads, whinnying, startled by our sudden appearance.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
Kingfisher dumped Carrion onto the wet stable floor and stepped over his body, marching off toward an open door to our right that led, not to a stall, but to a feed store and tack room.
“Let me guess. You don’t like horses?” he said.
“No, I don’t like horses. Horses don’t like me. We mutually dislike each other.”
Fisher hefted a saddle down from a rack on the wall and barged passed me, carrying it out of the tack room. “You’re gonna have to get over it.”
I followed him, stepping over Carrion as Kingfisher entered one of the stalls. “It doesn’t work like that! I can’t just get over it!”
“Sure you can. Keep your ass in the saddle. Keep your mouth shut. It’s easy.”
“Fisher!”
The male placed the saddle he was carrying carefully over a monstrous black horse’s back, working quickly to fasten the girth. “This isn’t a negotiation. You made a blood oath, human. You’re bound by it, which means you’re coming with me.”
“I swore I’d help the Yvelian Fae figure out how to use the quicksilver
—”
He wagged a finger at me. “Think again. What did I say to you when I
asked you if you agreed to the pact?”
“You said you’d go and get my brother, and in return, I would help create relics for Yvelia!”
Kingfisher pushed passed me, out of the stall, heading back to the tack room. “I said, verbatim, ‘I go, and I try to get your brother. You help me and assist me in any way I ask you to, and you do as you’re told. You agree to this pact?‘ to which you replied, “Yes, gods, I agree! Just get on with it!”
“But we both know what I meant! I didn’t mean that I’d go traipsing off into the unknown with you in the middle of the night!”
“Unless you’re paying very close attention, what you mean to agree to and what you actually agree to are often two very different things in Fae, Little Osha. You agreed to help me and assist me in any way I asked you to, and that you’d do as you were told. You sealed that deal with blood. Now, I’m telling you to find a horse and saddle it up as quickly as you can, before my psychotic stepfather catches a whiff of what we’re up to and murders us where we stand.”
“You fucking tricked me!”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I taught you a valuable lesson that will serve you well for the rest of your very short human life in this realm. Always pay attention to the fine print. The devil’s in the details. Now go.”
|
Since I’d woken up in Yvelia, I’d only seen the world outside through windows. A part of me had suspected the town below the palace and the forest stretching off to the mountains beyond were illusions.
They were not.
My mind broke a little when Kingfisher ordered me out of the barn. At first, leading the horse he’d mounted for me outside, I was mostly concerned about the animal’s big, square teeth, but then I looked up, craning my head back to look up into the vast darkness, and I experienced the kiss
of snow against my cheeks for the first time. Really experienced it. Seeing it from inside had been one thing, but being outside…
My whole life had been consumed by the need for water. I’d seen people fight for a mouthful of it. Die from the lack of it. Claw each other bloody, and lie, and betray, and steal for it. A dire thirst permeated Zilvaren. That thirst was the city’s heartbeat. No matter who you were or where you went, you felt the rhythm of that heartbeat like a hammer striking an anvil. It lived inside your blood. The suns beat down so hot that the ground beneath your feet turned to liquid glass, and your body grew weaker with every breath you took. From the moment you woke up until the second you fell asleep each night, you were on a clock, and that clock was ticking.
Water. Water. Water. Water.
You had to be willing to die for it to survive. In Yvelia, it just fluttered down from the sky. I wanted to scream.
Briefly, the thick layer of clouds overhead broke, and I caught a glimpse of the midnight sky beyond: a handful of brilliant white lights flickered in the black. I didn’t want to ask, but the sight had stolen my breath. I needed to know. “What are they?” I whispered.
Fisher moved around his horse, looking up at the sky, too. “Stars,” he answered stiffly. “There are billions of them. More than any mind can comprehend. Suns, like the two that hang in Zilvaren’s sky.”
“So far away, though.” My voice conveyed my awe.
“The quicksilver closes the gap. With it, we can travel to the realms that orbit those stars.” He said it so simply. As if he hadn’t just told me that Zilvaren wasn’t hidden through some mystical door somewhere. My home was up there. Amongst the stars. I gaped at the pinpricks of twinkling light, wondering if any of them were my suns. The clouds crowded in again, blotting out the sky, and my chest ached, full of grief.
“Get on,” Kingfisher commanded, nodding at my horse. He was a dark- haired wraith, made of shadows, the flash of his pale hands and face the only part of him I could make out as he fixed two large bags to his own horse’s saddle.
“We can’t leave. We need to wait for Ren.” My words were lost in a cloud of fog. Kingfisher came around his horse, and the beast shifted its weight, raising its back leg to kick. It was a giant, its coat black as sin, and had a look of madness in its eyes that could almost rival Kingfisher’s. When Fisher growled in irritation, the horse chuffed and blew out a breath, tossing its head, apparently rethinking the kick.
“He’ll catch up with us down the road. We have a meeting place for situations like this. Now are you getting on the horse, or am I putting you on the horse?”
“It’s snowing. I’m going to freeze to death.”
I hadn’t noticed the thick bundle of material in his gloved hands. Kingfisher’s eyes gleamed as he shoved the black cloak at me, his nostrils flaring. “It’s heavy. Easier to put on once you’re up there, but since you’re so stubborn and refuse to follow orders—”
“Soldiers follow orders. I am not a soldier.”
“Believe me, I’m well aware of that. Here. Let me help you.”
I didn’t want his help, but my hands were already numb from the cold, and the massive piece of material he handed me seemed impossible to figure out. Fisher had it sorted in moments and draped the cloak over my shoulders. It was stiff and waxy on the outside, lined with soft, silky fur on the inside. The warmth enveloped me instantly, banishing the bitter chill, though my hands and face still suffered in the cold.
I yelped as Kingfisher gripped my waist and hoisted me into the saddle of my horse. The chestnut-colored beast, smaller than the others, turned its head to try and bite me as I settled into the seat.
“Bring your leg forward,” Fisher commanded.
Arguing with him was pointless. His mind was set—we were leaving the palace tonight, and nothing would change that. I wanted to refuse just to spite him, but my body ached to comply. I wanted to move my leg forward for him. I couldn’t stop myself.
Fisher lifted the saddle flap and tightened the girth. Then he secured the long, narrow bundle he’d returned from the healers with beneath the flap, making sure it was secure. “Don’t touch this. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Leg back,” he ordered, and I obeyed.
Snow drifted down, landing in his thick hair, dusting his eyelashes and the tops of his shoulders. “Comfortable?” he asked.
“No.”
“Excellent. Don’t yank on the reins. Aida’s a good girl. She’ll follow without any input from you, so just let her be.”
Aida probably wasn’t a good girl. She was probably a devil in disguise, waiting for the first chance to throw me off, but I held the reins loosely, obeying Fisher without complaint. “Wait! Where’s my bag?” I twisted in the saddle, searching for it.
“I’ve got plenty of food and water for both of us. You don’t need it.”
“I don’t care about the food and water. I care about Onyx!”
“What’s an Onyx?”
“Just give me the bag, Fisher.” If he fought me on this, I’d raise hell. Luckily, the bastard just sighed and went back into the barn. He returned a moment later with my bag.
“The second that rodent becomes a problem, I’m skinning it,” he said, handing the bag up to me.
“He’s not a rodent. If anything, he’s a dog.” I opened the bag to check that Kingfisher hadn’t replaced Onyx with a rock or something, but the little fox poked his head out, ears twitching as he took in our surroundings, his pink tongue lolling.
“It should run beside us,” Fisher grumbled, mounting his own horse. “It doesn’t need carrying.”
“He is a he, not an it. And no, he can’t run beside us. He’ll get cold.”
“He,” Kingfisher said, dripping disdain, “is a wild animal, and this is his natural habitat. Why do you think he has all that thick, white fur?”
He was right about that. Onyx was a creature of Yvelia, clearly built for this environment. But when I looked down at him, he wriggled back into the bag, leaving only his wet little nose visible. He seemed perfectly content where he was.
“How about you focus on your cargo instead of mine?” I snapped at Fisher. “Your passenger’s going to give you all kinds of trouble when he wakes up.”
Carrion was tied to the back of Fisher’s horse, still unconscious. His arms hung limply, and his fiery red hair was already thick with snow. There was no way he was comfortable. He was going to be sore when he woke up, and I knew firsthand just how irritable Carrion Swift could get without a good night’s sleep.
Kingfisher cast a blank look at him. “You’re sure he’s not your brother.” “I think I know what my own brother looks like, don’t you?”
The look Fisher sent my way indicated that he wasn’t so sure how to react to that question. “Then, at the risk of repeating myself for the eleven hundredth time, we should leave him here. If he’s not your brother, then—”
“We are not leaving him here. Belikon will kill him the moment he realizes you’ve kidnapped me.”
“It’s not kidnapping if you come willingly,” Kingfisher said in a calculating tone.
“I’m not doing any of this willingly! I want to go home!”
He shrugged as he swung himself into the saddle. “And yet you’re coming to help me end a war, aren’t you. What more noble cause could there be? Congratulations on achieving fucking sainthood.”
