Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 11

  {Why? You are too powerful to be so weak.}

  And you have seen too much to think so small. I am giving you the gift you want the most.

  The soldiers now knew we were here. They were approaching.

  “Tisaanah…” Eslyn muttered, uneasy.

  I lifted my hands. Let the magic flow, and build, and build — harnessed from Reshaye’s rage.

  If you wish to be remembered, I whispered, why would we destroy our audience? You say you want to be powerful. That is what I want, too. How does one gain power?

  {By wielding it.} Magic flared as Reshaye threw itself against my thoughts, nearly shaking my control, but I held it back.

  By becoming a god, I murmured. And letting them live to become believers.

  Esmaris’s voice unfurled in my mind like smoke: Dead men don’t remember your name.

  The soldiers were gaining on us.

  Let us show them everything we can do, Reshaye. Let us write a story.

  And I surged forward, with everything that I had, every scrap of magic, every piece of power. I poured all of it out, into the ground, into the stone, into the air. Crimson butterflies swelled around me.

  At first, I thought it wouldn’t be enough. I needed Reshaye. It hesitated, angered by my defiance and confused by my goals. But then, it watched as the soldiers faltered.

  Do you see? I whispered. See the way they look at us?

  Not like a monster. Like a god.

  And that was enough. Reshaye seized control, pouring its magic into mine with the kind of intensity that scrambled my insides. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. Could barely even see, through the blinding light that now surrounded me.

  With a powerful burst of wind, I forced the soldiers back, back, back through the ravine.

  And then I pressed my palms to the earth and for the first time I could feel it speaking to me, too — could feel my magic flowing into it.

  Magic surged. The stone cracked.

  Bloody butterflies spilled into the sky, so thick they dyed the sun scarlet.

  Now, Reshaye, I commanded, and Reshaye obeyed.

  Just as Zeryth had ordered, I brought the cliffs down.

  When the smoke cleared, the soldiers would have seen the remnants of what was once the bluffs now reduced to rubble, blocking them from their path.

  And they would have seen me — standing there with Il’Sahaj raised and blood-red wings spilling from my back, shielding the city.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aefe

  It had been more than five hundred years, long before I was born, since the Sidnee and the Wyshraj met amicably. More than that since we had opened our doors and let any of them, even a single representative, within the Pales.

  My family and the Blades all stood at one of the highest and largest balconies in the Pales, a wide lip edged with silver that opened from the cliff face. The view from up here was famously beautiful and expansive. There was the forest, then the swamps, and far, far in the distance — only on a clear day — the faintest outlines of the tallest peaks in the House of Stone. Now, all of it was doused in the bloody red of sunrise.

  My father, mother, and sister were silhouetted against that sky, and I could not help but appreciate how beautiful the three of them looked. Perfect as a painting.

  We heard them before we saw them. It sounded like a breeze through the trees: shshshshshsh.

  And yet, the sky was clear.

  The sound grew louder. The breeze became a gust, my cape yanking at my throat, my mother’s long black hair flaring like crows’ wings. My sister grabbed onto her diadem to keep it from blowing away. My hand found the hilt of my sword.

  SHSHSHSHSHSHSH.

  All at once, they were everywhere.

  Where there was once blue sky, there was now a moving mass of wings flying up from beneath the balcony. They moved so fast and in such perfect unison that for one moment they looked like a single massive creature, backlit in shadow and splashed with red sunrise.

  And when they dove, they became smears of feathers and color — the white of doves and blacks of ravens and yellows of delicate finches. Visible only briefly before a graceful cloud of rolling fog enveloped them, and when it dissolved, it revealed Fey bodies preparing to land on the balcony.

  Fey bodies, with outstretched, beautiful wings.

  “Mathira,” I whispered, and Siobhan promptly shushed me.

  I couldn’t help it. Look at them.

  They landed in perfectly synchronous rows, fair fabrics rippling around them. The last two to land were a man and a woman, both with the same shade of champagne blonde hair and particularly ornate clothing. Then, they parted and bowed.

  My father, to my surprise, followed their lead. And as strange of a sight that was, we followed him without hesitation. I lifted my head just enough to watch her arrive: Shadya, the Queen of the House of Wayward Winds. Her wings were pure white, stark against her long red curls. A crown of gold peaks sat upon her head.

  She surveyed us, her wings outstretched. Then, she drew them in tight, and they were simply… gone, beneath a flash of rolling smoke.

  She turned to my father and bowed, turquoise chiffon gathering at sandal-clad feet.

  “Teirna Reidnacht. It is an honor to be welcomed to the Pales for the first time in so many years.”

  She spoke with a low, purring accent.

  “It is an honor to have you and your people here, Es’reen Shadya,” my father replied.

  We all stood, the two nations staring each other down and doing an awful job of hiding it. We could not have looked more different. The Sidnee all wore our finest clothing, deep black and lush purple and silver threads, the Blades clad in leather engraved with our individual tales.

  All this, while the Wyshraj wore… well, one could barely call them “clothes.” Their attire looked as if it could have been made from a few long, unfinished pieces of fabric artfully pinned around their bodies. All of it rendered in shades of gold or turquoise or white, and all of it leaving an expanse of skin showing that, among the Sidnee, would be truly shocking. The men donned one single swath draped over one shoulder, leaving practically half of their chest exposed, while the women wore theirs twisted to — mostly — cover their breasts and then drape down into capes.

  “You think they fight in that?” I whispered to Siobhan. “One wrong move and all your secrets are revealed.”

  This time she didn’t shush me, and a smirk twitched at the corner of her mouth.

  My gaze fell to the two Wyshraj standing closest to the Queen, with the long golden hair. The female was whispering something in the man’s ear. Probably some equally rude retort, though not very funny, because he didn’t react at all. The light spilling in through the windows cast a gold glow across his skin. Well-built shoulders. Sculpted arms. A face that looked as if it were assembled from marble planes, both in beauty and in utter stillness.

  If they were going to walk around like that, at least they had the decency to be good looking while they did it. No one could argue that.

  My father stepped aside. “It is my honor to introduce you, Queen Shadya, to my wife, Alva. And my daughter, Orscheid. The Teirness.”

  My sister, ever ladylike, blushed as she lowered into an elegant bow.

  Shadya bowed her head. “It is a great pleasure to meet you both. Your beauty surpasses even what I have been told.”

  I watched in silence. It had been so long ago since I stood in Orscheid’s place, but sometimes, it was impossible not to imagine what it would feel like to be bowed to by the Queen of Wayward Winds.

  My father turned to Caduan.

  “And may I also introduce you, my Queen, to King Caduan Iero.”

  The queen dropped into another bow, even lower than the one that she gave my father.

  Caduan, to my horror… didn’t. He just stood there, giving Shadya a stare that seemed to be picking her apart.

  I wished I could reach out and shake him: Don’t just stand there, Mathira-damned i
diot. Bow!

  Tension pulled the air tight. Finally, Caduan dropped to his knees, and it was like the entire room let out a silent breath.

  They rose, and Shadya gave Caduan a warm smile, as if she hadn’t noticed his infraction. “I congratulate you on your coronation, King Caduan, though I am deeply sorry for the circumstances that led to it. I assure you that we will not allow what happened to your House to happen to any other.” She looked out across all of us, and her voice rose. “Half a millennia, and the Houses now unite to make it so.”

  She turned back to Caduan with fire in her eyes, and it was clear that she expected a reaction to match. Perhaps some hardened statement of solidarity, some declaration of vengeance, some furious promise of hope and blood.

  Instead, he said, simply, “I appreciate that.”

  I almost choked.

  “I appreciate that?!” I muttered.

  “Sh!” Siobhan hissed, but even she could not pretend that she didn’t have the same reaction.

  If Caduan noticed that everyone was staring at him with perplexed horror, he didn’t show it. Shadya, at least, chose to let this oddity slide, too. She turned to the rest of us and swept her arms out.

  “And that, of course, does bring us back to the topic at hand, does it not?” she said. “We have an abundance of things to discuss and very little time.”

  My father gave a serious nod. “This, I cannot dispute. Come.”

  We gathered along the long, black glass table in my father’s finest gathering room. The walls were adorned with the most intricate maps of the Fey courts and the human lands that Sidnee artisans had to offer. Deliberate, of course, like everything my father did. Even these pieces of parchment needed to communicate to our reluctant allies the strength of the Sidnee clan. We all spoke with honey-sweet words, but they still held a little bitterness — bitterness that could merely be distaste, or could be poison.

  The table was long, seating entire courts along one sheet of glassy black stone. Light spilled through tall, silver-rimmed windows. The Wyshraj sat on one side, their backs to the windows, making their flowing hair and loose robes seem to glow against the backlight. The Sidnee sat on the other side, all staid darkness and dark leather. Caduan was in the middle, so clearly part of neither clan, and so conspicuously alone.

  Time ticked by as the most revered strategists from both nations outlined our current situation. Caduan was called upon to recount what had happened to the House of Stone, which he did calmly and factually — though I didn’t miss the way his eyes lowered as he spoke, the only crack in his composure. The Sidnee and the Wyshraj shared what they each knew of human aggressions, which turned out to be, in short, nothing.

  “And this is why,” Queen Shadya said, at last, “my generals propose a very deliberate tactical approach.” She nodded towards to the two blond Wyshraj that I had noticed before.

  “My two leading generals, Ishqa and Iajqa Sai’Ess, have developed a plan that I think we will both find mutually agreeable,” Shadya said. They rose, taking up a place on either side of the massive map.

  “One thing has been exceedingly clear while reviewing our current information, and while listening to King Caduan’s account of the attack,” the woman, Iajqa, said. Her voice was low and smooth. “The humans managed an unacceptable level of surprise, and our first step must be to mitigate this risk and learn the nature of our enemy.”

  “We propose an initial approach rooted in information gathering and defensive strategy,” the man, Ishqa, continued.

  “We have no time for careful measures,” Klein said.

  “I certainly understand the impulse to respond with force,” Ishqa replied. “The atrocity that was committed against the House of Stone deserves blood. And I assure you that we shall have it. In time.”

  He turned to the map, gesturing with an elegant hand to the northern Fey lands — where the Obsidian Pales stood. “I propose that we take a small, elite team through the Fey houses, traveling south, investigating the aggressors and cause of the attack.” He trailed his fingers over the Fey continents that soon gave way to smaller, more isolated Fey isles. “We will travel south, first to the House of Reeds, then past the Houses of Nautilus and Roiled Waves, and then further to the independent lands and the human nations.”

  “The human nations?” Siobhan said. “Is that wise?”

  Ishqa’s expression barely changed, but some faint movement of his mouth evoked the ghost of a smile. “I have served in the army of Wayward Winds for nearly a century, and led it for half of those years. In that time, I have learned that there is little more valuable in times of war than a few chosen feet on the ground, with eyes that are sharp and weapons that are sharper. That is how you stop a war before it begins.”

  I wasn’t especially charmed by that Wyshraj snootiness to his tone, but he was undeniably right — and Siobhan, of all people, knew this.

  My father nodded. “Certainly, we can assemble an army to travel with you.”

  “No army,” Ishqa said. “I propose that we send only two representatives from each the House of Obsidian and the House of Wayward Winds. The fewer there are, the more easily we can gather information without attracting unwanted attention.”

  “And in the meantime,” Iajqa said, stepping forward, “We will build and train a joint army here, preparing ourselves for whatever is to come. A universal Fey force, representing the best of the houses of Obsidian and Wayward Winds together, united, in the strongest and most finely-honed power in the world.”

  As she spoke, her voice grew slightly faster, as if her excitement was getting the better of her. I couldn’t help but share in it. The Wyshraj may be uptight and poorly-dressed, but their warriors were the things of legends. Even their ridiculous fashion choices highlighted their lethal beauty — those little strips of fabric displaying cut muscles and practiced grace, framing battle scars with the same reverence with which the Blades treated our tattoos.

  I blinked, and for a moment, the image overtook me: the black-clad Blades fighting alongside the Wyshraj knights, shadow and light, the stone and the sky mingling. Even in my imagination, it was so beautiful that I felt the hair on my arms rise.

  I glanced at my father, wondering if he, too, saw the incredible beauty in this potential. If he did, he did not show it. “Have you already chosen who among the Wyshraj will join the scouting team?”

  “Iajqa will lead the development of the joint military here,” Shadya said. “And Ishqa will be my point representative on the mission. This, of course, in equal partnership with whichever general you would like to send on your behalf. You can decide once—”

  “I don’t need to wait,” my father said, smoothly. “Klein, my master of war, will join Admiral Iajqa in the development of the military. And my daughter, Aefe of the Sidnee Blades, will represent the House of Obsidian on the scouting journey.”

  I nearly choked on the air I was breathing. I barely heard anything after he said my name.

  The Wyshraj nodded at this, completely failing to grasp why any of this was remarkable. But the Sidnee all visibly stiffened. I felt dozens of sets of eyes glance at me, confused. No one said a word. But I knew they were all thinking it. I was thinking it:

  Why?

  Klein was looking at me as if my father had just made some terrible mistake. I could feel Siobhan’s analytical stare drilling into the side of my face. But I looked only at my father. My father, who neither loved me nor respected me. My father, who had dozens of far more qualified Blades than I.

  My father, who, despite all of that, had chosen me.

  “I will go as well.”

  The sound of a new voice pulled me from my distraction. I snapped my head down to the other end of the table, where Caduan sat.

  “On the scouting mission,” he added, as if the silence that greeted him meant he had been unclear.

  As always, he seemed to have woefully misread the room.

  Shadya spoke first. “Perhaps it would be better to leave such dange
rous travels to the soldiers. As a king, your insight may be needed here.”

  “The Stoneheld nation is nothing more than a dozen people now, none of whom need me for anything,” Caduan replied. “To say that they need me to stand here doing nothing and being some sort of… figurehead is insulting to them and to me.”

  Shadya’s eyebrows arched. Ishqa blinked three times in rapid succession, the only sign that he was taken aback.

  I had to fight an awkward laugh. I didn’t understand Caduan. Everyone kept trying to hand him the kind of respect I would kill for, and every time, he carelessly discarded it.

  “I think it is unwise,” my father said.

  “I disagree.” Caduan looked around the table, his stare suddenly razor-edged. “Let me remind you. I watched my home destroyed. I watched my kin murdered. I watched the world around me burn. And I am not going to sit here in a tunnel and wait for someone else to give me the answers. I want to know why, and when we find who did this, I am going to hear that answer from their lips.”

  His words were quiet, but they lingered in the air.

  “It is not our place to disagree with that,” I said, before I realized I was speaking aloud.

  “Indeed.” Shadya gave Caduan a curious look that he did not return. “It is not. And so it shall be, King Caduan.”

  The meeting gave way to a feast. Once the shock wore off, I was so excited that I could barely think — an affectation not at all helped by the several mugs of celebratory whiskey that I guzzled down over dinner. I threw myself into the music of the band, into the dancing at the center of the room. And when I finally saw my father stand and drift away — when I was finally able to find him standing in a quiet hallway, gazing off into the stone shadow of the Pales’ tunnels — I chased after him only to slow to a stop a few paces behind, suddenly self-conscious.

  I already had reason to distrust my own words, so often too sharp and too quick. I stood there in silence.

  “What is it, Aefe?”

  He didn’t turn around. He was staring down the hallway, into darkness so deep that it was nothing but a wall of black.