Xander remained in the town square for hours—lifting stones until his fingers began to bleed, letting his people cry on his shoulder, leaning over the bodies piled on the ground, using a wet rag to clear the blood from pale brows, searching for signs of life, and directing the healers to those with the best chances of recovery.
He was a beacon of strength.
A fixed point in the midst of so much chaos.
They needed him, and he held on to that as he fought to stay focused, fought to ignore the image of Rafe and Lyana entwined, the gleam of understanding in her eyes, the questions churning in the back of his mind—questions about what had really happened between these two people who claimed to hate each other, about what had really happened to make a dove pick a raven as her mate.
46
Cassi
Lyana fell asleep soon after the healers left, exhausted from the day and from the gash in her leg, which gave Cassi the chance to finally go looking for some answers. The golden streaks of sun had long since faded from the horizon, and the moon was already rising. Her favorite time of day was here—the time for dreaming.
Cassi pushed through the door connecting their rooms and collapsed in her own bed, body exhausted from the long days in the practice yards, even as her mind whirled with the night’s adventure. She slipped into her spirit form before her eyes had fully closed and turned back immediately, floating through the wall to lean over Lyana, who was out cold. Reaching with her spirit magic, Cassi pushed against Lyana’s soul, trying to sense a change, a new awakening, any sign.
There was nothing.
She frowned and pushed harder, latching on to the energy of her friend’s magic, searching for a new spark, a new strength. Lyana grumbled in her sleep and rolled over, as if she somehow sensed Cassi’s prodding.
With a sigh, Cassi pulled away.
It had to be you, she thought, staring at her friend. It had to.
The earthquake that shook the island had been magic through and through. A pulse of power had blasted through the air, invisible to anyone except those with magic in their veins, and had rattled the spell that kept the isles floating. That happened from time to time, when someone with immense power was born or came into their magic.
It wasn’t Lyana’s birthday yet.
But it had to be her. It just had to.
With a frown, Cassi turned to the window and soared through the curtains into the open sky. There were no answers in Lyana’s rooms, at least none she could find. Instead, she made her way to the royal quarters to check on the other magic-user she knew.
Rafe was lying face down on his bed, wings spread as wide as they could go, bent and bruised, but already looking better. His back rose and fell in a gentle rhythm as he breathed deeply. He faced the balcony, his arms acting as pillows to his head. Deep grooves were etched into his brow, in a scowl even sleep couldn’t quite wipe away.
Cassi reached for his spirit.
It was strong and sturdy. The silvery sparkle of his magic was a warm caress against her soul, but much like Lyana’s, it felt no different than it had every other time she’d touched it. With a sigh, Cassi drifted back into the night, ready to find her king, when a whisper on the breeze made her pause.
“It wasn’t the princess’s fault. It wasn’t either of their faults.”
The voice was Xander’s, annoyed and frustrated in a way the mostly jovial prince had never sounded—not that she knew him very well. Their interactions had been few, but still, the anger in his tone made her curious. As did Lyana’s title on his lips.
“You weren’t there, Mother. There was no time to think how it might look. Rafe risked his life to save my mate. Before I even knew what was happening, they were buried in rubble.”
He was standing in Queen Mariam’s room. Well, not standing so much as pacing. His face was covered in a fine layer of dirt, and blood stained his clothes. The tops of his wings were lowered in exhaustion, but his expression displayed a fiery strength his muscles did not.
“It doesn’t matter how it was,” she icily replied. “It matters how it looked.”
The queen was seated at her vanity table, putting cream on her face, ebony wings perched so only her primary feathers slouched on the ground. Through the mirror, she watched her son as he walked behind her.
Xander paused to run a hand through his hair. “And how did it look? I was there, yet somehow you managed to see something I didn’t from all the way up here.”
“I have eyes and ears everywhere, Lysander,” she murmured, tilting up her chin as she applied lotion to her neck, her movements so casual they didn’t match the iron in her tone. “So will you one day, if you want to remain king. And while you were diligently tending to your people, they were talking behind your back, whispering about the fire-cursed bastard who was trying to seduce our new queen and lure her into Vesevios’s arms—”
“Mother, that’s ridiculous! Rafe would never—”
“They said he brought the earthquake just so he could have the chance to act a hero. They said he survived where countless others died because his god is giving him power. They said he has us tricked with his magic. They said his very existence in our house is making Taetanos weak.”
“What would you have me do?" he asked. "We can’t succumb to frightened gossip.”
“Frightened gossip has the power to bring a kingdom to its knees,” she told him, and turned in her chair, long skirt dragging as she moved. “Our family has been in power a long time, but it wasn’t always that way. The ravens are loyal, but even loyalty has its limits. Perhaps you should consider that before you decide which side to choose.”
Xander met his mother’s gaze and held it for a minute. Then he released a heavy breath, somewhere between a sigh and a growl, and stalked from the room without another word. Cassi’s focus slid to Queen Mariam, who waited for the door to close before catching her head in her hands, her frigid strength melting away. Her face moved back and forth as her fingers rubbed at her temples, until, with a hiss, she stood. The monarch flattened the wrinkles in her sleeping gown, then she straightened her back and pinched her cheeks, as though even in the privacy of her own chambers she couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness, or any hint of vulnerability.
Cassi left her to the loneliness of her room and slinked back into the night, not completely sure what to make of the encounter. She let it replay in her memory so she could recount every detail, then cleared her thoughts to concentrate on the only soul she needed to find that evening.
“Did you feel it?” she asked as soon as she finished spinning his dream, placing them back in the dreary gray room with walls that loomed.
“I did,” her king replied, sapphire eyes filled with storm clouds, lips drawn in a grim line opposite to the smile spreading hers.
“It was a sign, the sign we’ve been waiting for,” Cassi said, finally letting some of the excitement from the day leak into her tone. In the world above, surrounded by the corpses of ravens, both children and adult, there’d been no place for eagerness. But in this dream, standing wingless by her king’s side, all Cassi could think was that everything they’d been waiting for, everything she’d been working so hard to achieve, was here. She was almost done, almost free from the cage her dual life had become.