“You lied,” he said simply, trying to gauge her reaction. As he spoke, Rafe took a few steps to the left, so his back was to the balcony. The tear in his wing was healed enough for him to fly, he hoped. Enough to get away. “About needing my help with a sword. You lied.”
“I lie about a lot of things.” Cassi shrugged. The words and the gesture were casual, but a tight gulp followed, revealing a different emotion.
“What other things?” He was buying time to take a deep breath, preparing to release his raven cry. Those few precious seconds of her confusion were all he would need to get away.
“There’s a whole world you don’t know about, Rafe,” Cassi murmured, her gaze flicking over his shoulder. “But you will.”
She threw the dagger in her hand.
He had no choice but to step to the side once more to avoid the blade, and now the balcony no longer presented as an easy dive behind him. Before he found his balance, she tugged another knife from her belt and sent it flying. The point landed in his abdomen, making him stumble back into the wall. Cassi swung her blade. He barely had time to lift his forearm and catch the blow with the hide of his jacket, laced with metal to act as a shield. He pushed her away with a kick to the chest and stood, ripping the dagger so his flesh could reseal, grunting as his magic flowed, bringing cool relief to the fire simmering beneath his skin.
But Cassi wasn’t giving him time to heal or time to take the breath needed to release his godly cry. After so many hours of sparring with him, she knew exactly how he’d attack and how he’d retreat, exactly where he’d go, as though she’d catalogued every minute of their time on the practice fields, storing it for this very moment. She was fast, incredibly fast as she dealt different blows, fighting in a way he wasn’t used to—not going for the kill, not going for the big, debilitating wound, but taking small jabs here and there whenever the opportunity provided, enough to make his magic slow and laborious, stealing half of his attention away.
And she had an advantage.
She fought with heart—with purpose. A fire lit her eyes. Energy reinforced her movements. Determination hardened her gut.
But Rafe was empty.
He was alone. He’d already lost everything. Did it matter if he lost his life, too?
No one would even realize. Xander thought he was leaving, never to return. Lyana had snuck from his room that morning without so much as a goodbye. The queen and everyone in the House of Whispers would rejoice to hear the fire-cursed bastard had finally fled their small isle, disappearing without a trace.
Maybe he was always meant to die in this room, surrounded by his parents’ ashes—the spot where he’d first cheated the master of death. Taetanos always won in the end. If Rafe knew nothing else in his life, it was that there was no vanquishing the god of fate. There were only moves and countermoves, all leading to the same inevitable place.
A vicious sense of irony pierced his heart.
Rafe gasped and looked down, surprised to find the pointed end of a sword protruding from his chest. Cassi pressed a boot to his shoulder, crunching his wing as she pushed, sliding her weapon free. He fell face-first against the ground, crashing like a sack of beans whose string had snapped, nothing left but to lie there and blink as he watched his blood spill over the dusty tile floor, ready for the end. She pressed a knee to his spine, holding him down, and leaned close enough for him to feel her breath against his ear.
“I’m sorry, Rafe,” she whispered. “Truly, I am. This is going to hurt. But you’ll survive. I promise. You’ll survive, like you always do. And I hope someday, maybe, you might find it possible to forgive me.”
At first, the words didn’t register.
Then she grasped the bones of his left wing and snapped. He bucked beneath her, trying to dislodge her as the terror of the truth hit, sending a cold wave through his veins.
This wasn’t the end.
It's not personal, she'd said. I lie about a lot of things. There's a whole world you don't know about, but you will. You'll survive.
Cassi didn’t mean to kill him. She had a plan—one that was bigger than him, bigger than Lyana, bigger than the ravens and the doves and this kingdom above the clouds—and he was the only one aware of her treachery. Xander wasn't safe. Lyana wasn't either. Cassi had been fooling them all and if he didn’t escape now, they'd remain ignorant of her duplicity—vulnerable and in danger. He had to fight, if not for himself, then for them.
"No!" Rafe shouted with newfound vigor.
A raven cry hurtled up his throat and Cassi stilled behind him, disoriented by the godly call. With a pump of his right wing, he rolled just enough to grab her arm and throw her from his back. By the time her eyes cleared, he'd snatched a dagger from the floor and plunged it into her side. Cassi gasped. Rafe took the advantage, no longer seeing her as anything but foe, and scrambled to his feet. With his right wing limp, he had no choice but to take to the halls.
He made it two steps before a blade slashed his ankle, severing the tendon, and he fell, forehead hitting a bedpost on the way down. Mind swimming, he crawled toward the door. Cassi launched onto his back and wrapped her arms around his neck to cut off air. He jabbed his elbow into her wound. With a grunt, she released him and toppled to the side.
The exit was close, only a few feet away. If he could just get there, he might be able to lose her in the underground halls, a maze he knew like the back of his hand. If he could just—
A knife drove into his lower spine.
Rafe's vision flashed white, blinded by the agony, and his legs crumbled, useless. Cassi was on him in an instant. He was disoriented, weak, and paralyzed from the waist down. Magic flowed in his veins, but not enough. Though he arched and twisted with all his strength, Cassi held him down. A rope tightened around his wrists, securing them behind his back.
"I've been told this might help," she said as she grasped his hair and yanked his head from the floor to slide the hilt of a dagger between his teeth. Her face was grim, her lips thin, her eyes hard. Without another word, she gently set his chin back against the floor.
When the knife made the first cut into the joint of his wing, he bit down into the worn leather, fighting the pain with pressure, an inhuman sound escaping his lips. Then the second incision came. Then the third. On and on, until mercifully, the world gave way and he slipped into his dreams, going to a place where his mother laughed with him, holding his hands as they danced around her room, his brother and father by their sides, all four of them happy and united, then deeper still, to a small halo of light in an otherwise endless abyss where two palms created starlight in the dark and a soothing voice whispered, telling him to hold on, because this fight wasn't over.
The war was only just beginning.
64
Lyana
“No!” Lyana shouted.
The world came into perfect clarity as the dagger plunged into Xander’s chest. She didn’t know what happened, or how they’d gotten here, or why she didn’t remember, but her blood sang with power and she knew she would do whatever it took to save him.
He fell back, still.
Too still.
Her head swam.
No.
No.
No.
Her gaze darted around the room, searching for something, anything, then landed on the stranger to her left and the dagger he was wearing on his belt. Without thinking, she tore the blade free and threw it, aim unflinching, focused on the man holding the bloody knife.