I am born of Seelie magic. The Dagda created me, for the good of the world.
“Yeah, well,” she muttered and shielded her eyes against the red light of the sun to find a better path forward. “He did a terrible job of controlling you. Do you know how many fae you’ve killed?”
Because he left these lands. Now, you control me, Keeper of Storms.
“I don’t want to,” she snapped.
You have no other choice.
She really wished she could shut this voice up. It had only been a few moments since she’d consumed the Dionadair, and it was already annoying the hell out of her.
“Well, then I command you to be silent.”
No reply.
“Good.”
In the moments since the fight, the magic had infused her bones with a small amount of strength. It would be hours yet before she was whole again. Days even, perhaps. Her shoulder was still very much broken, her arm dangling at an odd angle by her side.
But she would be able to fly.
Squeezing her fingernails into her palms, she cried out as she pushed her wings through the throbbing skin at her back. She had to pause to catch her breath when it was over. If she was going to do this flight thing on a regular basis, she needed to find a way to do it that wasn’t so painful.
It felt like someone had lit her back on fire.
She pushed up into the air, gently flapping her wings to test her balance. When she didn’t immediately plummet to the ground, she pushed higher into the sky, wings flaring. She rose above the charred buildings. The maze of city streets stretched out before her. Some were on fire. Others were dark and silent and dead. Some were still alive with the battle. The wood fae had yet to be defeated.
Her feathers rippled in the soft breeze. Now that the Dionadair was no longer tossing her about, she could feel the fragile strength in the silver-tipped wings. She felt like an unstoppable force, even if the rest of her was still ripped raw from the fight against the storm.
Soaring over the buildings, she swooped down to spin close to the streets. Eyes darting, she sought a very familiar head of sable hair. He would have it pulled back for battle, tied away from his face with a black band. In his boiled leather, he would be stalking through the streets, ferocity pulsing from his body like the feral warrior he was. His muscles would contract and ripple as he swung his sword, the red light glinting off the impressive Tamaris steel blade.
She could picture him so well in her mind’s eye that she swore she saw him running through the Findian streets, a whirlwind of leather, smoke, and steel. But when she dipped closer to the ground, she saw that it had been nothing more than a shadow. A trick of the eye. He was not here.
Frustrated, she pushed back up into the clouds, spinning so that she could gaze across the entire expanse of the black stone city. Her chest ached, raw with need. Where was he? Why couldn’t she find him? She’d seen no sign of Segonax or Nollaig either. She did not dare consider what that might mean.
She closed her eyes.
Surely, Lorcan had found safety. Surely the Ruin—the Dionadair—had not fallen upon them all as it tossed Reyna through the clouds above the square.
Lorcan could not have died in the Ruin. She knew he couldn’t. He was immune. She’d seen it herself. But the storm could have disintegrated the rest of his party, leaving him to face an insurmountable number of wood fae alone.
Blinking back the tears, she swooped down once again, spinning through street after street after street. She passed burnt-out husks of buildings—remnants of fires left by the attacking wood fae. She passed blood-plastered walls and street corners piled high with the dead. She passed mountains of ash, the frozen wall she’d created herself.
She passed the living, the crying, the afraid. They huddled beneath the weight of the battle, trying to gather their wits after so much death had stared them in the face.
And then she passed shadow fae warriors shouting in victory as they shut the gate tight on the encroaching enemy. They’d won. The shadow fae had beaten back the wood fae. For now, at least. But the victory felt hollow to Reyna.
They had won, but where was their prince?
Where is Lorcan?
There was one last place she had yet to look. She turned her sights on the harbor where a small cluster of shadow fae warriors stood beside a ship that held the flickering banner of the Sea Court. Curious, Reyna flared her wings and pushed through the air. She called upon the magic within her, begging for enough strength to sharpen the sight of her eyes.
The magic flared to life, filling her up with power. Her body felt weak; her mind was numb. But she could see so clearly that the distant specks solidified into fully-formed fae. Three shadow warriors stood blocking the wooden path that led from the docks to the winding stairs up toward the castle and the city beyond. Before them stood two sea fae. Reyna recognized neither, though one wore a glimmering turquoise circlet, and her matching gown was spun from rich silks and embroidered with golden thread.
Reyna frowned, slowing as she approached the docks. What in the name of the Dagda was this? Why was sea fae royalty here, docking at the Shadow Court, especially while a battle raged on in the distance?
As much as she yearned for answers, something inside of her warned her to hold back. Something was wrong about this. She could feel it in her gut. With a frustrated sigh, she twisted back to the city, wings beating the thick, humid air.
Where is Lorcan?
The clouds shifted in the sky, parting so that the red sun now glinted across the black stone of the castle.
The castle, Reyna thought, understanding at once. Lorcan had taken the others to the safety of the castle. Relief surged through her. Of course he would have gone to the castle. There, he could take down his father and end his cruel reign. She could have kicked herself for not realizing it sooner.
Flaring her wings wide, she took off through the clouds. Her eyes zeroed in on the twisting black mass of towers in the distance. Suddenly, a sharp rip tore through her left wing. A pain as great as any she’d ever felt burned through her feathers like molten iron.
She screamed, reaching behind her to claw at the pain. Her fingers curled around an arrow. A pit of shock tumbled into her belly. She’d been so focused on the castle, and finding Lorcan, that she hadn’t bothered to look below…at the wood fae who had yet to be killed or captured, wreaking as much havoc as they could before they were caught.
Her vision clouded as the poison charged through her wings. She tried to hold on to the world around her. Distantly, she heard herself screaming, knowing that if she did not stay lucid, her body would plummet to the ground. Seelie had gifted her with immortality, but that did not mean she couldn’t be killed. She would never die of old age, and she could survive most things. She did not know if she could survive slamming into a rock from a thousand feet in the air.
Before she could find out, darkness consumed her.
52
Thane
“What is that?” Thane pointed up at the sky at a whirlwind of feathers and flesh. He had never seen anything like it before. Bright silver glistened even beneath the strange reddish haze of the shadow realm.
He shielded his eyes from the glow, frowning. The bird-like creature seemed to be hurt, and it was tumbling to the ground. Tumbling right toward them.
“Get out of here, sea fae,” one of the warriors blocking their path growled out in a tone that reminded Thane so much of Lorcan. “Come any closer, and we’ll slice off your heads.”