Bloodtraitor (23 page)

Would Aaron and Misha have attacked the Tuuli Thea and her heir?

Why
wouldn't
they? Misha was mad, and Aaron was so deeply in her thrall he had no sense of his own.

“Misha is threatening to greet any avian demands with soldiers,” Vance replied.

I let out a frustrated growl. Midnight had fallen, but Misha wasn't content. She needed an enemy to fight. She wouldn't hesitate to start a war.

“I don't know if this means anything,” another serpent said, “but I just got back from checking the market, where I finally found one of the Shantel. They're in rough shape—their sakkri never returned from the attack on Midnight, and their magic is volatile because of it—but they haven't completely abandoned us. While we were talking, he mentioned rumors that a golden-haired woman was seen talking to Prince Lucas. I don't know why Miriam would be with the Shantel, but…”

He trailed off with a hopeless shrug, dropping his eyes.

My heart nearly stopped.

Golden-haired woman.
There was a possibility it was Miriam, of course…but there was also a possibility it was
Alasdair.
Could she have made it out? If she had, and she had been injured, someone might have brought her to the Shantel for healing.

“I need to go,” I whispered.

I threw myself into the air, taking to my second form so rapidly I barely even heard Vance's startled yelp of, “Malachi! Wait!”

I couldn't wait for him. Even if we were willing to leave Kadee alone—which neither of us would be—Vance's quetzal wings could never keep up with mine, and I couldn't stand to slow my pace. I needed to know.
Now.

KEYI KNELT AT
the sakkri's side as the elderly witch shuddered and coughed. “So much bloodshed,” the sakkri said. “So much ash.”

“Are you all right?” the falcon asked.

The sakkri shook her head. “My magic was never meant to be used this way. Help me back to my land?” she pleaded.

Keyi tried, but when they reached the border between Midnight and the magical forest of the Shantel, the sakkri stumbled and fell within arm's reach of her homeland.

“Oh, my sister,” the sakkri whispered as softly as a prayer. “You were supposed to take this burden from me.”

Keyi tried to help the sakkri stand, but the witch shook her off.

“No,” she said. “It's over. This body is too old and too bloodied to hold such power anymore.”

“Don't talk that way!” Keyi reached down to pull the sakkri to her feet with or without her consent.

But her work was in vain. Keyi's hands passed through the sakkri's dark skin as if it were nothing but a shadow…and then that's all that it was, an irregularly shaped shadow cast by the trees…and then even less than that. She was gone.

As soon as I passed above the Shantel forest, the world around me spun, driving me to the ground so hard it knocked the breath out of my lungs. I hit the cool earth and for several moments just lay there, trying to pull air into my body.

No, not just cool—
cold
. It was mid-October, but the ground already felt as frozen as the night Shkei had died, when I first met Vance. The land was mourning the sakkri.

I stood cautiously, wary of other magical traps. The air around me had a quiet, waiting feel to it. Would a new sakkri be born? Who would teach her to use her power?

I started walking, trying to guide myself by the magic around me, but I had only come to the Shantel woods guided by Nathaniel's tokens. I could only hope I would end up at the central village. If Alasdair was alive, that's where she would be.

If they haven't executed her,
my cynical, despairing mind whispered to me. The Shantel didn't believe anyone who had been imprisoned in Midnight could ever be trusted again.

Night fell around me, but I trudged on, tripping over brambles and downed tree limbs. The woods showed damage as if from a fierce and violent storm, more extreme than anything we had actually experienced. Were they
dying
? Had the sakkri really sacrificed everything—not just herself, but her land and her people—in order to fight Midnight?

I had given everything
I
had as well, but an outlaw who refused responsibility for anyone or anything beyond himself could never have as much to lose.

By the time I reached the stone walls that ringed the Shantel village, I was trembling with exhaustion. My vision was swimming with ghosts of both the past and the future, bloody and wailing specters I couldn't quite vanquish. It was almost a relief when the guards appeared around me and grabbed my arms.

“Alasdair?” I said.

No one answered. I hadn't really expected them to. They hoisted me up and dragged me forward. I was grateful for the assistance; I couldn't walk anymore.

They didn't bring me to Alasdair. They didn't even bring me to one of the Shantel royals.

Instead, they brought me into a guest suite in the royal family's home, and dumped me in front of a woman with pale skin, ebony-black hair, and garnet eyes. How had she made it past the flames and out of Midnight?

“He's one of your people,” I heard them say. “What would you like done with him?”

Hara Kiesha Cobriana stared at me, at first with confusion, and then with growing fury.

“Before you answer,” another voice interjected, “you should know that Malachi was critical in the attack against Midnight.”

I turned toward Lucas, grateful that he had come to my defense. The ruling prince had dark circles under his eyes.

“I've also heard that Misha and Aaron have declared him a traitor, and put a bounty on his head. It might be worth hearing what he has to say.”

The magical pressures that had battered me on my way here had left me exhausted mentally and magically. I had little time left before my own power would force me into the dark void, where I would dwell until my body had recovered sufficiently for my mind to inhabit it. I needed to explain my presence. I needed to justify what I had done. I needed to convince Hara not to kill me out of hand, as I could see in her eyes she wanted to.

“Alasdair?” I croaked. My throat was tight, parched as if by the fires that had consumed Midnight. “Kill me if you want to, but please tell me first, did Alasdair survive?”

Hara's eyes widened, and then narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you want to know?” she asked.

If the answer was no, she would have said no.
She knew the part we played in selling Alasdair. She would have blamed me for the hawk's death, if she could.

She's alive.

Darkness swallowed me.

“We need to go!” Aislinn shouted desperately. Ever since she had triggered the spell, her skin had been tingling, and her muscles were heavy as if she had worked them to exhaustion. Now her eyes stung and her lungs burned from the smoke she had already inhaled—but that was nothing compared to what would happen if the fire reached them.

Hara turned and gripped Ashley's hands. “I won't go without you. I never would have survived here all this time if you hadn't helped me. Please.”

Ashley shook her head, her eyes wide and panicked. “I can't.”

Hara wouldn't leave without Ashley, and they were running out of time. Knowing the mind of a slave better than anyone, Aislinn snapped, “Would he want you to stay here to die?” The hawk gasped at the blunt words, but she started to move.

Once in the halls, it seemed every way they turned was blocked. They couldn't get to the passage out. Even when they managed to find their way into the courtyard, the heat was so terrible Aislinn's skin had started to blister, and her head spun as she took in lungfuls of black smoke instead of clean air.

She was on the verge of unconsciousness when she saw Ashley look up at the sky, then shut her eyes with an expression of desperate concentration. The last image Aislinn saw was the pair of wide golden wings growing from Gabriel's slave's back.

I woke, unsurprisingly, in another cell.

I was getting to be quite a connoisseur of prisons. This one wasn't nearly as nice as Midnight's now-molten marble trainers' cells, or anywhere near as vile as the bloodstained hole Misha had thrown me in. It was simple, dry, and clean, with an earthen floor covered by a woven mat, a mattress, and a cubby set well away from the sleeping area with a basin for waste. There were no windows in the walls, but there was one—set with bars—in the heavy wooden door.

I debated breaking out, but in Shantel land, that seemed unwise. Instead, I approached the door and called, “Hello?”

I expected a guard.

Instead, another barred door diagonal to my own swung open, revealing a lithe, golden woman in a simple woolen dress.

She approached cautiously, her bare feet soundless on the dirt floor. When she pulled on the door to my cell, it opened without protest. It had never occurred to me that it might not be locked.

I opened my mouth, but couldn't find a single word. I wanted to cry. I wanted to beg her forgiveness for everything—for selling her, for not saving her, for leaving her to the fire. I wanted to thank her for everything she had done for my brother. I wanted to weep for her, for everything I had experienced with her in the trainer's cell.

I had been raised to hate every example of royal blood, but she had shown me what a queen should be, and
could
be: brave, wise, and compassionate. She had taught me that there were people who were worth following.

I couldn't speak, so I let my body speak for me: I went to my knees. As a child of Obsidian I bowed to no master…but as a child of Obsidian, I also had the right to choose my own path. This woman had earned my loyalty. Alasdair didn't pull away when I took her hand, silently pledging her everything. My faith, my love.

“My queen,” I whispered.

She shook her head.

“Are you all right?” I tensed at the cold, protective voice I heard behind us. Hara hadn't had me killed in my sleep, but her tone suggested she wished she had.

Alasdair nodded, though I felt the slow shudder that passed through her. I remembered the time Jaguar had asked her the same thing. She had lied for me then, protecting me.

Now she protected me again. “I am fine,” she said to Hara, her musical voice making the words echo in my head. “He wouldn't hurt me.”

Fine.

Fine.

Everything will be okay now.

I looked up at Alasdair and Hara…and suddenly, I couldn't help but laugh, because I knew what came next. Hara had every right to hate me, given what my guild had done to her mother, father, and brother, all on the basis of my prophecy. I doubted she really wanted my help, but I needed to make that right somehow. And Alasdair
should
hate me, but somehow didn't.

Either way, there was only one thing left for me to do.

I, Malachi Obsidian, creation of Mistress Jeshickah, prophet and inspiration of the Obsidian guild, who had conspired against the greatest empires in the world, now had a goal: I would see not just one but
two
queens to their rightful thrones, or I would die trying.

THE WINTER WINDS
are bitter tonight. I had forgotten how frigid and biting the air can be outside the protection of Midnight's stone walls. This shelter is as comfortable as a structure made of wood and leather can be, but the howling wind makes the walls flutter and my bones tremble.

I stare at the notes in front of me, trying to make sense of them. One of the few things that Hara and Malachi agree on is the fact that I cannot ignore the world. It is hard for me to believe that anyone truly needs me, but they keep insisting. So I read reports about food scarcity, riots, and how the serpiente and avian armies continue to grow as they struggle to contain their own people, and turn wary eyes to each other. I know that the Shantel have refused to see anyone since the day we left—even Kadee gets turned away when she tries to enter their forest—and the Azteka have not returned to the marketplace since the equinox. Malachi says he suspects the sakkri knew she would not return from the attack, but also that they could not succeed without her.

Hara rails that I must attend to these messages, because it is my right and my responsibility to return to the avian people as monarch.

Malachi calls me his queen, but would let me be anything I want.

He would let me do anything I desire, would follow me into court intrigues or into exile. When, in an hour of weakness and desperation, I took my hawk's form and sought the small port town where I first met Gabriel Donovan, Malachi did not stop me. He followed, and his blue eyes watched without judgment as a half dozen different people told me that no one had seen Gabriel for months. When I came home to camp, he let me sit silently, mourning a man I know I should hate with every fiber of my being. And when I was ready, he put his arms around me, and I wished I could remember how to cry.

The only person who better understands how difficult it is to go through each day, needing to make the decision for myself to get up, dress, and put one foot in front of the other, is Aislinn. I didn't think she would survive the injuries she took from smoke and fire in our escape. By the time she had recovered enough to tell us anything, it was far too late for us to find Nathaniel, and we have no way of contacting him now. None of us have heard anything from the vampires; Silver's line has kept to their word to leave the shapeshifters alone. So Aislinn, too, will have to learn what it means to live without a master.

Privately I wonder how things might have been different if Nathaniel had gone to Gabriel to enlist his support. Gabriel worked hard to make sure that no one saw the cracks in his façade as a perfect, ruthless trainer, endlessly content with his brutal work. I do not think he knows how to be anything else, but sometimes I think he wanted to be. I don't think he would have actively assisted Nathaniel, but I think he would have walked away and let the winds blow where they would.

He would have taken me with him.

I know that thought should terrify me. Some days, when I can pull myself from the fog, it does.

Hara plans to move against Aaron and Misha soon. Malachi says his guild is behind her, even those who currently live in the palace. We haven't been able to find any sign of Miriam or her son, though one of the other Obsidian serpents says they think Misha may have had my sister killed when she refused to condone the new serpiente queen's plan. Hara has made me promise that, when she returns to the throne, so will I.

I have no desire for the avian crown, but I will do what must be done. How could I do any less, when I look around me and know the sacrifices that each member of our band has made in their effort to usher in a better world?

Life is not easy, but as the Obsidian guild says, a life lived in hardship and freedom is better than one lived in comfort and captivity. I have been a younger princess, raised in luxury, with minimal responsibilities and little common sense. I have been a captive songbird, held in a cage by a man I believe wanted me because I reminded him of something he lost long ago, something he did not know how to hold without destroying.

Can I be a queen?

Can I be Alasdair?

Can I be responsible for myself, answerable to my own conscience, as I step forward and try to lead?

I look around, and know I am not alone in wondering. We are all starting new lives now. We are all learning, through hardship and determination, what it means to be…

Free.

Alasdair Shardae

December 1804