“Why do you think I’m in such an excitable mood?” he asked, leaning in to her ear. “The sight of blood gets my own blood pumping.”
The way he said “pumping” made me want to throw up my morning fruit platter.
“Please, Aurelius, I should like to get back in line,” Seraphina insisted, flinching as his fingertips brushed her cheek, pushing away a strand of hair.
The sight of her displeasure appeared to spur Aurelius on, his hand reaching down to grip her wrist, his knuckles whitening. “I do hope you continue to resist me, darling Seraphina. I did not think it possible that I could want you more, but you have proven me wrong—the challenge of your coy act will make the conquering all the sweeter.”
It’s not an act! I wanted to scream, but I held my tongue, knowing it would only get me and Seraphina into more trouble.
He let go of her wrist, leaving the imprint of his fingers on her skin, and sauntered off toward the gallows. Queen Gianne had yet to arrive, but Jareth and her other advisors were already in position, alongside the scythe-wielding executioners. Everyone was awaiting the woman of the hour.
In Aurelius’s absence, I watched Seraphina’s strong façade crumble. She brought her hands to her face, visibly steeling herself. In that moment, I knew I had to tell Navan about Seraphina, just as I had promised her I would. I had to let him know what would happen to Seraphina if he didn’t marry her. Now that I’d really seen the truth of her fate, I wanted to give Navan the chance to save her from those horrors.
Seraphina turned unexpectedly, bringing her hands down from her face. Our eyes met, and her mouth opened in surprise.
“Riley,” a voice whispered behind my ear, making me whirl around. Ronad was standing next to me, his hood up, an anxious frown furrowing his brow. He took my hand, hauling me away from the side of the barrier, away from the sorrowful face of Seraphina. I was sure she’d seen me, but there was no time to talk now.
With Ronad gripping my fingers, we weaved through the crowd, making for a gap farther away from the wooden spectator towers. The event would start soon, beginning the sand-timer of our mission. Judging by last week’s screening, we’d have no more than three hours to get to Ianthan’s cabin and back to the Idrax house, before anyone else got home and found us missing.
We reached a gap in the barrier and slipped across to the parked vessels that rested on the plains beside the crowds. I looked briefly over my shoulder to see the congregation swarming forward to greet their queen. Her voice was booming over the loudspeakers.
“The mighty Southerners have proven their worth on the battlefield, and yet there are still defectors among my people who will not heed my warnings!” she bellowed, her tone sending a shiver of fear up my spine. “Will we tolerate traitors?”
“NO!” the crowd roared.
“Here, we have a pathetic creature who sought to hide so-called pacifists in his basement!” the queen spat. I couldn’t help but turn to see the poor bastard who’d been caught in her web. Enormous screens had flickered to life behind the gallows stage, drawing in for a close-up of her victim. He was alarmingly young, no older than Ronad, and his eyes were squeezed shut, his whole body trembling. “How do you plead?”
“Not guilty, Your Majesty,” he squeaked. “I didn’t hide anyone—the soldiers came and couldn’t find a soul!”
“LIES!” Gianne screamed in his face, spittle flying. “You see this wretch? He is the son of one of my most-trusted generals. Hear how he dares to lie to me!”
The crowd booed, the sound reverberating through my chest.
“I didn’t hide anyone, Your Majesty. Your soldiers burst into my home and couldn’t find anyone,” the young man sobbed. “I wasn’t hiding anyone. Please, have mercy!”
I stared at his face, in enlarged high-definition. He looked innocent to me.
“TRAITOR!” Gianne howled. “Even your father has named you a liar! Isn’t that right, General?”
The camera panned to a weary-faced coldblood standing at the bottom of the gallows steps. The old man barely looked as though he could stand unassisted, his glazed eyes staring down the lens in confusion. A soldier knocked the back of the old man’s neck, prompting him to nod. A moment later, he fell to his knees, but the camera snapped back to the action before too much of the truth could be seen.
“You see? Even your father admits your crime!” Gianne screamed triumphantly.
It was becoming very clear now… Gianne was on a witch hunt, and everyone was fair game.
Chapter Nine
I tore my eyes away from the stage as an executioner lifted a scythe, ready to swipe it across the neck of the shivering coldblood. I couldn’t watch. Ronad and I weaved through the mass of parked vessels and toward a line of trees. We kept low, making sure nobody could see us from the gallows.
“I really hope the cabbie was wrong,” I whispered, as we hurried to the edge of the woodland. “If Ianthan’s cabin isn’t there anymore, I—”
Ronad cut me off. “It’ll be there, Riley. I promise.”
The bitter atmosphere was even colder within the shadows of the forest. My teeth chattered, no matter how tightly I pulled the cloak around me.
“Is it far?” I asked, rubbing my arms.
“Just a short walk from here.”
I frowned. “Will we make it back on time?”
He gave a soft laugh. “Here we go with the questions,” he teased. “Keep your head up, all right?”
We walked in companionable quiet, the peace broken only by the occasional snap of a twig underfoot, or the flutter of something moving in the branches overhead. Now and again, I’d see yellow eyes staring at us from the undergrowth, but I wasn’t scared. They belonged to small, harmless creatures, according to Ronad. Besides, there was nothing in these woods more frightening than what lay beyond them.
“I knew she’d start going after the big names,” I said, as we continued down a barely discernible path hidden among the lichen and moss that covered the forest floor in a spongy carpet.
“Huh?”
“Gianne. I knew she’d start going after some bigger targets. That general didn’t look like he had a clue what was going on,” I explained. “They probably drugged him or something, so he wouldn’t cause a scene.”
“Looks like Jareth might have built his tunnel just in time,” Ronad mused, although he sounded worried. As much as he resented Jareth, I knew he didn’t want any harm to come to Lorela.
“You think she’ll start gunning for the Idraxes?”
Ronad shrugged. “I don’t know what they put in the royal water, but the queens be crazy!”
I laughed. “I think it’s the crown that does it, not the water.”
Twenty minutes later, a scent trickled through the trees toward us. It was a burnt smell, like bonfires and smoldering ash. It was the smell of destruction. Shortly after that first whiff of trouble, the landscape began to change. Vast swathes of woodland had been sheared away, leaving nothing but the smoking remnants of once-luscious glades, splintered logs, and singed debris.
Picking our way across the shattered forest, we reached the shore of what had once been a beautiful lake. Gray ash floated down all around, settling in the water and across the devastation. The lake itself still glittered beneath the unyielding sunlight, but there was no beauty here anymore. It looked exactly as the cabbie had described it—a recently abandoned warzone.
At the far side of the lake, I could see the ruins of a huge building, half a glass dome protruding from the remains. From the way the broken boulders gleamed, I could tell the structure had been built from opaleine. Great chunks of the precious stone lay scattered around, sparkling amid the chaos.
“Is that the concert hall you mentioned?” I asked, pointing to the opposite side of the lake.
“Yeah, what’s left of it,” Ronad muttered.
All around the shoreline lay piles of rubble that had once been houses. Only one remained mostly intact, shining some light on what the neighboring struct
ures had looked like before war broke out. It was a vast mansion made from a marble-like stone—not quite opaleine, but definitely not cheap. Given the location, these were probably vacation homes for the rich and famous of Vysanthe. By the looks of what was left, all of them had been bigger than anything the Idrax family had to offer.
I brushed a fragment of ash from my cloak, leaving a smudged streak across the forest-green fabric. With a shiver of horror, I realized it wasn’t just ash from the burning woodland or the bombarded buildings—this was the ash of the dead. It was the final flurry of the dead soldiers who’d fought overhead.
“It’s best to ignore it,” Ronad suggested, seeing my appalled face.
“Easier said than done when it’s raining dead people.” I shuddered. “How far is the cabin from here?”
Ronad pointed to the destroyed opaleine. “It’s in the woodland behind the concert hall.”
“I thought you said it was half an hour from where we were!”
He grinned. “It is, if you walk fast enough.”
“Fine, but can we keep to the trees until we get to the other side?” I pleaded, desperate to get away from the falling flakes of ash.
Relenting, he followed me back into the shelter of the forest, where we crept along the perimeter, keeping the lake to our right as we hurried on. I was ever-conscious of our time running out, and there was still a lot to be done, the hiss of that invisible sand-timer forcing me to pick up the pace.
However, as we neared the spot where the intact mansion sat, I grabbed Ronad by the shirt and yanked him back, pulling him into the shadows. A strange ship sat on what had once been the mansion’s rolling lawns. It wasn’t sleek or sophisticated, like most coldblood ships. Parts of it were rusting away, and several panels looked like they’d once belonged to other ships, hammered in mismatched patches. It was about the size of the Asterope, with two bulky, curved wings coming out the sides, reminding me of airplane turbines. Whatever kind of ship this was, it looked like it belonged in a junkyard, not a mansion’s backyard.
“We should try’n pick up as much of that shiny rock as possible. It’ll go fer a bucket-load at the darkstar market!” a voice called, as four figures emerged sporadically from the building, carrying scavenged furniture and technology.
The one who’d called out was leaning against the front of the rusty spaceship, his arms folded across his chest. He looked remarkably human, dressed in all black, with torn trousers, heavy boots, a bulky jacket made from a leathery material—one sleeve missing—and a bandana across his forehead. He had a black-and-white feather dangling from one ear, and a pair of snakebite piercings beneath his bottom lip, the studs apparently black, too. The only colorful thing on him was a glowing blue bracelet.
I guessed he was the leader, and he definitely wasn’t Vysanthean. The rest of the group didn’t seem to be, either. I watched them come and go. There was a lycan and a Carokian among them, the latter making me feel a little queasy, with its bulging red eyes bugging out of its head and its amphibian mouth flopping open, but I had no clue which species the others belonged to.
There were two unknowns. One was a petite individual with colorful red-and-yellow skin that seemed almost scaly. Its head looked oddly goldfish-like, with vivid aquamarine eyes and a plump pair of bright orange lips above a nonexistent chin.
The second moved like a shadow, prowling across the gardens, his skin covered in a sleek layer of jet-black fur that had abstract designs shaven in, the pattern moving across his body. I could tell he was male because his upper half was bare, and formed like a human’s, with rippling pecs and abs I could play a tune on. He wore black cargo pants that hung low on his hips, and his feet were bare, shaped like elongated paws. His face, however, was cat-like, his ears flicking backward and forward, as if listening for distant sounds of warning. I hoped he couldn’t hear us hiding in the trees. Just like the leader, he wore a black-and-white feather in his ear, the fibers resting against the side of his panther-like face.
“What are they?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
Ronad looked worried. “Scavengers.”
I rolled my eyes. “What species are they? I only know lycans and Carokians.”
“Carokians freak me out.” He shuddered, pulling a face. “The red-and-yellow one is a Darian—stay away from their mouths, at all costs. They might look sweet, but they have rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth inside their mouths. They can pull out chunks of flesh in seconds.”
“Aren’t they the ones with the delicious blood?” I asked.
Ronad nodded. “That’s why it’s weird to see one here.”
“What about him?” I gestured at the cat-like scavenger.
“He’s a Rexombra. They’re an ancient species, almost as old as the Draconians. They’re mostly mercenaries, with a sideline in assassinations. They’re powerful and smart, and the stealthiest bastards you’re ever likely to come across. You’ll never hear one sneak up on you—it’s why nobody has ever been able to prove what they do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, nobody has ever caught them in the act.”
I frowned at the thought, though I imagined it was a pretty quick way to go. Even so, it made me look over my shoulder a couple of times, just to be sure there wasn’t one lurking in the trees behind me. I was about to ask what the humanoid was when the Darian shouted out.
“Stone, where do you want this?” it asked, carrying an armful of expensive-looking tech. The creature’s voice was high and shrill, cutting right through me.
“Drop it in Red Bay,” the casual leader replied, scuffing his boot against the grass. All he needed was a motorcycle and a cigarette in his mouth, and he’d be every parent’s nightmare.
“Are we really taking all of that rock with us?” the Rexombra asked, glancing over at the concert hall. “There won’t be room for anything else.”
“Relax, Alfa, we’ll take a couple blocks,” the man named Stone said. “We’ll still ‘ave plenty of room for all that artsy crap you insist we nick.”
The Rexombra, apparently named Alfa, grinned, flashing a pair of fangs. “But does my artsy crap always sell?”
Stone rolled his eyes.
“Stone, yes or no? Does my artsy crap always make us a ridiculous amount of credits?”
Stone chuckled. “Point taken.”
“So, which planet are we hitting next?” the Darian asked as it emerged from the belly of the ship. “Since I picked this one, I think it’s someone else’s turn.”
The Carokian flapped its gaping mouth at the Darian. “You didn’t pick this one, Niniver,” it slurped.
“I did!”
“Tarin has that civil war brewing, and they’ve got loads of those special mushrooms you like, Stone—if you know what I mean?” Alfa suggested, but Stone shook his head, evidently bored.
The lycan wandered up with two jewelry boxes under its arms. “How about we visit the North, see what the war has to offer up there?”
“Not a bad idea, Dio. Saves us a bit o’ space lag,” Stone remarked, grinning.
Alfa, the panther-like one, darted on ahead, retrieving a few blocks of the concert hall opaleine, which he brought back single-handedly. Soon enough, to my relief, they were preparing to depart. We’d wasted a good twenty minutes watching them, and I was worried it might cost us dearly.
“Is that the last o’ it?” Stone asked, and his crew nodded. “Speak now or forever hold yer peace!”
The lycan made a crude gesture, which made the others laugh. Ronad snorted beside me.
As they headed for the ship’s entrance, a deafening crack shot through the air like a gunshot. Above my head, a tree had splintered, the weight snapping the trunk in two, the falling timber narrowly missing the spot where Ronad and I stood. Stone whirled around, whipping the bandana off his head. In the center of his brow, a third eye opened, blinking slowly, looking directly at us.
I tried to duck down into the undergrowth, but my body refused to cooperate. I w
as frozen solid, unable to move a muscle. I couldn’t even open my mouth to speak. Using my peripheral vision, I could tell that Ronad was struggling too, a vein throbbing at his temple.
“What you looking at, Stone?” Alfa asked, peering toward the forest.
“That tree fell, and I wanna know why,” he replied, his tone menacing. “I think there’s someone out there, dropping eaves on us.”
Alfa rested a paw-like hand on his leader’s shoulder. “We need to get going before that queen’s party is over. They’ll send the authorities, and we want to be long gone by then,” he warned. “No point worrying about a few injured soldiers. That’s all it’ll be in a warzone like this.”
Stone’s three eyes narrowed. “I can sense ‘em.”
“And the authorities will sense us in a sec, if we don’t get a move on!” Alfa insisted, more urgently this time. “Besides, we’re running on a schedule, remember? We’ve got goods to deliver! Don’t want Ezra to start nagging us again.”
Had I heard that right? Ezra—Orion’s right-hand man. Even if I had, though, that didn’t mean it was the same Ezra I knew.
Turning around, Stone tied his bandana back around his head, covering his third eye. Immediately, my muscles relaxed, everything returning to normal.
The scavengers scurried inside the belly of their rusty vessel. A minute later, the engines fired to life, sending debris flying everywhere as they clattered and rasped, spewing out hot air and bright white light. The things that looked like turbines turned upside down, creating the propulsion to lift them into the air, which they did with another rattle and a couple of bangs for good measure. It definitely wasn’t a smooth take-off, but I was glad to see the back of them as they flew off.
“What the hell was that?” I gasped, unclenching.
“Who, the dude who looks like he’s going to an Earthen funeral?”
“Yeah, how did he do that? I couldn’t move!”
“He’s a triclops—more specifically, an ambaka,” Ronad explained, cracking his neck. “They can stun any creature that crosses the path of their third eye. That is what happened to us. Although, I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to be extinct. Their entire planet was destroyed in a war with Vysanthe, over fifty years ago. We were always told there were no survivors.”