“Veron,” she said, like the softest moss feathering down the back of his neck, like warm breath on his skin, and he faced her.
Her eyes were the dark embrace of home, the bloom of night and beauty of shadow, and when she smiled, his breath caught.
She held out the bouquet, and when he took it, her touch lingered on his hand. “Nothing to fear,” she whispered, for him and him alone.
With a nod, he smiled back, but restrained it before his teeth would show. No teeth. Nonthreatening.
A little girl with dark curls like Alessandra’s squealed her delight, and Alessandra unclasped her pearl bracelet and handed it to Kinga, another of his kuvari, to give away. With a happy little laugh.
No, she wasn’t spoiled. Her father had adorned her with luxury, but she didn’t seem to hoard these things.
She called out to Gabriella, who removed several books from her horse’s pack, and distributed them to older children.
Alessandra’s fondness of books—he’d have to note it in A Modern History of Silen.
She didn’t look like the fiercest dark-elf women, the ones young men dreamed of—equals in battle, ambitious subjects, the strongest among their people. Fiery lovers. But…
Honest, generous, wise, brave, kind… That anyone should find such traits in a partner was a blessing. One he’d never expected. All he’d been allowed to expect had been a marriage Mati deemed beneficial to Nozva Rozkveta. As was proper.
In the forest, Alessandra had been close, her perfume of some sky-realm flower so near he could’ve almost tasted it. Her fingers had stroked against his hair, a whisper of a touch, and he’d had to fight the desire to lean into it. As his heart had pounded then, there had been something in that dark embrace of her gaze. A curiosity. A question. An invitation…
One he’d been tempted to accept. Very tempted.
But did she feel the same? After her utter terror on their wedding night, he wouldn’t push. If he misread her, it would only frighten her more, and trouble her. If the gap between them was closing, however, someone would have to broach the subject, admit the shift in perception. And it would be him. He’d have to confess his budding attraction to her first. And he would. No hiding. No dishonesty.
The final time he’d seen Ata, he’d only been a boy, not even old enough to go hunting alone with his father. Can’t I come, Ata? he’d asked.
Ata had crouched to eye level, smiled, and patted him on the shoulder. Not this time, son. But I’ll be back before you know it.
With a beaming grin and a nod, he’d watched Ata walk to his death. To end the war between Nozva Rozkveta and Lumia, Ata had willingly turned himself over, and had saved many dark-elf lives with his sacrifice, but he’d betrayed the love of his own children, of Mati. The stillness Mati had gone through, like living death… all because Ata had betrayed their love when he could have—
Dangerdangerdanger. Noc’s fey-horse mind invaded his own.
Shadows cloaked them as they neared an arch, and he could still hear the flap of funeral shrouds, vast and heavy, the beat of each shake—
And gasps, horrified screams—
He blinked, and the flapping came from above, the beat of great, black wings that blotted out the sun.
Chapter 10
Enormous wings spanned fifteen feet wide above them, two dozen harpies with too-wide mouths and razor-sharp talons.
A few swarmed the top of the arch, while the rest dove for the crowds. The humans would be slaughtered. Alessandra would—
“My bow!” Veron leaped off Noc’s back and pulled Alessandra from the saddle, wrapping his cloak about her as the crowd dispersed in screams.
“Veron, why are they—”
A harpy swooped low, talons out, and Alessandra screamed. He shielded her. Nothing would harm her. Nothing.
Gavri rushed in, drew her bow, and the first harpy wailed as it hit the cobblestones before them.
“Hide anything that shines!” Riza bellowed in Sileni. Someone handed her his bow and a quiver full of arrows, which she tossed to him.
“Shines?” Alessandra shouted, ducking along with Gabriella.
Gavri’s unit ringed them while Danika’s covered the crowd ahead of them, and he shuffled Alessandra and Gabriella behind him to the narrowest point of the alley as he took aim.
One through the neck. Down on the cobbles.
Another in the eye, and arrows pierced its wings as it fell.
Riza’s kuvari cut heads with vjernost blades—the only way to ensure the final death—and the arcanir caught the sunlight. Sharp, screeching cries pierced the air.
He took aim, burying arrows in wings and bodies, but—
Noc bucked, then kicked at a harpy—coins jingling in his saddlebags.
No.
“The coins!” Alessandra called. “If we could just—”
Get them on the street.
“Gavri,” he snapped, taking his glove between his teeth and yanking it off. “Cover me!”
As soon as he sprang forward, arrows hissed through the air above him.
“Your Highness!” Riza growled, her vjernost blade meeting talons.
Hold still. He caught Noc’s reins, then cut the girth free. The saddle and its bags tumbled to the street as he clapped Noc on the rump, sending him to Gavri and Alessandra.
Blood rained onto his head and neck—a harpy thudded to the cobbles, an arrow in its gaping maw.
He grabbed the bag of coins, opened it, then tossed it to the empty street ahead of them. Gold exploded on the stone in a chaos of clanging and clinks, bright sunlight glinting off hundreds of shining facets.
A dozen harpies descended over the glittering metallic sea.
Over fifty bows angled as one, myriad arrows burying in shrieking targets. Riza gave the kill order, and vjernost blades cut heads from bodies.
Booted footsteps hurried in. Two squads of city guards, whose commander Riza met with a blood-spattered scowl and recounting of the attack.
He wiped the blood off his own face… with a blood-soaked sleeve.
Hooves clopped behind him—Noc neighed his location as Alessandra led him.
She was all right. Thank the Deep, Darkness, and Holy Ulsinael—she was all right. At the first sign of the harpies, he thought she’d…
A sigh left him and, with it, the rigidity claiming his body. He took a step forward before she held out a handkerchief.
He paused. What had he been thinking? To throw his arms around her, feel her safe against him, to kiss her? No, he had to tell her how he felt first.
With a murmur of thanks, he took it and swabbed his face, then patted Noc’s neck. Thank you for the warning, old friend.
Noc only nickered. He always had been a fey horse of few words.
City guards combed the streets, although there seemed to be no human casualties. A couple kuvari nursed wounds, but Riza already had their mystic, Xira, tending them.
The commander of the city guards, wearing a mermaid emblem, approached. A middle-aged man with graying black hair, he bowed low to Alessandra. “Your Highnesses, have you been harmed?”
Still wearing his cloak, Alessandra seemed uninjured. “I’m all right. Veron?”
“The only injuries are two of my kuvari, but you’ll have to check with Captain Riza.”
The commander’s throat bobbed. “Please accept my deepest apologies for the bad luck. Her Grace had us take every precaution.”
Every precaution would have included clearing the nearby harpy nest before the Royal Progress, or at least issuing a warning about reflections. But unlike the humans he remembered, these had a lot to learn about Immortals.
And bad luck would have meaning that would ripple throughout the human kingdom. That their human gods disfavored the peace, the marriage, them.
Alessandra took his hand, then with a deep breath, turned to the commander. “It wasn’t bad luck, Captain…?”
“Scianna,” the commander supplied. “But I don’t understand, Your Highness—”
Alessandra handed Noc’s reins to Gabriella, then walked with him back toward the alley he’d led her to, with Captain Scianna following. Gavri waited there attentively, but when he passed her, she lowered her gaze.
She’d fought bravely, capably…
But she couldn’t be trusted. The first betrayal had been small, almost harmless, but the next could mean a life, or more. She couldn’t be trusted. He turned away.
“Harpies are drawn to shining objects,” Aless said, catching his eye for a moment, “like coins. Jewelry. Blades. Anything that might catch the sun, and their eye.”
True enough. And she’d clearly been listening. Her idea with the coins had been brilliant. What was she planning now?
She reached the spot where he’d left her during the attack, the narrowest point of the alley, then turned toward the arch. Her finger pointed upward, to the top, where as the clouds cleared, a shine reflected, blinding white and large, toward the cliffs. As they’d approached from the south, they wouldn’t have been able to see it. But from her vantage point in the alley, she had.
“I believe that’s a mirror, Captain,” Alessandra said. “What seems like bad luck was actually sabotage.”
Aless eyed Veron surreptitiously as a squad of city guards escorted them, Gabriella, and his guards into Duchessa Claudia La Via’s castle. The duchessa waited in the great hall, where she and Veron would have to earn the duchessa’s support and that of her nobiltà. If by the time they left, the nobiltà was all smiles and the duchessa extended a promise of friendship, their objective here would be a success.