Page 21 of The Blood Crown

The Captain’s gaze narrowed, as if she smelled the lie.

Aurelia held her breath, forcing herself not to look away.

The female clasped her palm around the ring. “The king will be glad to see this,” she uttered to the male beside her, turning on a heel and stalking past Aurelia without another glance.

It was only then that Aurelia let her shoulders drop, watching the female’s back as she approached the silver sirens.

Their graceful bodies were strewn in front of the riverbank like discarded flower petals. The long shafts of arrows protruded from them vulgarly, staining the dirt pewter with their blood.

The Captain kicked over the body of the middle one. Seemingly satisfied that she was dead, she placed a blood-red boot onto the siren’s back and shoved her body into the river. The siren’s beautiful face floated for a moment before the dark grey water pulled her under and swallowed her up.

Movement flashed at the periphery.

One of the other sirens leapt up, dashing for the swift current of the river, but the white-haired female was faster.

She caught the siren by her shimmering blue hair, wrapping the long strands around her fist until the siren was snarling and snapping her pointed teeth under her grasp.

A male appeared at the Captain’s side. She held out her open hand as he dropped a large, wickedly curved blade into herwaiting palm. The siren’s final hiss was cut short as the blade sliced through her neck, severing her head from her body.

The pale female held up her trophy, the siren’s naked body slumping to the cold ground. “I guess it’s true that the only way to kill a snake is to cut off its head.”

Tossing the siren’s head into the river, she turned to the one that still lay motionless on the ground, jerking her chin toward the male at her side. Without a word, he knelt, severing the slender neck with one vicious slash.

The female wiped the blood from her gleaming blade onto her gear, her gaze finally landing on Ven. Her red mouth sharpened into a smile, revealing the edges of pointed canines.

“Welcome home,” she uttered.

Chapter 11

Chains bound Aurelia’s hands, thick metal cuffs with sharpened spikes on the underside that cut into her wrists, burning and biting with every movement.

Her waist was lashed to Ven, who sat behind her on the dappled grey courser. The grip of his thighs around her was a small comfort as she glanced to the white riders surrounding them, melting away into the snow-dusted forest.

The sleeve of her shadowskin was sticky with blood. The bite of the serpent didn’t carry the same sting as demon venom, but she wasn’t healing. The gritty feeling in her throat only increasing since the fight with the silver sirens, and the thirst that had been a gnawing irritation for the last few days had become hard to ignore.

She risked a glance behind them. Karro’s limp form had been slung over the back of a horse. Unconscious, but alive. She had heard them say as much when they’d hauled his large body from the clearing and strapped him to a mount.

Looking down to where Ven’s long legs wrapped around hers, she could see the tell-tale shine of fresh blood weepingfrom his wounds. He had put on a good show in the clearing, but the grimace of pain had been written clearly on his face when one of the white-haired archers had pushed him back to his feet.

They needed blood.

Leaning back against Ven’s chest, she tried to ignore the fire burning up her throat as she whispered, “Where are they taking us?”

“To Mountveil, I’d imagine,” he uttered. “To their king.”

Velvet night stretched over the mountain peaks as they made their journey through the Shades.

The narrow back of the female leading their posse was far ahead of them at the front of the group. Her destrier was black as night against her white gear, her blood red boots and the crest marked above her left breast the only spots of color in the grayscale winter night.

Her pale skin glowed against the flurries of snow that drifted lazily through the pines, a longbow slung across her back, made of some silvery white wood that matched her sheet of long hair. The top half of it was pulled away from her face in intricate braids, falling down her back, swaying like threads of silk with every movement from the large beast she rode.

The rest of the Nostari looked the same, their hair varying shades of white, platinum, and silver. Skin so pale that it was nearly translucent, the only color from the webbing of blue veins at their porcelain throats and their bright red eyes. Not the ruby and garnet varieties she’d grown accustomed to at Ravenstone.

Everything about these people seemed drained of color. Of life.

It was difficult to believe that the onyx-haired, bronze-skinned Solari andthesehad once come from the same people.Then again, it had been millennia since the Nostari had looked upon the sun.

Black cliffs loomed ahead as they followed a roughly cut path carved into a ravine. Her eyes traveled the sheer rock faces on either side until they could see no further up into the snow that dusted the mountain peaks. They were so deep into the Shades that the sun wouldn’t reach this place.

---