Page 54 of Lady for Embers

“What do you mean ‘retrieved?’” Scarlett asked.

But a moment later, her question was answered as objects appeared in the sky, dropping to the decks of the ship with sickening thumps. Sorin was reaching for her, but she shoved his hands away.

“What the fuck?” Cyrus muttered, stepping forward.

Cassius and Sorin were closing in around her, while Azrael moved forward with Cyrus to try to ?gure out what exactly they were looking at.

“Move, you overbearing asses,” she growled, trying to shove by Cass and Sorin, but they were solid walls of muscle. There was no getting by them without tapping into her magic, and she needed to save that.

Cassius was spinning to face her a moment later, his hands gripping her shoulders. “Seastar...” He looked utterly helpless as he met her gaze.

“When we tell you what the message is, you need to keep control of yourself. Do you understand?”

“Why wouldn’t I keep control of myself?”

“Because those are heads and body parts, Scarlett,” Sorin answered grimly.

“What?” Her face scrunched at what he’d said, certain she hadn’t heard him correctly. “Of what?”

“Of people, Scarlett. Of... Fae. From our Courts.”

Her entire body went ice cold. Then hot. Then cold again. Her shadows thickened, swirling around her, ?ames and ice whirling among them.

“Move.”

Her voice was as dark as her magic, and Sorin and Cassius both stepped aside. Mikale was smirking at her. Lord Tyndell looked sorrowful, as if he was upset it had come to this. The seraph looked bored, his arms crossed, watching her warily.

She looked down at the body parts scattered around the deck of the ship. You wouldn’t be able to tell if the limbs were Fae simply by looking at them. Arms. Legs. Feet. Hands.

But the heads? They all had the arched ears of the Fae.

How Sorin knew they were from their Courts, she didn’t know. Maybe he’d just assumed. She didn’t care. Alaric had killed innocent people to send her a message.

And then Alaric stepped from the air in front of her.

“You are dead,” she said, her tone the embodiment of darkness itself.

“You killed my people; I killed yours. You wanted a war, my Wraith. I gave you one,” he returned, his voice deathly calm.

She lunged for him, and he leapt for the sky, black wings ripping from his back. Scarlett’s shadows were already forming a dragon behind her but not fast enough. She threw ?re, freezing it as she had done in the Night Child territory. Leaping from blocks of frozen ?ames, she went higher and higher, racing after him until her shadow dragon bellowed its own fury. She knew where it was without having to look, and she leapt to its back as it soared past her, a stream of ?re erupting from its mouth.

Alaric spun in the air so that he faced her, and when her shadow dragon spewed ?re again, it hit a shield of something Scarlett could not see.

“Those were innocent people!” she screamed at him.

“You have been killing people since you were twelve,” he retorted, black wings ?apping lazily to keep him aloft. “Or has it become so second nature to you that you have forgotten your ?rstkill?”

“They were not innocent people,” she retorted, blades of ice forming in her hands.

“How would you know?” Alaric asked. “You were told what you needed to hear.”

“What?” Scarlett balked, rearing back and nearly losing her balance on the dragon. “You lie.”

“I suppose you will never really know, will you?” he sneered.

Her shadows were snaking over his shield, trying to ?nd a way in until she realized they weren’t moving along his shield at all.

The shield was absorbing them.

---