Page 34 of Flight of Fate

Ayna

Tori doesn’t askbefore he grabs Myron’s and Royad’s hands and site-hops them out then returns within a heartbeat to get Herinor and Silas, who have the good sense to shift into their bird forms first so they make it easier for Tori to transport them. Kaira takes his open hand, and I hop onto his shoulder before he can object or, worse, leave me behind. The last thing I see is Tata’s blade flash silver and crimson as she runs through the leftover soldiers with a stone-hard expression.

Unlike I’d imagined, Tori doesn’t drop us off in the throne room but takes us to the highest point of the palace: one of the towers marking the corners of the building.

“Fucking Hel,” Silas breathes as the two Crow males shift back into their fae form, staring down into the streets behind the palace walls where fairies lay slain on the cobblestones in puddles of their own blood, their faces contorted in frozen horror.

My chest constricts as I scan the city as far as my eyes will allow and find more and more bodies scattered along the alleys. The lively buzz usually defining the city during the days and early night hours is gone, replaced by the stench of death and panic. But what’s worse is the utter silence.

There are no lights flickering in the windows, no hooves clopping along the roads, no merchants shouting out their goods.

“What happened?” Herinor takes my words right from my tongue, whispering them into the grave-like quiet.

Tori’s shoulders lift as he heaves a breath so deep I wonder if he’s breathed at all since Recienne ordered him to bring us back to Aceleau. “We don’t know. We haven’t had the chance to question anyone.”

His tone is too calm, too quiet, and I barely dare ask,“Where are the others?”Kaira shudders as my thoughts drift through her mind link.

Bythe others,I mean all of them: the Fairy King, Myron, Royad, but also those who remained at the palace when we set out for battle. Clio, Sanja.

My crow ears strain for any sound that might give away they are somewhere in the solid stone building beneath us.

“Recienne, Myron, and Royad are securing the premises.” Tori nods at the gardens below where I indeed spot three dark forms gliding between bushes on silent feet in the falling night. “But what we can say so far is that it’s only the western part of the city. They left the eastern and southern districts alone, probably out of fear of alarming the soldiers camping right outside the walls.”

The audacity to attack in a city crawling with powerful fairies…

“Who would do something like this?” The shock weighs heavy on Kaira’s shoulders, even when she straightens them, defying the horror unfolding before us.

Tori’s head turns toward her even when his eyes keep scanning the palace grounds like he could weed out any danger by sheer willpower. “Who do you think?”

“Erina wouldn’t dare set foot in this city. Not without a host of soldiers,”I think at them, and Herinor bobs his head, hand twitching to his sword as he seems to be counting the corpses in the streets.

“This has Ephegos written all over it,” the male agrees, and even Silas dips his chin, for once at a loss for words.

Kaira faces Herinor, turning her back to where I’m still perched on Tori’s shoulder. “If you know him so well, why don’t you tell us where to find him so I can slit the bastard’s throat.”

Terror isn’t the right description for what flickers in Herinor’s eyes at her statement. It’s something similar laced with a deadly calm on the surface that keeps his emotions buried deep enough that they don’t leap from his tongue or his sword as he growls, “You are not going anywhere near Ephegos.”

It’s an order, and Kaira isn’t having it.

She merely turns toward Silas standing next to Herinor, grabbing for her bow as if she’d shoot Ephegos from the skies. “Since your friend isn’t cooperating: where doyouthink we can find the traitor?”

With a sharp shake of his head, Silas gently pushes her hand away from her bow. “Ephegos wouldn’t be stupid enough to show his face in this city. He must have sent a magic-wielding unit to slay so many fairies that quickly. A unit of Crows who are masters at unweaving wards,” he says, reminding us of how they got free of the spells binding them into the Seeing Forest to begin with. “That also explains how they got into the city.”

Tori nods his agreement, and the rumble of rage in his chest makes my entire bird body tremble. “The patrols haven’t found the assailants,” he says after another deep breath that makes me feel like I’m sitting in a boat on a rocky ocean. “They were already out searching when we arrived. Clio gave the order when the screaming started.” He lowers his head an inch as if he can’t bear the thought of Clio anywhere near the slaughter havingoccurred in this city. “The patrols only found the dead. In the streets and in their homes. This isn’t the work of soldiers. It’s the work of assassins.”

“Lots of assassins,” Silas adds in that dark, toneless voice he normally uses to deliver jokes, but there’s no humor in his eyes. Nothing but the cold promise of violence as he shifts his gaze from the grave this city has become to Tori and me. “Ephegos had a small army of assassins deliver a message.”

“That he can get to us whenever he wants, wherever he wants, and there is nothing we can do about it,”I think at them, and no one objects.

As if it’s the only thing keeping his shoulders from hunching, Tori squares them an inch before facing Silas fully. “The battle was a diversion,” he says with that dry analytic tone of the general despite the trembling of his muscles straining beneath my claws as he fights to hold himself in place when he hasn’t been able to make a full assessment of the damage. “The city was the real target.”

Recienne and Myron confirm as much when we meet them half an hour later in the throne room, all of us caked with blood from the battle we so foolishly ran into while Ephegos used the time to slaughter half a district in this city.

The four Crow males are standing a few feet from the stone dais at the front of the pompous room, next to Clio, Tori, and Kaira, on whose shoulder I’m now perched, not because I don’t want to be close to Myron but because I can watch him better from my current spot, his serious expression, the grief in his eyes, the contained anger at what happened.

Rubbing his face, Recienne leans against the dais where his carved throne stands ready for the king of Askarea. Beside him, Queen Sanja is perched on the stone lip, her hand sliding back and forth over her belly as if soothing the unborn babe growing there. “It’s not your fault,” she says to her mate, her tone not gentle but scolding, as if the Fairy King frequently beats himself up about things he didn’t have a hand in.

Recienne merely shakes his head. “I should have known?—”

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