CHAPTER 6

Grand ships of perfectly carved timber were scattered across the ocean’s disturbed surface. From my position, they looked like wooden toys floating in a tub of water, ready for a large hand to descend from the sky and move them.

I settled on a ship closest to the shore, vessels of russet-stained wood formed a walled barrier. Atop masts, Cedarfall banners trembled in the winds that whipped across the ocean.

I tasted the bitter salt across my dried lips, mixed with the harsh smoke that billowed from the ship’s port side.

I should’ve felt a swell of relief at seeing the fey ships. Instead, heat coursed through my chest. Bile crept up my throat. I watched as the wall of far larger, far grander ships cut across the dark, foam-tipped waves toward the shallow waters.

Toward the fey ships.

I lifted a hand and covered my eyes. Squinting, I focused on the ivory sails, which billowed in the winds. Across the cream material was a symbol I recognised with sickening clarity. Not even its violent rippling could hide the mark of black stitching.

The wheel of the Creator. The same symbol I’d seen nailed above Abbott Nathanial’s church. I distinguished its two inter-crossing lines, which overlapped the circular symbol and pointed east, south and west. The northern line tipped like an arrow and pointed skyward to the Creator’s heavenly domain.

But that wasn’t the only similarity to Nathanial’s church. Because the creatures flying through the sky looked exactly like the depiction of the angel on his stain glass window.

“We’re under attack,” Althea gasped, eyes snapping from creature to creature.

She was right. I froze, not from horror, but the need to calculate my next steps carefully. Dragging my gaze from the wafting sails to the winged figures, I was transfixed as they swooped through the clouds as though the sky had birthed them.

They dove with grace. Like birds, they folded their feathered limbs and dove toward the ocean in a spear-like formation. Except the creatures didn’t disappear beneath the surface of harsh waters. They cast their great wings out, catching them mid-fall, skipping across the ocean’s surface like stones, directly toward the Cedarfall ships. The dull dawn light caught on blades. They glittered in their hands as though forged from light itself.

I heard them the closer they came. Their haunting cry of war carried across the winds like a siren song.

“What are they?” Kayne asked the question on everyone’s minds, breathless at my side. Lucari flared her wings upon his shoulder but didn’t dare become airborne. I didn’t share the same connection Kayne had, but I sensed her fear as sour as my own.

“Gryvern?” Duncan questioned, equally taken aback by what we witnessed.

“No,” I replied confidently. “Those are not gryvern.”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to discern details which would help me give them answers. My mind was numb. All I could do was watch helplessly as the creatures speared toward the fey. Angels, that was what Nathanial had said he’d seen. Spoken to. I put it down to a senile mind, but now I wasn’t so sure he was ever misled.

Seraphine was suddenly at my side, peeling from the swell of freed prisoners who waited, audibly panicked, by the display they too witnessed. “Well, looks like we have a change of plan. Robin, we cannot risk the lives of those fey by taking them out of the castle to this, not until we know what we are facing.”

Her words settled over me like cold rain, hissing off the anger boiling across my skin.

“Any insight you can offer?” I asked her, master of knowledge and secrets.

She shook her head, black hair cascading over panicked eyes. “I have no idea.”

I believed her, and that only made this more horrifying.

“What’s our next move, King?” Seraphine asked.

I gasped at the question, not yet sure. “We follow through with making sure we get these fey away from Lockinge.”

“Our only chance of leaving Lockinge is moments from sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Look!” Seraphine pointed outward, turning my attention to something I’d already noticed. One of the Cedarfall ships lifted at an awkward angle as though a monstrous creature dragged it down into the deep. Whatever had caused the ship to sink had torn a mass of wood from its hull, leaving a gaping hole for water to gush into.

As though our attackers waited for our full attention, an explosive bang echoed across the waters. I snapped my head at the sound. A blur of black metal shot across the seas with furious speed. There was nothing I could do but watch as it shattered through the side of another Cedarfall ship.

In the distance, fey soldiers threw themselves into the depths as their ship broke apart in a storm of wood and flame.

“We have to stop this.” My command burst out of me. A violent shiver took over my body as I witnessed bodies disappear beneath waves among the carnage. Our saviours had sailed all the way around the continent on my order. But, once again, I had led them to their deaths.

“Robin,” Althea snapped, ferocity matching that which stormed inside of me. “Those are my people. Our people. I’m with you. We cannot turn our backs on them, letting whatever those are attack them the moment they’re free. We’ve got to do something.”

My jaw ached as I ground my teeth together. “We will do something. Together.”

A plan formed in my mind. It was rushed. Given the chance, I would have likely discovered multiple problems with it. But I didn’t have a moment to think when unknown creatures bearing the symbol of the Creator attacked us.

Duncan was already looking at me as though he sensed where my thoughts had gone. Deep lines furrowed across his brow as the winds whipped his length of dark hair from his face. The scar on his cheek created a devastating shadow from his eye to his lip, which curled into a sneer.

“Seraphine, keep the fey safe inside the castle until we have dealt with those opposing us,” I said, voice firm as more pieces of the plan slotted together.

“On it,” she said, before running off, spreading that command through the small army of her Asps.

“I know that look,” Duncan said, frown pinching harsher, eyes never leaving me.

“Those things in the sky. I need you to bring them all down.” My command was vague but clear to Duncan. His eyes softened, and cheeks flushed. Then Duncan followed my touch and glanced down at his wrist.

I held it in my hand. My thumb dusted across the thin iron bracelet that reminded me painfully of the one and only item I had been given by my mother.

“Robin. I – I don’t think I can do it.”

My fingers gripped tighter as I urged him to look back up at me. He needed to see the desperation in my eyes so that my plea made its way into his soul.

“You heard Seraphine, those ships are our only chance at leaving. The more we hesitate, the more will sink. We must stop this before any more are destroyed.”

“Fighting Hunters and Kingsmen is one thing, but going against winged warriors is another,” Kayne said, always the first to point out the flaws.

“Enemies,” I reminded. “We planned to face enemies, and that is what clearly waited for us outside. The plan has simply changed.”

“Kayne is right, Robin. There is no saying what we are up against,” Duncan replied, chest heaving with each breath. He fumbled as he spoke. His hesitation poisoned every word that passed between his lips. “It is one thing trying to save the fey, but what if I hurt someone? I can’t control this… power.”

“I need you to try, for me, if not for them.” I gestured to those around us. “Do it because I asked. You asked if I trusted you, and I do, Duncan. For the sake of everything we have put ourselves through these past weeks, please.”

Sorrow creased Duncan’s expression. He closed his eyes for a moment, stilling as though he hardly needed to breathe.

“Tell me you will try.” I couldn’t conceal my creeping panic as I spoke to him.

When Duncan finally replied, it wasn’t with the resistance I expected. “You could ask me to jump from this very spot, and I would do it. How could I ever refuse you, Robin?”

It was more a statement than a question. I was his weakness, as much as he was mine.

“Thank you,” I exhaled, not wanting to blink to miss the storm in his dark eyes.

Duncan sighed through a weak smile, one that never reached his eyes. He pressed a kiss on the crown of my head, holding it there for a paused moment.

I thought the spark I felt was simply from the shock of his touch. But as he pulled away, his eyes glowed a molten blue. His wrist was naked of the iron bracelet. I knew the spark was from something else entirely – magic.

The iron bracelet fell from his clutch, allowing the electrifying strands of his new power to coat his skin like snakes of bitter, fiery light.

“Go,” he whispered, urging me away from his body, which ignited and crackled with snakes of purple light. “Run!”

Leaving him was the hardest thing I’d done, and yet it was my only option. I didn’t stop moving, Althea alongside me, until I stood before the stretch of dark waters far beneath the castle.

Wild wind whipped at my black hair, obscuring my view of the battle across the ocean. Above me, ominous clouds flooded the sky at an unnatural speed. Thunder rumbled in warning, roaring as though a creature of nightmares hid among the clouds, waiting to burst through and devour the world.

Looking back up toward Lockinge Castle, I could see the heart of the phenomenon. Upon the worn stone wall of the balcony stood Duncan, with his hands raised to the sky, like a child willing their parent to pick them up. The bolts of blue-purple light that burst from his hands suggested something darker.

Duncan’s mutation, a result of the concoction of fey blood Aldrick had inserted into his heart, had cursed him with powers that should never have been possible. He called for the wild storm to close over the world. He enveloped the world in shadows, only illuminated by sudden tongues of forked lightning. Duncan seemed limitless.

“It is working,” Althea shouted above the storm. It took a strong will to look at her. Back straight, chin raised in defiance. The Cedarfall heir watched the horizon with boiling intent. One might’ve wondered if she was in control of the storm that brewed ahead of us from the look in her eyes alone.

I could see exactly what she meant. The white-winged creatures scattered across the skies as the bolts of lightning whipped down upon them. Duncan’s lightning was chaotic, clashing into the ocean without prejudice.

Since our escape from Aldrick, Duncan had been adamant to keep his power buried by the iron bracelet. He told me he didn’t want it – admitted his fear of it. But I knew he was wrong. He simply didn’t trust it. Yet.

Duncan was uncontrolled and fuelled purely on desperate instinct – but his intention was exactly where it needed to be. And for that, I was thankful.

Although he looked like a god, calling down streaks of light from the skies as though they were his strings, and he was the puppet master of the storm, he’d reach his limit soon.

That was when Althea and I would act.

I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood. Although unpleasant, the distraction stopped me from looking back at Duncan.

“If this doesn’t work, we risk everything,” Althea reminded me, rolling the dark sleeves of her form-fitting tunic up to her elbows. Freckle-covered arms now exposed, she shook them as though stretching them out in preparation.

“And we lose everything if we don’t take the risk,” I replied, my heart jolting at the sight of the strange, winged creatures dodging with poise and ease through the lightning strikes. There was something familiar about them. I couldn’t focus on one long enough to claim answers, for they swooped and dived, flying with a speed that made them blur into figments of ivory and gold. “I refuse to fail after everything we have done. For our sakes and theirs.”

I thought back to the freed fey who waited in the castle. Kayne, Seraphine and her small army of Asps would have their work cut out for them, trying to keep some sense of calm among the crowd when a war quite literally raged outside of the castle’s protective walls.

Suddenly the human city was now the safest place for them to be.

Confident pleasure sparkled in Althea’s gaze as she locked her eyes with mine. She nodded first. I replied with a curt tip of my head. “Then let’s not let them down,” Althea said, rolling back her shoulders. “Ready?”

I took a step toward the water that rushed back and forth upon the shore. Foam and seaweed tumbled over with the tide.

“Set fire to the sky,” I said, facing out at the waters toward the pandemonium. Duncan’s power had separated the fight but had not stopped it entirely. That was our task.

“Oh, how I have wanted to hear those words.”

Heat exploded behind me, but I was already running from it. I didn’t need to look back to know that Althea had released her power completely, just as Duncan had.

And now it was my turn.

The shallow waters turned to solid ice beneath my feet. It was as though winter seeped from my body with no thought or physical action. My power devoured the ocean surface willingly, flooding across the dark blue until it glistened like diamonds. There was no room for hesitation as my boots met the layer of ice.

This was not just magic, it was the power of Icethorn – a gift of being its king.

I didn’t stop running. There was only the single thought of keeping one foot in front of the other and the desperate need to ensure no more ships fell to this siege.

My feet slipped as I chased the spreading of my ice out into the ocean. Stiff wind lapped at my cheeks, causing tears to roll down my face, only to catch in frozen droplets before they reached my jaw.

The closer I was, the clearer I saw the creatures. Two arms, two legs. A body no different from mine – despite the magnificent feathered wings bursting from their backs.

Humans. They had to be human or at least something similar. Not like the gryvern, with their monstrous forms and leathered wings. And, like the sails marked with the symbol of the Creator, they also displayed the same mark upon the drapes of ivory material across their chests instead of plates of armour.

Althea continued throwing flames into the skies, lifting them higher and higher until they billowed far past Lockinge castle’s tallest tower, scorching the clouds in thick plumes of smoke. My feet stumbled beneath me as I glanced back at her. From a distance, she looked more like a bird from stories old, thrusting wings of fire across the world until she burned it entirely.

Althea’s display of power encouraged my own. I felt in competition, expelling the winter I housed within me and freeing it across the world.

My forced confidence didn’t last long.

Slicing downward from the sky before me was a woman of ethereal power. Black skin glowed in contrast to her dove-grey wings. She moved with such speed that her outline became unclear. Until she stopped, throwing out her impressive span of feathered limbs to catch her downfall. Braids billowed around her frame like coiled strands of shadow. In her hands, she held a hammer of sorts crafted from gold. This close, I could see its surface swirled with decorative symbols. It took both hands for her to hold it, her muscles bulging with restraint.

“Halt this madness,” she bellowed, hovering before me, feet barely above my floor of ice. I drank in the vision of her. She wore a garment that would have been well suited for a place within a church. Similar to Abbott Nathanial’s shawl, except hers was cut to fit her body for not only the purpose of prayer but battle too.

“A madness it would seem you have caused,” I spat.

She regarded me, golden eyes drinking in my body. “Never did we expect to find the fey allied with the Defiler. Is this what has become of the world since we left it in your capable hands?”

Her words didn’t make sense, not as I was enthralled with the way her hands twisted around the leather-bound handle of her weapon. I felt her intent to use it upon me just as I felt the breeze her wings created.

“I don’t know what you are talking about, but if you wish to save your… warriors, I suggest you stop this attack.”

It was as if she didn’t hear me, or at least didn’t care for my threat.

“Where is he?” she asked instead.

“Call off your attack!” I repeated, feeling the edge of anger that provided me comfort and confidence in the face of this winged human. “I shall not give you the grace by asking you again.”

I reeled back as she laughed, the sound so melodic and sweet.

“Is this the resistance the Defiler sends to greet us?” she asked. “Pathetic. We expected more from you.”

“Who is this Defiler you speak about?” I asked, clawing at what she had previously said but not quite catching it. Still, Duncan’s lightning raged on through the skies. It thickened in the air. The other creatures struggled to keep pace as his lightning exploded the world in light and heat.

“We have travelled too far to entertain such foolish questions.” Her lip curled upward as she swung the hammer with ease. It must have been made from feathers or something softer than metal for it to move with such effortless grace.

I threw myself backwards, falling on my ass and skidding away as the hammer fell into the body of ice that my feet had not long touched. It exploded into shards, a vicious crack snaking toward me.

It took not but one brush of my hand and the water froze over, stopping the webbing of cracks from spreading any further.

“We do not wish to fight,” I pleaded.

“That’s a shame,” she said, swinging her hammer again.

Refusing to back away, I lifted the chill of winter from the water and into the moisture-laced air. Like Duncan’s power, it sparked, but from a destructive cold instead of boiling light. It met the head of her weapon and clashed with it. The force sent her off-kilter for a moment.

“Who is the Defiler you speak of?” I screamed my question before she could right herself and attack.

“Do not play coy with me,” she spat, annoyance slashed across her beautiful face.

I took my chance of peace to speak before she swung the hammer downward. “Do you serve the Creator?”

Her arms tensed, wringing her hands upon her weapon once again as though it were a habit of comfort. “The Creator. Our Light. He has tasked us with stopping the Defiler from freeing the demonic entity Duwar with the precise instructions to take any life which dares stand in the way. Which, as it seems, is you.”

I looked beyond her, to the shattered Cedarfall ships that scattered across the ocean, then to the winged beings that dodged Duncan’s lightning as they continued their attack.

“You’ve got this wrong. I believe the person you speak of – this Defiler – is Aldrick.”

“Aldrick,” she hissed the name, proving it was not unfamiliar to her. “He will die for his treachery.”

“A feeling we share. Make it known that we don’t stand with him but against him.”

Her expression didn’t waver. It was stoic and unmoved, clear that my words did not have the effect that I wished them to.

“Lies born on the tongue of a snake. Enlighten me, fey. What serpent are you?”

I shook my head, ready to fall on my knees and plead for this to end. From the sickening distrust in her obsidian eyes, I knew it would not make her believe me.

“I’m Robin Icethorn, King of the Fey Court, and I beg you to hear my words and seek the truth in them. We are not allied with Aldrick… the Defiler, the Hand, whichever name you wish to best recognise him as. Those ships you send to the ocean floor are rescue vessels for the fey who wait, in fear and desperation, in that castle. Fey whom we have promised to save. And I swear to Altar, on the Creator, on anything worth naming, that if you stand in our way, I will stop you even if it destroys me.”

My entire body trembled. I felt my chance for peace ebb away as she shifted her hammer in a sharp motion. This time, it wasn’t the heavy head that she brought down to me.

It was the handle, as though she was offering her weapon to me.

I looked up the length of polished gold until my gaze settled back on her face. Her expression, although still filled with something that would spark fear in the weakest of souls, had seemed to soften.

“Take the hammer in your hands, and I will pursue the truth or unveil the deceptions you sputter toward me,” she said, the bite in her tone almost softening. “Do it and you may save them all or seal the doom we have arrived to provide.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. Swallowing back my hesitation and pride, I reached out and wrapped my hands around the handle of her hammer. It was warm to the touch. Alive, almost.

The nameless warrior held the head of her weapon in her hands, tethering us both until we were connected by the length of gold. Instantly, I felt its hefty weight. If she had released her grasp on it I would’ve fallen beneath its mass, crashed through the ice at my feet and sunk to the bottom of the dark ocean with no hope of coming back.

“One question, that is all I will give you.”

Nodding, I gritted my teeth and waited for what she had to ask me. I couldn’t understand how touching a weapon would grant me the safety of my people, but it was a chance I was prepared to take for them.

“Are you allied with the Defiler, aiding him to bring forth Duwar to this realm?”

It was the easiest answer to give. My mouth opened so quickly that I hardly took a breath before. Then I felt it. A strange, drawing pull from within the weapon that tugged at my very bones as I spoke.

“We are not.”

The winged woman hesitated, looking down at her weapon as my words settled over her. With bated breath, I waited for her to speak as she contemplated something silently. The sound of battle still raged behind her. It seemed louder than before.

“That is the truth,” I reiterated, my fingers tightening their hold on the handle. “You would be the fool to think otherwise.”

Suddenly, she withdrew the weapon from my grasp. The powerful pull I felt in my chest disappeared as my hands met empty air.

“The Creator has recognised your truth.”

I expected something more, but then she turned, wings almost knocking me backwards. She faced the remaining Cedarfall ships and her own armada. Not once had I questioned her authority. It seemed to seep from her pores, leaving no room to deny it.

“Wait,” I spluttered. “Do not do this.”

“It,” she replied, “is done.”

She threw back her head and released a sound that I had not heard another person make before. It was a mix between a scream that had the power to curdle blood, but also a song. A pitched note that soon became one of many as the other winged beings stilled in the air and returned her call.

I watched, stunned, as the fighting ceased. The clouds broke apart, and the bolts of lightning diminished. My heart skipped a beat as I searched for Duncan on the wall far behind me, but I couldn’t see him. His presence within the air faded quickly, so much so that I knew he had finally discovered his limitations.

“Robin Icethorn,” she said, turning my attention back to her. Regret drew down at her face as she landed upon my stretch of ice to stand before me. In the air, she seemed tall, but standing before me, we were similar in height. “I fear our grave misunderstanding has cost you.”

Fury coiled within my chest, but I forced it down long enough to get my next words out. Carefully chosen and full of demand, I spoke as softly as I could force. “As penance for your mistake, you are going to help me fix this. And then you are going to tell me exactly who you are.”