41. Schism

Schism

I thronel reeled back with the angry hiss of a viper. "Foolish creature," she sneered, shifting her stance into a fighting one. "If you will not—"

Cass didn't give her a chance to give her villain speech. He struck with his wing, the feathers slicked down into a killing edge and his stance low and strong.

The star-iron sword met his wing, her downswing vicious. It cut through the air with a thunderclap. People screamed. My eyes jerked to the side to see bloodied courtiers. She'd cut them with the wind , she was a goddess —

No, I told myself viciously, scrambling to get out of the way of those aerial strikes as Cass' wings and her sword clashed again. This is no time to panic. You can help them. I'd helped the people trapped in the woods when I hadn't known anything. This didn't have to be any different.

I huddled under the table and closed my eyes, the clang and crash of every strike ringing through the air. The force of her attacks hurt, Cass' wings and my back wrenching with the blows. It didn't matter. I had to set it aside.

All the late nights spent meditating with Cass as we honed our connection to the Clement Palace and to the Court of Mercy flooded into me. He'd told me I was a natural, when all it had been was six weeks of wild power scouring that connection deeper. The depths of those channels beckoned like the sea. Fall into me, lose yourself in me—

Protect them , I whispered to the palace, thinking of all my terrified people. Wealthy, important, frightened, faery… the Clement Palace showed them to me in scattered fragments, scenes seen through their eyes. A hundred different views as Ithronel and her King clashed, a goddess cleaving stone and air alike, leaving gouges across my soulmate's perfect wings. Cutting him open with the wind, blood drenching his shirt and pants, but her sword never biting into flesh.

Protection. I made myself think of it—made myself turn my heart away from Cass and imagine it. Walls of stone. Distance between a furious goddess and my people. Space for Cass to fight, where he didn't have to defend anyone.

The palace obeyed. Walls shot up from the ground like blast doors in a movie, slamming into the ceiling with a BOOM that threw plates to the floor. Physical geometry didn't matter to a place as ancient as the Clement Palace. In a heartbeat the center of the banquet hall went from near the heart of the palace to being divided from everything by swathes of bedrock, and I flung the walls away from each other to give my soulmate room to move.

A spike of hot exultation ran through me. I dug my fingers into the marble floor with my teeth bared, and went to war.

Cass fought with brutal force. The moment the walls went up, he stopped trying to block Ithronel's attacks with the broad sweep of his wings and went for vicious blows. He kept his hands up in a defensive position. If he touched her, he could fight with his power, but he couldn't get close. Her reach with that sword was too long.

My sword lessons had taught me enough that I knew I didn't have anything to contribute to the clash of swords and wings. Cass knew how to move, and how to fight. He knew how to face swords.

Ithronel used hers like a club. Her power screamed through the air, cut along its path, but she wasn't a swordswoman.

My swordmistress would eat you alive, I thought, distantly. I could almost see the flat disdain in her eyes; the way she had looked at me when I'd tried to tell her the stance she'd put me in didn't feel right. "You are used to being lazy. If you cannot even stand, how can you hope to fight?"

With the thought, my mind latched onto the movement of my soulmate—to his stance and the way the blood slicked the marble floor under his feet. Rougher , I thought, and the palace answered, the ground turning from polished stone to coarse sandpaper.

His surprise tightened my chest, then was replaced by the vibration of a snarl, vicious with pleasure. My blood heated.

Ithronel's feet were bare. She was a goddess, but that didn't preclude pain, and any distraction could give Cass what he needed to close with her. Like glass, I commanded the palace. It didn't even hesitate. The ground under her feet shattered and reformed, paper-thin slices of marble lancing through her feet. Her shriek of pain shook the walls.

The Clement Palace was mine , not hers. Fae called the gods patrons of the Courts, but they were siphons , feeding off the wild magic so that people could live in peace without growing tails or facing down monsters.

We don't need you anymore, I thought, my teeth bared with bloodlust. We have him .

Cass drove her across the floor, keeping her away from me. Under her feet, I turned the floor to glass-sharp knives; with every step, Cass' feet met the perfect footing, exactly where he needed it. I couldn't fight like him—but I sure as fuck could fight with him.

The goddess redoubled her attack with an enraged shout, moving fast enough that Cass had to cede ground. He held his wings hunched forward, shielding his head and chest, stepping back, back, back—

With perfect footing, he feigned a stumble, and went down to one knee.

Ithronel didn't see it for the trap it was. She reared back, greatsword held like a spear, and drove it for his heart.

Cass took it in his arm.

He took it on purpose , teeth bared in rage and eyes glowing gold, capturing her blade with his own body. The steel ran between the bones of his forearm without any pain at all, blood painting it red, and he surged to his feet, reaching for her.

Ithronel screamed in stymied rage. Her arms twisted, wrenching the sword to the side. Bones cracked, flesh tore—

—and then his hand was on her throat, and all movement ceased.

Power raged through me, pulled with such force that my vision streaked and danced. My heartbeat roared in my ears. I could feel his hand like it was mine, gripping so tightly on Ithronel's neck that the tendons screamed for relief, the force of that tension making his arm tremble. Half a million square miles of Court arrayed himself against a goddess, like a river fighting a reservoir.

The green leaves in her hair turned golden. They fell, one by one.

She fell, her skin breaking apart and body dissolving like a stone into sand, turning into autumn willow-leaves. Her sword slipped from leafy fingers and slid out of his arm like an eel out of a cave.

Cass' fingers met and closed into a fist. Her whole body fell in a rustling rain of leaves.

The thunder of Mercy's power through me fell suddenly silent. All I could hear was the harsh rasping of Cass' breath and the slow drip… drip… of his blood striking the stone floor.

I pressed my hand over my mouth, trembling. Cass had… he had…

"She's not dead," he said roughly. He slowly lowered his hand, and didn't turn to look at me. "Her memory still lives. She's one of the Deathless, Quyen." Cass' wings started rattling. They were scored with bright bronzy lines, the marks of her star-iron sword. "All it takes is time. Soon – maybe very soon – she'll take solid form again. Perhaps she'll step out of a cave, or a willow grove, or a spring, and then—" His voice cracked. "I have made a terrible enemy."

There were sharp feathers piercing the cloth over his spine. He'd channeled all of Mercy to defy her, and he would wear the marks of that power forever.

I didn't know what to say to him. What was there to say? "Guess the Cassites aren't so stupid, after all" ? I didn't have any comfort for him, and I didn't think trying to plan for an uncertain future would read as anything but petty and cruel .

His wings and shoulders slumped. His blood dripped down his fingers to splash on the floor.

A dark shape moved in the winter wood.

Cass had Ithronel's greatsword in his hands and his wings spread in a guard position before I could even focus my eyes on the creature moving through the trees. He growled a predator's warning, the very ground underneath us trembling from the sound.

"Keep your wrath behind those sharpening teeth, Merciful King," a deep voice said, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "I am no starved and desperate maiden."

Snow crunched underfoot, and a massive beast stepped out of the dark forest.

It had the shape of a gaunt wolf but was the size of an SUV, with ice-blue eyes and a near-black coat. Glossy black spikes speared up out of its dark ruff, running down its spine like something on a dragon, and instead of a wolf's fluffy tail, it had one made of what looked like knife-sharp obsidian vertebra, as long as a lizard's and snaking through the air.

"Faerqen," Cass breathed. He started backing up, hands shaking, all his feathers slicked down.

The low rumble of a derisive laugh filled the room. The god stepped into the light, stalking towards us with his head held low and jaws parted. His hot breath fogged in the cold air as the temperature plunged. "Well met, little game piece," the great Wolf's voice crooned from all around us. His feet crunched across the ruined floor, leaving ice and snow behind. "What glorious chaos you've caused. He didn't mean for you to have such a place of honor, but how fate likes to laugh at our plans."

Cass came to a halt in front of the high table, his wings mantled and his feet so close I could have reached out and grabbed his ankle. "Who, your glory?" he asked, his voice tight. "All of this. Me, Vaddy, Ayre… what is this?"

A low growl rumbled from Faerqen's deep chest. "You've caused no little harm to the ally of my favored prey, so I will grant you the answer to a single question, Merciful King," his directionless voice said. "And I will grant one to the clever mortal soulmate," it crooned into my ear, from inches away.

I jerked so hard I hit my head on the top of the table. Faerqen's laugh echoed through the room as I crawled out from my sanctuary and got to my feet. Unlike Cass, whose black velvet doublet was torn and slick with blood and whose embroidery shone red, my clothing was almost untouched. I walked around Cass' half-spread wing, keeping my shoulders back and expression cold. I put one hand over my heart, faery-style, and gave him a bow. "Your glory."

He licked his chops like a hungry dog. "Your questions, little ones."

Cass slowly lowered the sword until the tip rested on the ground. Frost crawled up it, the coating of blood freezing from the nearness of the god .

The steam of my breath froze on my lashes and my hair, and hung glittering in the air. Killing cold, I thought distantly, staring at what could only be the god of winter. Every inhale seared my lungs, but Cass' power still coursed through me, and I didn't freeze. I didn't even shiver.

"Sarcaryn. Your favored prey," Cass said at last, rasping the words. "What did he intend, if not… this?"

The enormous wolf started pacing, his serpentine tail tracing through the air. "I am not he, so I cannot speak with total certainty," Faerqen's voice purred, the sound all but caressing us. "Yet I have hunted him these many eons, and I know his patterns like my own." He growled again, coming to a halt in front of us, his breath pluming and the frost crawling up onto our clothing. "I do not care for the leash of a Court, but Ruekh holds the throne of the silver wanderers in my place, and Sarcaryn wants to take it from me. Yet what can Desire do against Battle Himself?"

Cass didn't answer. Blood dripped off his fingers and froze before it reached the ground, falling like sleet.

Faerqen made a sound of disgust. "He seduces others into doing his dirty work, Merciful King. He cuts off allies, one by one, and surrounds the enemy encampment with those who will stand against them. Lightning. Windswept. Stag ," he said, snarling the word. His pale eyes flashed white. "Tell me, game piece. Who would have stood in your place had one of mine not interfered?"

A snarl lifted Cass' lip. "You're suggesting that he intended Vaduin to rule. For Danica to have a Court's power behind her at the Silver Coronation."

"Just. So." The god shook himself. "I doubt you were ever part of the plan. I doubt my prey thought of you at all." His massive head turned towards me. Those parted jaws were level with my head. His breath smelled like raw meat. "Your pretty mortal soulmate is surely nothing but an echo of his weight leaning against the strands of fate. Yet one more royal monster given a mortal to balance him."

"The pretty mortal soulmate has a question," I said, keeping my voice level.

He lowered his head to look me in the eyes. "Ask," he crooned into my ear. I could have sworn I felt his breath skim across my throat, the only warmth in his frigid aura.

I took a deep breath, feeling my lungs freeze and thaw in the same moment. "How do I protect my Court from a goddess like Ithronel?"

A low laugh rumbled through the room. "You find a stronger protector," his voice purred from inches away. The sensation of fingers traced down my jawline and onto my neck. "You make a bargain with a greater god."

Next to me, Cass went tense, his wings and nostrils flaring as he felt the echo of that touch. He turned towards Faerqen with a flat gaze. Glassy spires of ice slid up from the snow all around us in silent menace. "Don't. Touch. Her," he snarled through clenched teeth.

The massive wolf vanished without a trace—and shadow fell across me, cast from the shape of a man taller than Ithronel on one knee behind me, the fingers of his hand resting on my pulse and a dagger of ice pricking the soft spot beneath my ear. "Do not dare to challenge me, healer," he said, his breath kissing my skin and freezing in my hair. "I am the god of death and glamor. I hunt in the wilds and rule the frozen wastes of the high north. You cannot yet stand against me."

Cass' ears pinned back. His grip tightened on the sword.

Before he could say or do something impassioned, I said, "Bargain with me, then, your glory." I looked up into Cass' eyes with determination. "Bargain with us ."