67. On High

On High

L ong after Cass fell asleep, I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling with the warm weight of his arm draped across my ribs. I couldn't shake the sense that I had everything I needed in the fire of Talien's opals and the perfect sapphire of Tarra's eyes. All the pieces of the puzzle were spread out on the table, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the image was supposed to be.

At last, I couldn't bear it any longer. I extracted myself from under Cass' arm and wing, stumped my feet into a pair of fur-lined boots and wrapped a heavy down-stuffed coat around myself, strapped on my sword and belt-knife, and went for a walk to clear my head.

In the witching hours, the Clement Palace was a quiet place. This early in the morning, not even the servants were out and about. The only creatures moving through the hallways – aside from myself – were the palace cats, who gave me gleaming-eyed looks before bounding into the darkness.

My feet carried me to where I'd first met Cass, then down the hall and out into the sleeping forest of the heart of the palace.

Even in my warm clothing, the cold sank into my bones, making me shiver. Living in Long Beach, I'd rarely had the opportunity to get truly cold, and while I'd been hauled into Faery in the middle of winter, it had been a long time since I'd faced cold without Cass keeping my blood warm. Even though his reflex healing worked through his blood, I didn't have enough in me to combat winter.

I didn't get winded hiking up to the thrones. Though Cass' magic had made me tireless, it had still been my body doing all the work. The weeks of hiking and months of sword lessons had taken my already-fit body and honed me into a marathoner. Hundreds of icy stairs at altitude didn't faze me.

The vista from the top was starkly beautiful in the moonlight. The wind kept the flat surface mostly clear of snow, but the whole surface glittered as if it had been coated with shimmer powder. Someone had been up here at some point, probably to keep the stairs clear of snow; I could see the icy bootprints as glassy spots across the surface. They either hadn't bothered cleaning the thrones off, or there'd been some snow in the past couple of days, because there was a couple of inches of snow in the seats of the throne in an angled drift, with larger drifts of snow up against the sides of the thrones.

Even this close to the literal seat of my power, nothing felt any different. Whatever was cutting us off from the Court was doing a damn good job of it.

Since I was already up there, I walked over to my throne and started brushing the snow off the seat. It must have melted at some point, because there was a layer of bumpy ice on the bottom, white from the snow glued to it. Touching it left me dizzy and nauseous, and the cold gnawed at me, chilling more than my fingers.

A sickening feeling settled into my gut. Knowing what I would find, I pulled out my belt-knife and scraped off the crust of one of the frozen bumps.

Encased in ice, the fire of a black opal gleamed back up at me.

Rage knotted in my chest. I could see the plan as if it had been written out for me. Station troops and archers along our favorite path. Use a flicker-bird to let the people on the high mountain know we were walking into the trap. Send it back to signal the attack. Poisoned arrows to stop him from casting, opal nets to block our ability to use Court-magic or our land-sense, poor stupid Tarra as a final trap in case arrows and swords couldn't finish off a Fury with the wings of a stymphalian bird.

They hadn't known I had my own power source—that six weeks in the wilderness had turned me into a mage whose only power was connections of her own forged to King and Court. Even I hadn't known.

With my teeth bared, I started prying off the hateful thing, chipping at the ice. They must have poured water onto it, because the woven net of stones was thoroughly frozen on. I broke the tip of my knife off and didn't give a shit. Each opal detached from my throne let the Court of Mercy back into my heart. When I broke the central stone off, power hit me with such force my breath stopped in my throat, all my skin going hot.

It wasn't an opal. The carved disc looked maybe like limestone, a solid six inches across, with the underside carved into a horrific toothed pattern that looked like a lamprey's mouth.

A slice of a stalactite , I realized with growing horror. Something told me that touching it with anything other than steel would be a terrible idea. Those teeth menaced, hungry and merciless. The world seemed to darken near it, fading away into nothingness.

Faerqen's aegis only protected us from the direct interference of other gods. Ithronel couldn't come here and swing a sword at Cass again. That didn't mean she couldn't come at us sideways.

She'd protected her worshipers, giving them passage through the caves even when she didn't have a body. She'd settled herself into Raven Court, and I was willing to bet she'd been the one to bring the presence of Cass' family to the Raven King's attention. If this wasn't another gambit – a siphon on the Court of Mercy's power, feeding her and crippling us – I'd eat my fucking boots.

I drew my sword. Gripping the hilt so hard my knuckles went white, I slammed the star-steel pommel down on the mouth.

Again.

Again.

It cracked. I kept pounding at it, fury driving me, my steel pulverizing the stone into harmless pebbles.

Then I did it to the opals, smashing the brittle stones apart. Mercy's pleasure snarled through me. It didn't like being bound and leeched upon any more than I did.

I swept the detritus off of my throne and sat in it. The cold stopped mattering. My Court flooded into me, the whole world rushing in. The rocky beaches of the western coast, the mountains scraping the sky, the slumbering forest, the eastern desert and the depths of the mines; all of it as much me as the blood in my veins.

To my left, another siphon squatted on Cass' throne in malevolent hunger. The opals shattered my awareness, like a mirror broken into shards by the blackness of the maw at their center.

It didn't belong there. Cass belonged there, my soulmate's strength and sunshine the perfect counterbalance for my sharp-edged storm. My hand tightened around the hilt of my star-sword—but, no.

He was healing from a wound neither of us had known he was carrying. He'd chosen to endure agony for the hope that he'd be able to keep his ability to heal. No matter how much I despised the parasitic construct frozen to his throne, I had to remember that it was the only reason Cass might come out of this as a man instead of a monster.

Fate worked in strange ways. Maybe this was Faery balancing itself out; making recompense for the brutality of the events that had made Cass King.

I leaned my head back against the cold stone of the throne, trying not to cry from the relief of knowing what was wrong. Cass was healing, and would probably be safe to handle the Court's power in the morning. As soon as he was, we could take the nightmare device on his throne off, and the other half of our connection would be back. His reflexive healing would share his body with me, and my power – whatever it was – would be able to follow that path back to his soul. In the meantime, I had the Court again, and I had Cass' blood in my veins.

A shooting star lit the night sky as I stared up at it. A moment later, another streaked across the sky, brilliant and beautiful. Had it really only been yesterday morning that I'd been standing on a lookout tower, watching my soulmate go into battle? It felt so unreal. But tonight was the peak of the Calanids.

Martial magic, I remembered with a sinking feeling. We'd been attacked during a meteor shower, which boosted combat magic of all kinds.

There's no way this is over , I thought, dread settling into my veins. We had Tech and Yllana in custody, but that didn't really mean anything. Any one of the three dukes could be responsible, or any combination of them. Tarra had been wrapped around Tech's fingers, but I imagined it wouldn't have been hard for Ace or Talien – or anyone else, really – to convince her that being the Monarch was a much more suitable position for someone of her beauty and class than a half-animal brute and his mortal soulmate.

There had been enough failsafes in the assassination attempt that I struggled to imagine it being the only plan. I was fairly sure that it wasn't even the main plan. There were a lot of high-class opals here, but not remotely enough to account for multiple mines' worth. Whatever those were for must be easier without Cass, specifically, as the Monarch, but I couldn't imagine that our enemies would just go "aw, shucks" and give up now.

A cold breeze blew across me, making me shiver. I looked down at the mess I'd made of the opal array and lifted my lip. We needed to get some answers out of Tech and Yllana, and it wasn't like Cass was up to it. I might as well use my wakefulness for something.

I got to my feet and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. Someone had hurt my Cass. I was going to make them regret it.