17

DAXEEL

The warlord prowls through the crowd that floods the courtyard. Darkness wisps around the ankles of his boots, parting for the very one responsible for the scars that mangle Daxeel’s back.

Ocean eyes burn through the dark.

Daxeel watches his father move through the thickened blackness, seeing more than any litalf ever could in the Cursed Shadows.

The pallor of General Agnar’s skin is unlike the pale complexion of the dark male walking beside him. Agnar’s second keeps the complexion of sun-bleached stone, but the general’s pallor is translucent—enough that from a distance, the inky stain of his veins presses against his skin. Those veins seem darker around the billowing black spiral that rushes up into the skies. The same veins Daxeel watched deepen into fresh tendrils of ink on a twisted face each time the general took a whip to him.

The only kindness he ever received from him father was to never once bring down the whip on his front. He kept the lashings to his back.

Now, as he thinks of them, those warped scars that prick at his flesh, a new thought flitters through his mind.

Nari .

Her fingertips grazing over the puckered ridges, a tender caress he would have once gotten to his knees for. But that tender touch is stained with deceit.

She tries so hard to regain a grip on his affections, his trust. But what is once broken can never fully be whole again. A warning he must remind himself of around her, those flickering moments of weakness that must be banished.

There is something in Daxeel; a shield that erects around those who have wronged him.

Now, it shoots into place and shuts down every hint of emotion the moment his father’s familiar pale blue eyes spear into him from across the courtyard. As it always has, the stare feels like being speared by frozen knitting needles.

“You understand that, no matter the outcome of the Sacrament, your offered position in my unit remains,” General Caspan’s rough accent shatters his thoughts.

Daxeel tugs his gaze from his father’s stare.

He turns his chin to the warlord he stands with.

Beside him, Rune nods, a single gesture of understanding, low enough to be considered respectful.

General Caspan adds, “You should expect your papers a month after the close of the Sacrament. I will call all my warriors to the base the phase that follows the Sabbat.”

So soon.

It is a premature summons, earlier than most other units will be ordered to congregate before the invasion, but Caspan is a somewhat new warlord, and his ways are different.

He keeps a strong unit for many reasons.

One, as Daxeel suspects it, is his unique selection process. The first warlord to exclusively recruit dokkalves with dead evates or none at all.

Rune’s evate is dead—and the pain that forever lives within him blends with his primal nature to create a savage warrior, one who lives in rage that begs to be released.

Rune will be focused, not yearning for a love left behind at home, but rather one in the afterlife waiting for him. If there’s a significance in that, Caspan sees it.

And he sees it in Daxeel as he turns his chin to him.

“As I understand,” the general begins, “you are to sacrifice your evate in the Sacrament.”

It is not a question—it is hard approval, as firm as his coal gaze.

This is a career offer.

Daxeel’s stony face betrays nothing. “The career I established is outside of warriorship. I hope to return to extraction.”

Caspan’s lashes lower over his black eyes. “War is coming.” The thicker accents of the south barbs his words. “There will be a call for all trained males to enter it.”

War is something of a leap.

Daxeel considers what’s to come as more of an invasion, a conquering of the human lands. An extermination to come.

“My father’s unit will be positioned in the far reaches of the human realm,” Daxeel says with a curt glance over at General Agnar.

His father makes no secret of his blatant cruel stare fixed across the courtyard. Daxeel traces it to Bracken across the way, his pale hair a deadly rope down his muscular back.

Drawing his attention back to Caspan, Daxeel adds, “I will follow blood customs and take my place under my father’s command.”

The nod Caspan answers with is one of respect.

Still, he traces his attention to his second, some groups down the courtyard. Bracken turns towards them, not quite looking at Daxeel or Caspan, but observing the faces of potential recruits.

The pearlescent gleam of his eyes is milky, cloudy, and Daxeel itches to rip them right out of his head.

His glower isn’t returned.

Bracken hardly spares a glance on him. Beefy arms folded over his chest, his long body leans back against the stone wall by the entrance to the garrison. His attentive gaze sweeps the courtyard, lingering over a few here and there, as though he can find the best warriors based on presentation alone.

Caspan nods again, one dip of his chin, and Daxeel recognizes for what it is: Understanding. The primary reason Daxeel could never belong to his unit. Bracken.

Then the general is gone, melted into the crowd packed onto the courtyard.

Daxeel spares Bracken a look of threats before Rune nudges him out of his darkened thoughts.

Rune’s barbed voice is a murmur, low enough that no one around them can hear anything beyond a growl, “Ambush.”

Daxeel’s chin turns to the side. His lashes lower over the approaching litalf—and it takes some seconds before he recognizes the rage-twisted face.

“Lord Braxis.” Daxeel doesn’t bow his head in greeting, and neither does Rune.

They are not of Licht, and so they owe no propriety to the lord.

The sharp angles of his noble face are blotched red and angry, a rush of bewildered panic that frizzes his uncombed, plaited hair, and reddens the hues of his green eyes.

The lord storms towards them, hands fisted at his sides. The moment he reaches Daxeel and Rune, he can’t contain the snarl that rips through him, “Where is my son?”

Rune casts a frown between the lord and Daxeel, and it’s a look that Daxeel shares. In tune, they both return their frowns to Braxis.

“I have not seen him here—”

Before Rune can finish, he’s interrupted.

Louder, the lord’s vicious snarl is a shout that strikes through the courtyard like a liquor bomb, “ Where is my son ?”

The shout draws in nearby attention.

Some glances are fleeting, disinterested, but Daxeel’s father turns a steely look their way.

He starts to move through the crowd towards them.

Disinterested, Daxeel shrugs a shoulder. “Am I to understand Taroh is still missing?”

“The loss of Comlar, I’m sure.” Rune’s monotonous tone drifts some as he turns his attention to the spiral, the constant current of billowing darkness. “How everyone must weep for such a fine male.”

Daxeel can’t fight the twitch of his mouth into a fleeting smirk.

Just as Lord Braxis takes a frantic step closer, as though prepared to scramble into a chaotic, muddled fight that he would certainly lose, Agnar advances. His beefy hand comes down with purpose on the lord’s shoulder—and in contrast, Lord Braxis suddenly looks as frail as a mistreated slave.

The touch stills him instantly, as though every piece of muscle and bone and guts within him freezes over.

That’s all it takes.

No threats or whispered words from the general to the lord, only a firm hand on a slender shoulder.

Lord Braxis retreats with a defeated step back, one that slaps on the stone ground and slumps his posture. “You and that halfbreed whore did something to my boy. I will learn what, and I will have my revenge.”

His litalf truths hold steady.

He believes every word he speaks.

And it’s all he says before he stalks off.

For a beat, Agnar watches him go, eyes scrutinising the crumpled tail of his blue coat. Then a guttural grunt catches in his throat before he turns to slide his sharp, prickling gaze between Daxeel and Rune.

Rune hums a curt sound. The amusement of it all drifts away as he dips a brisk bow at Agnar.

Daxeel doesn’t acknowledge his father beyond a glance that he’s fast to cut away. He swerves it to his mother by the grandstand and lingers for a moment, assessing for any signs of distress or danger.

It’s a mutual indifference.

The warlord has no interest in his son, no desire to know the cause of the lord’s outburst. It was his pride that motivated him to defend his house against the lord. That’s all that was. All it would ever be.

And his interest has fast returned to his wife as he finds her by tracing Daxeel’s concerned gaze.

“How is Melantha?” he asks, a question he can’t ask her himself.

Their arrangement prevents him from approaching her, speaking to her—unless absolutely necessary. They meet only twice a year to soothe the bond and beast within Angar. Beyond that, nothing. And since he is here on warlord business, he is not to stay at Hemlock House, or to attempt a reunion with his evate.

For half the year, every year, they live apart.

Daxeel can’t imagine a worse pain than to be separated from his evate for such lengths of time—and yet, he suffered that torment for a decade. Even if it was pre-bond, it was a piece of his soul shredded every single phase.

It changed him. It fostered a bitterness in him, like mould to a damp windowsill.

Daxeel offers a curt answer, “Both her sons in the Sacrament, the targets of the passages. She is afraid.”

Rune wanders a few steps back, giving them the illusion of privacy.

Daxeel leaves out any mention of Aleana’s ailing health, because if Agnar cared nothing at all for a child of his, it is the babe who came out sickly.

He doesn’t ask anything about his daughter.

His gaze is stuck like honey to Melantha.

She either doesn’t notice his stare—or she avoids it.

The result is a frown on his thin mouth and a hollowness carved into his eyes. “Lord Braxis will have paid light warriors to hunt you, an added motivation.”

He turns his grimace on his son.

It’s a grimace Daxeel feels the echoes of in his heart, an ache in the chest that’s not unlike a carver took their weapon to his insides and gutted them out, clean.

“And Bracken,” his father says, voice lower than a faerie hound’s growl, “will have designed for some of our own to turn on you on the mountain. He would sacrifice this victory for Dorcha to achieve personal retribution. Do not doubt it.”

It is a thought Daxeel hasn’t entertained.

His jaw tightens on the truth of it, that Bracken would sell out his own to buy his revenge on Melantha’s children: the trophies of his own personal loss.

Daxeel’s gaze fights to aim at Bracken across the courtyard. But he steels himself against anything that might betray what he’s learned from his father. His father who doesn’t aid out of love or regret, but rather the pride and honour of the House of Taraan.

“You might not be the only target Bracken has offered to his hired assassins,” his father says. “Your evate will enter the Sacrament without your hand.”

Rune takes a step closer, his suddenly gleaming cat eyes fixed on the warlord, because while Agnar is a despicable beast, he is ruthless in battle, and so his advice must be respected.

“She might land far from you,” Agnar goes on. “Then she will be exposed to anyone of Bracken’s choosing.”

That thought, Daxeel has entertained. It’s haunted him for a month, now; the threat that other warriors will go after Nari to get to him. Even if his enemies don’t figure out what Daxeel intends to sacrifice to Mother, Nari’s death on the mountain will destroy everything.

It won’t kill him immediately.

The rotting of his soul on this plane can take up to a week before his heart stops and his flesh turns cold. It’s a week he can use to keep fighting, if the pain of the loss doesn’t cripple him. And then he would have no sacrifice for Mother.

If this is Bracken’s strategy, it is an obvious one—but effective, too. The best way to get to any dark male is through the bleeding heart outside of the body. It is through evate.

A weakness in otherwise unkillable warriors. A balance of the scales in nature.

“We will all enter separately,” Daxeel says.

This time, it’s different.

There are no tricks to manipulate the Mountain of Slumber like there was with the shore of the dragon caves, no way of grabbing onto his soul brothers or Nari herself to ensure that they land together on the other side. The mountain cannot be tricked, because the gods themselves cannot be fooled.

“The better spread out across the mountain we are,” he says, “the faster one of us will find Nari before a foe does.”

It’s Rune who says, “Dare has never failed a hunt.” The best tracker any of them has ever known, born of the best traits of both light and dark, a flawless and rare blend. “He will get to her before anyone can pierce her heart.”

The assurance does little to soothe the ice-blue flames ignited in Agnar’s eyes. No matter the faith that the general has in Dare—faith strong enough that he’s already offered him a place in his unit for the invasion, and Dare is taking his time making a decision—there is too much uncertainty around Nari’s safety at the start of the second passage.

It will be bloodshed like no other.

It will be chaos.

And chaos is uncontrollable.

“It is your duty, son,” his father warns darkly, “to ensure she survives until you reach the summit. Between Bracken’s thirst for vengeance against our house and that light lord’s vendetta, there will be more threats to your evate than you let yourself hope.”

The phase was cold. Winter draws near. The rains pummelled the fae for too long in that crammed courtyard. Recruitment took too long. So it is the First Wind when Daxeel slips into the shadows of the kitchens, his curls flat from the rain soaking them.

Daxeel melts into the dark; he is the dark.

The slaves clatter and clang their way through dinner preparations.

Tris paces near the lit hearth, barking orders left and right.

She doesn’t notice him.

She doesn’t see him.

Daxeel lets the shadows embrace him, hug around his chest, curve over his shoulders, cage him completely—until he is one with the darkness.

The caress, the envelope of these shadows, it feels as natural as his leathers do on his skin, as easy as breathing like he’s gone his life without an arm, now has it back to where it belongs on his body.

The shadows belong to him as he belongs to them.

To win the Sacrament, then hand over the reign to the iilra, it’s a dawning horror, to give away a piece of himself. To give an arm.

He forces the troubled thoughts out of mind before his shadows shudder with his own distress.

Silent, he moves for the plated dishes on the bench. He steals one into his shadow fold—then slips out of the kitchens, unnoticed.

He makes it to the top floor without running into anyone, a feat since Hemlock is teeming with folk. It’s his preferred home for that reason.

Their home in the Shadow Court feels hollow when he leaves the Midlands, the larger rooms echo too much, the longer corridors are too cold, the stone towers too tall. And it is the home of his father.

Daxeel is in no rush to join his father’s unit for the invasion. But to accept General Caspan’s offer would be to shame his father, thus shame his house, and therefore himself.

The one value his father instilled in him—

Honour above all else.

Shame is a rot on self and house.

Yet Daxeel finds himself taking pity on the most dishonourable fae he’s ever known. He takes the plated meal to the door that whirls with shades of blue, and so he knows she has found sleep in the sweaty bed he can smell from out in the hall.

Still, he lowers the plate to the floor and places it on the edge of the emerald-green runner rug. As he rises, he lets himself focus on the bedchamber for a beat—listens for any sign that she stirs from her slumber.

But Nari sleeps through the phases leading up to the second passage. She sleeps through her fears that she can’t bring herself to face.

Nari…

His hand lifts.

Nari…

A shadow unravels from his shoulder and curls through the air. It licks at the door.

Nari…

Fingers curled into a fist, he moves forward, leaning his weight onto one boot—then he stills.

Nari…

He frowns at his balled, inked hand, as though it has a mind of its own and he just regains control of it before it can knock on the cobalt hues of the door.

He drops his hand to his side and takes a step back.

His boot flattens silently on the rug.

This phase, he will let her rot away in that bed once more—but just this phase.

Now, after Agnar’s warnings of warriors who will aim to hunt Nari on the mountain, Daxeel decides he can’t risk her life so soon. He needs her alive at the summit.

Daxeel needs Nari to train.