CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

SLADE

There’s a tempest dredging thesky, while I hold a lifeless body in my arms.

The impending storm is coming in with bared, frozen teeth to scrape the air with malice, its sharp frigidity beating at my face as it roars.

In my head, I’m counting the seconds. It took sixty for my timberwing to get to me, called from the whistle bursting between clenched teeth. Another forty to get on Argo’s back, for Lu to strap me in as I held Auren in my arms.

Another sixty seconds has taken us here, into the clutches of the clouds that are closing in. The night’s weather has decided to turn on me, the signs of an impending storm clogging the horizon like tufts of cotton in a drain.

Ice scrapes against my cheeks like jagged fingernails as my timberwing rushes on. I hold Auren closer, keeping my cloak over her, angling her face against my chest as my arms tuck her tightly to my body.

She’s too cold, too exposed, too still.

Her heart doesn’t beat, her chest doesn’t rise, her skin has gone sallow. All because of me. Because of what I did.

With a quick glance over my shoulder, I see Ranhold Castle below, lit up with torches. The face of it has now been marred with a splash of angry, solidified gold, erupting through the mouth of the doors and staining the gray stonework like insipid gilt magma that went inert before it could do any further damage.

It looks like the gold was trying to eat its way through the whole damn castle. To inhale it from an unforgiving mouth and devour it with wrath. Like a dam giving way, this is what happens when power is suppressed for too long, left to collect, to rise, to beat against its containment until the cracks form and it can finally break free.

I turn back around and hold Auren a little bit tighter.

I’ve got to get away from the castle—from the gold—but how much further is the question. Because every second I wait puts her in even more danger.

There’s a double-edged sword, and Auren’s life is balancing at the tip of it.

I have to get her as far away as I can, but I can’t risk leaving her in this rotted stasis for too long. Without knowing how far her power can reach, it’s a guessing game as to how far we need to go.

All I want to do is get the rot out of her. Her body can’t take more depletion. I need to have her on land too, settled and secure, because when I remove my power, there’s a chance she can still call on hers, and I can’t have that happen in the air.

Her aura is nothing but a pale wisp, like dying mist in the light. If I wait too long, my power that’s infested her will do more damage than I can reverse, and I can’t let that happen either. I can’t let either of those things happen. So this will be down to the very last second.

Time and distance are my enemy and my ally.

With anxious worry, my heels come up to nudge my timberwing. He lets out a call, either to show his displeasure or to signal to the rest of the flock. I know the others are following.

“Faster, Argo,” I urge the feathered beast, though my voice gets ripped away like hands snatching stolen trinkets.

Although the wind beats at us, Argo pushes on in a burst of speed, and I keep the reins loose to give him his head as his giant wings stretch out and cut through the night sky, lit up only by a veiled moon. I get jerked back, and if it weren’t for the leather strap from the saddle hooked to the buckled belt around my waist, there’s a good chance I would’ve fallen right off.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Yet right now, I’m not riding for sport or for scouting. This is life and death.

Herlife.

We fly as fast as possible away from Ranhold, and Fifth Kingdom’s skies seem to punish us for it. Perhaps the deceased King Fulke and Prince Niven want someone to blame for their demise.

Some of Auren’s hair slips out from beneath the hood of my cloak, its golden strands whipping around in the wind. With one hand, I pull the cloak tighter around her ear, trying to keep the cold from touching her even though I know she can’t feel it.

Thirty more seconds have passed.

Dread is stacking up in my gut like the heavy bricks of an insurmountable wall. It feels as if I’m counting the increments of Auren’s soul slipping away bit by bit.

I’ve seen what happens when I wait too long to reverse the rot, and I know just how damaging it is. I know how much danger I put her in.

Guilt ravages me for what I’ve done, for the magic holding her hostage, but my resolve to keep her safe hardens. I spare another glance behind me, but Ranhold is now out of view, the clouds blocking the kingdom completely.

From the corner of my eye, I see a dark shadow cut through the clouds, and I’m not at all surprised at the timberwing and rider that swoops in. The beast’s size somehow makes even Osrik look small in comparison. He watches me wordlessly, hands tight on the reins, and I give a nod.

I hope I’ve gone far enough, because I don’t dare wait a second longer. With a tug on the reins, I make Argo dive. My timberwing lets out a call, and I curl over Auren, bracing for our descent.

When Osrik sees I’m making to land, he lets out a sharp whistle and follows suit. In the distance, I can hear the call of more timberwings answering back.

Where I go, my Wrath follows.

My eyes burn with the force of the wind that rushes up at me as we continue to drop, cutting through heavy clouds saturated with the impending storm.

The lines of power along my jaw writhe and snap as I monitor the link of my magic now swirling inside of Auren. Rot. Corrosion. Death. It doesn’t belong anywhere near her, and yet, I put it there.

I fucking hate it.

My knees lock in as I lean forward and grip the hold of my timberwing’s strap. “Come on...” I murmur.

Maybe Argo can feel my rushing panic, because he somehow manages to dive even faster. Water freezes at the corners of my squinting eyes, and my heart pounds against my chest loud enough to compete with the rushing wind.

“Almost,” I say against her hair. “Just hold on a few seconds more.”

Finally, we cut through the last of the mist and clouds, only to be greeted by the frozen ground below, brandishing the world like a sheet of gray. When it looks like we’re going to crash right into it, Argo lifts up at the last moment and swoops in a circle right alongside Osrik’s timberwing before both land on their taloned feet, kicking up a spray of snow like the sea crashing into the hull of a ship.

My frozen fingers are already unhooking the buckle holding me in place. I slip down, taking the impact of the jump with my knees so as not to jar Auren too much. Before I can take a single step forward, Os is there, ripping off his cloak and laying it on the ground just as I see more timberwings landing like shadowed spectators.

“Stay back,” I call over my shoulder.

I lay Auren down on the cloak, the faintest traces of rotten lines stretching up the veins in her neck. Her hair is spilled in a halo around her, somehow gleaming even in the darkness. She looks so small with my cloak tucked around her, so lifeless.

I kneel over her, immediately focusing as I snap my eyes closed. My magic is there, clinging to her prone form like a poison. Unnatural decay is slogging through her veins and withering the heart in her chest. It’s slinking up her deteriorating throat, barred by her unmoving lips.

Tension rolls through me. Instinctually, I want to yank the magic out of her as quickly as possible, but I’ve found pulling it out too fast is like ripping a blade from a wound. I don’t want to do any more damage than I’ve already done.

Carefully, I call the power back inch by inch so as not to shock her system. Behind me, I can hear the murmured words of the rest of my Wrath, uncertain footsteps shifting in the snow, timberwings chuffing at one another, and thunder from the clouds we just departed signaling a cold front blowing in.

I shove all of that away and keep my awareness on the magic coursing through her. Like the roots of a weed, I drag it out as gently as I can manage. Fingers dig through soil, removing the rotten stasis I buried her in, letting her body reacclimate. I’m meticulous, lifting each bit of corrupted patches like drying clay, ridding it piece by cracked piece.

Despite the biting air, sweat beads at my temples. My teeth clench as I pull the power back to me, back to the recesses carved from my veins to simmer in my own spoils. I get it all out of her, until there’s just one single fragment left. One seed left buried in the center of her chest.

Yet when I call to it, try to unearth it from her depths, I find resistance. Instead of withdrawing like the rest, this piece sinks in its thorns as if it’s trying to stay.

As if it’s trying to keep her in its clutches.

My brow furrows and my hands shake, while the rotted roots on my skin stretch down the length of my arms. It slinks past my palms and cloys beneath my fingertips, the dark lines rubbing me raw from the inside out, threatening to pierce through my very skin.

A war of confusion and fear jumps in my jaw.

Never has my rot been so reluctant. Never has it been so persistent in staying. I haven’t struggled with controlling it like this for years, not since I was a boy. I had to learn very early on how to handle the malodorous magic before it destroyed everything, including myself.

So what the fuck is happening?

Frantically, I check over the rest of her, but there’s no other blight in her, not a single other part besmirched. The rest of the rot is gone, leaving her as she was before, so why won’t this last piece leave?

“Let go.” My tongue is heavy with the taste of unrelenting toxins. “Let go of her.”

It writhes in reply, like brambles twisting around her chest, like it wants to root inside of her. Panic slices through me like the sharpest blade.

“Get the fuck out of her!”

Magic and might unleash from me, stronger than the torrent of the storm trying to rend from the sky. With a crack that splits the air and clangs my teeth, I give one massive tug.

The force of my violent pull sends me flying back, while Auren’s entire spine bows up from the ground like an arcing wave.

“Rip!”

I lie stunned and out of breath, eyes locked on the shadowed outline of clouds covering the night sky above me. Snow flies up from the impact of Lu’s knees as she hits the ground next to me, eyes wide with worry. “Are you okay?”

“What the fuck just happened?” Osrik demands.

I hear Judd let out a whistle... “Your roots...”

My eyes drop, gaze falling to where the veins in my hands are writhing and snapping angrily. I can feel everyone’s gaze lift to my neck and face, but I don’t need them to say anything, because I can feel the lined roots beneath my skin. Fucking everywhere. As if I haven’t used my power in months, as if it’s pent up inside of me to an unstable magnitude.

But it doesn’t matter, because I just ripped that last bit of rot out of her, so everything will be okay.

Lu tries to help me sit up, but I push her fretting hands away, a pained groan escaping me. I quickly lean over Auren again, but the moment I see her face, I realize that she’s still not awake.

She’s still not moving.

My panic stems and swells.

Rot bleeds into the ground, shooting into the depths of the earth just as thoroughly and as violently as my stomach falls straight through into my feet.

What did I do?

Fingers dig into the snow, rotted mulch spreading from my touch, corrupting the ground with putrid lines. I don’t just feel it spreading into the snow—I feel it wrapping around my heart, squeezing, crumbling, making it wither right here in my chest.

My eyes slam shut, and my roots stab up against the skin of my neck. They wrap around my veins like furious snakes, constricting and biting, making me hurt all over, but it doesn’t matter.

Because I killed her. I fucking killed her—

Her lips suddenly part. The movement makes my eyes snap open just as a shuddering breath lurches out of her. Wisps of black expel from her mouth, the poisoned air evaporating between us.

Relief pounds through my temples. “Auren?”

But her eyes don’t open, and dread pulls at my chest.

I close my eyes to focus on the inside of her again, and immediately, the blood drains from my face. Because that piece—that single scrap of rot that I should’ve just ripped out of her when I got knocked on my ass—is still there.

It’s still. Fucking. There.

Stunned, I mentally try to grip around it again and yank, again and again, but it won’t budge. It won’t leave.

She breathes, another exhale of murky black misting past her lips.

My heart pounds like fists against my ribs, ready to punch through and fight. And still, no matter how much I call to my power, that piece in her chest won’t come out. It’s sunken in, like a stain of ink in gold fabric that I can’t get out.

Yet her chest is rising and falling. Her heart has begun to beat. She’s alive.

I can’t get that fucking last drop of rot out of her, but she’s alive, and that’s what matters.

“Wake up, Auren.”

Seconds go by. Five, ten, twenty. I count them all.

“Is she okay?”

My back tenses at the rough question spoken from Digby, his voice hostage to both injury and disuse. I don’t answer him, and I don’t know if anyone else attempts to. I keep watching her. Willing her to open her eyes.

“Come on, Goldfinch…” I murmur, urgency notched around my neck like a noose.

There’s the sound of shuffling footsteps, then Digby is pushing his way forward to kneel next to me. “Is she okay?” he demands again.

When I still don’t answer, his hand grabs the front of my shirt, and he tugs me to face him with surprising strength, considering the bruised state of him. “What did you do?” he snarls through swollen lips split with blood and frost.

Osrik is there in an instant, lifting Digby and pulling him away. “What did you do?” Digby’s shout is mangled, hoarse with accusation, but it melds with the voice of my own inner terror. The two of them exchange some heated words, but fear is too busy slamming in my ears for me to hear what they say.

What did I do?

The panic and fear that’s been latched to me since the moment I used my power on her comes flaring up in the form of a tremor through my hands.

“Why isn’t she waking up?” Lu asks beside me, but I don’t know. I don’t fucking know, so I can’t say a damn thing.

I clasp her cold cheeks in my hands, hissing at the pain throbbing in my fingers. Even now, it’s as if my power wants to split from my skin and go back to her.

Her aura is dull. Just wisps of dreary gold barely skimming against her silhouette. It should be gleaming brightly despite the night, yet it’s nothing like the flare of potent power and life that usually shines from her.

I waited too long.

I should’ve rotted her sooner, before she’d nearly drained herself. I should’ve landed faster, ripped my magic out of her earlier.

“Don’t do this,” I grit out. To her, to the gods.

Not now.

Not after everything. Not when I just fucking got her.

“I need you to wake up,” I order, but really, it’s a plea pulled from the pit of my soul. What if she never wakes up? What if that clinging seed of rot has taken root inside of her and won’t let her go?

The whole reason I used my magic on her was to stop her from draining herself to death. But I made it fucking worse. I made it worse, and now my own power is lashing out against me like a thousand serpents ready to bite, while she’s been tainted with my magic.

My head drops, forehead pressing against hers, my hands still on her cold cheeks. “Don’t do this,” I plead, eyes shut tight. “You’re stronger than this, Goldfinch. You are. So. Wake. Up.”

She doesn’t.

“Fuck!” Jerking upright, my fist pummels the snow beside me, the meat of my hand splitting open from the sharp ice packed into the ground. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I can hear Digby fighting like hell against the others, cursing me, threats and profanity slung against my back like a whip. Beating me with the realization—

“I did this.” Three words cut from the keenest guilt.

Lu’s lips press together at my declaration. “So undo it.”

“I fucking tried!” I snap, frustration bringing my hand up to drive through my hair. “I am trying.”

I can’t think straight. My pulse is pounding at my temples, the ground is shaking beneath my feet, something is roaring in my ears. My magic wails inside of me, bleeding into my irises, making me see lines that are not there. I’m pouring rot out now, too much, too fast, making it melt down into the ground, weakening the earth, spoiling its surface.

I hear shouts, or maybe that’s the wind or the power bucking in my bones.

“Rip, your power...”

My entire body is shaking, every inch of my skin being prodded and stretched, wanting to lash out, and my rot starts to flood the ground, reaching, hissing, wanting to spread and explode…

BAM!

I go flying back at the force of a fist to my face, falling back into the snow for the second time in the course of a minute, once again stunned.

“Get your shit together,” my brother fumes over me, kneeling even as he lifts me back up from where he sucker punched me. My furious eyes latch onto his face. “You’re leaking rot all over the Divine-damned place. Suck it up right now. You don’t have the luxury of losing control.”

I blink, Ryatt’s snapped words somehow grounding me to the present. A glance down shows that the snow at our feet is browned and sickly, veins like poisonous threads come to spread their toxins. It stretches out in a perfect circle, spoiling the ground and sucking up the moisture from the snow, collapsing it in rubbled ruin.

I take a breath and fist my hands, managing to pull it back before my power can spread any further, managing to pull it back in and in and in...

“You got it?” Ryatt demands.

“I got it,” I snarl at him.

“Good.” He lets me go, and I equal parts want to slam my own fist into his face and thank him for snapping me out of the power pull.

Turning away, I find all of my Wrath and Digby huddling around Auren. Judd casts me a wary look. “She’s breathing, that’s a good sign,” he says, as if that will settle me.

“But she’s not waking up.”

“Did you get all of it?” Lu asks, hands dancing around Auren’s sleeves, not quite touching her, just in case.

“Something is wrong. I couldn’t get the last piece out.”

Lu’s eyes go wide, and I hear someone else suck in a breath.

“Maybe I waited too long.”

“What does that mean?” Digby asks.

I shake my head at my own loss.

“Well, we need a plan,” Lu says, standing up and dusting herself off before she casts a look at the sky. “This storm is coming, and coming in fast. What do you wanna do?”

Taking a moment, I roll back my shoulders, subduing the tyrannical pull of magic as I flex and clench my fingers, forcing the roots to cease their incessant coiling. As soon as I get a handle on them, I push my way past everyone and then carefully gather Auren into my arms, tucking her against my chest, hating how lifeless she still feels.

I start to walk away, but Digby hobbles in front of me, expression murderous. “I told you to fix her.”

“She just needs to rest,” I reply, but even I can hear the uncertainty in my tone. “I need to get her out of the elements.”

Mutinous hate is there on his face, but before he can say anything else, I turn to Osrik. “You all fly back to the army. I want our soldiers moved out of Ranhold tonight. I don’t trust Queen Kaila. Get them back to Fourth as quickly as they can march.” My mouth sets into a grim line. “We’ll need them.”

Osrik nods, but Judd asks, “What about you?”

I cast a glower at the sky. “I’m going to fly like hell ahead of this storm and get Auren somewhere safe.”

“You can’t go alone,” Lu argues. “And you can’t fly all the way to Fourth with her unconscious. It’s too far. What if she wakes up and gilds you to death?”

Argo tucks in his bark-colored wings and kneels as I approach him, his talons sunk into the deep snow. “I’m not going to Fourth,” I call over my shoulder.

“Where are you taking her, then?” Digby demands.

But it’s Ryatt who answers as I grab hold of the saddle strap and hoist myself and Auren onto Argo’s back. I lock eyes with my brother’s angry gaze just as he answers for me.

“He’s taking her to Deadwell.”