Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

S weat slicked my skin as I swung my sword with wild fury, the clash of steel on steel echoing around the triangular courtyard in the heart of the Vault of Sky. The frigid air was a welcome respite from the stifling heat of my own flesh as I pushed myself to the limit, facing off against both Dalia and Moraine at once.

"Don't drop your shoulder," I barked at Moraine, slapping the flat of my sword against the side of her neck where she'd left herself open.

Dalia twisted behind me, aiming to strike at my back while I was distracted by berating our other sister in arms, but my sword clashed with hers before she could land the strike.

I kicked out at Moraine, forcing her back as the two of them tried to trap me in a pincer movement, then I threw my head back so that Dalia's blade swung past me instead of landing a blow.

I lunged at her in the space she'd left open beneath her outstretched arm, my forearm clashing with hers as she tried to drive a dagger at me in her other hand and I collided with her hard enough to put her on the ground.

My sword pressed to her throat as I pinned her beneath me and I threw a dagger at Moraine who tried to lunge for me while I was occupied with my win.

She deflected the dagger with her sword, but I met her gaze while I held a second blade pinched between my finger and thumb, both of us knowing I could have thrown it already and struck her between the eyes.

"Asshole," Moraine grunted, tossing her sword to the ground and I grinned through the blood staining my teeth thanks to the split lip she'd managed to give me somewhere amid the rampant fury of our combat practise.

"You know you love me," I taunted, pushing to my feet and offering Dalia a hand up.

She slapped my palm aside, spitting curses against my name as she scrambled upright unaided, forever the poor loser.

"The stars favour you with gifts of prowess as well as beauty, it would seem," a man commented from behind me and I turned to look at him, ignoring the press of the other eyes which had been present for the last hour, watching from the shadows.

"You're one of Cassandra's posse," I commented, taking the measure of him quickly and finding him likely to be lacking.

"I'm not sure I'd put it like that," he replied, carving a hand through his smooth, blonde hair and eyeing me curiously.

I reached out with my gifts. He wanted something from me, but it wasn't lust he was hungry with.

"How would you put it then? There is a certain smell to your breed and I don't often mistake the reek of it."

"I'm not as well-bred as the Blusters or any of the other sycophants Cassandra claims for her closest companions. But I have an uncle who is a High Reaper so I think she seeks influence by trying to draw me into her cabal."

I paused in the act of turning away, my interest piqued despite my usual determination to stay well clear of court politics. But I had often wondered whether the family members of the Reapers were given certain privileges with the stars. Were they given the gift of foresight? Would the prophets of the heavens deign to look into their futures for them? Or would they perhaps be offered a few snippets of wisdom from the stars which the rest of us weren't deemed worthy to receive?

"And would her efforts at recruitment pay off were she to earn the accolade of your friendship?" I asked curiously.

"Perhaps. But I seek connections with Fae who have proved their worth in actions rather than bloodlines. Which was why I was thinking we might form some kind of…understanding?"

I looked him up and down. He had been out here training for over an hour and was sufficiently ruffled and breathless to suggest he at least took his part in the war seriously. But I didn't much like striking bargains with anyone, especially the kind spun in the murky waters of the Wrathcourt.

"What is it you want from me?" I asked and I didn't miss Dalia and Moraine lingering close enough to eavesdrop while pretending to check their weapons for damage.

"Nothing. I'm simply offering the hand of friendship in a court of snakes," he said easily. "I'm Ogden Breeze."

I didn't take the hand he offered.

"Tell me what privileges your uncle affords you and how they might be of benefit to me," I replied, moving towards the water barrel and dunking a cloth into it so I could wipe the blood from my face as he answered.

"If I give you the truth, will you use it to ruin me?" Ogden asked, taking a cloth of his own and mopping the back of his neck with it.

"No," I said honestly. "I couldn't give a fuck about the Wrathcourt and I care even less about you. I doubt I'll remember your name after this exchange unless you can prove you have worth."

Ogden released a nervous laugh and I dunked a ladle into the water barrel, taking a drink from it. "Okay. The truth is…my uncle is so obsessed with ideas of his own superiority that even if he was able to offer out tips or whispers from the stars to his kin, I doubt he would. Besides…"

He trailed off but that hesitation was the most interesting thing that had happened in this conversation, and as I tasted his desire to rant about whatever it was that was stalling on his tongue, I tugged at it.

Ogden didn't seem to notice my interference in his desires, the words spilling from him in a rush as if he simply couldn't help himself.

"From what he has said, and the way he danced around the subject of proof and the questions I have asked about the will of the stars, I can't help but find reason to doubt in their superiority altogether. I mean, we just have to believe that people like my uncle are better than my father or me just because they can command additional elements? Think about it. Why are we even celebrating that? I'd say it's a sign of failure not accolade – imagine the shame of having dirt run through your veins alongside air. I'd have a mind to find the nearest cliff and hurl myself-"

I didn't hear the rest of Ogden's tirade because I walked away before he could finish it and Dalia and Moraine kindly stepped between us to stop him from following me.

"Fucking idiot," I muttered as I crossed the courtyard, reaching out to brush my fingers over the water carrier's bucket as I passed the huge statue in the shape of Aquarius, mentally apologising to him for listening to even a minute of that bullshit.

Ogden was little more than a jealous, petulant child, raging against the stars and the Reapers because he and his father weren't deemed worthy to join them. He could offer me nothing in the way of access to his uncle and I certainly had no interest in aligning myself with his non-believer bullshit.

I slipped behind a tall pillar which was the first of a line of them to the west side of the courtyard, sheathing my sword as I went in hunt of my shadow.

Those watching eyes lost me as I travelled through a throng of Fae discussing the upcoming instruction in air magic which we were all about to attend. I pushed through the closely-packed bodies until I made my way around the courtyard and came to a halt behind the asshole who had been watching every moment of my training.

I took up a position leaning against the wall, kicking my right foot up to press to the cold stone while he peered left and right, clearly in search of something. A something which I was pretty certain was me. The why was the issue.

I took an apple from my pocket and bit into it loudly, the beast before me stilling and slowly turning to look at me.

I arched a brow and Cayde frowned.

"Care to tell me why you were watching me fight?" I asked.

"What's to say I wasn't watching Moraine or Dalia?" he countered, moving to lean one shoulder against the pillar he had been skulking behind for the past ninety minutes while he'd observed me.

"The hateful look in your eyes," I replied, not bothering to swallow my mouthful of fruit first. Cayde was aristocracy after all and manners were bred into them like a second layer of blood. If there was one thing I knew about getting beneath the skin of assholes like him then it was that reminding them of everything they hated about me usually worked a treat. "And the way they've been pinned to me tirelessly. If you simply wanted to fuck me then I could feel it, but you want more, don't you?"

His ambition, desire for power and hunger for recognition all hummed in the air between us and I was left with little doubt that our rivalry was the cause of it. There couldn't be two prizes of the Sinfair. One sin-stained miscreant rising to greatness was an anomaly. Two was a whisper of change in the air. And the Wrathcourt didn't like change.

"I'm searching for your weaknesses," Cayde said, stepping closer to me and I grinned as I took another huge bite from my apple.

A bell tolled throughout the courtyard, calling us all to attention and I straightened my spine, excitement over our imminent instruction burning through me.

"Let me know if you find any," I said, slipping around him as the bells continued to chime. "It's been twenty-one years and I've still only managed to count one. And really, what does a little weak blood matter when you're the Sky Witch?"

"You're so fucking full of yourself," Cayde muttered at my back.

"Look who's talking," I replied, pushing into the crowd and leaving him behind.

If he wanted to skulk in the shadows and obsess over ways to outshine me then that was his prerogative. I had bigger goals in mind.

I joined Dalia and Moraine who were standing by the exit to the courtyard where an iron door was set into the stonework which marked the wall leading to the desolate landscape outside of Never Keep.

So far, the door had remained firmly locked, but today we were due to head through it for the first time and move onto the icy tundra beyond where we could practice our air magic without need for constraint.

The door was drawn open as I reached it, a trio of Reapers, cloaked in gold as usual, awaiting us on the frosty landscape beyond.

I tossed my apple core into the hands of some ogling idiot as I passed him, shuddering in disgust as he began licking it and groaning my name.

My sweet hellions swept in to flank me as I led the masses through the door, Cayde appearing like an unwanted stench on the air beyond Dalia too.

I ignored him, my eyes on the Reapers as they beckoned us after them onto the rocky plain and our boots crunched over ice and gravel as we followed.

To our left, the Vault of Frost extended into the unwelcoming terrain, the angle of the long buildings creating a V as they converged at the centre of the Keep. We moved away from both Vaults, walking for around ten minutes and spreading ourselves out as the Reapers instructed us to do so.

"Elemental magic is, in ways, the purest form of power any of us possess," Reaper Tessa called, her red hair vibrant where it spilled from beneath her golden hood, her green eyes lined with age and wisdom. "Today we will work on nurturing the natural connection you feel to your air magic, using that bond to unleash the fullness of your power. Then the hard work will begin. It is easy to blast down a door with brutal strength but the subtleties of picking a lock with a whisper of magic is something much more refined. The most potent power comes in the form of the unexpected."

My lips lifted as I listened to her, my own views on power so very like her own. After all, I was a woman of small stature born at the wrong time and cursed with the blood of my enemies, but I had forced the kingdom of air to sit up and notice my power regardless.

I inhaled deeply as I fell into the eternally shifting purity of my air magic, and as Reaper Tessa began instructing us on how to feel for the flow of it and let our will work alongside it instead of pushing for domination over it, I found that made a beautiful kind of sense.

My magic was something I wanted to work alongside, not force beneath my heel. And as I raised my hands to cast a breeze into the air, I could have sworn I felt the power within me smiling as it met with a kindred spirit and we began to learn the art of working as one.