Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

I raced into The Forge through a backdoor, the sound of the roaring furnace that was used to make the blades spilling out into the cavernous space. I'd heard the explosion coming from the far end of the building and my fears were climbing as I sought out my mama.

The heat of this place was stifling combined with the balmy weather. The water elementals who worked here had the power of ice to cool themselves, but I held no such gift yet, and I found it hard to breathe in the oppressive air.

The blast which had echoed through the building appeared to have taken place elsewhere as I spotted no clear signs of damage to the structure surrounding me. I just hoped my mama had been nowhere near it.

I wasn't foolish enough to call out to her, certain our enemies could be close by. The Sky Witch might be here alongside her vile allies already, and at that thought, I hefted a newly-made blade into my grip from a row of barrels, the dagger sharp and wicked, marked with the sea serpent emblem of Cascada.

It wasn't as fine as some of the weapons my mama had taught me how to make at home, her skill so great it was a tragedy that all of our people couldn't wield her creations. I grew better at it with each passing year, but I wasn't sure I would ever match her prowess, her weapons something truly magical to behold.

I crept deeper into The Forge, my footsteps silent, my movements graceful as had long been my way. Mama believed my Order would reflect this part of me, and I wondered if I was destined to Emerge as light-footed as her form, a Teumessian Fox. But I hoped I would get an Order that was more powerful than even Ransom's Merrow form, then maybe I would be seen as strong, capable like he was. Perhaps then my place training at Never Keep would be secure - if only I could claim such a fate. It was the sole dream I'd had in my small life that had sparked a sense of purpose in me, and if I failed in that ambition, I didn't know what I would do.

I grasped the blade with an easy hold, comfortable with it, though it had little personality. No kiss of magic in the steel, just an empty vessel ready to be wielded for bloodshed. Mama's blades all had their own feel, their individual essence, like each was imbued with a little piece of her soul, and I wished I could have one of them in my hand now instead. But this would have to do.

The scent of smoke carried to me and as I passed the giant furnace built for forging and headed on into the brick corridor that led to the main entrance. I found no one, heard no one either, and I started to grow anxious about the whereabouts of the workers. They shouldn't even have been here tonight, but Mama had been called in for extra shifts to finish up some new weaponry they were working on.

I didn't make it far before I found my way blocked by debris, the recent explosion having torn down half the roof here. There was no passage on and I turned back, quickening my stride and wondering if my mama had already come to blows with our enemies. Or perhaps she had made it to safety and I was wasting my time hunting when I could be in the thick of battle, fighting for a place of respect among my kin.

Shouted orders reached me from down a corridor and I quickened my pace, hope binding itself to my soul. I raced towards the sound, running through a chamber filled with piles and piles of metal barrels that were labelled with the symbol of a Basilisk. Mama had told me about the terrible power of that venom before, but I had never known we held such vast stores of it here.

At the far end of the chamber, the workers were gathered, hurrying to seal up a room with ice.

"Mama," I called, spotting her among them and she swung around with a look of relief. Her dark hair was braided down her back and her brown eyes blazed in fear as she found me there.

"It's not safe for you here, Everest," she gasped.

"Nor you," I said urgently. "The Skyforgers are coming."

"It's sealed," a man in a grey uniform boomed. "None of our enemies will get their hands on the weapons in there."

"We'll take up arms and join the fight," Mama said fiercely. "No Skyforger will triumph over us."

I nodded, keen to do just that as I hurried with Mama and the workers back in the direction I'd come.

Mama grabbed my hand, halting abruptly and I turned as her grip tightened on my hand, her gaze fixing on something to my right.

I glanced that way, finding two masked men stepping out of a door in the shadows with fiery blades in their hands, standing close to the rows and rows of metal barrels that were full of Basilisk venom. This had to be to do with that new weaponry they had been working on, the sight of it making my breath catch.

I raised my blade, my gaze fixing on the Flamebringers, the plain black masks on their faces making them appear more monster than man. They must have used the distraction of the Skyforgers' attack to sneak into our land, but their purpose here wasn't yet clear.

The largest of the men struck his two swords together and fire bloomed from the metal, pouring away from him, spilling across the floor and hungrily embracing the barrels.

"No," Mama gasped. "The Basilisk venom!"

The one who had set the fire looked our way as if noticing the gathered Raincarvers for the first time, the other Flamebringer cursing and shoving his comrade back toward the door. The fire took root, racing for the barrels several feet in front of them and The Forge workers cast water in a desperate bid to try and douse it. But the terror in Mama's eyes said it was too late.

She threw herself at me, forcing me to the floor and covering her body with mine while the entire world ripped in two.

My head cracked against the floor and I was dazed, staring after the Flamebringers as they raced into the doorway, the one who'd lit the fire losing his mask as it fell from his face to hit the ground. He glanced back, eyes of purest sin meeting mine, like a spill of oil mixed with hellfire. His face was brutally beautiful to look at, the slash of his eyebrows carving over those wicked obsidian eyes and the slant of his cheekbones like two cuts of glass driven beneath his skin. His black hair was as sleek as feathers, wayward and tumbling more to the right of his face than to the left, and there was a hint of deepest red to it, like a slick of blood glossed through it.

The boom of the explosion was all I could hear, and in those few seconds of life I had left, I clung to my mama and tried to make her roll, tried to shield her from what was to come. But she bound my limbs in ice, coating us as she tried to protect us both from the blast, her whole body working to shield mine while the raining spill of Basilisk venom came pouring down among the rising flames.

The workers screamed and my mama screamed with them, her body taking the brunt of the scorching venom. It could burn through flesh in seconds, devouring Fae like a demon reaping death.

I screamed too, but mostly in terror for her, my heart thrashing with an aching kind of dread that drove so deep into my bones, it cracked some piece of my soul, shattering it with the force of an anvil driving into me.

Mama wailed and writhed, but she never stopped casting ice, freezing me in place beneath her, my legs tucked under hers, refusing to let me move even a single inch. Her own arm lay over my left one, but my skin was partly exposed, my palm face-up as more of that acidic venom came splattering down on us. I screamed bloody murder as it splashed across my hand. If I was in pain, it was nothing to what my mama must have felt and tears of horror slid from my eyes as our gazes remained on each other's, freezing against my cheeks as they met with her magic.

She was shuddering, convulsing, yet trying to hold on as she shielded me with everything she had while the blast of venom and fire slowly halted.

The screams were quietening, death a whisper now in the wake of its roar.

Mama blinked, gazing down at me with blood bubbling from her lips. I tried to speak to her, only to find my mouth was sealed shut with ice, so thick and impenetrable, I couldn't even tell her that I loved her in the moment of her death. Because that was what this was, I knew it with such certainty that I was choked by it, crushed in the fists of the stars and forced to face the horror of it without escape.

"Find who did this," she rasped. "Never rest, Everest. Until they pay for what they have done."

I tried to answer, to promise her I would as I accepted the fading light in her eyes, knowing I couldn't refute it. Though I wanted to with every fibre of my being.

Blood was soaking through the ice encasing my body, her blood. Thick and warm, and enough to start to thaw the freeze that had been cast upon me.

I barely felt the pain of my hand through the agony of her loss, and as her eyes glazed, I prayed to Pisces, Scorpio, Cancer, Cetus, Delphinus, Hydra, and all the water deities that lived among the stars to let her pass beyond The Veil and find peace.

She had died for me, a heroine's death, but was it enough to earn their favour? The possibility of her being denied the passage was too horrible to consider, and I shuddered beneath the brittle weight of her, trying to gain enough strength to break the ice still binding my limbs. A noise of utter grief tore through my throat, locked there by my sealed lips.

After an unguessable amount of time, a shadow in my periphery made my heart lurch and Mama was pulled off of me. I expected death to find me in the form of an enemy, a Flamebringer or Skyforger come to finish the last of their quarry, but it was Harlon I found instead.

"Ever," he croaked in relief, pulling me from the floor and lifting me against his chest. "I heard the explosion; I came as fast as I could but…I'm so fucking sorry I didn't get here in time to stop it."

Heated pain flared in his eyes for my mother, but he carried me from the wreckage, leaving her broken body behind. As my eyes fell on her, a whimper of torment finally cracked the ice on my lips and I stared at her burned body, her entire back destroyed by the venom which had eaten into her bones.

"Harlon, go back, I can't leave her," I begged, clawing at his chest as I tried to shake off the rest of the freezing ice, but I was still in the grip of my mother's lasting magic.

"I have to get you to safety first. But I'll come back for her, I swear it," he vowed, looking down at my injured hand as I curled it against my chest.

There was fear in his eyes over the reality of what that wound could mean. The skin was ravaged, and if there was one thing I knew about Basilisk venom, it was that there was no healing its scars. Healing was a rarity of its own, the gift of such knowledge belonging to the Reapers alone, though they didn't offer it out too many. And there was one injury worse than any other in this world, the loss of a hand was as bad as it could get in terms of my ability to fight with magic. If I couldn't cast with this hand, if it was too broken to mend, then my hopes of being accepted into Never Keep had just dwindled to nothing. But that knowledge barely managed to find its way past the abject grief that clutched my heart in an unforgiving grip, never to release me from the agony of my mama's loss.

The roof above had been cleaved open by the blast, the great gouge in the metal giving a view of the hulking form of Ironwraith overhead, and a burning kind of rage settled in my soul over their hand in this. But it wasn't them I hated most. It was the dark-haired man with the soulless eyes. The monster who had set that fire, who had watched as it swallowed us whole. But it had not consumed me as he had hoped.

That crack in my soul deepened to a fissure which changed me irrevocably from the Fae I had awoken as this very day, twisting me into a vengeful creature that would offer him no mercy. And I made an oath upon the ocean and all the stars in the heavens that his death would soon be mine .