His head snaps toward me, disbelief flickering in his eyes. “Rook?”
The stag’s voice echoes in my skull, a whisper that gnaws at the edge of my resolve.Peace cannot be found through victory. Only through surrender.I war with the part of me that is born for killing and the part that wants to be worthy of her.
“If you can let them live,” I say slowly, “then let them live.” It’s the closest I can come to mercy.
Orios bares his teeth, gaze flicking toward the encampment. “And if it comes down to my life…” He gestures toward the humans moving through the firelight. “…or theirs?”
I hesitate, only for a breath, before exhaling the answer that feels like a blade to my own chest.
“Then make it quick.”
That earns a wolfish grin. “Yes, Rook.”
He pulls on his helm, the shadows swallowing his face, but I can still hear that grin in his voice when he speaks again. “I always kill clean.”
Then, with a ripple of smoke and a sharp crack of air, Orios steps into the void, leaving only the scent of ash and the promise of blood in his wake.
I watch them ghost through the camp, appear, vanish, reappear, void-walking along walls and through the shadows. My eyes bolt to the pyres. They are the threat that will betray us first. I must snuff them. Only if the fires die can we sift through the mess of tents, tear the camp open, find my sister. If she is not the same as when I last saw her, I take back my mercy. If they have harmed her, then kill them all, every last one, but leave the Golden Son for me.
I rise, full height to the highest crag. Smoke washes over me and my leathers unmake themselves into armor, black as starless night, etched with silver, runes seared into the steel until they hum under my skin. I flex my hands, the gauntlets sigh as the spikes kiss the leather. Smoke curls around my scaled pauldrons. A long black cloak unfurls behind me, catching the wind, and I settle the helm last, a shrouded hood that turns my face into a void. The last thing my enemies will see is the white storm of my eyes.
I arch my back and feel the muscles knit. My shadow-wings burst free, and my head falls back as I soak in their power. Then I hear him, the demon I keep caged beneath my ribs. He is always there, a low hunger I rarely feed. Emranth is a whisper compared to Gygarth, and if I could silence the Father of Below even for a flicker, then this thing is nothing I cannot bind.
When I call the wings, though, his voice comes clearer, slick and ravenous.
“I hunger for blood,” he murmurs in my head. “Is it time? Do we feast?”
I let a smirk cut across my face. “There may be a morsel for you, demon. But not yet. Back to the void.”
He hisses and withdraws, folding into the dark.
My gaze hardens on the outer ring of pyres. They will fall first. That will give my Blades the sliver of shadow they need to move unseen and strike true.
I dangle a boot over the crag, feeling the valley yawn beneath. Few know the sensation of falling forever and never hearing the ground. Of tasting the end and then being hauled up into flight. I do.
It never dulls.
I step off and do exactly as I promised. Fall. The wind slams into me, hard enough to cut, stinging behind my eyes. Time fractures, everything accelerates beyond even Fae sight until the rocks below swell into a single, jagged mouth. For an instant I taste the end, before my wings fling themselves wide. The air catches me like a hand, hurling me back up. I pin them, shoulders burning, and drive forward, a shadow turned spear toward the camp.
It never dulls.
On any other night, I would send blades of smoke slicing through the throats of these humans, clean, silent deaths before they even knew I was there. But not tonight.
Tonight, I show restraint.
Coils of living shadow slip from my fingers, twisting like serpents through the air. They wind around fragile human necks, not to kill, but to silence. The coils tighten just enough to steal breath, to draw the light from their eyes until they crumple soundlessly to the ground. The air stirs, the wood creaks beneath me as I land on the wall.
The first pyre blazes below. I stretch out my hands and call to the smoke. It answers, swirling and writhing before me, alive and hungry. With a thought, I send it forth. The smoke lashes around the flames, devouring the fire whole until nothing remains but a bed of cooling embers.
I rise again. East wall. More Legion soldiers fall. More fires die. Each extinguished blaze paints the camp in deeper shadow, until the darkness itself begins to feel alive beneath my wings. The Blades strike with precision, but even in the frenzied heat of battle, they obey. No blood spills. Not yet. We will take this camp through cunning, not slaughter.
Orios and his contingent of Blades reach the ballistas, their forms ghosting through the shadows. He disarms the crews without a sound, without breaking a sweat, with a skill honed over centuries, and begins dismantling the gilded machines. Ithranor craftsmanship. Beautiful, terrible things. Like everything the Fae touch.
A parting gift from Anethesis. I snarl, canines sliding free. If only I had killed him myself. The bliss of feeling his light go out under my hands. Steel is quick but cold, impersonal. Hands on flesh are different. To close my fingers around a throat, to watch the fire in someone’s eyes gutter and die. There is no greater satisfaction.
I smother the east wall, then the south. The last of the pyres collapses into smoke and ash. The archers and ballista crews lie still, unconscious, disarmed. Not a drop of blood spilled. The camp is ours.
But where is my sister?
