Chapter 43
Finlay
We return homeafter the meeting, and I am more on edge than before. My skin prickles with unease, the fine hairs along my arms standing at attention like soldiers awaiting orders. The familiar weight of centuries presses against my chest—I have lived through wars, through plagues, through the rise and fall of empires, and I know the taste of impending violence. It coats my tongue now, copper and ash, bitter as regret.
But this is different. This is worse.
In every war I’ve survived, I knew my enemies. I could see them massing on the horizon, count their banners, and learn their names. I could burn them and watch them fall and know that when the ash settled, the threat was ended.
Now? Now we’re fighting shadows. Whispers. Enemies who wear friendly faces and smile while they sharpen their knives behind their backs.
The king of my homeland is more than likely plotting to kill my mate and bond mates and wipe out our nest. Magnus, with his cold eyes and colder heart, the male who once called me friendbefore I chose love over loyalty. He doesn’t forgive. He doesn’t forget. And he certainly doesn’t lose gracefully.
But Magnus is only one threat. One name among many. And the others—the others hide so well we don’t even know to look for them.
Keir gets us home fast—the void swallows us whole, that infinite darkness pressing close for a heartbeat before spitting us out in the entrance hall. The transition always leaves me slightly nauseated, the phoenix in me rebelling against the unnatural cold of the blink hound’s travel. I shake off the sensation and follow the others to our war room, my eyes scanning every shadow we pass, every doorway, every servant who bows as we walk by.
Any of them could be a spy. Any of them could be waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
I hate this. I hate not knowing.
The chamber is carved from living stone, torches guttering in iron sconces along walls lined with maps and weapon racks. The air smells of old smoke and weapon oil, of parchment and the faint musk of the predators who gather here to plan. A massive table dominates the center, its surface scarred by centuries of use—blade marks, claw gouges, the circular stains of countless goblets. This is where we make decisions that reshape the world.
This is where we try to identify enemies we cannot see.
“He doesn’t like losing, so he will strike. It’s a question of when and how.” I say the words flatly, stating facts rather than opinions. My eyes find Raven where she stands at the head of the table, her obsidian wings folded tight against her back, her sapphire eyes blazing with the fierce intelligence that first drewme to her. She’s so young—barely a heartbeat in my eternal existence—and yet she carries herself like a queen born to the burden.
But even queens can be betrayed. Even the strongest fall when the knife comes from someone they trusted.
“Keir, you’re on Nova duty.” Raven’s voice cuts through the tension, clear and commanding. “Anything happens, you blink into the cavern with the hot spring where I hid. Stay on that island in the stone with her. The pressure will keep other creatures out, and you can see the water move before anything gets close.”
She crosses to him and presses a kiss to his cheek, lingering for just a moment. The gesture speaks volumes—she is trusting him with her most precious possession, her daughter, her heart made flesh. I watch his dark eyes soften, watch the fierce protectiveness settle over his features like armor. He will die before he lets anything touch that child.
But will dying be enough? Will any of us be enough against enemies we cannot name?
“Why aren’t we still with your parents for this?” Hemlocke asks as he moves around the room, passing out waters. The glass is cold against my palm when I accept mine, condensation already beading on the surface. I take a slow sip, letting the cool liquid soothe my parched throat.
I watch Hemlocke as he moves—steady, reliable, but he’s not a warrior.
But I trusted others too, once. I trusted Magnus. I trusted the council of my homeland. I trusted friends who later tried to chain me to a pyre and burn the rebellion out of my blood.
Trust is a luxury we cannot afford. Not now. Not when the conspiracy runs so deep that we can’t find its roots.
“Because they aren’t seeing what I am.” Raven paces, her boots striking the stone floor in a steady rhythm. Her wings rustle with each turn, leather whispering against leather. “I am the primary target, but why? That’s easy—no matter who I have children with, those children will be the strongest of their kind.” She pauses, letting the words sink in like stones dropped into still water. “How do you keep a species weak? You keep it from evolving.”
She says it like it’s the most logical thing in the world.
And it is.
Which means this conspiracy has been running for generations. Decades. Perhaps centuries. Long enough to become invisible, to weave itself into the very fabric of our society until we can’t tell where the rot ends and the healthy flesh begins.
“That makes a ton of sense.” I turn the glass in my hands, watching the torchlight fracture through the water. The light bends, distorts, shows me reflections that aren’t quite right—just like everything else in our world right now. “All the species on the continent have lost size and strength because none of them can reach their mature size. We’ve been so focused on the obvious threats that we missed the slow poison.”
Slow poison. That’s exactly what this is. A poison administered drop by drop over generations, so gradual that no one noticed they were dying until they were already too weak to fight back.
How many of our people are part of it? How many smile at us in the hallways of the academy, bow to Raven in the nest, share meals at our table—all while plotting our destruction?
The not-knowing gnaws at me like a starving rat.
