“But this is…” I clutched my chest, the breath slowly returning to my lungs. “This is different.”
“Yeah, that particular spell is anewHaley Barnes trick.” She waggled her fingers in front of my eyes, showing off a silver ring with a polished dark-red stone. “Bought it from a blood priestess last night in Tremé. She said the bloodstone was spelled to enhance my natural gifts and allow me to temporarily manipulate blood flow in an assailant. Don’t you justlovewhen a product works as advertised?”
I nodded, still trying to blink the stars from my eyes, though at that point I couldn’t be sure they were from the magick and not from the whirlwind of Haley Barnes.
“But now that you’ve had the pleasure of nearly losing consciousness at my command,” she added, her smile bright, “you can add it to the list of things to remember about me. Write it down. That way, the next time you barge into my shower uninvited, you’ll know what to expect.”
With that, she pressed her hand to my chest again and shoved me and my still-raging hard-on right out of the bathroom.
“Save your fucking fantasies for someone who wants them,” she snapped, “because I sure as hell don’t.”
The door slammed in my face.
My breathing returned to normal.
I leaned my forehead against the wood and sighed.
Fuck.
Haley didn’t want my fantasies? Yeah, they weren’t for her. They were never for her.
They were for me.
Because like I’d told her, the price I’d paid to leave Midnight was higher than she could’ve imagined. And now, a fantasy was the closest I could ever come to making my little sparrow sing for me again.
14
KERADOC
Lieutenant General Oona of Midnight stood before me at the council of war, her sky-blue hair pulled tight, her face grim. “We’ve lost Hanging Lake, sir. The Road of Silence has been overrun.”
The other generals and commanders seated around my table grumbled, but I kept my face impassive.
Named for the mutilated corpses the raven gryphons hung from the surrounding trees, Hanging Lake was actually a swamp, a fetid pit of despair that stretched on for miles along the southwestern borders of Midnight. The swamp’s value was purely strategic; it surrounded both sides of the Road of Silence that led into Razorback range, keeping all but the most intrepid travelers and traders from wandering too close to Amaranth City.
Most could neither outrun nor outwit the vicious raven gryphons, and the slaughtered remains of those who’d tried had long served as a deterrent to any upstarts.
So how the hell had we lost control?
“Darkwinter?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. The Darkwinter fae were the toughest of the rebel factions—the only faction we truly needed to fear, assuming the others didn’t unite under a common banner. They’d been steadily gaining ground for months, portaling in all across the realm, each new platoon stronger and more fearsome than its predecessor.
“Yes, sir.” Oona held my gaze, her spine straight as an arrow. “Reports from the northern front have also confirmed additional Darkwinter vessels moving in across the Sea of Tranquility.”
So the enemy fae had found dark witches powerful enough to portal in not just their men, but their ships as well?
Again, I fought to hide my displeasure.
Despite its moniker, the northernmost sea was anything but tranquil. Roaring as high as a mile above sea level, its waves were notoriously savage, pulverizing most ships within seconds. What the water could not destroy, the sub-zero air temperatures and brutal hurricane-force winds usually did, not to mention the array of fiendish sea creatures circling the depths, always in search of a feast.
Long before Amaranth City was built, the Sea of Tranquility protected Midnight’s northern border from invaders, fae and demonic alike. It was so untraversable, our own people had never even built warships. We scarcely knew the true depths of that perpetually storm-tossed sea or the terrifying creatures that inhabited its watery kingdom.
“How are they even navigating it?” one of the commanders asked.
“Our troops claim their ships are unassailable,” Oona said. “They cut through the waves like hot knives through butter, allegedly impervious to both the cold and the threats of Tranquility’s native monsters.”
“Wemustmount an attack,” he replied.
I shook my head. “Our gargoyle squadrons simply aren’t capable of an aerial assault in the extreme cold.”
