But I’m okay now. And Aquila seems like she needs someone.
“Here. It’s not to keep, just a loan. He’s been a pretty good friend to me, and, well, you seem like you could use a friend.” I pass her the lion.
Aquila takes him. Carefully, she runs a hand over his mane, along his back, before finally tracing the large white wings. “This reminds me of home,” she murmurs.
“Were there creatures similar in the Above?” I ask.
“Oh yes, that’s one thing I remember,” she says. “We’d dart through the sky together, sailing through the clouds and sunshine, and at night, we’d—” Aquila shakes her head. “I thought I was about to remember something, but it popped out of my head.” Her hand goes to her horn again. “I suppose this is how Sira felt.”
“What do you mean?”
Aquila makes the lion fly through the air, flapping his wings, and says in that idle, singsong way, “Oh, you know. With her sickly, little wings. She couldn’t fly, not like the rest of us. Maybe that’s why she wanted us all to fall with her.”
“Sira had wings?” I breathe.
“We all did. But Sira’s never worked. Faustrius told me she ripped them off herself. Plucked them as one would pluck the petals off a flower.”
My breath catches. A fae, born among the clouds, unable to fly.
And when she fell to the earth, she made everyone fall with her.
Someone clears their throat, and Aquila and I both look up, startled.
Faustrius stands over us. Despite his enormous size and the shadows cast by his antlers, I hadn’t heard him approach. How long has he been here?
“Aquila, we’re needed in the tower,” he says lowly. Then he stares at me. I want to turn away, but he holds my gaze in a bone-deep and ancient way.
The stories you could tell, I think.
But I don’t ask him what it was like to know Sira before she tore apart the Above or what it’s like now, to watch her attempt to destroy another world. Instead, I quirk my head to the side, adopting a glassy-eyed look, and chirp, “I must find Caspian.”
He says nothing.
If someone wants to survive Sira’s realm, they either become a monster or play the role of one. From the way he’s looking at me, he knows which one I am.
But I’m not sure which role he’s playing yet.
43
Caspian
Laughter slithers through the square, sharp and serpentine,curling between the crumbling stones of Nether Reach. The tower looms behind me, a black spire needled into the gray abyss above, ribbed with spires and lattices.
Today is revelry day. A celebration of Mother’s conquest.
I lean back on my throne overlooking the courtyard. Crafted of shadows, my thorns all jagged points and flickering edges, yet it fits me far too well. The corporeal darkness coils around my shoulders like a lover’s touch, disappearing into a waterfall of inky smoke.
At my feet, Rosalina perches on the first step of the dais, half-turned toward the crowd, half toward me. Her body glows, barely covered in slivers of silver and onyx silk. Her legs are draped to one side. She plays her role perfectly, fingers brushing up and down my thigh, eyes watching only me.
The perfect plaything for a prince.
My gaze lingers too long on the line of her throat, the dip above her hips, the curve of?—
I force myself to look away.
It’s a performance. All of it. The throne. The revelry. Her.
Me.
