Page 13 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Slowly, she peeled her wet lids open. So much pain crossed her beautiful bronze eyes, I wanted to take it all away, for her not to hurt anymore. “No.”

“Is it him?” Her father. I knew he had been a member of the Moon Court and part of the Adriatian council. Over the years, I just had hoped he had dropped dead or disappeared so he would never be part of Nia’s life.

Shutting her eyes tight, she nodded. “Are you going to hurt him?”

“Nia,” I said, tipping her chin to look at me. “I am going to kill him and you are not going to ask me to spare him.”

Agree with me, damn it. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone more than that man.

“Alright.” she whispered. “Alright.”

I nodded and hugged her tight to me. “What do I do, Nia? How can I make it better?”

She hiccupped, hiding her face in the crook of my neck. “I don’t know.”

Chapter three

Amarantinum

Snowlin

I’d spent twenty-four hours in the dungeons. By the fortieth finger I’d broken, the crunch wasn’t all so crunchy anymore and the blood had turned a shade of pathetic. I was bored out of my brains and a thread of my dress was poking my neck, torturously egging me on.

The sound of nervous breaths in the dim alcove gritted on my nerves. I’d slumped by one of the walls next to a councillor whose face I couldn’t make out. As a matter of fact, I couldn't make out any of their faces in the dimly lit room. It was a rule of mine not to discriminate. All would suffer the same anyway. All ten of them.

“Tell me again, Adriane,” I spoke, my voice echoing and breaking the dripping noise a leak in the ceiling made. “From the start.” No matter how many times I’d heard it from her already, she’d never once stuttered a word or cried or begged or pleaded. She was going to repeat that story till her eyes bled red and her throat scratched with pins of pain and guilt.

Her chains rustled when she straightened herself up. Perhaps I did discriminate. Hurting her had felt almost as good as hurting the king himself. “Four…four days,” she stuttered, and my smile became serpentine. “Before the solstice, we received news that all of Silas’s Ybrises had been seen manifesting their magic. Stregor and I decided to gather Moon court and a full vote was cast for an organised attack the day of the solstice. Considering the distraction of the festivities, it was the perfect time. We’d gathered the Aura, the soldiers and last we got—” Silence filled the room for a little while. “Last we got his Majesty's signature.”

My head dropped back to the wall. “How does it feel? To fail.”

“We didn’t fail,” a gravelly voice bit out. And I loved that.

“You did,” I said, quietly. “And you all will find out why very soon. Once I get the wolf and the dragon to join this thunderbird.” I’d made myself laugh to the brink of tears, yet everyone else shifted to attention, not as amused as I. Their silly heartbeats grew louder, concerned and panicked. “I’m going to make sure to fulfil that prophecy till the last word and show you what true wrath looks like.”

Adriane’s stare glistened a little. Oh, and there it was. The beautifully dreaded fear. “What do you—”

“Shhh,” I whispered and waited till the room grew quiet and anxious again. “Do you know what annoys me?” I asked absently, and the person next to me shivered and muffled a cry. “That sound crickets make on a very hot summer night. All the heat, the tossing, the turning, and the bad dreams, and you still have to hear that gods awful noise. Don’t you agree?”

From the light shadows casted by a distant torch, I could make out her jerky nod.

“Your breathing,” I said. “It is making the same nerve gritting noise. Don’t do it.”

She sucked in a sharp breath and held it.

“Hmm,” I hummed, closing my eyes for a moment, relishing the quiet. Silence always bothered me before, it was omen for the latter noise. I always tried to find a way to fill it—a scream, a cry, a plea, a song, a rhyme, a story, the sound of blade parting flesh over and over and over. Now, however, I was the latter noise and all I wanted was ruckus to drum while I walked the altar of everyone’s demise, not the last puffs of air of rotten carnage I left behind.

It wasn’t long till the councillor was coughing and wheezing out of air and ruining my reverie. “I…I’m sorry, I couldn’t. Please, please don’t hurt me.”

I pushed up to my feet and grabbed a fistful of her hair before hoisting her up to her wobbly feet. “What is your name?”

Her hands shot forward as if they were enough to hide from me. “Es…Esther.”

“Esther Laveau, daughter of Felix Laveau, priest to the Lyran congregation. You were made councillor after he retired twenty years ago. Like father, like daughter, you both have spread your propaganda far and wide around Numen, even left some bread trail for me to chase you. Fifth name to sign the order of the Solstice attack thirteen years ago. Didn’t take you much thinking, did it?” Pulling my dagger from the sheath, I nailed it in her stomach and dragged it up till it met her ribs. Oh, how many times reading and studying her had I wanted to do that.

The woman screamed in pain, enough to give me a proper headache. Fascinating, really. “So, you know of pain, huh? This must be a new revelation because you bore no recognition of it when you signed the death of thousands years ago.”

She cried, holding a hand to her stomach while her guts threatened to spill out. “F-Forgive me. Forgive me, please. I have a young boy, please. I have a young boy.”