Page 29

It was a warning to be careful and to keep hidden.

The guards stiffened, and one stepped forward, glancing between us.

Aster lifted a hand, and they stepped back without question. He had never had such quiet authority before.

“Why are you here?” he asked. “You were meant to…” His eyes flashed in the direction of the warriors. “Most Rebels head for home and the General’s camp.”

So he knew what the General had been up to. Thorn wanted me to find out who the Annatalians in the Ruckus were loyal to. Did she know Aster was now a Celt? She always held her information close, but wouldn’t have kept this from me. Would she? When she had seen how crushed I’d been when he’d disappeared.

I had adored Aster for years, but darkness had always existed under his relaxed smile. He was the perfect Shadow. The perfect spy. He could become anyone he wanted to. So who was he now? My pulse quickened in warning.

“Why are you here?” he asked again.

I always thought that I knew him better than that—and I was about to test that theory.

“One of the Elite Trackers found me,” I shot back. I wasn’t going to tell him that it was the same one who flew me here. I’d wait to see if he already knew that.

“And Red and Rose?”

Red and Rose: the codenames he had given to Ember and Thorn. Red because Ember’s real hair was flaming red and Rose because Thorn was beautiful and sharp.

His chin dipped as he studied me. “You were flown here by Kitthathen, the Nomad Prince, under an Ignite Phoenix. It’s a death sentence for him to cross this border, and yet he did that to get you here. So, was he the one who found you? Strange for him to deliver you here. Why would he do that? And where in all that’s fucking holy was Torran when he did?” The venom in his voice hit my blood and straightened my back.

Torran… Every muscle went rigid, and I pulled at my bindings, welcoming the searing pain which shot down to my fingertips. Torran, the Northlands Prince, the Betrayer, had been the one who broke us all. He had thrown my brother into the Northlands prison, never to be seen again. He was the one who’d caught me and my cousins and all those other women and handed us over to the Barren as breeding stock. There was nothing human about Torran. He may have been named after a God, but he was the worst type of monster.

“I never saw Torran.” I’d have killed him if I had. “Some of the Elite Flock were in the Grand Library when I was trying to steal another book—so maybe he was flying around barking his orders. But I only saw Kitthathen and the Nomad Rider.”

“Nomad rider?” His whispered laugh echoed through the small, ivy-infested room, and for the first time, I recognised the orphaned, reckless boy who was once one of my brother’s best friends. The boy who would follow me as I climbed the tallest tower to watch the phoenixes take their morning flight. “There’s no Nomad rider, Feather.” He paused to let the truth settle.

I stilled.

Oh gods, no! I leaned into the pain, pressing my wrists into the cord.

No.

That wasn’t possible.

“Kit and Torran are inseparable. They share everything. Women… a tower… For all we know, their phoenixes are mated.”

I scoffed, trying to distract my mind from picturing the Nomad and Torran as the same person. “What women? Do they have them after they’ve burned them to death?” When skin touched a fire-touched Rider, the Skyworld magic was so strong that it overcame anyone without runed protection and the magic to charge it. Much like the anklet that Morlan had traded with Kit for my passage to the Ruckus.

“Witches… They can take witches. I hear that Annatalian and Settlecent ones are the best, as their magic suits the runes better. Is that what he wanted with you?” There was a narrowing of his gaze, just for a split second, that told me he was… worried? Jealous?

“It’s not—”

“You know what goes on in those Sky Towers? Well, apart from Torran’s Smoke Tower, because there’s a rogue phoenix terrorising it. It’s the only phoenix I’ve ever appreciated.”

How did he know that? The Ruckus really was in league with the Riders, then, as the rebel whispers suggested. The rumours were true, and yet they made no sense because the Riders were Skyworld and the Celts of the Ruckus worshipped the earth. They were supposed to hate each other.

I strained to see if he was lying to me, but the look he gave me was cold and calculated.

And then a wide, beaming smile took over my entire face. “Well, I’ve got good news then. If that Nomad was Torran, then I filled his veins with Harrow Root.”

And if that had been Torran… I’d already signed my death warrant. But surely there was already one out on me after I’d killed Frickel, so what was one more? Even so, for the first time in years, I was happy—elated, even. I’d had my revenge without even knowing it, and it felt as if the fates had given me a gift.

“Oh…fuck. You didn’t?” He chuckled and then full-out laughed, and it filled the room and warmed me until he stopped and sighed. “He’s going to kill you for that. You can’t stay out of trouble, even on a Yule night. You stabbed Tor on what… The Longest Night!”

Tor—that’s what we used to call him after Lex had met him a decade ago in the mountains, after they had been chosen as Riders and the Elite Tracker Flock was formed. Aster had been there too, but he hadn’t been chosen as a Rider. I believed his relationship with Lex had suffered due to that. Why was he now using that nickname?