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My gaze wandered over those windows set into the damn mountain itself, too colorful, even under the veil of rain to indicate anything else but wealth. “Where exactly is the keep?”
Asker exhaled a long breath to my right, the water conveniently running down along his bushy brows. “Carved into the mountainside that serves as the backdrop to the city before it. It is quite impenetrable, the windows barred with tightly-woven chains, the gates heavy iron.”
Yeah, that was what I’d thought. “And that dungeon where our scout said they dragged Galantia to after they unloaded her from the ship?”
A ship Malyr and I had tried to reach several times after a scout had found Aros’ dead body in a boat that had drifted aimlessly near our coast, or so reports had said. That bastard had probably rowed her to the large vessel, only to conveniently get himself killed. In any case, reaching the ship had been impossible, the winds too strong and our wings too weak. We were fucking poor fliers over open water.
“Beneath it,” Malyr said, who stood to my left, the rain dripping into his eyes clear, only to run down his cheeks as black droplets with no way for him to syphon. “Unless things changed, which our informants suggested they have not, that particular dungeon can only be reached from inside the keep.”
A keep behind an iron gate, walls of rock, and caged windows. Getting inside that thing would be tricky. But actually making it to the fucking gate? Past net catapults and highly trained archers? How?
I wiped the rain from my face and back over a braid that clung to the last of the tousled strands Galantia had put there, but I’d be damned to open it—it might very well be the one I’d be burned with. “Since you two knew exactly what we’d face, I assume you came up with some smart strategy on our way here?”
Malyr and Asker tortured their lips.
So… no smart strategy then.
With Taradur’s army pushing here from the southeast to keep us safe from smaller attacks within the kingdom, getting to a good twenty furlongs of the city had been easy. Getting inside was the problem.
“Our options are limited,” Asker said, the rain drumming off his black armor. “Without siege weapons, we cannot take down the catapults and battlements. If we waited for Taradur to—”
“No,” Malyr said, his face gaunt, torment chiseled into his cheeks in shadowy valleys. Three times, his ravens had nearly fallen from the sky, the pain coming through their bond costing him every ounce of strength. “Any second I stand out here is a second she suffers in there. We cannot wait for Taradur.”
“That’s all well and good, Malyr, but as things stand, we won’t even make it in there, let alone through the keep and down into the dungeon.” Shadows nervously flickered around my fingertips, matching the desperation that ate me from the inside. I couldn’t fail. Not again. Not this time. “How do we get her out of the dungeon?”
Malyr stared ahead for long moments before he finally said, “We don’t have to get her out.”
I arched a brow at him. “What?”
“There is no need for us to make it any farther than the keep itself.” Reaching his arm out, he let hisanoashape there, the bird immediately ruffling his feathers even though the rain pearled off easily. “Not if she manages to make her own way out of the dungeon.”
“You’re not helping, Malyr.” Galantia might have been resilient and resourceful, yes, but she was no match for steel, swords, and who knew how many soldiers. “She’s a void.”
He stroked a knuckle down along his bird’s puffed-up chest. “No, she’s athief. That makes her anything she wants to be, even a deathweaver. All she needs is my gift.”
Realization stabbed me straight in the guts. “She has never stolen a gift before.”
“But I believe she came close.” His attention settled on me. “I once went to find her in the orchard before Tidestone. You were there, but you neither heard nor smelled me.”
“Because she depleted my shadows.”
“Which explains how you couldn’t conjure arrows,” he said. “Should your senses have suffered?”
A shudder spread down my arms. What if he was right, and she’d gotten closer to stealing my gift than any of us had realized? I wouldn’t know what that felt like. Nobody knew much about thieves anymore these days.
“None of that changes the fact that she never wielded your shadows,” I pointed out. “Not successfully.”
“Successful enough to set a room on fire.”
“Not controlled, then.”
“Out of control might just do. One big blast might be the only thing we need to get us in there.”
“They would not see such a thing coming,” Asker murmured slowly. “It would take them by great surprise, scrambling their focus and whatever strategies they have set into place.”
The more I thought on it, the more promising it seemed, except for one terrifying problem… “What if your shadows attack her?”
“Are you going to attack that white raven female you love so much?” Malyr asked hisanoaand, when the bird cawed and spread his wings as if offended, he absorbed him back into himself and lowered his arm. “She cleared an entire kingdom from my shadows. If anyone can handle them, it’s her.”
