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The figure shattered on impact, unleashing a cacophony of soul-splitting screeches and gutturalkra-kras. It pierced my ears, sending a shudder through my bones that trembled all the way into my core with how it echoed on the flagstone, bile rushing onto my tongue.
“Whoa…” Malyr wrapped his arm around me, shortening the reins of a nervously dancing Liual.“Eze nja… Liual. Eze.”
Around us, soldiers scrambled backward, some losing their footing in their haste. Sebian’s horse reared, its eyes white with panic, its hooves clattering wildly on the road. One hind leg slipped on the slick surface, and Pius staggered back. With a terrified whinny, he lost his balance and fell sideways, throwing Sebian from the saddle.
The sickeningthudof Sebian’s head striking a wooden column resonated through the chaos. A pained groan followed as he slumped to the ground while Pius struggled to its hooves and cantered back down the Tarred Road, soldiers dodging the panicked horse left and right.
“Sebian!” Asker’s shout still echoed as he shifted into his unkindness, which quickly fluttered forward.
Mine dashed faster, having me reshape beside Sebian as he struggled himself onto all fours. “Are you hurt?”
He held his hand up the moment I stepped toward him, gesturing for me to stay back while his shoulders rose and rounded. A heave. A grunt. Then, his entire body convulsed as he retched onto the flagstone.
Malyr walked up to Sebian and handed him a waterskin. “Should have shifted.”
“Mm-hmm,” was all Sebian answered before he grabbed the waterskin and rinsed his mouth a few times. “Please tell me I’m not the only one who almost shit his pants.”
“It must have been a Raven who got trapped in the shadows mid-shift, magic and all,” Asker said, his face pale, his eyes trailing to the crumbled creature. “There is no telling how many of these we might encounter this close to the Perch. We would be well-advised to keep our distance from these… screamers.”
“We have to leave the horses behind—too much risk should we accidentally disturb more of them.” Malyr took Sebian’s hand and pulled him to stand, then turned and set his eyes on me. “Can you walk?”
“If you can, then so can I.”
We continued on foot along the winding road, past ornate lampposts, intricate tooling that decorated the wooden frames of shops, and elegant facades with shiningaerymelset into its daub. How strange it was to have such beauty mark the backdrop for new heartaches that waited around every curve: piles of dead birds, soldiers with their grips still firm on their swords, those… screamers.
“Valtaris was beautiful,” I said where I walked beside Sebian, removing the shadows several steps ahead where Malyr strangled them.
“Black diamond, King Omaniel called this city,” Asker said, squinting at a set of alabaster stairs that emerged from the shadows just ahead. “Its roofs will sparkle under the sun again soon enough. Once word travels of this, there’s no doubt Ravens from across the realm will return home, eager to help in the restoration.”
Malyr came to a sudden halt at the narrow set of stairs, his gaze transfixed on the intricately winding, cast iron banister attached to the bright stone wall that lined the stairs to one side. His hand reached out, fingers lightly tracing the cold metalwork, following the elegant curves and delicate twists that had once been the pride of a skilled craftsman.
His eyes closed briefly, his touch lingering and jaw set, before he began the climb. “I remember now.”
I followed in silence, the stairs narrow and steep, each step echoing in the still air. With every footfall, the bond within me seemed to wrench and jar, like the string of an untuned lute screeching terribly in my chest.
That couldn’t be good…
Finally, the stairs leveled out, leading me onto a plateau with several airy pavilions, stone benches, and statues of birds in flight, their wings outstretched. A large fountain stood at the center of the plateau, its basin long dry, the dead hedges around it the remnants of a once lustrous garden.
There was much less death here, much less devastation aside from the rubble of a nearby watchtower that had halfway collapsed. That, and the two black bodies that lay on the ground, one male, the other female. Malyr’s mother; I could tell by those feather-shaped pins I’d once seen depicted in a book, which still sparkled in her long, dark hair.
Malyr passed his parents’ bodies without a glance, his eyes fixed on the pile of rocks and debris ahead, where he didn’t so much stop as fall to his knees. He grabbed at rocks, stones, and boulders—fast, faster—tossing them away as shadows flared up around him.
Asker appeared beside me, pulling an intake of air through his barred teeth with a hiss, watching Malyr’s shadows grow, swell, expand. “My prince, maybe we should return in the morrow?”
Malyr showed no reaction, his movements growing frenzied, his body consumed by an urgency that bordered on madness. Each clank of rock against rock seemed to send a strike into my chest, the shadows it stirred there matching the ones that undulated around him.
“When was the last time he poured his shadows into you?” Sebian asked.
“Two days ago, since I was too exhausted from clearing our way up here,” I said, and there was no denying how Asker’s balance shifted onto his heels. “I need to help him.”
Akser’s hand landed heavily on my shoulder. “We do not know the limit of your void, but my guess is that you might have reached it.”
I exchanged a look with Sebian for no more than a second, but it was all that was needed for me to spot the commitment in his eyes that coursed through my veins. The commitment to us: three souls connected by fate, friendship, and the feelings we harbored for each other.
Sebian jutted his chin toward Malyr. “You handle his shadows; I see how I can handle him.”
He matched my stride as we hurried over to what had turned into a volatile wall of shadows that flicked and writhed. Hand outreached, I absorbed them, carving us a way through the darkness. And there, on the ground, Malyr heaved and sobbed, frantically grappling at whatever rocks he managed to lift off the small body that lay beneath them.
