Lux, p.21
Lux, page 21
The Storm-born was right. The might of Rune’s power over the Depths and Heights would be able to wreak havoc on the enemy ranks out in the open far more than if the enemy had entered the Shadowlands beneath Mara’s keep.
But as she saw Rune’s onyx stare settle softly on Eilea, her heart squeezed. Rune had made Jess promise that she’d do everything she could to keep the Storm-born safe on the mission they were about to embark on. Only yesterday, Rune had shared how torn he was about having the Unseelie who had tethered Eilea captive in the Sun Keep. He’d confessed how tempted he’d been to end his life. But Eilea was adamant that she remain tethered so as to help in this mission. Beneath the quiet, brooding anger on Rune’s face, Jess knew the fragile hope that was growing: for Umbra’s unity, for a future here, for one day, and perhaps not too far away, love.
Astra and Skiron skidded to a stop as they landed gracefully from the open roof of the Sun Court.
“Ready for Operation Shadow Silva, ladies?” Astra asked.
The tension skyrocketed. Those of Operation Shadow Silva were the only ones who would be flying over the Seelie lands tonight. The others would be portaling through the Heights from the Sun Keep, out into Unseelie land where they would draw the enemy into battle and away from the gate. By the time Eilea flew Jess and Astra into those lands, they hoped that the gate would be clear of the enemy portaling out.
Sunny and Erika were the last to push through the streams of fae, shifters, and Storm-born already making their way up to the Heights of the Sun Keep to portal. Erika’s earlier braided hair was wild and loose, and as Jess’s gaze roved to Sunny, she took in the serious case of bed hair afflicting him.
So, we weren’t the only ones.
Jess exchanged a look with Astra Rainbow, whose toothy smile said the pair’s appearance hadn’t escaped her notice. Jess had a moment of being pleased that she’d blurted things out to Erika about Sunny’s feelings earlier. And the happy look that Sunny shot Jess had her inwardly doing a victory dance.
Erika brought Jess back down to Earth. “Remember, don’t risk your human form unless you have to.”
Jess nodded, trying to master her nerves as the thought of where she was about to go and what she was about to try to do threatened to smother her. Thankfully, there was Matteo, and as his arms gathered her up, she felt her whole world reduce to that one perfect point where she was safe, where she’d always been running to, and where she’d damn well make it back to.
22
SEA OF ALLIES
Matteo plunged off the top of the Sun Keep, closing his eyes against the winds clawing past. His stomach somersaulted as he dropped toward the ground. But he knew he’d portaled successfully when the horns calling the allied forces suddenly died. The Heights spat him out, unsympathetically, into Unseelie territory.
He scrambled out onto a craggy hillside, alongside hundreds of other shifters. The wolves, fae, and Storm-born traveled through the Heights portals that their various units had been allocated to. Depths portals were only being used by the witches and mages to portal through the groves of trees by the riverbank. With the enemy being most attuned to water, it had seemed best to minimize portaling through the Depths.
Matteo was almost pleased of the dizzy feeling as he got his bearings, following the stream of shifters. The uncomfortable disorientation numbed the ache in his heart. But… not for long. The memory of Jess in his arms just before she’d left tore at him. When he’d seen the rising chaos in her eyes at the task looming, he’d crushed her to him. But now that embrace didn’t feel enough—not to hold him together. He didn’t know how he was supposed to survive what he’d just done: let her leave. He should be with her.
I should always be with her.
Beneath the night, the ranks of sure-footed wolves around Matteo swarmed down the crags above the Herba Terra. His assessing gaze took in the intermingled lines of black and white wolves around him. Like the original shifter twins, Romulus and Remus, they ran united. The magnitude of this moment flooded him, and, once more, he wished that Jess was beside him to witness this magic. Matteo gathered himself, remembering that it was their march that would draw the enemy away from the gate that was her entry point. It was the shifter unit, alongside the other para units, that would allow Jess, Astra, and Eilea to infiltrate the enemy camp.
The enemy who had sundered the clans, covens, and courts all those thousands of years ago. The enormity of the moment echoed in the swift beat of the shifters’ paws that seemed to shake the earth with a demand for freedom.
Matteo was one of the first wolves to enter out onto the flat lands of the Herba Terra. The Grasslands. These plains felt even more alien than the Sun Plains. The lusciousness of the Seelies’ parklands was enriched by Alba’s restoration, a renewal that hadn’t reached here. Instead, the deep thickets of dark hebena trees gave the area an unnerving quality. As if all that divisive magic that Jess had been studying in these lands the last few days had gathered in these forests. Matteo had never thought that trees could creep him out.
But there it is. These ones are totally creepy.
There was a pack of fifteen hundred wolves gathering in the grasses. They stilled, waiting for the next unit to assemble from out of the nearby Depths portal. Earthen magic thrummed near as the Triodian witches and mages burst from the lake. The Triodians were slower joining the wolves on the plain, but their rallying was accompanied by spectacular groans and creaks, and Matteo knew that the Silvan groves had been portaled in.
Sure enough, as Matteo’s wolfish gaze whipped out across the plains, he drank in the sight of a moving forest, lurching forward as the mages and witches assembled. Matteo remembered the beings created from root and soil that Warden Whitmore had cast in the penitentiary, but these were much mightier specimens. These were the great yew trees of Silva’s Cathedral and the ones Enodia had stolen, now marching alongside the Triodians, their roots scuttling over the plains like feet.
As the Triodians surged forward along with the forest, Matteo and the other shifters set off with them, padding on slowly. The huge, ancient boughs and branches grumbled and sighed above the shifters, moving to embrace all of Earth’s paras until a huge, moving shield of woodland protected them. As the Triodians and shifters crossed the plains, the first shot of an arrow whizzed through the night. The moving forest protested, the trees’ boughs whipping through the air to take the iron arrows for the wolves and Triodians beneath them.
Matteo smelled the ancient Earthen magic that Jess used flood the air. Erika, Fern, and a few others within the Triodia Coven, adept at communing with the dead, were using the spirits to help them against the Unseelie fae. The aerial units were starting to rain down attacks using their iron-tinged sluagh. Matteo’s shifter nose took in the scent of cold iron stealing through the night. Anxiety tightened his muscles, every moment anticipating that cruel touch of cold on his fur, that if he were unlucky, might remove him from the fight before it had even begun. He focused on every sound eroding the night, willing himself to be alert enough, fast enough, to dodge the coiling shadows of iron-tinged invading the moving forest like poisonous gas.
Beneath the shifting, rustling forest, shouts and screams, growls and whines pierced the air, the Unseelies’ iron-tinged striking plenty of their targets. With the rising cries, both human and animal, echoing through the forest, the sanctity of the woods felt tainted; a place of magic transformed into nightmare.
Through the darkness, Matteo’s wolfish eyes caught the first sight of the true enemy. Their formations glowed like moonlight; their pearly, luminescent skin and the sheen of their armor and weapons catching the starlight.
The Triodians were to take Mara’s aerial units, while Imber’s Seelie and the Storm-born were to combat her pucca units. Everyone had agreed that it was vital to get the tethered Storm-born away from the enemy ranks before Rune targeted them with Umbra’s Depths and Heights. So, Rune planned to first transform the tethered Storm-born with his winds, as well as meet Queen Mara in battle.
That left the Fomor foot soldiers to the shifters. They needed to battle their ranks until Rune could summon the waters and winds to purge them. To purge these lands with the elements, just as Jess was about to do in the Below with the soul energy she wielded.
As the lines of Fomors marching closer loomed towards the great army of wolves, Matteo, in step with Piera, Dearbhla, and hundreds of other wolves, swarmed forwards, disturbing the strange, droning insects and releasing a spicy aroma as their claws tore up the grasses. Their howls cut through the Shadowlands as they broke out from the coverage of the moving canopy.
As Matteo rushed toward the enemy line, the agglomeration of foot soldiers that formed the army dominated his senses. What Erika had said about them being formed from a mixture of those they’d conquered was clear in their diversity. Every soldier bore different features and forms. Some had wings while others had horns; some looked more human, others more animal. But where the individual forms should have been interesting for their uniqueness, there was that deep-seated knowledge beating through Matteo that none of these attributes belonged to the individual. Instead, as his wolf eyes drank in the sight, it was as if each Fomor was dressed in trophies butchered from innocents: the horns, hoofs, wings, and tails they wore as if they’d bedecked themselves from fresh corpses. And that’s what their white, translucent skin reminded Matteo of most—the bones of those they’d slaughtered. He sensed it, knew it, something deep in his own bones warning him that these very beings were born from the bodies, blood, and souls of those they butchered. An army of the dead, even more grotesque than what Matteo had witnessed from the Enodians or the Unseelie.
These are the Devourers. World-breakers. The Gathering Dark.
Matteo charged, pushing himself faster as he heard the beat of his brother and sisters’ paws beside him take up the song of the kill. He felt a rush of savage pride for what he was, for what his pack was: beasts who didn’t shy away from the frightful flesh that stole toward them.
We are shifters. The descendants of Romulus and Remus. We will claim the skins of those who rent our clan.
Matteo aimed for a huge Fomor, who tried to hide his translucent skin behind a chest plate of armor and the fur cloak adorning his hulking frame. With the fur, the Fomor’s horns seemed like even more of a mockery. Matteo’s claws slashed at the exposed flesh of his enemy’s neck and relished the sound of his choke as he hit the dirt.
Erika had said that the Fomor were beings born from water, and Matteo felt it in the cold, blue blood coating his paws. He felt as if the liquid were something festering and longed for a cleansing pool. Instead, his eyes sharpened, homing in on the exposed area of white on the flank of the next Fomor. Matteo’s jaws needled into the creature’s jelly-like skin, its blood and entrails spilling out onto the grass.
As Matteo’s black wolf darted into the enemy ranks, his claws and teeth searching for the next weak point, the sound of a whine or howl escaping from the line of shifters around him spurred him on, urging him to fight for his brothers and sisters. For the pack’s survival. But, most of all, the thought of a fair wolf stalking lands where this filth originated from forced him ever on. The deeper he fought into their masses, the more it seemed as if their lines were never-ending. And the white flesh he kept tearing into seemed to belong to the underbelly of one gargantuan beast. One that even a thousand pairs of teeth and claws had no chance of bringing down.
23
FOREIGN SOIL
Maintaining the veiling Jess cast over herself, Astra, and Eilea through Seelie land was effortless. She drew her power from the faded and she and her companions bled seamlessly into the night. Astra held the reins loosely in her hands; she wouldn’t need them until she posed as a proper Unseelie once in the Fomor kingdom. Jess was seated behind her, her arms wrapped tightly around her friend’s waist.
Ahead, the first sign of the enemy ranks—a kind of diamond-like glimmer on the horizon—came into view.
Jess’s heartbeat quickened and her breath caught in her throat as a dozen wonderings flocked through her head.
How many Fomors are there? Have the others portaled through the Heights yet? Have the shifters marched against the Fomors already? Is Matteo okay?
For a moment, Jess’s death dust ebbed and the veiling flickered.
Cursing, she drew it back over them. Calming her hammering heart—they weren’t yet near the portal—she told herself to focus. Jess was in human form, as it was easier to channel her death dust in this body. But that meant she and Astra—an Unseelie and a Rem—flying into the enemy ranks wouldn’t go unnoticed. Jess’s veiling must hold. She mustn’t get distracted.
Jess directed Eilea, “Fly to the right of the white. I sense the gate lies that side of the plain.”
How tempting it was to look left to where the Fomors gathered. A low rumble sounded like the roll of distant thunder, but she realized it was footfalls. They were marching. Jess concentrated on the muted whisper beneath that, the faded, focusing on keeping her and her companions safe. The last thing they needed was to be spotted by Mara’s aerial units. Speaking of which, the airborne Unseelie gathered in bands above the white mass, their black wings and dark iron contrasting starkly with their allies below.
It became increasingly clear where the gate to the Fomor kingdom lay as Eilea carried them deep enough into the forests, bordering the grass plains. They had a birds-eye view of the streams of the enemy, still marching and flying out the portal in droves. Without instruction, Eilea drew them a little farther away from the droves of airborne Unseelie flying, perhaps, a hundred feet away, towards the Herba Terra.
A few more of Eilea’s strong wingbeats took them within line of sight to the gate. Still, the enemy proceeded to pour out of it. Eilea slowed her pace, circling above a stretch of dense hebena forest. Guilt tumbled through Jess as she wondered how long the Storm-born could go with the two of them seated on her back like this. And that was without all the flying that lay on the other side of the gate.
Jess’s gaze wound over the ever-increasing force that showed no sign of stopping. She dug her nails into her thighs as her concentration wavered. The whisper in the tops of the trees beneath them wafted through Jess’s awareness, and she let the soothing energy of the faded lap over her and her friends. All else disappeared while Eilea continued in her holding pattern.
Astra’s voice broke through Jess’s trance. “Looks like that’s the last of them. Let’s go.” The Storm-born arced down.
As they drew towards the gate, tension spiked through Jess. But she drew the death dust over them, willing it to conceal them from the enemy’s sight. Everything seemed to slow as Eilea touched down on the ground, a mere ten feet from the portal. Jess concentrated on her breathing and on the whisper that lapped over them all. On the veiling that screened them from the very real eyes of the enemy nearby. Two Unseelie mounted on Storm-born stood on either side of the gate like sentinels.
Jess’s heart cramped for Astra. She must feel just as tense if not more than Jess did, sneaking past her own people. But her friend’s loose grip on the reins and steady breathing didn’t falter. As Eilea’s hoofs took silent, masked steps ever closer to the gate, Jess’s eyes raked the tiny details of the Unseelies’ uniform and armor and the tack of their steeds. Everything that Astra and Eilea were furnished with was the same, right down to the iron on the trim of the saddle and footholds of the stirrups. They looked the part. They moved the part. They were authentic.
I mean, Astra is an Unseelie, and Eilea is a tethered pucca.
The surrealness of the moment spilled through Jess’s thoughts. As her nerves mounted, her musings went down ever weirder rabbit holes. To think that when she and Astra had first met, she’d spent a large amount of time picturing her friend on a winged horse. And here she was. Here they both were.
Despite her anxiety, Jess’s death dust blanketed them as they plunged through…
The first thing Jess was aware of was the humidity of the air. Mist curled around them. As it dispersed, three moons came into view. Eilea was flying again, the shudder of her wings pulling them upwards. Jess drank in the sight of the moons that she’d seen through the mirror pool in the cavern beneath the Iron Keep—two half-moons and a crescent one.
“It’s show time White Wolf and Storm Horse,” Astra said.
In spite of everything, the code names that Astra had given them as part of Operation Shadow Silva, buoyed Jess up. “Roger that, Winged Warrior.” As Jess recited the script that Astra had impressed upon her, she realized her friend had spent way too much time talking to them the last few days as if they were part of a Special Ops team.
Eilea nickered in appreciation. She took them higher, the vapor continued to disperse, giving them the first sight of huge strips of water below. In the moonlight, the surface of the Below glittered almost prettily. The curling mist, too, gave the watery lands a softness. But then the first shudder of movement broke the surface, curved, pale jelly-like flesh breaking the illusion of any wholesomeness. The fleeting glimpse was enough to make Jess’s skin crawl. Something Eilea seemed to agree with as she nickered, her wingbeats increasing and taking them higher still.
The memory of the pheist wrapping itself around her leg and dragging Jess downwards flickered through her head. A swell of gratitude swept through her for Eilea’s beautiful cloudy wings that allowed them to climb safely above the dark waters. Something that continued to beat through Jess, as every so often, one of these half-formed Fomor creatures breached the water below. Otherwise, the smooth waterways stretched out, on and on.
Until… the light altered. A ribbon of bright light issued ahead, and hope beat through Jess. Could it be sunrise? The two times she’d seen into the Fomors’ world, the moons had been evident. What was the bet that this miserable place was a sunless world? But what was that light then?
