The breach bells woke me a few hours later.
I’d barely opened my eyes when I began transforming, my body snapping and stretching, feathers sprouting down my arms. As my fingers grew talons, my bandage tore open, and I glanced down at my hand with numb curiosity. It was the first time I’d dared to look at it since returning from Gothyn.
Beneath the soft sheen of down, which thickened as my feathers came in, my skin was mottled with blisters. The welts had diminishedin size, but there were dozens of them, and they’d blackened, which I distantly registered as an ominous sign. Maybe, I mused numbly, I would lose my hand. And how funny, and fitting, that Gemma’s left hand also bore scars, but hers were a net of delicate lines that glittered prettily as an embroidered glove while mine looked like the patchwork hide of a chimaera.
Monster of Rosewarren indeed.
I followed my squadron mates out onto the grounds in a daze. I shouted the commands I was supposed to shout, strapped my weapons to my body as I usually did, and launched into the air alongside my fellow Roses, but it was like my body was doing these things of its own accord. I knew Freyda was flying beside me, but she was a blur. Sounds were muffled, and my mind was a void.
Even when we reached the breach site—Section Twenty; a pack of lycans; a convoy of human refugees headed south—I felt removed from myself, like I was nothing more than a puppet at the mercy of my training instincts. Earthquakes below us; howling winter winds all around us; the snarls and howls of the lycans as we tore through them; and the Mist, a sea of silver loosed from its bindings, flooding it all—I noticed these things as if from a great distance. Unmoved. Unafraid. If my hand hurt from fighting, I didn’t feel it.
Only when we returned to Rosewarren—the lycans slaughtered and the surviving refugees shepherded to a nearby settlement—did I start to resurface from the fog I’d fallen into. As we crossed the snowy grounds and approached the priory, all my senses prickled in warning.
Something was wrong.
It was midmorning, the Mist-shrouded sky a churning dull gray, the wintry air so cold it hurt my lungs, and yet no smoke came from the chimneys. The barns were still shut, the training yards were empty, and all the priory’s windows were dark.
And we were still in our avian forms. Normally we transformedback to our human selves the moment we touched down at Rosewarren after a mission. But here we all stood with our talons and feathers, which meant that either the Warden had chosen to keep us this way or she was incapacitated.
My horror at the thought was the real first thing I’d felt all day.
Caralind was the first to reach the rear doors.
“Locked,” she said, frowning. “That’s odd.”
“Odd,” Brigid agreed grimly, “and ominous.”
The sound of quick footsteps crunching through the snow made us turn to see Berthel, one of the human stable hands in our employ, frantically running toward us.
“He has taken control of the littles,” she said, tears making her voice thick. “I don’t know how, but he’s turned them against us!”
Brigid caught her by the arms and held her steady. “Slow down, Berthel. What do you mean, taken control? Who ishe?”
Berthel shook her head, barely able to speak. Her hair was coming loose from its knot, and her eyes were glazed with horror.
“He has the Warden trapped in her office,” she said, “and somehow he’s gotten hold of the littles’ minds.Allof them. They’re ruthless, and much stronger than they should be. They’re chasing the older Roses through the house, they’ve locked dozens in the barracks, and they’ve raided the armory.” Her voice caught on a sob. “I think they’ve killed—”
Before she could finish the sentence, a sharp twang rang out, and an arrow hit her right in the neck. She collapsed in Brigid’s arms and bled out in seconds.
“There!” Cira pointed to an upper window in one of the priory’s turrets. I saw a flutter of motion, a flash of color, then nothing. Imagining any of my sweet littles as deadly snipers made my blood run cold. Our familiars scattered; with a fierce shriek, Freyda soared up to the window and dove inside, undoubtedly determined to track down the perpetrator herself.
I whirled around and kicked down the locked doors, reducing them to splintered shreds. We raced inside, ducking another two arrows shot from above.
“What in the name of the gods did she mean?” Brigid muttered angrily. Her whole front was red with blood. “Who ishe? Is it Kilraith?”
Cira glared down the corridor, dagger in hand. “But how could he have gotten past the wards?”
“We don’t know the full extent of his capabilities,” I said quietly, though a terrible idea had begun to form in my mind, even more terrible than the prospect of Kilraith taking over Rosewarren. “He’s gotten hold of the littles’ minds, whoever he is,” I murmured. “A child of Jaetris, then.”
“We’ve got thirty littles living here right now,” Brigid said. “A single person couldn’t control so many minds.”
“No, but if they used another mind—a strong one—as an amplifier and an anchor, they might.”
Brigid glanced at me, understanding dawning on her face. “You don’t think…”
But I did, and somehow I knew I was right.
Hewasn’t Kilraith.
