“I’m no princess,” the voice had said. “My name is Fury, and I’m a fucking god.”
15
ALEXUS
“Her name is Fury.”
Panting from her sprint from the lakeshore to camp, Raina carves her hands through her long, dark hair, dragging it back from her face. She stands at the end of the table where I’ve been sitting with Rhonin for the last few minutes discussing Joran’s whereabouts. I haven’t even had time to look for her. I’d assumed she was still with Nephele and Helena.
Though I’m startled by her abrupt arrival and declaration, I school my features into a mask of calm and temper my emotions. With a steady grip, I lower my mug of ale and rest my hand on Raina’s waist, an effort to ease her. Her witch’s marks are revealed, bold in the dark of night, and her end of the bond is closed. She’s so rattled that her distress is shutting down everything.
Luckily, I can read her emotions regardless. They’re so often written on her face and in the way she signs.
“Whose name is Fury?” I ask with a confused shake of my head.
My heart skips a beat at the feel of that name on my tongue. A name I haven’t heard in a very long time. A name I wouldn’t call a name.
It was a rebellion.
“The weapon,” she signs with hasty movements. “Joran was right. The prince needed a third weapon. I do not know what she is capable of, but she is the weapon. I have no doubt.”
As a chilled sweat breaks across the back of my neck, everyone begins to gather for dinner, their eyes on the storm clouds shadowing the sky in the distance. A few stares have started watching us, though, given Raina’s obvious agitation.
“We’re going to talk in private,” I tell Rhonin as I stand. “If Joran isn’t back soon, send Keth, Callan, and Jaega out to look for him. If the storm breaks, though, they need to get back here. I don’t want anyone to lose a night’s sleep because Joran is an idiot.”
“Will do,” he replies, turning up a healthy swig of ale.
I lead Raina toward the willows where we take shelter beneath the swaying fronds. Despite the increasing wind, the bonfire is high tonight, a dancing symbol of defiance as the survivors face the very element that devoured their families. Its light reaches us even here, though it isn’t enough. I need to see Raina’s eyes. Her expressions. She says so much with that beautiful face when she signs, and right now, I don’t want to miss any detail.
Quickly, I call forth the energy of the night—the heat of the fire, the power from the moon, the strength in the wind. I’d rather not draw the villagers’ attention, and I feel stronger today, so when the force of each entity arrives, I draw it all through my veins and channel it into pearls of light at the ends of my fingertips, releasing them into the darkness around us.
Raina’s eyes widen, but there will be time to explain my ever-changing magick later.
“Take a deep breath and start from the beginning,” I say as she leans back against the tree. The sight of her like this—underneath this willow, her dark blue eyes staring up at me… It stirs something deep inside that I try to recognize but can’t.
I let her sign. Let her tell me everything. From Nephele’s mention of Neri to that bastard finding Raina on the lakeshore to her seeing Colden in Thamaos’s old dungeon.
Once she pauses, I say, “But you refused to make a deal with Neri, yes?” Thank the fucking Ancient Ones, she nods. “And you couldn’t see the prince at all,” I clarify.
“I could see nothing but Colden and red shadows at first. I could not hear them either. I never do. I only knew that Colden was still locked in a dirt cell, speaking with someone,” she signs, “and that it had to be the prince. So I waited. Longer than usual because of what Neri had said. Eventually, the shadows faded, and I saw the woman through Colden’s eyes. Somehow, I heard her too and felt Colden’s unease.”
From the stricken look on Raina’s face and the way she shivers at the thought, it’s evident that she’d love nothing more than to scrub the image from her mind. A decomposed body. A woman with a single streak of dark red hair. Flesh rotted, and yet she was somehow alive and worthy of being caged and secured by an iron collar and bars.
A woman who called herself not a princess, but a god.
A Fury.
“She could be anyone.” My voice comes out weaker than I mean for it to, my throat constricting painfully as I speak. I swallow. “A former siphon, perhaps. A sorceress.”
I want to believe my own words, even as I absentmindedly touch the centuries-old scar on my wrist. The moment I feel the rough skin, I yank my hand away, because the suggestion my mind is trying to conjure needs to be shut down. Now. It’s only the anxiety of this entire ordeal getting to me.
Because Fleurie died. The Brotherhood killed her after the battle between Thamaos and Urdin, at King Gherahn’s command. Once they reduced her to no more than a lifeless form chained to the rocks at the Abyss of Pensea, they let her wash away in the brutal, icy waves.
Her death is one part of those last years with Thamaos that time hasn’t leeched. I watched it happen. Chained as well and on my knees in the frigid cold, forced to witness my friend’s torture for days, screaming until I couldn’t speak, until her bloody body slid down the black cliffside and vanished into the sea.
All because she wanted to take her father’s empty throne.
Fleurie cannot be alive. I would’ve known. She would’ve found me.
