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The battle raging above the stone peaks of the night-kissed palace was silent. I moved among them like sunlight, slipping between the outstretched fingers of an oak tree swaying in the summer breeze. I could bring no weapon with me, I couldn’t even bring my clothing. All I had was my bare body to rip through them. One by one.

Their hulls were blessedly empty of their cursed cargo. Just five Darrig remained on Rictus’ ship. Five Darrig and two empty kin’tha cages that lay curled up on the deck in a patch of moonlight. I left the cats. I didn’t know if they, like my lost beloved’s pet, were failinis recommissioned into their disgraced position, but all I could see when I looked at them was his worried face and the rage he had felt that night when I had sought to access her without his permission. Before he had accepted me as no threat to her. He had so easily defeated me, knocked me to my ass and nearly snapped my ribs with his fury.

The first Darrig was easy to dispatch. A simple, artful positioning of my hands on his shoulders and a delicate snap of his neck. The crunch of the discs between his spine was so soft, the sound of bones cracking muffled by flesh was a song I was familiar with, but the aria of cartilage collapsing under the weight of my might was one I rarely got to enjoy.

Memories of wars and battles long forgotten came flooding back to my muscles and invigorated them like the icy touch of a winter-kissed lover. My heart, ever steady, beat a champion’s drum, calling my next foe to me as I stalked him through the shadows of the deck.

I wanted him heard. I wanted his death to herald my presence. It would be easier than slipping down into the hold to fight in cramped quarters against the other three. I rang the bell, calling them to me, smashing the over ripened plum of his head against the mast, sending shudders through the wooden ship. It lurched, as if recoiling from the dark smear of brain, blood, and bone.

I dismantled them. There was no better way to put it. It was no battle. No true fight between us, even with them brandishing swords and daggers against my completely unguarded bulk. I ripped their limbs from their bodies, liberating them of their blades and weapons. When they screamed, singing me my favorite opera, I ripped their throats open with my bare teeth and let their blood paint my nudity.

By the time Rictus called for the ropes to be lowered down, bickering with Harrower in their tongue, I had cleaned up my mess. It was the least I could do.

Rictus found me below deck, perched, cock out, atop a gruesome throne made of the dripping flesh of his compatriots.

“The bone breaker,” I grunted, barely a Fae, more an animal than a child of magic.

His dark eyes swept the litter of his men, took in the gathered viscera that was once his cousins or brothers. I had been a little surprised not to find a mother on a ship like his. The Darrig had lost so many during the War, they must have done away with the custom of treating their ships like air-bound brooding caves.

I expected him to scream. I expected him to do something more than calmly take a forgotten bottle of wine from the table, pry the cork free and take a swig before taking a seat in a chair to face me full on.

“What about it?”

“You will give it to me.” My glare might as well have been welded to him. I did not blink. Didn’t let my eye wander to the flicker of the lanterns. My focus belonged to him and no other, not even bothering to push the gristle and blood-coated strands of hair away from my face.

“Can’t. Already gave it to His Majesty. So you did all this for nothing.” His voice was so even, so measured and steady, that I could have set a metronome to the rhythm of his words.

I tilted my head, watching him take another swig. I had never been as good at counting lies as my sister, but there was a certain flavor to the air of a good lie, especially a lie of desperation, that in a battle fugue I savored.

“Liiiiiiiiiiies.” I drew the word out into a hiss worthy of the kin’tha that flanked my throne, occasionally snacking on the meat I’d set for them.

“Even if ’tweren’t, why would I give it to you? You’ll just kill me as soon as you’ve clapped it.” He leaned back, wincing almost imperceptibly as the kin’tha crunched down on a bone. “No. No, Bastard of Árus Láigh. I’ll lay down in my grave with a smile on my face knowing you were thwarted.”

“Give it to me. Don’t give it to me. It matters little, Imperial Rictorian of the Twisting Streams, Iatto.” A grin of satisfaction slid through me as his flesh shivered under the weight of the knowledge that I knew not only his true title, but also his brood name. I had always known Rictus was just an abbreviation of his rank among them. A wartime moniker that stuck. The Far Darrig were like the Fae in many ways, and in many ways different. They did not cling to their true names the way we did, but their brood names? The names whispered only in haunting ceremony to their own pantheon of ancestral spirits was the sacred equivalent. It was the name their ancestors whispered to them with. The name their ancestors knew them by. To know it was to have a direct fist around the line of their heritage. “Either way I will avenge her, and he won’t have access to her.”

“If she still lives.”

“If she still lives,” I whispered, agreeing with him.

“I won’t go easy,” he calmly proclaimed, setting the bottle back to his lips.

“I tore five of your kin apart with my bare hands without alerting the guards below, Iatto. Do you think to pose a challenge to me?” I flexed my massive blood-coated fist the size of his head.

“No, just waiting for the poison to take hold.” He grinned and lifted the wine. “Stonefish venom. Two sips will fuck you up and get you high. Half a bottle?” He laughed again and downed the rest of the bottle in a single gulp. “It’ll steal the magic straight from your bones and bury it in the shimmering eddies before your enemies can steal your memories.”

I roared, launching from my throne as he casually set the bottle down and spread his arms wide as I charged him. “Nothing sweeter than knowing you’ll never fucking find that golden cunt you’re so addicted to. May Odharnait curse you, Bastard.”

Pale, white flames licked through his eyes as I made it to him and snatched him off the chair, but his body was nothing more than the vacant doll he had used to execute his crimes.

He’d guessed right. I was no necromancer. No bone shaking corpse speaker. But I had planned to rip every last memory from him to find the bone breaker curse after I’d killed him. I’d been willing to spend the last of my magic for the chance that she might be at the other end of that vicious curse. And now, even that hope was gone.

I roared my impotent rage. Bellowed into the skies above us, the impotence of once again having hope snatched from me. Screamed at the cruelty of once again losing her.

Chapter 14

Cricket

We let night fall full across the village. It settled in an uneasy blanket as the four of us waited. We busied ourselves to appear as if nothing was different in the light of the single candle. We didn’t know if anyone was watching us but just in case we had spies on us, we didn’t want to tip them off that we planned on running.