A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Forty-five

Forty-five

7:30 PM

11 hours and 15 minutes until execution

When you didn’t know where to go, every path was equally wrong. It was quite different from not caring where you went, in which case, every step would have been equally right. Tyr returned to the courtyard, if only because he’d had luck there once before. Who was to say it couldn’t happen again? Additionally, its circular, centralized nature offered an equal advantage to the various points of the palace. Pillars supported cathedral-high ceilings on all sides, halls and rooms and things of importance and mundanity in all directions.

It was familiar, knowing what he wanted with no idea how to achieve it. He knew he needed Dwyn in order to figure out how to use borrowed powers, but he had no clue how to get her to give up her secrets without incurring the wrath of the bond they shared. Before he’d needed to know her secrets, he’d needed to find her in the first place. And before it all came the need to see the men who’d hurt Svea brought to a violent and terrible justice.

Kings, generals, and militaries would probably disagree, but Tyr was quite certain there was no such thing as a foolproof plan. All anyone could do—particularly a lone actor—was the next right thing, one step at a time, while hoping for the best.

The All Mother must favor him, he thought, as his luck sparkled within a few moments.

He’d been in the courtyard for no more than two minutes when a woman floated out from behind the pillars near the opposite end of the courtyard. He’d spent enough time in Tarkhany to know the posture of peasants and enough time lurking about the castle in Aubade to spy the way nobility carried themselves.

This woman was no commoner.

He marveled at the woman, skin darker than Odessa calla lilies, cloudlike dress stitched of night itself. Twilight-deep, jewel-toned purples and blues rippled behind her as she walked. While some of the attendants in the castle had been human, this woman’s arched ears were easy to spot from the close crop of her hair. From the quick, intentional pace of her stride, he’d expected her to cross the courtyard into a separate part of the palace. Instead, she came to an abrupt halt near the fountain.

Tyr took a few careful steps toward her, wondering if she was going to descend into the dungeon.

The woman exhaled slowly, nostrils flaring in a clear sign of anger. Her fists flexed at her sides. Before long, the bird took several careful steps toward her.

“I won’t insult you by asking you if you did this,” she said to the bird. He could hear enough from his free ear to know she wasn’t speaking the common tongue. The translation device was terribly useful. He wasn’t confident he’d give it back. “Because I know the answer. There’s no reason for those men to be here. This was handled.”

The bird cocked its head from one side to the other.

“No one’s here,” she said through her teeth.

With one step forward, the bird’s foot transitioned into the step of a man. She matched his height almost exactly, shoulders straightening as if to emphasize her anger. Whoever this was, she was not here to show a sign of weakness.

“I didn’t bring them here,” he answered, voice low and irritated.

As with Tyr and his ability to step between things fully clothed, the shapeshifter before him was dressed in finery both loose enough for the climate and brilliant enough to portray his status. His tunic and pants resembled the same blacks, oranges, reds, and yellows belonging to the bird moments before. This was an important man.

“You did, Tempus. You’ve been bringing them here for sixty years. You shouldn’t have gone to Farehold. You started this when—”

He looked to the side, crestfallen. “I didn’t know you knew about that.”

She looked as if he had slapped her. The insult to her intelligence was as violent as any physical blow. “When I brought you in to this palace, you understood what you were getting yourself into. You knew who I was, and what I—”

“I’ve known that you will not bloody your hands with the justice you crave, Zita.”

“This isn’t justice!”

“Lower your voice. No one knows I’m here.”

Her hands flexed again as if controlling a great and powerful storm within her. Tyr idly wondered what abilities she might possess and whether or not he might be at risk of harm, should her wrath win.

Zita made a controlled expression. “If you’re seen, we’ll say you’ve arrived in the night. It’s well known: you’ve been on an extended trip away. I’d prefer that we keep it that way.”

The man she’d called Tempus showed a combination of frustration and defeat. “Why did you marry me, if I never stood a chance in your court? Why would you agree to this union? Hundreds of years have passed, Zita. He’s been gone for—”

Her expression changed in an instant. “Don’t you dare speak of him.”

“This! This is why! This has to happen. You won’t let him go. You won’t let any of them go. You won’t—”

“I’m not the one who needs to lower my voice,” she said, spinning on her heels as she returned the way she’d come. Tempus jogged after her, and Tyr responded by picking his way carefully across the courtyard. He hugged them tightly enough to slip into her room, undetected, as the door closed behind them.

Her room was not so much different from the one Ophir had been assigned, save for a few personal touches. Zita’s was thick with the same bright citrus scent that permeated the palace. He’d thought it had come from the incense that smoked from the pendulous fixtures around the halls and rooms, but perhaps it was as much from its queen as from the decorations.

Tempus ran a hand over his face. “Zita—”

“I didn’t confront you on your little ambassador mission because no blood was shed. You needed to see them for yourself, and you did. You came back and we never spoke of it. It was over.”

His face was ripe with incredulity. “You want Farehold to get away with this? With nearly a millennium of injustice? You want—”

“Of course not!” Full-bodied anger tore through her, irrespective of the late hour. Tyr looked over his shoulder for something he suspected he might see: rune etchings on the doors. They’d been engraved by a manufacturer for their dampening ability. No one would be able to hear what happened within these rooms. “But do I blame the grandmothers and the children and the feeble and the poor of Aubade? Do I blame the ignorant princess stumbling around here with little more education on the world than a toddler? Am I any better if I take their land? If I rain terror down on the citizens, don’t I match their monstrosity?”

There was a tinny quality to his high, mocking laugh. “Where is the accountability? Where is the justice?”

“You’d have me rush into battle and risk my people’s safety after all we’ve endured? You’ve always been short-sighted,” Zita replied.

Tempus’s hands clenched into fists. “It’s been six hundred years!”

Her reply was a gentle desert breeze. “And if I’d taken your council, the regents who sit upon their stolen throne would have been ready for retaliation. Revenge, dear husband, is a dish best served cold.”

“Goddess damn it, Zita. There’s cold, and then there’s whatever the hell this is.”

She didn’t dignify his petulance with a response.

He was unmoved. “You have a plan, then?”

The bored stare she gave him could have frozen every drop of water in the palace. “You gave up the privilege of knowing long ago, Tempus.”

Tyr touched a finger to his lips, leaning into his silence as he listened. He’d been right. The All Mother had favored him indeed.

Tempus stomped to the far side of the room. Something told Tyr these were fights the walls knew well. The shapeshifting man cast an exasperated arm as he made a sweeping gesture to the world at large. “The humans who were forced to evacuate the coast don’t even know the names of the ancestors who died in the pilgrimage. Many of the fae who held your grudge have died. If you had planned to stay alone in the desert—”

“I should have,” she bit. “I was happier alone.”

His eyes went wild and pleading as he crossed the room. His tone softened as he reached for her hands. “You don’t mean that.”

She jerked them free. “I do. You’ll never be half the man he was. Now, leave me be. I have an execution to prepare.”

Tempus turned away, but not in anger. This was pain. Tyr recognized the broken emotion painted from his wounded face to the slump of his shoulders. He was looking into the fractured heart of a man in the sort of love that would never be returned. Despite the tumultuous conversation before him, he couldn’t ignore the thrum of excited adrenaline. This was a fist-sized diamond of finds in the world of espionage. He’d uncovered more in thirty minutes than any of the Farehold parties could have hoped to discern if they’d remained in Midnah for years.

Tyr had witnessed many gifts and powers throughout his years and couldn’t help but find his superior. Shapeshifting? Yes, a clever way to hide in plain sight, but a more effective gift for hiding was the ability to step into the place between things. Harland possessed supernatural strength? Good for him, but what good was brute force if the enemy spotted him a mile away? Tyr had developed his own hardened muscles and skillsets and could deliver punches and dodge similar blows without ever being seen. Samael had excellent intuition? That sounded wonderful, but if he was discovered the moment he followed his hunch, how useful was his power? Ophir could manifest? Well…okay, she had him beat on that one. It was the superior gift.

And Dwyn? She was infuriating. He hated that the irreverent, too-often-naked witch, her stolen powers, and her unconscionable trail of victims took residence in his mind. She did not deserve the thought he gave her.

Now what was he to make of the two before him? Zita, the clear royal of the palace, and the fae male called Tempus—was he truly her husband? A late-in-life marriage to a man who lived in the shadow of her resentment? Tyr supposed it was possible he was jumping to conclusions, but the angst, brokenness, and context allowed him to fill in some gaps whether he had some goddess granted gift for wisdom. Tyr leaned against the marbled wall and waited. If he gave them ten more minutes to talk, perhaps they’d spell out everything he needed to know about Berinth, Farehold, blood magic, and if he was lucky, maybe they’d stop fighting and give a detailed lesson on how to drain people and steal power.

“What was your plan?” Zita asked with a sort of resigned softness. “After the princess killed him?”

Tempus cupped his face once more, fingers rubbing over the ghost of a beard. “Now, that part I didn’t do.”

Zita’s eyebrows knit together. “What?”

“I don’t know the man in our dungeons.”

Her eyes were sharp. “I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t tell you what you are and are not allowed to believe. You know I’ve orchestrated several moving pawns in this game. I did go to Farehold decades ago to see them and speak to them myself, and you’re right: Eero and his family were toothless. Between the two of us, I seem to be the only one invested in righting the wrongs done to the continent. But I do not know that man in your dungeon.”

She took a careful step back. “You swear it?”

The man must have seen his opening and took it. This time when he grabbed Zita by the elbow, it was with the gentleness of a lover craving only acceptance. “I swear it on my life, on the All Mother, on the souls of my ancestors. I’ve been to Aubade. I’ve been in the castle that once belonged to your family. I’ve met their king. I’ve seen the lands they’ve claimed as their own. I’ve put my nose where it doesn’t belong. I’ve wanted to help you close this chapter so that you can begin to heal. But I am not responsible for the man in your dungeons, nor do I claim responsibility for the vengeance that brought Eero’s daughter here.”

Her face puckered everywhere from her brows to her lips. It was confusion, it was distrust, it was pain. “I never thought you’d admit to going to Aubade.”

Tempus brought her in close, holding her tightly as he breathed his answer against her neck. “I shouldn’t have gone. I learned very little. Ophir was a child at the time, so that’s what I became. She knew nothing, and her father was as useless as a sack of flour. I don’t blame Eero directly, though he certainly hasn’t done anything to right the wrongs. Caris, however…”

She pulled away. “The slain princess?”

Tempus sank from somewhere in his middle, like a building whose pillars had cracked. Sweat glistened on his brow from both the heat and the stress of their fight. If the light had caught his eye in any other way, Tyr would have thought the man was about to cry. “She would have been on our side, Zita. She wasn’t just a pretty monarch set to marry Raascot’s king. She didn’t just want peace. She sought justice. Caris desired unity for all the right reasons.”

Zita considered the information, chewing on each word as if it were a particularly tough piece of meat. After a prolonged silence, she asked, “And his second born? The princess with us now?”

He shrugged. “The girl desires singular vengeance for her sibling. I believe she knows Caris was her superior in every way, and the best contribution she could make to this world would be to end the life of whoever killed her. She isn’t our enemy. She isn’t anything.”

Tyr closed his eyes against the assertion. It was hard to hear, even for him. He leaned his head back against the cool marble of the stone, breathing in the smell of freshly juiced oranges and limes as he digested what Tempus had said. No one on the continent believed in Ophir. They didn’t know her. They didn’t know what she could do. Even if they did, would it matter? Maybe that was part of what he liked about her. Nothing about her was obvious. Her underestimation was gift and curse. It was the continent’s preconceptions and folly that made them unable to see what she was capable of—that was no failure of hers.

It was odd, this feeling. Almost like an itch within a wound, the healing stitch beneath a scab that would reopen and be more painful if one contacted it. He wanted to tear at it, to alleviate the discomfort, but he knew it was inherently unwise to do so. He didn’t prod. Tonight wasn’t about perplexing, invisible injuries and indefinable sensations, no matter how much they bothered him. It was about information.

Focus.

“But tomorrow…” Tempus prodded.

“I know.”

“So, what do we—”

“We do nothing.”

Zita pulled away from the embrace, and Tyr saw the pained look again. It was the face of a man in love. Such a dangerous, treacherous thing. Love wasn’t an emotion, not really. It was a verb. It was the force that shaped his life. A feeling was the least of Tempus’s worries—clearly his feelings fluctuated greatly, as Zita’s contradictory tugs on his heart pushed and pulled him with equal intensity. Whether he went to Farehold, shaped the kingdoms, influenced criminals, or lured princesses was perhaps inconsequential contrasted against his reason for doing it.

“Do you have a plan, Zita? What have you brewed for six hundred years?”

She wilted. “It hasn’t been six hundred.”

He looked to his feet. “I know. I know the first few years…and with your children…”

“I don’t want revenge.”

Tempus dared to return her gaze. “Maybe you should.”

She swallowed. “It wouldn’t serve us. It wouldn’t serve Midnah, or Tarkhany. It wouldn’t serve the people of Farehold who are no more guilty of the atrocities than our own citizens. The poor shouldn’t suffer for the disputes of monarchs.”

“They took everything. They took what didn’t belong to them. They—”

The powerful woman before him remained downcast, as if whatever fury and strength that fueled her had smoked out. “They didn’t take everything. That’s the tactic, isn’t it? You offer two options, one in which your heart is cut out, the other in which it’s merely broken. Isn’t that why the shop boy stays with his cruel employer? Why the woman remains with her wicked husband? Why we live on in Midnah without outright war? Our hearts are cracked, yes, but they’re ours.”

Tempus didn’t argue.

It was a terrible fight. It was wrong—surely the man could concede that much. He couldn’t have agreed, but he must not have known how to form a rebuttal. She was describing abuse. Whether from the assistant, the wife, or the kingdom, it was lose-lose. This couldn’t have been the first time they’d had his conversation. Or the second. Or the tenth. It was clear from the slump of his shoulders and the way he headed for the door that he was a man who’d lost this fight long ago.

“What do you want?” he asked finally.

She looked at him in a way that showed the entirety of her soul. Even Tyr could see the crushed powder of her heart from where she stood. “I want them to do the right thing.”

Tempus’s lips became a flat line. “Waiting on someone else to come around for justice—”

“Is like waiting for rain in the desert. I know.”

“You could do it. You have a power unlike any the world has seen. You could bring Aubade—no, Farehold—to their knees. You should have done it then.”

“I won’t use it.”

Exasperation choked Tempus. “But now we have their princess. It’s his last remaining daughter. If we—”

“No,” she said, voice low but firm. “Ophir is not a hostage. She’s not leverage. I’d rather have her as an ally. If Caris truly would have been an agent for justice…”

“Keep holding your breath, Zita. Maybe it will only take another six hundred years.”

Tyr saw from the posture, from the step, from the subtle shake of the head that Tempus was resigned to his inability to win her heart through any feat of logic or strategy when it came to regaining the lands they’d lost or the royals he deemed their enemies. Tyr couldn’t know that marrying Zita had been the best day of Tempus’s life and a relatively calm weekend for her. He didn’t know that the sun over Midnah had been bright as it shone over their union, but not too hot, or that the kingdom had been receptive, but there had been no gay joyousness in their celebrations. She was a good queen, of that Tyr was sure after only knowing her for a moment. She was one who had moved on, it seemed—at least, she had for public appearances. She’d found someone who loved her. He couldn’t know the man before him with lands and titles and a good heart who would bring his armies and passion to the palace and battlefield.

And then there was the list of things that only Zita knew.

She did not want to give her new husband children, for example.

It had been a scandal to the kingdom and a tragic, heartbreaking honor to their mother. She’d had children, after all. Three sons born to her late husband, the joy of Tarkhany, the lights of her life. Their father’s name would die with them, they’d declared. Their wives hadn’t understood, nor had the kingdom. Tempus hadn’t understood. The only thing he knew, a truth he gripped with miserable fingers, was that they were in an unhappy marriage. Not because they didn’t care for each other, not because they’d done anything wrong, not because they weren’t a good fit, but because they were two beings whose paths had intersected at the wrong time.

And what if they’d met before she’d ever fallen into the arms of her human? Perhaps Tempus would have been a marvelous king. Maybe he should have been her first and only love. They might still hold the coastal shores, own the fruitful lands, bear fae children who still lived, have a beautiful legacy of kindness and peaceable relations with their neighboring kingdoms. Perhaps if Tempus had been the king of Tarkhany when Farehold’s king had made a play for their lands, he would have intervened. Maybe their presence closer to the shore could have positioned them to help the fae who’d been forced north to Raascot. Perhaps Farehold could have been kept in check, balanced by forces from both the north and the south.

Farehold—the middle kingdom, as the continent called it—hadn’t won from superior strategy or better armies.

The victory had come from betrayal, subtlety, and time.

Brick by brick they’d built their empire of stolen supremacy. One stone went unnoticed. Two, then twenty, then ten thousand. Before the neighboring kingdoms had been willing to accept the atrocities implied by the fortress around them, Farehold had created an empire of violence. Move, or be moved.

Tyr thought of his miserable journey across the Tarkhany Desert, wondering if it would have been manageable at all without the intermittent clusters of trees, the pools of water with firm bedrock that refused to let it evaporate. The Frozen Straits had no such luxury. There was no fresh water, no reprieve, no shelter or break or moment of calm. Human and fae alike died on the ice, their bodies frozen into infinitely preserved icicles, their flesh and blood never decaying, never decomposing, trapped forever in an endless winter. Maybe geography was the only thing that had kept Sulgrave safe from Farehold’s interference. Thank the All Mother and the frigid torment of her blizzards from the south and their colonization.

He wanted to believe that Sulgrave would have fought back, that they would have bested Farehold in a battle and left their conquerors in rubble. From his time in Tarkhany and the palace, he’d developed a few opinions about reasons one might win or lose in a war. Defending your territory was much easier if you saw the enemy coming from a distance. Inviting the enemy into your home under the banner of goodness and hospitality and not realizing they were a cockroach until they’d infested your home posed an entirely new set of problems. Perhaps Sulgrave would have been no different. Hopefully they’d never need to find out.

“Go, Tempus.”

“Once upon a time, I shared your bed. You used to let me stay with you.”

She looked at him sadly, all of the fight in her evaporated like water on the sizzling marble. “I did try. I wanted to love you.”

When Tempus transitioned, it wasn’t into the tall, familiar bird Tyr had seen before. He became a vulture, enormous, threatening, and ready for flight. She opened the door for him, and Tyr slipped out the second before Tempus exited. It was disconcerting to see a man become a creature that looked so much like death. Perhaps if he hadn’t seen Ophir’s atrocities, he would have considered vultures to be among the ugliest things on the planet. Now he knew better.

Tempus spread his wings and took off into the star-studded black of the night sky above the gardens, leaving Zita in her room and Tyr in the open air between the pillars. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d learned. The more he knew, the more questions he had. He wasn’t sure Ophir would be entirely happy.

Tyr crossed the courtyard considering how he might tell her, what he might say, what he might do to explain what he’d heard. Perhaps it wouldn’t change anything for her execution. Maybe Ophir would be able to make more sense than he had. Maybe she’d learn something that he hadn’t been able to discern. Maybe—

The air left his lungs.

A strangulation hold gripped him around the throat from an invisible assailant.

He clawed at the unseen enemy and made contact with something that seemed to be made of stone. It didn’t feel like the flesh of human or fae. Unseen? And the power of a vice- like grip? And the…

Dwyn .

She snarled as her ability to stay in the space between things slipped out of her control. Her grip on his throat was weakening. Her borrowed powers wouldn’t be of use to her much longer. His face flashed from surprise to fury as he looked into the black eyes of his assailant. Raising his fist, he brought it down with all his might to hit her, but she lifted her other hand to block him. Strength. Shield. How many borrowed abilities was she using? How quickly was she burning through them? What could she withstand before it affected her? Whatever remaining siphoned power she used for strength remained. One hand on his throat and the other on his fist, she drove her forehead into his face and knocked Tyr to the ground. He saw her head swim with the impact, but she had the benefit of healing on her side. Had she leveled a village in preparation for this fight? His last moments of vision before the world slipped into dizzying darkness were Dwyn’s pretty face twisted in the satisfaction of victory and violence.