Crown of Flames and Ash (Courts of Aetheria #2)

Chapter 49

Chapter Forty-Nine

A elia

Ruhl raced after the coil of both light and dark energy, a living, sentient thing pulling us deeper into the gloomy woods. I sprinted after him, determined not to get left behind despite his longer strides. The farther we got, the quicker I realized we weren’t heading toward the center of the forest as I’d first imagined. Instead, we were traveling toward the southern edge. Soon I was able to make out the rolling hills that encroached the border along the Wilds.

Stars, where had they hidden those relics?

As the looming trees began to thin out, muffled voices echoed at a close distance. Ruhl slowed, throwing his arm out so I nearly slammed right into it. “Shh,” he hissed.

I drew in a deep breath to slow the rapid thrumming of my pulse after the sprint across the woods and moved into step beside him. We kept to the shadows rimming the ring of darkwoods along the southern edge of the thicket.

A familiar form coalesced just beyond the treeline and I muttered a curse. Lucian. Raysa, why did this male always appear in the most inopportune moments? Another blonde head of hair bobbed beside him, the gold circlets lining his pointed ear sending my stomach plummeting.

“It was a team event, you fool,” Belmore hissed at his friend as he circled something on the ground. From this distance, I couldn’t quite see below his kneecaps.

“Those Shadow Fae females were only slowing us down, and you know it. I did us a favor.” Lucian kicked at whatever lay between them.

Ruhl inched closer, his icy breath spilling across the shell of my ear. “Do you know those two?”

“Unfortunately,” I grumbled.

“Well, they’re standing between us and the relic. Either they’re too stupid to realize, or they’re guarding it to keep others from finding it.”

“My gildings are on the former.”

He smiled. “Good, then let’s claim what’s ours.” He strode forward, but I slapped my arm across his chest without thinking. His dark gaze whipped to mine, a mix of surprise and fury swirling through the darkness.

“Uh, apologies…” I slid my arm off his unyielding torso and tucked it behind my back. “It’s only that Belmore, the one with the braids, is on my squad.”

“So?”

“We aren’t allowed to harm our teammates. Isn’t that a rule at Arcanum?”

Ruhl snorted on a laugh. “That’s cute, duskling. No such regulation exists at the Citadel. The only code of conduct we must abide by is Strength from Darkness, Power through Pain.”

Gods, that sounded awful.

“Either way, we cannot hurt him, understood?”

He nodded, begrudgingly. “How about the other one with the short hair?”

A devious smile parted my lips. “He’s all yours.”

Ruhl emerged from the cover of the trees, shadows whirling around him in a tight formation. I paused for a moment to take him in, a lither more elegant version of Reign. While his elder brother was raw power, the younger prince oozed grace.

“And Ruhl, feel free to make it painful,” I called out after him.

He canted his head back, flashing me incisors. “I was right, you are a violent little thing.”

I quickened my step to march beside him as we emerged from the edge of the woods into the valley at the foot of the hills. Both Belmore and Lucian spun in our direction the moment our footfalls crunched through the fallen leaves.

“Why am I not surprised you’re with him ?” Lucian snarled. “You have a perverse fascination with the Shadow Fae, don’t you, Kin?”

“You’re the only perverse one here, Lucian,” I growled back.

From the corner of my eye, I caught the subtle shift in Ruhl’s demeanor, the tensing of his posture, the flaring of his nostrils. “Son of Raysa,” he gritted out, feet already moving.

I tried to follow his line of sight, and when I did, my stomach dropped to my heels. The thing the Light Fae males were circling earlier wasn’t a thing at all, they were bodies, two of them.

Ruhl moved in a torrent of darkness, his nox bleeding through the air and thickening it so that it was impossible to drag in a full breath. Lucian and Belmore both staggered back as the wave of night pushed closer.

I darted behind him, nausea curling in my core, threatening to unleash the measly contents of my stomach. “Ruhl, wait!”

He slid down to the earth, fury surging from his pores in a deadly tangle of nox . I reached the bodies only a few seconds after him, and my gut twisted. The two females were strewn across the lawn, scorch marks mutilating their forms. Angry blistering skin covered their charred bodies, and the pungent odor of burnt flesh infiltrated my nostrils.

Oh gods, I was going to be sick.

“Clarys…” Ruhl snarled.

The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place it. I knelt down beside him, my hand twitching to squeeze his shoulder and impart some tiny bit of comfort, but I kept it still, thinking better of it. Ruhl was not my friend. He may not have been quite as terrible as I’d imagined, but I still had to keep my guard up. “Clarys?” I whispered.

“The female you saved in the Luminescent Gauntlet.”

My thoughts swirled back to the chaos of the labyrinth of light and dark, and the Shadow Fae who’d staggered toward us with an ethereal blade lodged in her chest. I had no idea Ruhl knew her, or that he’d seen me tend to her wound.

Before I could get a word out, he rose, nothing but a torrent of pure night. His shadows surged forward. Belmore conjured an ethereal sword, but a shadow curled around the blade and ripped it from his hand. Lucian watched in horror as the tendrils of darkness surrounded him, twisting and coiling around the two males, until everything else fell silent beneath their screams.

Doubt warred at my insides as I watched the wicked shadows plunge into Belmore’s ears, mouth, eyes—basically every open orifice. His lips curved in terror, eyes so wide they seemed mere seconds away from exploding from their sockets. Gods, it was horrible. Technically, I wasn’t the one hurting him, so I wasn’t breaking any rules. And still, that guilt surged. Even if I wanted to stop Ruhl, there was no guarantee he would listen. If I’d learned anything from my time at the Conservatory, it was that this sort of ruthlessness was commonplace among the Fae.

And still, the words popped from my mouth before I could stop them. “Ruhl, no! Not Belmore.” Ugh … “And maybe Lucian’s had enough too.” I muttered the last part so if he missed it, I’d understand.

“You cannot be serious?” he shouted. “After what they did to Clarys and Evin, they do not deserve your mercy, and they certainly will not receive mine.”

My thoughts flew back in time, to Reign tearing out the life of that Shadow Fae who had caught a glimpse of my dagger’s power, and my insides clenched. I couldn’t simply stand by and allow it to happen again.

“Ruhl, I said stop !” I shouted louder this time, the rush of emotion inciting a surge of rais to the surface. My fingertips glistened, lighting up my entire form in the encroaching darkness.

He canted his head back, his hands still splayed, guiding his shadows. “Are you going to try and stop me, duskling?”

“If I have to…”

Without so much as a response, he turned his attention back to the writhing Light Fae who now hung in the air, suspended by the dark wraiths of death. That arrogant little bastard. Huffing out a breath, I summoned my rais then drew from the powerful nox thickening the air. My chest bloated, the mix of light and dark sending fiery energy through my veins and bursting from my splayed hands.

A wave of rais slammed into Ruhl’s shadows, dispersing the shadowy minions into tiny fragments. Belmore and Lucian crashed to the ground, coughing and wheezing as inky, dark smoke puffed out of their mouths and nostrils. The reprieve was short-lived as the shadows re-formed and readied for a second surge.

“Please, no,” Belmore cried, tears splashing down his cheeks. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill the females.”

“Ruhl, enough!” I cried out. “You’ve taught them a lesson.”

He spun on me, pure malice in his expression. “I’m not your professor, Aelia,” he hissed. “I’ve come for their lives, not their penance.”

A shadow slipped from his finger and curled around Lucian’s throat, and I lunged for Belmore. I blanketed his trembling form with my own body as I summoned a radiant shield. Through the gilded haze, I could just make out the sickening crack of bones breaking.

Spinning toward the sound, I caught the vacant expression on Lucian’s face an instant before he crumpled to the ground. He landed in a heap, his neck twisted in an unnatural angle. Oh, gods. Squeezing my eyes closed for only an instant, I whispered a quick prayer for his soul.

“Noxus’s nuts,” Belmore ground out as he eyed his friend, a sickly-green pallor coating his skin. “He snapped his neck.”

“In Ruhl’s defense, Lucian did murder two of his classmates.” Every kill seemed easier, fazed me less. Curses . I was becoming like them, immune to the ruthlessness. “What the blazes happened?” I growled at Belmore. “Weren’t we supposed to be working together with Arcanum?”

He shook his head, a tremor still vibrating his broad shoulders. “Lucian and his partner—Evin, I guess it was—were fighting about something stupid, and he lost his temper. My partner, Clarys, tried to step in to help her friend, and he lost it.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he took in the motionless form beside us. “He may have been an asshole, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“And neither did those females.” I ticked my head toward the pile of little more than charred flesh, bones and ash. Straightening, the radiant orb popped, and Belmore grew paler still.

“What are you doing? He’s going to kill us.” He stood and started backpedaling toward the woods.

I fixed my gaze to Ruhl with Belmore’s footfalls echoing behind me as the coward retreated into the safety of the forest. Already, I could feel the prince’s fury dissipating, as if his devilish underlings had been somehow satiated by the kill. He stalked toward me, jaw clenched so tight it seemed carved of stone. Or maybe I was wrong… “Never do that again,” he hissed.

“Do what, exactly?”

“Stand between me and my prey unless you wish to join them.”

“That’s exactly the problem, Ruhl. They weren’t prey, they were Fae, just like you and me. And as terrible as they may have been, you don’t have the right to steal their lives any more than I do.”

Ruhl’s shadows curled around me, trapping me against a wall of obscurity. “You’re wrong, duskling. I am the prince of the Court of Umbral Shadows, heir to the throne and blessed by Noxus, god of eternal darkness. I choose who gets infinite sleep in his arms.”

His words reverberated through the dense forest, every syllable thick with power. I held his gaze, unflinching, though my heart raced with a mix of fear and defiance. “And that,” I countered, my voice steady, “is why your court will always be shrouded in true darkness, Ruhl. Not from the lack of light, but from the absence of compassion.”

Ruhl's eyes flashed, the shadows retreating slightly, as if taken aback by my reply. For a moment, a flicker of something else crossed his features—surprise, perhaps, or maybe an unspoken respect. “Compassion,” he scoffed, but his voice lacked its earlier venom. “Compassion doesn't rule Fae or prevent war; power does. And power demands sacrifice, Aelia.”

I pushed against the shadows, feeling them give way under my determination. “Then perhaps it's time for a new kind of power, one that doesn't thrive on the sacrifice of innocents.”

Ruhl watched me, his expression unreadable for a long moment. Finally, he stepped back, the shadows dissipating completely. “Perhaps,” he murmured, almost to himself as he turned away, “but not today.”