Queen of Blood and Vengeance (Secrets of the Faerie Crown #4)

37. Cyara

37

CYARA

Cyara stared at the parchment in her hand. The small square was nearly covered in ink, a series of words blotted out. Some scribbled, some written with infinite care. Every sentence destroyed by a wall of black. She’d been trying for the last hour to come up with the correct words. She’d tried an apology. An entreaty for understanding. An emotionless elemental missive.

She crumpled the parchment in her hand. A second later, it was cinders.

A note was the coward’s way out.

Whatever she’d become over these last few months, she would not let herself be that.

She released her fist, letting the remnants fall into the snow at her feet. Bits of ash clung to the legs of her gray leggings like a reproach. Cyara ignored them. She’d already set things into motion. Months ago, really. When she first began researching the Sacred Trinity at Veyka’s urging. Then when she’d poisoned Percival. Accepted Arran’s quest. Pressured Diana until she was in tears. The kind, gentle female she’d been was gone, slaughtered with her sisters, her friends, her father. She was a harpy now, inside and out.

After today, Osheen would no longer cast her those sidelong glances. She’d never catch him watching her as she bent near the fire, admiring her figure. Nor feel the warmth of his smile as she sat hip to hip with Maisri, the child of his heart. After today, he would hate her.

She could accept that.

If Veyka lived, she could accept anything.

Wiping her hand on her thigh, she walked back into camp.

Osheen’s eyes flicked to her from where he bent over the fire. Behind him, the entrance to the faerie caves hid beneath a bramble of thorns. Osheen would make short work of them, she knew, securing safe passage for himself and Maisri. They’d only paused to camp here so that Osheen could finish skinning the wolf he’d killed earlier in the day, intent on bringing an offering of fur to the faeries as a gesture of goodwill.

Cyara paused long enough to take stock of the camp. Osheen was back at work. Diana and Percival had removed themselves to a log set well back from the fire, just as they’d planned. It was not unusual for the brother and sister to find moments of privacy along the trail, and Cyara had seized upon that opportunity. She’d also asked Maisri to help her untangle the skeins of yarn she’d carried in her pack for knitting night after night. Ever vibrating with unspent energy, the daisy fae had them lined up on a barren stump, working away diligently.

Her heart lurched in her chest.

Careful to keep her steps steady, to raise no alarm, she circled the edge of the firelight. She forced her arms to swing casually at her sides, to keep her wings loose, to not stare across the fire at the pair, male and child, who she’d unwittingly given slices of her heart.

She took her place behind Percival and Diana, facing the camp, her back to the darkness.

As one, the siblings rose, stepping over the log and joining her to form a circle. Diana knelt, arranging the pile of stones on the ground between them. The snow crunched beneath her feet. Osheen looked up. Froze.

“What are you doing?”

Cyara swallowed down the lump of cowardice in her throat. “We must go.”

Osheen straightened. Maisri was at his side now, too, a skein of neatly raveled yarn in one of her small hands.

“We must make common cause with the Faeries of the Fen.” Osheen’s voice cracked over the words, though he tried to maintain that lieutenant’s command.

The stones were in place. Diana stood and began chanting, joining hands with her brother. Diana was the one with the power of prophecy, the witch-gift in her blood that allowed her to unmoor her mind the way her full-blooded witch ancestors could.

“You have your orders. I have mine,” Cyara said. She’d written some variation of these words on her note a dozen times, scratching out every iteration. They were just as insufficient coming from her lips as the end of her quill.

Diana began to tremble, her eyes rolling back in her head. But just like the spell she’d cast in the temple at Eilean Gayl, her lips continued to move, repeating the chant again and again.

“Do not do this,” Osheen implored. He started toward them, long strides eating up the snow-covered ground. Maisri trailed behind them.

Cyara pulled her wings in tight, shoving the harpy down, lifting her hand to send out a blast of fire instead. It struck the ground between them, bringing Osheen up just a yard short of Percival’s back.

Osheen shoved Maisri behind him, to safety from the raging wall of flame.

A familiar tingling began in her limbs. Not quite like Veyka’s ability to move through the void, but close enough that she could see the comparison, understand how Gorlois had manipulated Diana’s gift to allow the short movements between realms and over land. The same way she forced Diana now.

Maisri’s lower lip trembled, a pair of tears sliding down her cheeks. Osheen tugged the child against his side, his eyes dark. Cyara thanked the magic that was pulling her away before she could see the light in his eyes fully die.

“I’m sorry,” Cyara said, knowing that the words were not enough. That they might be stolen by the wind and the flames. Knowing that she was hurting him. “I cannot let her die.”

Her flames winked out.

But before Osheen could cross the line of scorched earth, they were gone.