Page 135 of Between Fear and Favor

She breathed deep before her mouth fell open. “No,” she whispered. “We have to get out of here.”

Before I could react, she jumped out of her chair, body colliding with mine, and I grabbed her by the wrists. Her momentum sent us flying, our bodies lighter than they ought to be as we slammed into the door.

“Where the fuck do you think?—”

“Ciarden’s Flame!” Grabbing for the door handle, she murmured to herself. “I thought they were bluffing.”

I’d read plenty of historical accounts of the horrors of the Great War, but none were more despicable than Ciarden’s Flame. Outlawed for centuries, the devastating weapon had been far too disastrous in the past—even the monarchs of the Three Kingdoms eventually agreed to never use it again.

“Impossible,” I said, bracing myself against the door. “That shit doesn’t exist anymore.”

It couldn’t be. The moonpearls which could stabilize the warring divinities were no more; the rare oysters had been hunted to extinction to prevent this from ever happening again.

“Look,” Aida said, grabbing me and turning me with ease.

What I saw through the thin archer’s window made my jaw drop and my heart race.

We were all going to die.

Black shadows hovered over the ground, almost like a fog, and beneath it sparks of divine fire glowed. The shadows moved like snakes, writhing and wrapping tendrils of death. The cloak I’d tossed upon my chair floated upward, as if caught on an invisible wind. The firsthand accounts of survivors of Ciarden’s Flame had never mentioned this strange facet of the cursed weapon.

I looked for Nor in the crowd of people backing away from the wriggling mass, but she was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she was already in the armory.

“We need to sound the bell,” she said, fumbling with the doorknob behind me. I couldn’t find words, unable to speak. Even if my soldiers ran, there was no safety from this—nothing they could reach in time.

“You do that. I need to find Nor,” I said, more to myself than the elven woman. It felt futile, but I’d do anything I could to get her out of this fortress. Aida’s warning would have to be enough for the others. I didn’t yet know of the conduits at this fortress who could rift, and as there was no time to find them, I found myself murmuring a prayer to the old gods for guidance.

“I thought it was supposed to spread,” Aida said from behind me, and I stepped closer to the window to investigate what she spoke of. I was being drawn to the tips of my toes even as I stood there. “And—and then explode. But it’s…”

The shadows had begun to almost grapple with themselves, no longer spreading across the ground, but instead collapsing inward, forming a vast orb in the center of the courtyard. Expanding and thickening, the shadows grew dense. The depthless heart of the writhing mass obscured my view, making it impossible to see past it—to see the armory, to see anything. A bastardization of Ciarden’s shadows and Aonara’s divine fire, created to spread and destroy, it had caused an untold number of conduit and mortal deaths alike. Entire towns were destroyed in seconds, the forests of Lamera incinerated in a breath.

“We only have moments before it...goes. Perhaps it won’t be so bad since it didn’t spread?” Her voice faltered before turning to the door.

“What did you come back for?” I asked, mouth suddenly dry, wondering if whatever she had up her sleeve could stop this.

“Courage,” she said, and when I turned toward her, I found tears in her eyes. Gliding around the desk, using the tabletop for balance as her footsteps had grown lighter, she opened the top drawer. Inside it, nestled between Raj’s spectacles and his favorite pipe, was a small wooden case. Handmade, I recognized his handiwork in the decorative flowers carved around the perimeter of the case. When she opened it, I went still. Inside was a thin tube with several darts alongside it. Wrapped in cloth, she revealed a glass vial. Suspended in water, it was full of what I knew were seeds of the Nythyrian sleeping tree. The vial held enough poison to kill a horse. Aida’s slim fingers unstoppered the cork before grasping a dart. Swishing the sharpened tip into the noxious liquid, she prepared her weapon. There was no mistaking who it belonged to.

Missing assassin daughter to the Nythyrian queen who marched on Astana, the Silence’s eyes hardened to flint as she clenched her jaw. “They’ll pay for what they’ve done.”

As she fastened the case shut, I took in Raj’s handiwork once more. A meticulously precise hand had engraved a beautiful design upon the wood, and careful attention had hewn the space within to mold it exactly to the size of its contents.

It was clear Raj had known who she was.Whatshe was. And he’d been brave enough to love her anyway.

Racing across the battlement,I ignored the growing sphere in the center of the courtyard. Taller than I was, I knew that once the divinity tore through the stabilizing nacre, reaching the core of iridescent moonpearls, it would cause an explosion that would destroy anything in its path. Though the shadows were condensed within that smaller shape rather than spread across the fortress, it would still raze everything to the ground. Each step I took propelled me farther until finally I leapt down into the courtyard. Any other time, a fall from that height would have broken bone, but the air was dense. It caught and lowered me in a painfully slow descent. Somehow, the growing orb of death was affecting our pull to the earth.

“Rhia’s mercy, what is happening?” someone shouted, unnerved by their buoyancy as they ran toward the gatehouse.

“Nor,” I screamed, my feet skidding across the ground as my momentum pushed me toward the armory. The bell rang, and I watched as the few soldiers who had gawked at the growing darkness in the courtyard began to run. The door to the armory slammed open, soldiers I’d yet to meet running toward a ruse of safety, and I was there within a breath, shoving into the building to find her. “Nor, where are you?”

It was dark within, shields and axes and spears leaned haphazardly against the walls. There was a clanking of metal, and I stared for a moment before I realized they weren’t leaning against the walls. They were hovering in front of it.

“The fuck is happening…”

In the center of the room, a few dozen daggers floated above a table, their weight not enough to hold them down, and I shook my head. Aside from the clatter of the blades, the only sounds were the bells outside, and I sighed. Where the fuck had she gone?

“Fuck,” I murmured, hand gripping my chin. I wondered if perhaps she’d gone to her chambers instead when I heard a scuff of a boot in the back room. “Honor?” I said, and heard no response as I approached. The blacksmith’s furnace was still burning, a bellows laying discarded nearly in the flames, each lick of heat strangely rounded at the top. A sword lay discarded in the cooling bucket, the water strangely hovering around it. Dismissing the sound for what must have been steam from the cooling sword, I took one step into the room.

“Don’t move,” a voice hissed in my ear. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed dark hair and a tall build. For a split second, I’d hoped it was Nor. Until she stepped forward. Scars dappled her sun-kissed skin, and she crossed her arms. Muscles thicker than mine bulged, and she glanced over my shoulder. I inhaled sharply as a dagger’s point traced between my ribs. It was likely poisoned, same as nearly every weapon in the Nine’s possession.

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