Alaric’s lips pursed in disapproval at the coarse language. Sevraim merely grinned, lopsided and amused, teeth flashing white against mahogany skin. Ileis cocked her head with interest, and Alaric dearly wished, not for the first time, that he had subordinates who were capable of attending to the task at hand rather than their baser urges.
He was stuck with these three, though. He and Sevraim had grown up together, had trained together since childhood, and once they became legionnaires and met Ileis and Nisene, Sevraim had immediately roped the twins into those antics of his that Alaric bore on sufferance. There was a certain irreplaceable kind of trust that came with having spent most of their lives fighting a war side by side. Within the Legion, their combat formations were the most seamless, and Alaric supposed that he tolerated Sevraim, Ileis, and Nisene well enough during downtime.
A soft fluttering sound made the four Shadowforged look up. Alaric was expecting a skua, the standard messenger bird of the Kesathese army, or a raven, the messenger bird used exclusively by House Ossinast. To his consternation, however, what descended toward him in a swift glide was a mop of ashen feathers, binding a slender bill and beady orange eyes into a plump frame.
A pigeon.
It landed on Alaric’s shoulder with a gentle coo and extended a spindly leg to which had been tied a rolled-up scrap of vellum, waiting patiently while his legionnaires looked on in bewilderment.
“Is it lost?” Ileis demanded.
“Can’t be,” muttered Sevraim. “All messenger birds are aether-touched. They always fly true to the intended recipient.”
“Someone in the Sardovian regiments has finally grown a brain and decided to come on over to the winning side, then,” said Nisene. “Better late than never, I suppose.”
“The audacity,” breathed Ileis, “to directly contact the crown prince—”
Alaric thought that maybe he should add speaking only when spoken to to his mental list of desired qualities in subordinates. He slipped the missive loose from the knotted twine around the bird’s leg and unfurled it in his hands. The pigeon flapped its dusky wings and took to the air once more, soon vanishing behind the clouds.
It turned out to be two sheets of vellum, rolled together. Alaric scanned the message that had been hastily scrawled on one sheet, then folded up the other and tucked it into his pocket. “I have to go,” he announced. The Shadowgate poured forth from his fingertips, ripping the message apart until it was nothing but ashes that scattered in the breeze.
“Where?” Nisene asked in deeply suspicious tones.
“That’s classified.”
“Ooh, a secret mission,” Sevraim gushed as Alaric began climbing back up the cliff. “Do you need a partner, Your Highness?”
Alaric rolled his eyes at Sevraim’s transparent attempt to escape the current tedium. “Negative. The three of you will stay here and finish dismantling the Sever; then you will proceed to the Citadel for the meeting with Emperor Gaheris.”
“Without you?” Ileis prodded. “How are we to explain your absence to His Majesty?”
“What makes you think I’m not off to do his bidding?” Alaric challenged, scrambling onto another ledge without looking back.
“You aren’t,” Nisene called out.
He smirked to himself as he climbed higher. “Just tell him that I have an urgent matter to take care of.”
Upon reaching the summit, Alaric headed straight to where their four wolves were docked on a large, partially collapsed platform that rose up from the sea of temple ruins. So named for their pointed snouts, the coracles gleamed jet-black in the early-afternoon sun, their barrel-chested hulls bearing the Kesathese chimera in silver paint. Alaric slid into the well of his coracle, raised its black sails, and took off, the wolf’s prow slicing through the air like a scimitar, its aether hearts spitting out iridescent fumes of emerald green as it soared over the cliffs. Toward the Eversea.
Here is a token of good faith, the message had begun. Exchanged for the hope of clemency.
It could only have been a matter of time before a Sardovian officer switched sides, Alaric supposed, but the turncoat really couldn’t have picked a better moment. If they could get information on the Allfold’s defenses, it would assure the success of the Night Empire’s upcoming attack—one that would be launched on such a scale as had never been seen before on the Continent, and thus bore the equivalent amount of risk.
And as for the information that the turncoat had already shared . . .
Alaric dug into his pocket for the map that the pigeon had brought him and perused it, mentally charting the most expedient route. The Lightweaver had over half a day’s lead on him but he was confident that he would be able to catch up. If not in the air, then on land, within the borders of Nenavar. He had to stop her before she reached the Dominion’s Light Sever.
Alaric did his best to ignore the cynical inner voice telling him that if he had just cut her down on the frozen lake a fortnight ago, he wouldn’t have had to abandon all his other responsibilities for this wild chase that already had the makings of a diplomatic crisis stamped all over it. No matter what, Gaheris would be furious once he learned that Alaric had acted on new intelligence without consulting him. After all, what if this was a trap? And if it wasn’t, and the worst-case scenario happened, the Night Emperor would find out that his heir had angered the Zahiya-lachis by trespassing on her realm. Either way, the consequences were going to be severe.
It would be far kinder, Alaric thought sardonically, for the Nenavarene to execute him instead of handing him back to his father.
Still, there was no other choice. In all his twenty-six years, Alaric had never seen the Sardovian Lightweaver’s ilk before. She was a slip of a thing who bulldozed her way through combat with willpower like iron, besting him and one of his deadliest legionnaires even though she had neither legitimate training nor regular access to a nexus point. With the latter, there was a very real possibility that she would be unstoppable.
He really should have just finished her that night on the outskirts of Frostplum. But Alaric had been . . . fascinated. Perhaps it was too generous a term, but that was honestly how he’d felt. They’d been surrounded by a plethora of dark barriers, each one strong enough to shred her into a million pieces despite her built-in resistance, but he hadn’t let that happen. He’d followed some impulse and waved the barriers aside. She’d been a frightened little rabbit at first and he’d put her through her paces on the ice, under the seven moons, studying the way she moved, the way she bared her teeth at him, the way the aether gilded her olive skin as her features twisted from fearful to murderous. The way her narrowed eyes shone golden with her magic, reflecting the distant fires of the battlefield.