Taking a chance, she pressed her hand flat against the engraved disc. In her other hand, she gripped the hilt of one of her daggers still at her hip. They had been gifts from Imeyna's own forge, presented to Rayne when she had completed her training and been inducted into the Knights last year. The wooden handles were designed to look like crows' wings and reminded her so much of her father's sword, with its crow hilt, that Rayne had treasured these blades, cleaning them and sharpening them nightly after practice. The handle was cold but familiar in her hand.
At first, nothing happened. The door was just a door, and then her stomach twisted in pain. She tried to jerk her hand away but was horrified when it wouldn't move. It hadn't worked and now she was going to die by some wielder's deviant spell. But then the pain that had her doubled over ended and her hand fell away easily, nearly sending her to the floor. She regained her balance and watched the door creak open.
“My prince?” called a small voice inside. “Is that you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Rayne
She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door, her heart pounding in her chest. The dagger slid soundlessly free of its sheath, but before she could step around the heavy stone door, another voice called out, this one from behind her.
“You there! Stop!”
She should have slipped inside and finished the job but instead, she stopped and turned to face the guard who had called her. But it was no normal guard in iron-plated armor.
It was a man in full royal wielder's regalia—a high-collared red coat that came up nearly to his ears, and a golden mask across his eyes. Fire blazed in one of his hands, but not from a torch. It was cupped in his palm, an unmoving ball of flame in the still air of the corridor. If spell wielders were rare in Shade, elemental wielders were nothing but a myth. Even in Dusk, Rayne had not known any growing up, though she was sure her father would have had some in his employ, men that could control fire, wind, water, and air. That could steal the breath from someone’s lungs or pull them beneath the water with a flick of a hand. The only thing she knew about their strange magic was that they could only control one element at a time—and that was even if they could control more than one—and that the element had to be present for them to manipulate it.
Rayne hadn’t thought to meet such a wielder, but of course, her father would have spared no expense, gone after the best in the land to make sure his daughter and the future queen of his stolen country was safely ensconced within his walls.
“Danyll?” Edlyn called again and Rayne turned to her, catching a glimpse of a dark brown eye and slender shoulders in the firelight.
“Get back,” the wielder called, whether to Edlyn or Rayne she couldn’t be sure.
“Danyll?” Rayne mouthed the name, her head bouncing back and forth between the wielder and her sister before realization dawned on her.
The wielder was no mere soldier. He was the Ashsky prince. Edlyn had been nine, and Rayne eight, when Edlyn’s engagement had been announced. The girls had been both disgusted and intrigued at the thought of marriage. Rayne remembered the young prince as he had been then at that year’s gathering, awkward and gangly, all limbs and a narrow face covered in red spots. He had not played with the other children but sat always with the adults, listening to strategies and battle plans with a smirk on his lips as if the whole thing had been his idea. The marriage arrangement had been mutually beneficial, granting Edlyn and Danyll, who were both second-in-line for their respective thrones, a country of their own, and secured the Ashsky family as a Crowheart ally.
Her stomach flipped as he manipulated the fire, rolling it between his fingers. “Who are you?” he asked. That would be the question, wouldn’t it? Only someone allowed by his spellwork would be able to open that door, and she wasn’t one of them, as far as he knew. She felt a strange mix of fear and anticipation and tried to call on that false bravado that she had used so often the last five years.
Though his face was partially hidden by his mask, there was wariness in the way he pursed his lips and tensed his shoulders, holding the fire at his side as if ready to throw it at her. It occurred to her then that she would have to kill him now, too, or he would be just another barrier to Imeyna’s father taking the throne. Add his death to her long list of treacheries.
“Surrender now and I’ll make sure you have a fast death,” the prince said, raising the fire so that it cast eerie shadows on his face, making him seem skeleton-like. Rayne pulled both of her daggers from their sheaths and held them at her side, keeping herself utterly still, her fingers pressing almost painfully into the engraved crow-feather hilts.
“I’m not afraid,” Rayne said because it seemed like something he would hate to hear. And she was right. Beneath his golden half-mask, his face twisted from wariness to rage in the blink of an eye, his jaw twitching as he ground his teeth together, his eyes hard, black orbs.
He took a step toward her as if to grab her. She gathered herself to attack, crouching and raising her daggers, but he stopped mid-stride, an arm’s length away from her, and the tunnel plunged back into darkness. For one terrifying moment, the darkness seemed to smother her. It was as if she had fallen away from the world, utterly alone in the middle of a vast nothingness. Then her eyes began to adjust and she realized what this meant—he had lost the fire.
She recovered before he did, but fire hadn’t been his only weapon. Her dagger met his with a fierce clatter that echoed against the stone walls. He was fast, but she met him in speed and skill, feeling his movements in the dark, listening to the high-pitched swish of blades as they cut the air. Block, swing, block, swing. She aimed for his wrists, his arms, his exposed face. They both drew blood. Small cuts stung her arms and neck but didn’t slow her down.
All the while, she felt something tugging at her in that deep, indescribable place inside. The air seemed unstable and the ground trembled beneath her feet. It was as if the prince was reaching for his magic and not finding it. But there was no time for her to revel in the fact that someone else was finally feeling what she had felt for the last several years. As she went in for a block, he grabbed her knife-arm and twisted, then kicked her feet out from under her before she could even react. She stumbled against the stone door, her fingers brushing not just stone but fabric, too. On her hands and knees, Rayne looked up the length of a woman’s body to her face, and finally to a pair of deep brown eyes framed by thick lashes.