Adrian fought hard to keep his modest dinner where it belonged, but the unforgiving combination of fear and vertigo nearly bested him. He chanced another peek below, and immediately regretted it.

The wings--Cedric's wings--beat steadily above them, heavy and assured. Flying, Adrian thought wonderingly, even amongst the queasiness.

"Where are we going?" he asked, raising his strangled voice against the wind and the wingbeats.

"Where else?" was the grim reply. Cedric was baring his teeth in strain or anger.

"But Nightwind--"

"We'll get him back," he said, cold and certain.

Borne's houses and structures quickly reverted to recognizable forms upon their descent. As soon as they landed, Adrian scrambled out of Cedric's arms and onto the blessedly solid ground. He braced his hands on his knees and took deep, grateful breaths.

Cedric's wings were dissolving away into inky mist under the moonlight. Once they vanished entirely, he swayed on his feet. Adrian caught his shoulder to steady him.

"How the blazes did you do that?"

Cedric's mouth quirked. "I'd always feared being subsumed into the Beast again, but then I considered what I already knew, that the Axis of Darkness has only ever defended and shielded me. Perhaps, even that first time, it was protecting me from what I had to do to save myself." He shivered. "I think I killed the Ice Blade that night. Because he was too dangerous to be left alive. And I was prevented from remembering it."

He visibly gathered his strength and straightened up. "In my hands, the black diamond would never hurt me or do unnecessary harm. I trusted it, and so it transformed me just enough to get us both out of danger."

Adrian remembered to close his slackened mouth. "How much of it did you use?"

"Plenty," Cedric said. "As I thought, we can't make a habit of flying about."

"No argument there. I recant everything I'd ever said otherwise."

Candra's home stood about twenty paces away. One window flickered with candlelight, like a mocking invitation. Cedric's eyes narrowed.

"Don't do anything stu--" Adrian said, right before Cedric marched forward with all the caution of a rampaging bull.

*

The door split open with a satisfying crack before Cedric's foot. He stepped inside and found Candra sitting at her table, pipe in hand. A candle burned in a copper holder beside her.

"Did you kill them?" she said.

Cedric stopped short, and Adrian briefly collided into his back. "What--no, of course not!"

"Don't 'of course' me. I don't know you, nor what you're capable of." She tipped ashes into the holder with a brisk shake.

"You could have asked."

"You could have lied. And if those grasping malcontents somehow managed to snatch the diamond from you, even better."

"From our corpses, you mean?"

"I work with what I have."

"And what work is that?"

Her mouth twisted, and she seemed to consider before answering. "To ensure that I don't make the same mistake twice."

Cedric stared. Then, the truth hit him all at once.

"A young, ambitious Scholar who nursed a simmering contempt for the dusty elders of the Order. A living incarnation of the divine, wise and beautiful, who miraculously gave this little upstart his attention." Her tone was bitter and mocking.

"Is this your recompense, then?" he demanded. "Preventing me from following in his footsteps, at any cost?"

"I encouraged him, aided in his experiments. We shared what even his siblings did not. He, too, believed he was saving the kingdom." She eyed Cedric with disdain. "And compared to him, you're a bumbling pup."

"You're right, I'm not my predecessor. The Goddess' power is passed on through flesh, not spirit. He and I share nothing." But even as he said the words, they rang false to him.

Candra rose from her seat and approached him, hand outstretched. Cedric took an instinctive step back.

"Prove it," she said coldly.

Cedric would have asked what she meant, but a part of him already knew. With great reluctance, he took her hand in his.

That same, terrible intimacy swept over him again, its potency now magnified tenfold. Gooseflesh prickled his entire body as he was lost to sensations that weren't his own--greedy lips against his, flushed skin on skin, passionate, mingled breaths. Bonded in flesh, pulsing as one with the fires of life.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Cedric staggered back from Candra's touch, both repelled and exhilarated. He willed his galloping heart to calm as the tendrils of foreign memory subsided from his mind.

Candra's chest heaved; her eyes were bright and fevered. "Flesh holds memory, too," she said, withdrawing her hand to rest it at her flushed throat.

He fought off the tide of mortification that threatened to overwhelm him. "I am not my predecessor," he repeated. "And if… if you're as committed to preventing another Madness as you claim to be, we're of the same mind. Ayo will unleash calamity upon the kingdom, and I intend to stop her."

"How will you accomplish that?"

"By destroying every diamond in the Heirs' possession."

"My question stands."

Cedric paused. "I don't know precisely how," he admitted. "That's why… you need to come with us."

He felt Adrian stiffen in surprise behind him.

"I probably couldn't do it without you," he added as realization dawned.

She laughed derisively. "Did that just occur to you now, clever one? Were you expecting to simply barrel through the city walls and find oceans of diamonds in the open, waiting for you? Or that your three siblings wouldn't put up a fight?"

"Two," he corrected defensively. "Rhea passed on."

"Regardless, I'm shocked you've survived this long."

For a moment, Cedric was vividly reminded of Oleanna and her acid rebukes. "Is that a refusal, then?"

Candra deliberated.

"Not like there's anything left for me here," she said with a noncommittal shrug. "This doesn't mean I trust you, mind, but I can keep an eye on you at the very least." She strode to her shelves and grabbed the small vial of clear liquid, which she then pocketed along with her pipe and the last of her smoke leaf. She stripped the blanket from her cot and folded it in her arms. "There, I'm packed. Are we ready to leave?"

"By what means?" Adrian spoke for the first time. "Our horse has been taken by those grasping malcontents you sent."

"It's all right, Adrian," Cedric said. "I can sense where they are, where Nightwind is." He turned to Candra, and it occurred to him that she'd risked those men's lives too, along with his and Adrian's. "Care to join us, ensure that I don't murder them in cold blood?"

"Gladly," she said.

*

Benny had never craved a drink so desperately in his life. Spasms of terror still surged through his hands, which longed to grasp a brimming bottle or tankard. He longed to pour it all down his gullet and wash this night away into a blurred, uniform haze.

"There y'are!" someone boomed in the darkness, and Benny startled so badly he almost sprained something. "What the blazes are you doing?" demanded Gerald, who held his lantern in one hand and the reins of a fine black stallion in the other. He looked down at Benny with bewilderment all over his hairy face.

Benny was curled up in a tiny alley between two houses. Trevor and Gerald had been outside. They hadn't witnessed what he'd witnessed.

Gerald bellowed behind him, "Oi, Trevor, I found 'im!" A few seconds of approaching footsteps later, Trevor was also looking down at Benny in bewilderment and even some concern. In any other circumstance, Benny would have clocked him for that.

"What happened, Ben?" Gerald demanded. "Where's the lad and the diamond?"

Benny shook his head and forced his thoughts into some semblance of order, despite the otherworldly image of that black-winged creature now permanently seared into his mind. There was only one explanation for what he'd seen, especially given his indisputable sobriety.

"Rava, the Heir of Darkness," Benny finally rasped. "That was him. He--he escaped prison, somehow. He's here, in Borne."

A long, stunned silence. Then, both Gerald and Trevor burst into laughter. The infuriating sound pulled Benny out of his terror enough for his temper to flare. He leapt to his feet, and their mirth abruptly cut off.

"You callin' me a liar?" he growled at Gerald, who shrank back despite his significant height advantage.

Trevor, ever the diplomat, immediately tried to appease him. "'Course not, Ben. But innit much more likely that the dark played a trick on you? Made you think you saw somethin' you didn't?"

Benny had never been a particularly imaginative man. If he were capable of envisioning a boy with enormous black wings bowling him over on his way out the door, he'd be a far different person from what he'd known himself to be all his life. This, if nothing else, he was certain of.

"I know what I saw, you gibbering ape," Benny snapped. He glanced at their newly-acquired stallion, which snorted and tossed its head. "We're leaving. Now."

"But what about--"

"Blast the diamond! Go on, gather up whatever's left at the house."

Trevor and Gerald put forward a few more token protests, if only for the sake of their pride, but they reliably fell in step soon after.

This was all that conniving strumpet's fault. She'd knocked on their door not five hours ago, all shy eyes and rounded shoulders, bearing a striking resemblance to the first girl he'd ever bedded, a young whore from a Velaris brothel. Perhaps that was why Benny had listened.

In exchange for tipping them off to the diamond in the newcomers' possession, they were to take her with them and split the reward at the capital. Benny had gladly agreed to the pleasure of her company on the road to Crystallinus, was even willing to overlook that ugly scar running down her face. Now, it seemed obvious that the whole affair had been too good to be true.

"You sure 'bout this?" Trevor wheedled as they secured the saddlebags' straps on their mounts. The former Enforcer's stable stank of rotting hay and leavings, but it'd served as a much finer home for their beasts than they'd ever found before. The same could be said of the Enforcer's own home, all high ceilings and velvet and squashy furniture. If it hadn't been for the dark horror he'd witnessed tonight, Benny would have stayed until they'd picked all of Borne clean, even tracked down that young boy and his Blight-stricken mother he'd seen in passing.

"Ask me once more," Benny hissed. "And I'll wallop you into the next--"

His words choked off for the second time that night. A terrible heaviness settled upon him, as if the darkness itself had thickened into solidity. The flame in Gerald's lantern flickered once, feebly, before it was smothered into nothingness.

Benny might as well have gone blind. Even the arched entrance of the stable, through which some starlight should have shone, had gone pitch-black. His thundering heart and rapid breaths surged like a storm in his ears.

"Oh, Goddess," he squeaked. His limbs had petrified. He couldn't flee; he couldn't even curl up into a ball.

"What the blazes…" Gerald muttered from somewhere behind him.

A melodious voice echoed out from seemingly everywhere, its original source impossible to discern.

"You've taken that which does not belong to you," it declared in calm tones. "Now, you must return it."

The horse. He wants the bloody horse… Benny licked his parched lips. He held out his quivering palm, where the reins of the black stallion rested, to the shapeless entity before them. "By all means," he gasped. "What say we call it even, eh?"

The entity chuckled; until now, Benny would have never believed that such a light, youthful voice could laugh so menacingly.

A pair of white pinpricks materialized far above them, just a few feet below where the building's rafters would be. And then, the revelation of what those pinpricks were, and why everything around them had gone dark, seemed to hit the three men all at once.

They screamed in terror as their petrified limbs jolted back to life. Benny, Gerald, and Trevor didn't stop running until the first rays of sunrise crested the horizon.