Chapter 13
The King’s Remorse
I fall backward.
Fear seizes me in a chokehold as my gaze blurs until all I can see is the arrow in my elbow when I first shifted into my dove form and the terror I felt as I plummeted through the air and Alex fell from my back. I can’t crash into the ground again. I can’t lose my sister again. My wrists burn with the memory of the rope the Guard and Soldiers bound around my skin. I remember the panic and horror and dread I felt as the arrows sank into my body and I thought I was going to die and meet Lucius as pain roared through me.
That can’t happen again. I can’t lose Alex. I have to find her.
I call on my dove again as I see Myles and Wyatt tumbling into the sinkhole after me, but I feel no feathers sprout along my body. The malachite medallion doesn’t react to my request and the bird within me stays strangely silent.
Phoenix roars and throws himself against Ky as the ground gives way, pinning them both to the side of the crumbling sinkhole. His purple claws sink in deep, toes flexing as his muscles strain to hold them both up.
Ky scrabbles at the soil, but it’s too soft and his claws curl straight through, carving gullies that provide no purchase. Phoenix manages to gain traction, but he isn’t strong enough to hold up their combined weight, despite his desperate attempts and his panicked looks at the fall and how far it is.
I seem to fall for an eternity; I watch in such detail as Ky slips from where Phoenix had held both himself and his brother against the wall of the sinkhole. With an alarmed cry, Ky tumbles toward me, and I watch in seemingly slow-motion as his limbs splay out to the sides and his fur batters around him. Phoenix whirls around with a scream. He hesitates for only a moment, looking between the surface as his forelegs strain to hold on and the rest of us, before he leaps at his brother.
Phoenix catches up fast and tumbles into Ky, wrapping his forelegs around his brother’s flanks and shoving them both away from the side of the sinkhole, where rock juts out, sharp and jagged.
We all fall through the middle of the sinkhole.
No one speaks.
When I try to call on my dove again to shift so I can fly and attempt to catch, to save others because I can’t just let us all fall to our deaths, the malachite medallion and the bird within me still remain so quiet. I feel no feathers sprouting from my skin. I feel no shifting bones as the human gives way to the avian.
I can feel the dove within me, but it doesn’t react to my desire to shift.
Come on, I beg. I’m falling. We’re all going to die. This is like when Alex and I jumped out of the King’s castle. This is like when the Guard shot me from the sky.
The dove within me blinks silvery eyes but doesn’t otherwise react.
Please, you’ve gotta help me. I need to find Alex.
Phoenix snarls and lashes his tail when he rotates in midair, spinning so he’s falling paws-first again. His flames create a long trail behind him that cast flickering light on the walls beside us.
How far down are we going?
Before I can get an answer to that, my back hits a shockingly soft surface. With a low oomph, I slide down what looks like just air. When my feet touch solid ground, I drop to the ground, boneless and weak. I hunch over, forearms on the dirt and bracketed around my head. Through deep breaths, I try to calm the haze of hysteria bubbling up within me.
I’m unsuccessful.
How hard is it supposed to be to find my sister? Is it really that much to ask to want to know where Alex is? Is it too much to ask? I just want to find Alex.
I never wanted a target on my back. I just wanted to live my life with my sister. I wanted peace. I wanted my students to be safe. I wanted myself and Alex safe.
Was that really too much to ask?
Ky laughs as he splays his toes wide and skids down, and Myles runs his fingers across the invisible barrier that caught us. Wyatt studies it, their features turning into a studious frown as they press on it. Phoenix lands harder than Ky and rolls to the ground, grumbling and snarling the entire way.
“Fuck that,” he snaps. “Fuckin’ stupid. What the actual fuck are we doing here? This better be where Alex is, otherwise I’m demanding an audience with whoever the fuck came up with that fucking idea.”
Phoenix lashes his tail, pinning his ears and shaking out his fur, flames crackling and sparking on his pelt. He wrinkles his muzzle into something dangerous and predatory.
At Phoenix’s words, I rise to my feet and take a few steps away from where I’m standing and look around. We’re in the mouth of a cave, and a long one at that. Brown stone walls stretch high around us with stalactites hanging toward us. I almost walk into a stalagmite but manage to catch myself. Gems of every color jut out from the rock, glowing with vibrant sparkles. Phoenix’s flames shine bright, but they aren’t needed to see with how much light the gems cast.
Energy that I cannot quite put my finger on buzzes and hums throughout the entirety of the cave and the air. The hair on my arms and neck rises, and the dove within me coos, warbling. Silver eyes brightening to a degree I’ve never seen before, something grasps the dove’s attention like a noose around a neck, snapping my own focus to the yawning darkness stretching into an unknown nothingness.
“We should continue,” I say.
The malachite medallion pulses against my chest, flaring with a harsh silver light.
Ky flicks his gaze to the medallion.
“The power,” he murmurs, brown eyes fogging over.
I wonder what he sees, if he’s seeing the threads he had mentioned.
“What about it?” Wyatt asks.
“Do you feel the pull, Grey?” Ky asks.
“The malachite medallion wanted me to walk here, and now it wants me to walk into the cave.”
Ky huffs. “Unsurprising. I can see the thread. The power’s tying the malachite medallion to this cave very closely, and whatever’s further down. I’m guessing you can feel it?”
I nod.
“Then we should probably go down there,” Myles says.
Wyatt looks up, craning their neck back. I do the same, and the mouth of the sinkhole is a smudge above me.
How the fuck are we supposed to get out of here?
“Well,” Wyatt says, “I don’t see a way up, and we are clearly down here for some reason.”
“What if we get stuck?”
Phoenix snorts. “I think we are already stuck, Grey. I don’t think we can get much more stuck.”
I sigh, rocking on my feet. A part of me wants out of the cave. Its walls feel so compressing, like they’re closing in. The glowing gems shine too bright, blinding shards of precious stones chipped from the depths of the earth and stuck here in some place I know I have to be but don’t understand why.
Just talk to me, I tell the dove within me. Tell me why you want me here. Talk to me. Please.
I wrap my fingers around the malachite medallion as the urge curls through my gut to dig my nails into my arms and scratch until the sting of pain bites through me, chewing through the anxiety thrumming within me, winding me up higher and higher. I’m shaking, breathing turning ragged as I skip several steps on my way to a panic attack.
“Inhale,” Wyatt tells me, and they obey their order, dragging in an exaggerated breath, just like Alex has done countless times in the past.
I hear them breathe and force myself to copy them. I breathe in, then exhale, repeating the action over and over, tapping out counts of four on my skin until the static clears from my gaze and my mind settles down. No longer spiraling, I can think easier.
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Another part of me knows I have to be here. That part of me doesn’t want to leave, and that part of me takes a deep breath, settling into the knowledge that if the Midnight Wolf is here, I can talk to them and if they know where Alex is, I can get that information and I can find my sister.
xxxx
We continue further into the cave, leaving behind the mouth where we fell in. The gems embedded in the walls shine, illuminating the way, glittering and glimmering all around us until my vision sparkles from the overwhelming array of dazzling colors. Rubbing at my eyes, I force myself to keep going; Alex needs me.
The cave snakes back and forth, seeming to go on for both eternity and no time at all. Phoenix plods on beside me, spending more time watching his brother than his surroundings, brow furrowed into something somewhere between confusion and worry. Myles and Wyatt stick close together. The cave walls around us stay so uniform and consistent that I lose track of how far we have gone.
But when the cave opens up, all those thoughts disappear, vanishing as if they were never there in the first place.
So much light shines that I can see the roof of the cave, where stalactites hang in jagged, worrying points dotted with countless gems.
Ky trots way up ahead toward where several ghostly figures float. I recognize one as a representation of Arcane, and his form towers over the other three. One is a black vulture with a reddish head and a ruff of yellowed neck feathers, how many imagine Ananta to look. Another is a grey and beige crane with a red crown, how many imagine Aiyana to look. The last is a figure I do not recognize: a human with pale white skin and bright red hair, shackled at the wrists by silver metal bindings. Shirtless, they gaze out at the cave through blank blue eyes, crisp as the frost that occasionally nips at the grasses in the Sea.
“Who…” I start, then trail off, unsure if the figures are real or not.
Ky squints, ears pricked as he studies the four figures, then shakes his head. “They’re not illusions like I make, but they are not alive. I can see the threads of the magic of Lucius and Erebus everywhere though. They both have a very heavy presence here.”
“Do you know who the human figure is?” I ask.
Ky shakes his head again. “I don’t recognize them. Perhaps they were alive before me, or maybe they have some connection to the power of the Midnight Wolf, or perhaps Erebus and Lucius had some other reason for placing their image here.”
“-The fuck is this?” Phoenix asks. “Ky, is this one of the zodiac constellations?”
“What does it look like?” Myles asks.
“A wolf.”
I know that I should know what the twelve constellations are. But my mind is too scattered, too scrambled, to remember
“No, none of the zodiac constellations are a wolf.”
“But we are searching for the Midnight Wolf,” Ky muses, “and Lupus is the wolf constellation.”
A round, stone platform sits in front of the four figures. Only rising to mid-shin height, the twelve different colored gems on the platform cast sharp shafts of light on the ground.
Phoenix pricks his ears, fur rising along the back of his neck as he raises his tail. He twitches his nose and tastes the air, approaching the dais.
“Alex was here,” he says.
“What?” I reply, voice cracking over the word.
“Alex was here,” Phoenix repeats. “I can smell her. She was on the platform.”
“Alex?” I call. I raise my voice, tripping as I scramble forward. “Alex? We’re here. Are you here, Alex? Alex!”
I wrap my fingers around the malachite medallion, squeezing tight as energy shudders through me, searing in my veins with no place to go.
“Grey,” Ky says, nose twitching. Ears low, he doesn’t meet my gaze. He takes a small step toward me. “Grey.”
Phoenix rumbles, flicking an ear. “Grey, Alex ain’t here. Dunno where she is, but she’s been gone for a while.”
“No.”
I drop to my knees, fear seizing ahold of me.
“We were too late. Alex was here, but we were too late.”
I curl up as agony snakes through my heart, slithering around the dove that struggles against the sharp scales catching on soft, downy feathers. With a harsh coo, something flashes in the dove’s silvery eyes. I wrap my arms around my knees, knotting my fingers into my shirt as tears drip down my cheeks.
“We shouldn’t have stopped. We should’ve kept going. Why did we stop? We should have kept walking. We should’ve left immediately. What if—.”
Phoenix cuffs me over the head, claws sheathed. His breath stirs my hair as he steps forward until he’s standing directly over me.
“Look at me,” he demands. When I don’t move, he repeats himself. “Grey, look at me. I can and will make you.”
Hesitating for another moment, I lift my head. My lip quivers, and my vision blurs with unshed tears. Phoenix’s flames reflect in his eyes, bright enough against his inky fur that I have to squint. Ky stands off from his shoulder, brown gaze pained.
“Alex was here,” Phoenix says. “I’ll hit you again if you start it with the what ifs. Alex was here. She was alive here. I do not smell death. Nothing in here smells of death, and I know that smell, Grey. I am very familiar with what death smells like. We both know that.”
“But what if—.”
“Uh, uh,” Phoenix snaps, baring his teeth with a growl. He lashes his tail. “What did I tell you?”
He tilts his head, sticking his nose further into my face.
I take a ragged breath, trying to slow the rising panic, the fear, the dread, the horror, the way my mind immediately starts free falling into every single thing that could have happened to my own sister.
“But—.”
“No,” Phoenix cuts in before I can speak, voice firm and leaving no room for argument. He pins his ears. “No buts. No debates. This is not a negotiation. Alex was here. She was. I am correct about that. A feline’s sense of smell is much better than that of a human’s. Trust me, Grey.”
“But if she isn’t here,” I croak, “then where did she go?”
Phoenix sighs, rumbling.
He steps away from me and paces, toes flexing as he digs his claws into the cave floor, then swipes at loose pebbles and sends them skittering across the rock. He lashes his tail and ticks his head to the side, lip wrinkling.
“I don’t know. I don’t know where Alex went. I don’t know where she is. I just know where she was. She was here, Grey. She was. Alex was here. But she’s not now, and I don’t know where she went.” Phoenix takes a breath, tilting his head back.
When the glow of the gemstones catches with the burning of his flames and reflect, they refract in Phoenix’s eyes, amplifying every bit of what he’s feeling to the nth degree. Emotions flicker across his fiery gaze like a storm.
“We’ll find Alex, Grey,” Phoenix murmurs, voice rough but the least unkind I’ve ever heard him speak. “You won’t lose your sister, too. The cream puff doesn’t get to take everyone. I don’t smell death here, and Alex isn’t here so she’s somewhere out there. We’ll find her.”
I’m as certain as Phoenix is, but I don’t have the same confidence. What ifs swirl around in my head, the only thing I can think, and they drown out everything else.
“We will,” Ky echoes.
“We will,” I whisper, closing my eyes.
The malachite medallion a solid warmth against my chest, I imagine that I can reach out through the universe, across Ragdon, to wherever Alex is, to tell her that I’m searching, that I’ll find her, that I love her.
xxxx
“Hey,” Wyatt says, drawing my attention to them. They’ve pushed themselves up onto the wall of the cave, bracing themselves with a hand to keep their balance, while they trace their fingertips on their other hand across an ancient-looking scroll of writing on the wall.
“What?” I reply.
Myles raises his head from where he sits on a small stone jutting out from the wall. Bracing himself on his staff, he twists.
“Look at this,” Wyatt continues, “there’s a poem. A… prophecy.”
Ky whirls around, almost bowling over Phoenix as he sprints to Wyatt. Grumbling, Phoenix makes several halfhearted threats against his brother, but he rolls his eyes and a small smile betrays him. He pads after Ky as we all draw closer to where Wyatt has climbed a little higher.
“A prophecy?” Ky asks.
Wyatt nods, then reads aloud:
“The Wolf and the Dove shall rise
With the help of the Phoenix whom the King shall despise
The Demon shall eat until it’s full
To the war it shall feel the pull
The Father shall be found
From the curse to which he is bound
The flame of the King shall set fire
To the countless acres of the Sea and the mire
The Mountain Prisoner shall face their fears
After being alone for countless years
One shall disappear
Only then shall things be clear
The fatal bite
Shall make things right
Count on the assistance of the Deer and Eagle
And then shall topple the highest steeple
Help shall arise from a sacrifice
A scream shall claw through the air in a slice
The lost one shall swiftly howl away
The pains and sins of the Night and Day
Claws and arrows shall pierce veins
Eager to see who shall start the next new reign
Heartbreak shall fuel the rage
Of the Warrior and the Mage
The battle shall last for days and nights
Until at last the foe shall turn and take flight.”
We’re all silent for what feels like forever. I chew on my lip and mull over the rhymes. My mind whirls far too fast to make sense of what they mean.
“Yeah,” Phoenix drawls, “what the fuck?”
Ky squints, something thoughtful in his expression. “A prophecy.”
“Some of those lines make sense,” Myles says.
“One shall disappear,” I murmur under my breath.
Ky climbs up the cave wall, stretching upward as he examines the scroll. Ears pricked, he mouths along as he reads. Phoenix wrinkles his muzzle, shifting in place and grumbling.
“I don’t like that I’m included in that,” he snaps.
“Why?” Myles asks. “It sounds like you’re gonna take down the King.”
“I don’t need a prophecy to tell me that, and I was gonna do it without the Wolf and the Dove beforehand anyway!”
Myles switches his staff to his other hand. “So what? You’re still gonna do it.”
Wyatt twists, but they don’t get down.
Phoenix rolls his eyes. “Whatever. If I’m included by name, why isn’t Ky? Why aren’t either of you? There’s only a few, so really the whole thing is just stupid.”
Ky shakes his head. “No, Phoenix, I don’t think so. I think this was created with the belief it would be true.”
“A prophecy doesn’t force you to do anything,” Wyatt says. “It doesn’t set the future in stone; it cannot force your path in any direction.”
“It says—.”
Wyatt exhales. “I know what the prophecy says, but I also know that it cannot force anyone to do anything. Everyone can choose, and you chose long before you knew of the prophecy’s existence that you would take down the King and kill him.”
Phoenix bares his teeth but doesn’t reply. He glares off into the distant expanse of the cave in the direction we came.
I scratch at my collarbone.
One shall disappear.
Thoughts tumble through my head, and I make a connection I feel I should’ve made far sooner.
“Alex,” I whisper, voice turning high and thready.
Myles perks up, looking around. He glances at me. “Is she here?”
Phoenix scoffs, but I barely hear the sound, too lost in my mind.
I start to tremble.
I shake my head.
“No,” I say, “she’s not here.
“Alex isn’t here. I don’t know where Alex is, but she was here. Alex was here after Arcane shed the Midnight Tear, after he died.”
I face the grey stone dais where the Lupus constellation glows with slowly pulsing and shifting lights between the twelve different colored gems.
Ky draws his ears back, tail swishing against his hind legs. He frowns, and then his expression softens into realization as anxiety coils in my gut, a snake hunting for a songbird.
Ky realizes far faster than I did, but I speak before he does.
“Alex is the new Midnight Wolf.”