Chapter
Forty
Galantia Present Day, Deepmarsh Castle
he grandeur of the great hall unfolded before me in a breathtaking spectacle of black and white feathers as if night and day embraced each other, intertwining the dark history between ourT kinds with the bright hope that lay ahead. The sheer opulence of intricate details—from the bone-carved birds sitting at the center of feather wreaths to the black skulls painted onto ribbons that sprouted from between their shafts—put even the lavish carriage in which I’d traveled to shame.
And it was all for me… The sight caused something beneath my ribs to bubble like sparkling cider, tickling my heart with an unconfined glee as I spun around my own axis, trying to take it all in. Long tables sat heavily under the weight of black cloth, woven from shadows, their surfaces glimmering with polished silverware.
Crystal goblets caught the light from the towering stained-glass windows and scattered it in gleaming prisms. Garlands of intertwined twigs hung from the rafters, adorned with a collection of Raven treasures—nails and ribbons, glass shards and coins, pebbles and chestnuts.
To say I was captivated would have been an understatement—I was spellbound, bewitched,
mesmerized beyond the ability to breathe. My heart pounded with the rhythm of a thousand beating wings, my chest fluttering with unbridled anticipation. This was everything I’d wanted. The assurance of a dream, the confirmation of a future, and the validation of a love that was stronger and more profound than any pain.
“Astonishing, is it not? I had the servants lay it all out for me today so I may see what it will look like on the day of the wedding.” Captain Asker stepped up beside me, folding his black-braced arms behind his back as his gaze drifted to the high table, where an opulent wooden chair had been added to the one beside Malyr’s. “His father spoke his oaths to his mother under the elegance of a very similar ensemble. It cast us into war then. I ordered all this as closely to my memory as I could, hoping that, this time, it will bring us out of it.”
My thoughts drifted to the fantasy of that little boy sitting on my lap, my half-blood son born with the shadowy gifts of a Raven who, gods willing, might sit on the throne one day. “I hope so.”
“You will depart for Tidestone on the morrow. Will you give this to Marla?” From the black scales of aerymel that shifted over his hips, he removed a small satchel of shadowcloth, which had something clank inside as he reached it out to me. “The salted spells of deathweavers. After months in the Tidestone dungeons, we cannot be certain of her condition. If she has grown too weak, her only chance at consciously forcing a shift is by throwing herself off a high place, such as the bell tower or the cliffs. These will help her get there, should trouble arise.” The moment I took the satchel, his trembling fingers clasped around my wrist, causing me to look up into his brown eyes. “I beg of you, my lady, return my mate to me. My anoa is growing weaker by the day, eaten from the inside by the sheer agony and pain this separation is causing us. I have lost my daughter… I cannot lose my mate.”
My heart sank at the desperate plea in his voice, the glistening in the eyes of a man who’d always seemed so stoic. “I didn’t know you had a daughter…”
“The sweetest soul among the stars. Ravenna was gifted with visions of the here and now, able to gaze across realms and through the eyes of every Raven.” Dark hollows formed in his cheeks as he sucked them in for a moment. “She died five years ago. Marla is all that I have left. Please… bring her back.”
“It’ll be the first thing I do, right after my arrival, when it still has the entire stronghold in commotion,” I said and tied the satchel to the belt on my dress of shadowcloth. “I’ll push her from the tower myself, if I must.”
Something akin to a smile tugged the corners of his mouth, quickly hidden by the way he bowed.
“Like I said before, not all treasures sparkle at first glance, but I am more convinced than ever that the goddess had our paths intertwine for a reason. To rectify the past. This alliance will—”
“There is no damn alliance,” Sebian ground out through barred teeth as he hurriedly strode up beside us, his cheeks webbed with red vessels from the cold, the fur poking from his cuirass matted with ice. “Malyr fooled all of us, plotting with Lord Taradur behind our backs.”
Captain Asker exchanged a confused look with me before he narrowed his eyes at Sebian. “What are you talking about?”
“Those carts Malyr sent to Tidestone under the protection of Taradur’s soldiers…? There isn’t a single fucking piece of grain on them.” Sebian’s eyes found mine, their emerald glint holding none of their usual softness, driving an ominous chill into my bones. “They’re disassembled siege weapons, Galantia. Taradur is marching on Tidestone as we speak.”
My marrow chilled.
No, that… that made no sense.
Asker shook his head slowly. “Impossible.”
“My guess is that Malyr will send Ravens there shortly before the attack, not leaving them nearly enough time to prepare for such an unexpected force,” Sebian said. “Asker, call me a reckless fool all you want, but I’m telling you… Malyr is taking Tidestone.”
Malyr is taking Tidestone.
My home.
Coldness shuddered through me, piercing deeper than the whitest winter, only to clash with that radiant brightness I’d carried in my chest all day. No, this couldn’t be. Could not be. Surely, this was some sort of mistake. A wrong report or… or… “He is not taking Tidestone.” Strange, how that mumble barely sounded like my own when I turned around, my senses somehow dulled as I all but levitated toward one of the corridors.
“Why would he scheme behind our backs?” Asker’s voice sounded behind me. “No. No, Sebian. I will go and speak to Malyr this instant. He would never betray me like this.”
Precisely. Malyr would never betray me like this. This was all a mistake. A stupid— I can’t help but wonder if I am about to make a grave mistake, Malyr’s voice echoed in the back of my mind, putting a falter into my next step.
I pushed through it.
He hadn’t lied to me.
He loved me.
Sebian trotted after me. “Where the fuck are you going?”
“To Cici,” I said and quickened my pace along the many doors that lined this particular corridor until my eyes itched. Nothing but the breeze of my speed irritating them. “It’s her father who is escorting the food, after all. She’ll shed light on all this and prove that you’re wrong.”
Yes, yes, she would.
“You and your damn stubborn foolishness,” he hissed, grabbing for my arm. “Galantia, don’t you understand? He always planned to—”
“No.” I pulled my arm away before he managed to clasp it and braced it against the door to Cici’s chamber, hand pushing down on the unlocked handle. Hinges groaned a mournful symphony, the sound scraping my skin with eerie foreboding. “You don’t understand. He loves—”
Frigidness seeped into my veins, flooding my heart until it froze mid-beat, turning it to ice so easily shattered. Air left my lungs in a single sob as I looked at the color of betrayal woven into the cloth of my unraveling hopes. Everything suddenly felt so distant, so stupid, nothing but the echo of a dream that looked like mine but… was not.
“No, he didn’t…” Sebian all but exhaled beside me.
Cici spun around where she stood on a wooden pedestal by the window, red strands framing her wide eyes in the same way the fraying fabric of my sanity shaped around her hips. “Galantia…”
“Oh dear,” Darien, the dressmaker, said where he knelt by the bottom seam of Cici’s gown.
My gown.
Shadowy tendrils sculpted the neckline in the shape of a bird’s nest, the trunk-like columns running down along the corset adorned with shards of aerymel. From there, it cascaded down into a magnificent train of uncountable black feathers. Shadowcloth embellished the shoulders, gently swaying like wings tousled by the ocean breeze, the edges lined with the finest plumes. And there, hidden beneath the fluff, a single white feather hidden between the same blackness that cast over my
core.
It was magnificent.
Just like Malyr had said.
But it wasn’t mine, was it?
A raw sting pinched at the back of my eyes, sharp and unfamiliar, my hands fluttering restlessly at my sides as I swallowed against my tight throat. “What is this?”
“Sweetheart…” Sebian brushed his hand down along my spine, then clasped my upper arm, urging me to back away. “Come on. Let’s go and—”
“What is this?” I’d meant to scream it, but it only came out as a choked whisper, quickly overpowered by the wingbeats that slipped through the flight hole at the top of the wall.
Malyr shaped out of his shadows, tendrils still forming the long black strands that framed those two-colored eyes that bore into me, only for his gaze to drift to Sebian. “You have nerves, flying south to have your ravens poke their beaks into things that are not of your concern.”
“Look who’s talking about nerves,” Sebian bit back, sliding his hand down to intertwine with mine. “How could you do this?”
“How could I not?” Malyr jutted his chin at Darien. “Get out.” The dressmaker shifted right then, and five ravens breezed past me, almost distracting me from the slow, deliberate grind of Malyr’s boots on the floor as he approached me. Until he came to a stop inches from me, and shifted forward for his mouth to hover by my ear, where he whispered, “Did you truly think I would marry you? You?
A Brisden? I have nothing but hate for you.”
With the world tilting on its axis, I forced myself to turn my head and look at his hate-filled eyes, feeling my heart tear apart as my throat choked around an invisible knot that seemed to swell. “You… you don’t mean that.”
“All this came at a cost. Obviously, Taradur only made a reliable ally by me promising him to take his daughter as my wedded wife.” A shimmer sparked in the depth of his gray-brown irises, only to extinguish at his scoff, leaving nothing behind but biting malice that dripped from his poison-laced tone. “Thanks to the wedding announcement, Deepmarsh houses enough deathweavers, pathfinders, and fates to make the slaughter of House Brisden more convenient than it ought to be. Granted, I would have liked you to free Marla first, but no matter. We will strike with such force, there may yet be another opportunity. Little white dove, you were nothing but a distraction and a tight hole to fuck while I positioned my forces at your father’s doorstep.”
A slicing blade seemed to cleave through my chest, twisting with each callous word he spat.
Hundreds of hairline cracks webbed across my heart, threatening to shatter me into a million pieces, just like he’d said. But that had been before. Before the ride to the cliffs, the kiss, the many times I had felt his love in the pain, in the pleasure, and in every unspoken word between us. It hadn’t been imagined. It couldn’t be… It was real!
“My prince,” Cici murmured, her stare fixed on the ground. “Is it necessary to—”
“Shut!” Malyr’s shout sent a flinch through Cici, tendrils of shadows flitting across the white of his eyes before his voice calmed. “Your. Mouth.” He gripped my throat like he had the day in the forest, bringing his lips to mine, letting them brush his poisonous whispers across them. “Did you really think that I could ever love you?” A faint laugh. “Yes, you did. Poor little Galantia, abandoned, ignored, utterly worthless. Never loved, and oh, so foolish.”
Never loved.
Oh, so foolish.
Another crack in my heart.
“Enough!” Sebian barked, slapping Malyr’s hand off my throat before he pulled me against his chest. “You’re a miserable friend and a fucking cruel bastard.”
“Funny you say that, considering it was you who told me just how to get her all flustered.” Malyr
pressed his face into my cheek, letting the moisture of his breath settle on my skin like venom with how he forced the words through his clenched teeth. “She’s so starved for attention, you said, a bit of kindness would get me a long way with her. Guess what? It did. Didn’t take much at all. A few kisses
here, a few meaningless words there.”
Empty.
Meaningless.
Another crack to my heart.
Sebian gave a shove against Malyr’s shoulder, pushing him back half a foot. “I said it’s enough!
You ruined her twice over now!”
Malyr shrugged. “Now you can… sweep in and save her.”
“What?”
“Marriage, Sebian,” Malyr said. “How about you take Galantia to wife?” When Sebian’s arm stiffened on me, a malicious smirk curled one corner of Malyr’s mouth. “No, you are not quite so heroic as to abandon your oaths, are you? Did you actually ever tell her…?” His eyes found mine.
“Did he tell you, little dove?”
My entire body shook as I looked at Sebian. “Tell me what?”
Sebian’s lips parted, closed, parted again.
Nothing came out.
“I did not think you had,” Malyr said. “Do you want to tell her why you never kissed her, hmm?
Or should I?” One second passed. Two. Three. “Very well. See, little dove, Sebian—”
“No…” Lips trembling, Sebian hung his head. For a fraction of a breath, he hid his eyes from me, only for the forest-green orbs to lift and find mine with a layer of unshed tears to resemble leaves after a rain. “My mate died in the fire during that night, Galantia, along with the rest of my family. She died because of me, because I didn’t protect her.” A stuttered gulp. “We were… we were bonded.”
Bonded.
My ribs curled into my heart all over again, puncturing a frozen organ wounded with a million cracks. What would it feel like to be loved with such intensity? Such unequivocal fortitude, not even death could impose conditions?
I would never know. Not with either of these men, because one hated me, and the other had his love forever tied to a corpse. Not with anybody else, either. Nobody loved me. Nobody ever would.
My eyes burned.
My surroundings blurred.
Until the sweltering wetness trailed down my cheeks, collecting on my trembling chin from where it drip-drip-dripped onto the floor in an abundance of tears. Years of them flowed out of me as I cried for Risa, for Sebian, perhaps even for Malyr. But most of all, I cried for myself.
“See, there is no love for you here—not from me, not from him. There is no love for you anywhere.” Malyr leaned into me, letting his tongue lap a trail along my cheek, devouring my tears all the way to the corner of my eye, where he suckled and finished with a kiss. “I told you I would break you like your father had done it with me, little white dove. And, oh, how delicious your tears are.”
Another crack to my heart.
Something inside me fractured, a deafening clash echoing through the hollows of my heart, my core, my soul. It cracked through hope and naïve dreams, shattering me so completely, each piece a testament to a love that had never been. Would never be.
From the wreckage of my being, something primal emerged. A force so powerful, so raw, it thrummed with the rhythm of my shattering soul, vibrating through every vein, every nerve, every fiber
of my being. The force exploded outwards, a silent, blinding storm of white feathers and plumes that eclipsed my conscience and enlightened it at the same time.
Color bled over the room.
Our vision sharpened.
With a storm of white wingbeats, my ravens carried me up to the flight hole, and out into the even whiter winter from there. Our plumage blended with the snow and the clouds. Our wings carried us
east.
Away from the pain.
THIS CONCLUDES Feathers so Vicious. If you have a moment, please consider leaving my story a review.
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