Page 167 of Stolen By Shadows

I shift from foot to foot. The fabric tied around my antlers—remnants of the clothing of a family, long passed—sways with the motion. “Then you’ve got what you wanted. You are the queen of Castletree?—”

“No.” Sira sits straight up, fingers digging into the armrests made of cracked wood. “What Iwantis Aurelia’s head on a pike, next to her little daughters and those cursed princes! Instead, you’ve gone and lost them.Allof them. Isn’t that quite the coincidence?”

Who is this woman?I wonder, not for the first time. Is she still the same one I followed down from the Above? That industrious, enlightened woman with a vision of a new world? The one who would not let anything stop her, not even her broken wings? I resist the constant urge to scratch my shoulder blades.

I would have done anything for that woman. Ididdo everything. Gave up my home, rallied my people, became this…thing.

And this is what it’s all come to. A queen of rubble and rot.

“You will find them and kill them,” Sira says.

The word comes out of me as a breath. A word I have not known in an age. “No.”

“No?” Her eyes go wide, and she lets out a shrieking laugh, as if in disbelief.

I do not relent.

When all I do is stare at her, her gaze narrows, as piercing as a snake’s strike. “Aquila!” she screams.

My second-in-command comes into step beside me. Her face, now healed of its burns, is ashen, and she stares up at the sky. Once a priestess who communed with the stars, she has only known the dark for so long. I had thought possession of the surface would be a boon to her.

Maybe it will be. She seems more herself these last few days, ever since Sira lost connection with her Green Flame god.

“Due to Faustrius’s insolence, you are now the commander of the Elderblood. Hunt down the prisoners, and relieve them of their heads.”

My throat tightens. Sira can’t do that. I was chosen by my people. She has no say over our ranks.

Aquila holds her head high. “No. My loyalty is to Faustrius and Faustrius alone.” That teasing grin creeps up her face. “And the stars, but they don’t answer to anyone down here.”

“We are not your servants,” I growl to Sira. “We were to be equal allies. That was the arrangement. Your bidding should be reserved for your own subjects, which we are not.”

“If we are allies, then why do you betray me so?” Her brows knit together in a facade of hurt.

“I told you. The prisoners escaped. Regardless, it is you, Sira, who has made the first betrayal. The boy you turned in the fires of Mount Rhuvenmark. He is one of us, yet you forced him under your control. Free him.”

“There appears to be a misunderstanding. You are not in a position to negotiate.” Sira goes very still, except for her eyes. Her irises shake, and the pupils seem to change in size, large, then pinprick small. “If you cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of my queendom, you force my hand.”

A dark shiver creeps down my spine, like someone’s poured ink on my bones. “No, Sira. Don’t do this.”

“Fausty,” Aquila murmurs, grabbing my arm. “Fausty, she wouldn’t?—”

But it’s too late. Sira reaches into the shadows that curl around her like eels and pulls out the last living magic of the Above: the rose from the Gardens of Ithilias. Long had we thought it lost, and for the best that was. But when Keldarion and the human retrieved it from the ice, we Elderblood knew better than any what a danger it was.

The magic of creation. The magic ofcontrol.

It pulls at the edges of my consciousness, like being swallowed in dark water.

“I will free the boy from my control,” Sira whispers, “as an act of good will. But know this, Faustrius of the Elderblood. If I question your loyalty again…” She holds up the rose, examining it. “I will take measures to ensure I never need to in the future.”

Dread, colder than even my imprisonment in the ice, floods through my veins.

So. I am a thrall regardless. Awake and with the illusion of choice.

With a short bow, I dismiss myself and walk back toward the tangles of withered thorns.

My options lie before me. Disobey Sira and condemn my people to thralldom.

Or serve her, condemning us anyway.

My gaze stretches far over what once was the Briar. Somewhere within that husk flees our only hope.

The words whisper out of me, a plea and a prayer all at once. “Long live the Golden Rose.”