A Twist of the Blade (Shadows and Crowns, #2)

by S.M. Gaither

It was Malaphar who had chosen Elander as his servant. Malaphar who had given him the Death magic. And it was Malaphar who had now taken all but the most rudimentary parts of Elander’s power, and who threatened to take much more.

He still vividly remembered the last vision he’d seen in Cepheid’s Fire: A black bird swooping down from a stormy purple sky, claws reaching toward a sword stuck in the ground. The bird had seemed oblivious to that storm above him. And to a blazing sun beyond the clouds, which soon folded in on itself and left the world in darkness.

If anything, the gods were more dramatic.

his lips curved in one corner, and a quiet, dark chuckle rumbled in his chest.

Gods did not get tired.

most preferred to ignore a blade until it was pressed against their own neck.

the only way out is through.

Moon-kind had magic that allowed them to see truths, to find paths and unlock things, and it was a kind of power she had always longed for.

Zev and Laurent exchanged a glance, both looking surprised at how quickly they’d gravitated back to her side. “You two really missed me, huh?”

But until that end came, now he was also determined to give Thorn as many breaths in this world as he could. Even if the cost was pain that stole the breath from his own lungs. He needed her to help him kill her brother, yes. He needed her to go and figure out her magic so they could kill Varen… He needed her.

Tara stopped. For a minute, at least. But then she said, “It’s human nature to want to protect things that we’re close to. You got close to that Solasen woman. I watched it happening.”

Its large eyes and sharp, beak-like mouth made Cas think of a bird-of-prey, as did the cascade of oily black feathers that concealed the true size and shape of its body. But the gangly limbs that jutted out from beneath those feathers were not birdlike. They looked almost human, aside from the dark claws that tore into the dirt with every stride.

Anxiety coiled in her belly like a snake ready to rise and strike at her heart, her lungs, her mind.

Cas stared at that scuff mark once more as the hot metal sizzled against her skin. This was how Asra had taught her to survive, to fight her way through pain—by focusing on something else. Then counting to five. One could survive anything for five seconds. And then once you’d survived that five seconds, you simply moved on to the next five seconds and started counting all over again, and eventually the pain ended.

All pain eventually ends, one way or another, she used to say. Either it heals, or it scars over and makes you tough enough to not notice it anymore.

“It sounds like he’s in a bad mood, too.” Cas couldn’t help the touch of smugness in her voice, even as her heart pounded so fiercely she could hardly get her next words out. “Which is terrible news for you, I’d guess.”

He shook his head at her lie. “Your life force fades a little more every time you use your power—I can feel it slipping. That magic of yours isn’t natural. You shouldn’t be wielding it so recklessly.”

“You could slaughter a thousand people and happily bathe in their blood, and you would still be better than your brother.”

“But that’s the problem with loving deeply, isn’t it?” she asked her hands with a bitter little laugh. “It means you have to hurt deeply, too. And that hurt can twist you up in unexpected ways.”

you don’t have to apologize for the things that hurt you.”

pain is not a competition. Everyone has their own battles. Their different hells. Different demons. And you don’t have to apologize for the things that hurt you, as I said, or for what you have to do to survive these things—not to me or to anyone else.”

But that was so often how it happened, wasn’t it? Left instead of right. An arrow hitting its target. Or missing it. A minute too late. A minute too early…life was full of these tiny moments of profound impact—moments balanced on a blade that might twist one way or the other. “And another thing?” Rhea continued. “Don’t forget that you’ve survived more demons than most.”

“It’s just…it’s getting hard to know which battle to focus on,” Cas finished. Rhea considered this for a long moment. “Let’s just do our best to survive the battle in front of us at the moment, hm?” Cas managed a deep breath. Pay attention to where your feet are, Asra used to tell her—a plea, really, for her ward to stay grounded.

They were not horses. Rhea referred to them as roan, and they most resembled animals called antelope that Cas had seen in a book once. But they were not native to Kethra, and she had never seen one in real life. Surely they were not normally this large? They towered over her, so tall that she worried she wouldn’t be able to hoist herself onto one’s back without assistance. Their fur was reddish-brown, their eyes, a shimmering shade of coal—as dark as the curved horns on their heads. They wore thin armor coated with a rubbery material that was meant to absorb lightning, as well as strangely shaped—but functional looking—masks that were meant to protect against sand and bright flashes of light.

She took the reins in one hand and jerked hard to the right, forcing the creature to circle, shifting its feet so it could no longer buck. After a few of these circular motions, it calmed enough that she lifted her head and glanced around, searching for her friends.

And then like a stomach. A chest. Powerful shoulders and hindquarters that were already stalking after Laurent and Nessa, even as the head finished forming—a head that was large and round, with eyes as black as the clouds above and teeth as long as Cas’s arm, all of it wrapped in wires of lightning. Sand swirled up and filled in the empty spaces between that lightning frame, and then the beast was complete, a walking sandstorm in a shape that made Cas think of a tiger. One that bristled from head to tail with deadly electricity.

A dark cloud descended before them. As it came closer, it seemed to shrink, collapsing and morphing into the elegant shape of a woman—though by the time her feet touched the sand she still towered over Cas, much too tall to ever pass for a human woman. Her long legs were hidden beneath a dress that shimmered like a storm-tossed sea. Her eyes were a deep, captivating shade of indigo. Her hair was the color of lightning. Her skin was as dark as the clouds she had emerged from, and as Cas stared at it, it…changed.

He cupped the curve of her jaw. Kissed her again. Pulled back and studied her for a moment before he said, “I’ll stay with you as long as I can.”

“I’ve been thinking on the matter all night,” she said, “and I am still not sure who or what you are, but I will say this—I have yet to sense any malice in you. You faced death for your friends. You embrace the magic inside of you, even though it makes no sense to you or anyone else. And now you refuse to call love a weakness, even when it so very clearly weakened someone you obviously care about. You are…intriguing. And I sense that there is something important about you, even though I myself cannot say whether that feeling is good or bad. But my benevolent upper-goddess would want me to aid you, I feel, in hopes that it might tilt you toward the good.”

But Nephele was smiling, looking very pleased with herself. “There you are, Little Queen. Consider yourself Storm-kind. And wield that mark and magic well.”

She turned it over and around in her hands, noting every tiny detail. The goddess carried a sword that was marked with the Storm symbol, and a shield marked with the Sky symbol. She also wore a helm that carried the Star symbol, and upon her breastplate was a mark not unlike the crescent-shaped scar on Cas’s jaw.

Storm. Sky. Star. Moon. All the separate kinds of magic that Cas had shown, at least in some form or fashion. And all of them ultimately derived from the Sun Goddess’s magic. Seeing all of these symbols together like this, carried by this single upper-goddess, made her…curious.

“Every object—living or otherwise—has an aura. Serpent-kind magic involves controlling those auras. And yes, the Queen sees these energies in a way that most do not.”

She placed the gift back on the pile and turned her full attention to Cas. Studied her for a several beats, and then she said, “There are many different threads of color surrounding you. Some I recognize because I have seen them before—the energy of Sun, Moon, Star, Storm, and Sky-kind. But there is a sixth thread that I do not recognize.”

“Because common girls do not get to become queens.”

“At some point, you will have to decide for yourself who you are going to become,”

“Laurent is more the silent, slit-his-throat-while-he’s-sleeping type.”

“But in all seriousness, you essentially already have two brothers prepared to threaten and kill on your behalf, so who cares about Varen? Family is not always blood, and blood is not always family.”

“Are you asking me if I believe that the impending war in Kethra, the tyranny of Varen, the vengeance being planned by a powerful, unpredictable upper-god—if all of these things were intentionally caused by you?”

“Though it’s hard to see the meaning when you’re stuck in the middle with everything going to hell around you, isn’t it?” “Yes,” he agreed. “But then you come out on the other side, and things look different.” On to the other side.

You can be afraid, and you’re allowed to feel stuck…you just can’t stay there. You have to keep going until you see what’s on the other side of that fear.

“It’s not the books,” she countered, slipping the key from an inner pocket of her coat and unlocking the door to that restricted library. “It’s what’s inside them.”

At some point, you will have to decide who you are going to become. It was a question that had plagued her for entirely too long. Who was she, really?

The Serca-Sonca. The Heart of the Sun. The object that had started this entire horrible ordeal—the reason he’d fallen. This was the target the Rook God had sent him after…the gift that Elander had stolen from the Sun Goddess all those years ago.

Let’s just do our best to survive the battle in front of us.

“Can any of us really say what purpose we’re here for?” Soryn mused. “My mother always told me that this was up to ourselves to decide, regardless of what the divine have blessed us with.”

“Thank you,” he told Caden.

All he knew for certain was that he had fallen in love with her twice now. I answer to a higher power, he’d told her. But perhaps there was no higher power than this. Than her.

the little wave, the relieved sigh, the slight quirk of her lips that said, There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.

“I love you,” he said. She dropped the bag she’d started to rifle through. “What did you just say?” “I love you. And I always have—in this lifetime and in every other.” She laughed a quiet, uncertain sort of laugh, casting her eyes about as though she thought he might have mistaken her for someone else. “In this lifetime and every other? Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”