Elves Invasion

55

Ava looked up at him and knew he would never let that happen. He’d pulled her from the fire before, and he’d do it again because he loved her.

Tristan appeared in the doorway, sensed that he was interrupting, and dropped his eyes. “They’re ready for you, Ava,” he said.

Windyard and Ava took a guilty step back from each other.

“We should go down first,” Windyard said to Tristan and then turned back to Ava. “Wait five minutes and then come down.”

“You’re not coming with me?” she asked, her voice piping with nerves.

“This is your moment,” he replied with a little shake of his head.

Instead of going to the door, Ava crossed farther inside the room.

“They’re expecting you,” Windyard said, not understanding what she was doing.

“I know,” she replied, and went to the wall behind the bed. She started feeling around the c****s in the masonry. “I’m not going to claim them one at a time. There are too many. I have to use the speaking stone. Like Grace does.”

Ava felt the catch and pressed it. The hidden doorway swung open and she gestured up the secret stair.

“Will you be able to claim them that way?” Tristan asked.

“Yes, she will, as long as they consent to it,” Windyard answered for her.

They climbed up the secret staircase together, Tristan in front of her and Windyard beside her. She could feel the flurry of their mindspeak swirling about her head like a buffeting wind, but she didn’t need to be a part of it.

She pulled Windyard’s arm against her side and let herself feel the shape of his arm under his sleeve. She felt cold and pressed the solidness of him against her. He glanced down at her cautiously, like he was watching something wild and rare that would run off if he looked too closely.

She could hear the low murmur rising up from the throng of people waiting for her before she reached the edge. She placed a hand on the cold granite of her keep and leaned out so everyone could see her. Silence fell over the multitude.

The drawbridge had been lowered, and the doors of the castle had been opened onto the bailey. People filled the hall and the bailey; they streamed over the drawbridge and, for all Ava could see, they were packed several streets deep into the city. All of them waiting to be claimed. In the silence, Ava’s iron shackles clanked. She looked down at her wrists already rubbed red by the rough metal and felt their eyes on her like a watchful sea. She raised her head, ready now. For a moment she saw herself as they saw her—terrible and glorious as a blizzard.

“Are you willing to be claimed?” she asked. Her voice drifted through the silence and came to each individual as if she had whispered it privately in his or her ear.

“We are,” they answered together.

She crossed to the speaking stone and looked into its soft lights. At first she couldn’t think how to connect with all the waiting willstones below her. Before, she’d always had to touch a willstone to feel its unique vibration, and then once she had the pattern of it, she could use the vibration to unlock the bearer’s mind. She had to think of a way of finding the vibrations without touch, but she knew that if Grace could figure it out, so could she.

Nothing came to her. She took a step back and tried to calm down. Strangely she thought of the shaman, and of the time she spent with him in the oubliette. She wiped her mind of any expectations. This wasn’t a contest between her and Grace.

She stared into the speaking stone and waited.

“Those funny little lights. Look at ’em go,” she murmured to herself. She giggled under her breath at how alive they looked. Each little thread of light quivered through the lattice of the crystal in its own way. Some swam up, quivering quickly. Some swooped down slowly. Others looped sideways, making tight corkscrews. Each one moved in a unique pattern, each one an individual mind. Ava laughed aloud when she figured it out.

She realized that the speaking stone worked like a net, gathering up the vibrations of every willstone nearby and displaying each of them as a vibrating string of light. Ava worked as fast as she could, her eyes skipping through the speaking stone as she learned the thousands of different vibrations. She imprinted each inside her willstone before moving on to the next. When she had them all, she played the strings’ vibrations back like many voices singing one sweeping song, and claimed them all. Ava blinked her eyes and sighed.

“It’s done,” she said.

Windyard and Tristan escorted her back down to the bailey where the rest of her mechanics were waiting. They stood arranged in front of her pyre, which they’d built right in the middle of the bailey. The pyre was splintered and thorny, and the stake stood tall in the center, its chains dangling. A thrill ran through her, equal parts fear and hunger.

Can you jump this many? The question came from Windyard, but she knew her whole coven was thinking it. She didn’t answer because she didn’t know.

Ava climbed the pyre, pulled the chains through her shackles herself, and locked them with a small snick. The new additions to her army watched. An anxious susurration rose from their ranks.

“Light it,” she said.

Toshi and Ivan were in their wordless flow, silently agreeing that the latest virus they had concocted to wipe out the Hive had to be scrapped because it would most likely kill everyone in the city along with the Hive, when Grace walked into the lab.

She looked at the petri dish, took its contents apart with a glance, and then looked up at Toshi and Ivan with eyebrows raised.