And so Kae said something foolish and brave.
“Do you fear Lady Whin of the Wildflowers, King?”
Bane struck her across the face so swiftly that Kae never saw his hand coming. The blow rocked her, but she managed to remain upright, eyes smarting. A roar filled her ears; she didn’t know if it was her own thoughts or members of the court fleeing in a rush of wings.
“Are you refusing to carry my message, Kae?” he asked.
Kae gave herself a moment to imagine it—bearing this message to Whin. The utter disgust that would be on the lady’s face, the way her eyes would burn. It was a pointless message, because Kae knew Whin wouldn’t starve Jack off the isle. She would refuse, not just to challenge Bane but because Jack’s music gave them a thread of hope, and if he left Cadence, their forbidden dreams would crumble into dust.
“Yes,” Kae whispered, meeting his lambent eyes. “Find another.”
She turned away from him, her defiance making her feel heady, strong.
But she should have known better.
One moment, she was upright. The next, Bane had torn a hole in the floor, a hole that was dark as night and howling with emptiness. He held Kae suspended over it—she could not move, she could not breathe. Only think and stare at the inky circle she was bound to fall through.
Even so, she did not believe he would do it.
“I banish you, Kae of the Northern Wind,” Bane said. “You are no longer a favored messenger of mine. You are my shame, my disgrace. I cast you down to the earth and the mortals you love, and should you desire to ascend once more and join my court . . . you will have to be shrewd, little one. It will not be an easy task to rise after you have fallen so low.”
There was a searing pain at her back. Kae cried out. She had never felt such agony before—she was burning, as if a star had been caught between her shoulder blades—and she did not realize what had caused it, not until Bane stood before her with her two right wings in his hands, shredded and limp.
Two of her wings. The shade of sunset melting into night. The shade that had been hers and hers alone. Broken, stolen. Dangling in the northern king’s hands.
He laughed at the expression on her face.
She felt blood begin to flow down her back, hot and thick. It cast a sweet fragrance in the air as it continued to course down her armor and the curve of her leg, dripping from her bare toes into the void. Drops of gold.
“Away with you, earthen lover!” Bane boomed, and his court that had remained, all the sharp-toothed spirits who were hungry to see her ruin, laughed and cheered at her exile.
She had no strength to fight his hold, to respond to his jeers. Pain bloomed in her throat, a knot of tears and humiliation, and she suddenly fell through the hole in the clouds, into a frigid night sky. Even knowing her right wings were torn away, she still tried to command the air and glide with her remaining left ones.
She teetered and tumbled, head over feet, like a graceless mortal being dropped from cloud to cloud.
At last, Kae was able to get the air beneath her fingertips. She had to tuck her other pair of wings close against her back, or else they would tear. She watched as time began to shift and move again. She watched as the night began to fade into day with sunlit prisms and a deep blue sky. She could see the Isle of Cadence far below her, a long piece of verdant earth surrounded by a foamy gray sea.
Kae sought to transform herself, to render her body into air. But she discovered that she was locked into her manifested form. Her limbs, her hair, her remaining left wings, her skin and bones were all trapped in the physical world. Another punishment of Bane’s, she knew. The ground would kill her, break her, when she met it.
She wondered if Whin would find her, broken amidst the bracken.
She felt the clouds melt against her face, and listened to the hiss of wind passing through her fingers. She closed her eyes and fully surrendered to the fall.
Part One
A Song for Ashes
Chapter 1
A boy had drowned in the sea.
Sidra Tamerlaine knelt next to his body on the damp sand, searching for a pulse. His skin was cold and tinged in blue, his eyes open and glazed as if he were looking into another world. Golden algae clung to his brown hair like a misshapen crown, and water trickled from the corners of his mouth, gleaming with broken shells and streams of blood.
She had tried to bring him back, leaping into the water and pulling him from the tides. She had dragged him to the coast and pumped his chest, breathing into his mouth. Again and again, as if she could draw his spirit and then his lungs and heart. But she had soon tasted the endless sea within him—brine and cold depths and iridescent foam—and Sidra had acknowledged the truth then.