“Cerulean!” I shriek, whirling this way and that. “Moth!”
Sun rays splinter through the mist. I run, barreling past wooden beams. The bridge guides me to a pair of intersecting gangplanks, where I survey the range frantically. I crawl onto the banister, my toe losing its foothold as an arrow whizzes past me.
With my view obscured, I give up and hop down. Sprinting toward the nearest sheet of film transports me to a lower trestle bridge. Its crisscross ribs span the extension beneath the uppermost platform.
“What’s the rush, human?” a slimy voice coos.
“Slow down, little scum,” a second one drones.
“Or you’ll disappoint us,” a third one preens.
A trio creeps from around the stakes. Leers coil across their firebird faces, the blisters of their eyes reflecting infernos. The phoenixes from the masquerade slink around the trestle masts, their yellow flesh crackling.
I spirit around a column, monitoring their approach. I can’t help the pang in my gut, because this ancient feud feels pointless, when it hadn’t before. Why does it have to be like this? If they’d never crucified humans as inferiors and plagued us to death, and if the villagers had found another way to defend themselves, and if things were different, if both species could become one force…
Stealthy bodies lunge toward me, their wings aflame. My digits grapple for the whip and let it fly. The weapon snaps across the first Fae’s cheek, his body twisting at a ghastly angle as he goes down. The remaining Faeries charge, girdling around the stilts.
The slap of wings penetrates the bridge. A shadow veers through the area—a splayed pair of fringed panels. Blades of noise rent the scene. A javelin arches, slices through, and stabs the boards between me and the Fae.
Cerulean crashes onto the platform. He lands in front of me, hunched on bended knee, his right palm planted on the ground in a battle stance that shields my body from them. His wings cleave several posts before slipping into the slots of his coat.
I skitter backward, catching his profile amidst a debris of wood shavings. Fury, hysteria, and guilt strain his face. He wants to protect me. That doesn’t mean he’s eager to maim his kin, especially after betraying them as their ruler and denying them a future on this mountain.
Wounded treachery contorts their faces. “Why?” the female demands, her throat filled with gravel. “Why, Cerulean?”
“Because I love her,” he confesses.
His admission punctures the last vestiges of my heart. He could have made it easier on himself, given himself an excuse by revealing we’re bonded. At this point, it wouldn’t have pacified them, but it would have tempered their sense of treachery. Yet that’s not what he chose to say.
The Faeries blink. Their expressions wrest from shock, to confusion, to devastation. In the end, rage digs crevices into their faces.
But this isn’t their fight alone. I rush beside Cerulean, bracing my whip and sensing his eyes click toward me.
The firebirds move at the same instant we do. Cerulean yanks his weapon from the floor and wheels it into a spiral. The Faeries catapult into one another, blasting together with a speed that rattles the spokes. Fists and daggers clash with a spearing javelin.
I tackle one of the males, lashing my weapon and dodging his knife. The action travels across the bridge, the lot of us hurdling around the slats. With a dizzying spin of the javelin, Cerulean blows his adversaries into the railing, where they keel over in a heap atop the planks. My whip drives a gash into the last one’s back, then sweeps his boots out from under him.
Cerulean and I whirl on another. We pause, panting for air.
A legion of infuriated Faeries swarms the lower bridge’s skeleton, flooding from all locations. The shell of a beetle’s torso. The stripes and muzzle of a bobcat. The conch horns of a ram. The wings of avians and insects.
Battalions of tall figures, along with dwarves and pixies. Among the familiar swords, arrows, and curved daggers, they wield exotic blades that rotate, split into sections, shoot spikes, or fly like shooting stars.
We race toward the pandemonium. Clincher is, not all of them are fighting us. They’re fighting each other, handfuls of the Fae remaining loyal to Cerulean, maybe hoping he’s got a sound reason worth defending. The rest ambush us, the brawl escalating to both bridge levels.
It’s a hopeless, grisly display, shimmering at the edges with sparks of magic. So many faces and souls—gorgeous to the point of hellish, frightful to the point of ethereal.
Through mist and torchlight, they duel using animalistic reflexes. Fleets clash in midair, their wings jetting around one another. Claws and pinchers strike. Jowls open, and tusks sink into flesh that spurts fonts of blood.
The staleness of my sweat clashes with the nausea of overripe fruit and the brine of deep puncture wounds. A glossy spray of crimson stains my fingers. The visual shoves bile up my throat, but the rising sun spikes my veins with adrenaline.
I glance to where a globe of light skims the range. Daybreak is nearing.
I jump over a post, my whip snagging around a nodule tacked in the ceiling. Looping forward, I smash my heels into an insectile Fae with antennas. The crunch of bone resounds between us.
I let go of the slack. Before landing, I lasso another arm and pull it from the socket. The owner of that limb howls, submitting to the ground.
Before I can recover the whip, talons tear across my bicep. Black pain speckles my vision as I register a Fae with a ravenlike mien, a spiky rail of plumes tracking down the center of his skull. He hones in, but a wee fist pops into the scene. Papery knuckles bash into the raven’s visage, the blow chucking him into one of the posts.
