Rules for Spies

8

They're almost through with training when the horizon erupts in fire. Instantly, Azriel shoots up into the sky, Cassian's booming wingbeats sounding alongside him. As he tries to locate the source of the attack, he hears Nesta and Gwyn down below, telling the priestesses to run for the exits, their voices low but urgent enough that the answering footsteps are swift.

The flash of gold pulls swiftly from the horizon, revealing wings covered by feathers of flame. The firebird.

"Shit," Cassian groans, but he flies toward the bird without hesitation, trailing a crimson shield behind him. Azriel follows, sending his shadows to the training ring, down into Velaris, near as possible to the firebird herself. He needs as many vantages as possible.

There's something wrong with this magic, his advance guard hisses as it returns. It is not a part of this world.

He'd suspected Koschei's interference the minute he'd identified Vassa's daytime form, but at the confirmation, he speeds forward until he reaches Cassian.

"Koschei's controlling her," he says, knowing better than to tell his brother to be careful, that the words would have the opposite effect, just as they would for him.

"Just when I thought every human queen had gone evil."

Azriel chuckles and then resumes strategizing. As far as they know, Koschei has never held control of Merrill for very long, but Vassa has flown the length of Prythian in hours. Even from the little time he's spent with her, he doubts the Queen of Scythia would attack if she were in her right mind, and her alliance is too valuable to risk harming her.

"We need to find a way to contain her."

"Then we're going to have to flush her into the Illyrian mountains until she's too tired to stay in the air," Cassian says, his expression grim as he turns to Azriel. Trying to calculate his willingness to go into Illyria.

There's a reason, after all, that Rhys assigns him missions all over this world, but gives all the work in the northern territories to Cassian and Mor. What Azriel would like to do to Merrill is nothing compared to what, in the darkest corners of his mind, he'd like to do to Illyria and nearly all its citizens.

"We'd just have to make it to sunset." They can both fly for longer, but likely not at the speed that Vassa's marking. She's already halfway across Velaris, bright as a second sun. Her path is aimed directly at Cassian and Azriel, at the House of Wind beyond them.

"Thankfully the days are short." Cassian's smile is brutal and a farce. In his mind, he's already marked out their required speed, the direction and force of the winds, the route they'll have to take. The biting cold of the wind at their altitude. Just as Azriel's own mind and body and power were made for spying, Cassian was meant to make these swift battlefield calculations, the decisive shifts of strategy and force.

So when Cassian changes his direction, veering away from Vassa and towards his homeland, Azriel follows him without hesitation.

She wants to speak with you, his rear guard whispers, racing to catch up to his flight. He realizes that the "she" is Gwyn and wonders that his shadows would refer to her so generally, as if she is the only female in the world.

Why?

She wants to use her powers. She thinks that this is her fault.

\

Azriel is just about to tell his shadow that there's no way this is Gwyn's fault when a glance behind him reveals no change in Vassa's trajectory.

She's still flying directly toward the House of Wind, where Gwyn and Nesta wait, their swords glittering with those magical flames, the red and blue of their own shields, which the firebird is about to cross.