When Nova woke, the first thing she noticed was the pain in her head.
The next was the screaming.
As consciousness filtered back to her, she became aware that something was horribly wrong with the air. It hurt to breathe, and prickled and burned and as it entered her lungs. She opened her eyes; she still lay on the kitchen hearth where she'd settled last night, and the hard stone under her shoulder was evidence that this wasn't an unpleasant dream. She sat up, listening with a frown.
Then it fell into place, and she got up with stiff legs and stumbled to the window. She was almost blinded by a flash of green and another wave of horrid prickling over her skin as a Marrowhawk rebounded off the rune net.
A groan behind her alerted her to Jeorge waking. His crutches tapped across the floor to where she stood, and she resisted an urge to turn and kick them out from under him.
"Did it wake you up, too?" he asked, voice still full of sleep. She gritted her teeth and didn't respond.
They both jumped as two more Marrowhawks shot towards the rune net, rebuffed by a pulse of magic Nova felt in her teeth. Now she was alert, she recognised the call of a Firebull somewhere in the din, and the laughing calls of Rock Wights. She frowned as another wave of magic stood her hair on end. Just how many demons were trying to break through?
"Where are you going?" Jeorge called, as she turned on her heel and dashed from the kitchens. She ignored him, pelting through the castle corridors to the main foyer, and then pounding up the stairs and hurtling along another corridor until she came to a first-storey window. A thin rattle behind her indicated that her noisy flight had alerted the guards patrolling the servants' quarter, but all thoughts of that fled her when she saw the sight out of the window.
A veritable cloud of Marrowhawks were dive-bombing the rune net, and in amongst them were the smaller forms of Forest Haunts, which had never been documented in the city before. Their wings were stubby and mostly for gliding between trees, so they were recognisable by the frequency with which they dropped to the ground to rest. Nova only knew what they were from a dim recollection of an illustrated library book she'd read once.
She wasn't high up enough to see over the rampart wall, but the guards patrolling it were running up and down with frantic abandon, clearly at a loss of what to do in a real emergency. No one had been out in the corridors aside from the night guard; the idiots hadn't got around to warning anyone yet, it seemed.
"Ma'am?" a soldier said as he appeared in the doorway of the guest chamber she'd broken into. He faltered when he realised who she was, instantly shedding the deference. "You shouldn't be roaming the castle at this hour."
"I'm guessing you aren't aware of that, then?" she snapped, pointing out of the window. The guard dragged his feet when coming to look, and then froze as he saw the commotion. "I would advise you rouse barracks, since those louts clearly didn't manage it yet. Unless you want to be the one to alert his Lordship."
The guard, a skinny youth barely past adolescence under all that shiny armour, shook his head, throat bobbing crazily.
"I would also advise you don't mention taking instructions from me," she said with a small smile, and made sure he watched her stalking out. It irked her to have so many guards in the halls at night. She'd be tailed to the privy if she could ever bear to leave the hearth for it.
The memory of the Caelumese spy confined her to the usual servants' route up to the lord's chambers. Now that the initial shock had left her, she became aware of the damage her awkward sleeping position had done; her head ached, and the freshly raw stump of her wing, now a couple of inches shorter than the other, was throbbing. The bandages felt sticky when she moved. Over it all was the horrible buzzing of countless attempts to get through the rune barrier.
She wasn't the only one awake at a time when most were sleeping; the lord's bed was empty and had clearly not even been touched that night. A thin band of candlelight flickered under the washing room door. Despite herself, she hesitated in the doorway. She had never been into the lord's bedchamber this late. She already hunched in anticipation of an unexpected blow, half-expecting the lord to be hiding somewhere just to catch her out. But that was stupid. He wouldn't be expecting her.
Somehow that didn't make it any better.
She forced herself to cross the room and knock on the door, and the sounds of gently lapping water stopped immediately. Faellian's icy voice ground out, "This had better be a dark-damned emergency."
"There's a demon swarm at the net, my lord," Nova said.
Water sloshed onto hard flooring, and the wet patters of footsteps crossed to the door. The lord swung it wide, glaring down at her from a height, dripping wet and haloed in candlelight. "A swarm?"
"Yes, my lord." She swallowed. She had seen the lord shirtless before, but she had been whipped for looking too long in past instances. He stalked past her, vigorously drying himself off. The scars on his arms and back flashed silver in the light, and she quickly averted her eyes.
"By swarm, you had better mean it," he growled, throwing on a shirt and crossing to his window. He threw back the drapes, and froze. Nova edged up behind him, as close as she dared, and under his arm caught a glimpse of the long line of demons at ground level. From so high up, they looked like a seething greyish mass, tinged orange by firelight, except for two huge Firebulls identifiable by sheer size. Marrowhawks and Forest Haunts swept through the air above them.
"Unnatural," Faellian breathed, "This is unnatural."
He turned from the window, seeming not to register that she was even there, and all but flew from the room. Nova crept closer to the window, staring down at the spectacle in mingled horror and awe. The rune net glowed bright, holding strong against the barrage, filling her head with distant music from the source below the ground. It hadn't been built for a siege like this, but the craftsmanship was still impressive, and still holding at the outer wall. It was far closer to an art than anything her people were capable of, and against greater enemies. The only things Angels had ever had cause to fear were each other.
She frowned out at the mountains, dark save for the faintest glimmer of green. It was common for demons to flood into the city from the ranges in the dark season, but altogether unheard of to gather in such numbers. This looked, for all intents and purposes, like an organised front that was far beyond the scope of normal demon behaviour or intelligence.
She craned her neck, trying to see around the wall whether the scene was similar at other points on the ramparts. She couldn't see far, but what she could see was more of the same. Voices now carried up the stairs towards her as the castle was roused, and Faellian passed somewhere below, barking orders.
She shook her head, still unable to fathom it. When it was all over, there would be panic. The demons had been appearing in greater numbers and in stranger places all season, but this was unprecedented.
Her eyes fell on a point in the animal crush almost casually. At first, she didn't register what she was looking at, and then she realised that the gap opening up was not a loss of interest. Deaths were entirely solitary, and would prey on almost anything. Other demons gave them a wide berth, and that was exactly what they were doing with the one drifting towards the gatehouse at that very moment. It was hard to see until a flicker of fire or flash of green revealed a tendril of its smoke-like form. Otherwise, the only way to track it was by the movement of the other demons.
Nova had only come into close quarters with a Death once, and it wasn't an experience she was keen to repeat.
She left the room, only hesitating briefly at the thought that Harkenn would expect her to stay where she was. Descending the stairs again revealed the castle to have transformed from tranquil quiet to a hive of frenzied activity. A bitter wind blew through the halls from the open front doors, and teams of soldiers were wheeling the castle's stocks of wood into the foyer. She wasn't so stupid as to try and get outside to speak to someone on the defences – even in a state of emergency Faellian would find time to punish her for that – so she rapped smartly on the shoulder plate of the nearest soldier.
"There's a Death approaching the gatehouse," she said. The soldier blinked, uncomprehending. Whether the shock in his aura was because of her or because of what she'd said, she wasn't sure, but she clicked her fingers in front of his gormless expression. "Are you listening? There's a Death at the gate. Has someone sent for Unspoken?"
"T-the lord has," the soldier said, then seemed to realise he'd been cowed by a slave. He turned away and started barking instructions to his team, and Nova allowed herself the tiniest pinch of triumph.
She hovered in the foyer for a moment, unsure what to do but reluctant to head back upstairs like a good little slave and wait it out. A thought came to her, and then she was hurrying towards the servants' corridors. The maids would be on lockdown, and Grace would be in her room alone. She would wait it out there. She tried not to think too hard about why she wanted to go there, told herself it wasn't because she missed talking to the otherworld girl, and certainly wasn't because she wanted to make sure she hadn't changed her mind about being friends.
It wasn't the time, after all.
She tried to hurry without running. The guards all looked too distracted by the crisis to pay much attention to her, but they would if she looked as guilty as she felt. She clutched her chain tight to her body. Her skin prickled and buzzed with the ambient magic and the freezing wind. The corridors were empty, but she heard chatter behind closed doors and more than one case of hysterics.
She was almost more hesitant to knock on Grace's door than she had been to knock on the lord's, but she made herself do it. At first, there was no response. She almost turned around and left, but then a thin voice said, "It's open."
She stepped inside. Grace stood by the hearth, hands clasped in front of her. She was still in her nightdress, and visibly shivering.
"Nova," Grace said, in barely more than a murmur, "You shouldn't be here."
"Everyone's distracted," Nova replied. An odd feeling came over her. It was like falling into an icy river where there was supposed to be solid ground; somehow she'd still been hoping Grace would be happy to see her. Stupid, again. She'd ruined that herself.
"No," Grace said, more insistent, "You don't understand, you need to go."
In her distraction, she hadn't noticed the second presence in the room, and by the time she had, the door was shut and locked and there was a knife at her throat.
"I don't like unfinished business," Ethred's Angel spy hissed in her ear, and she cringed at the rasping Caelumese. His breath was sour and he stank of sweat. He probably hadn't been able to find a way out of the castle since the guard had been alerted to his presence.
Her mind went blank with panic when something warm trickled down her neck. Grace stifled a whimper.
"Here's what's going to happen," the Angel hissed, still speaking in their tongue, "You're going to find me a way out. And when I am out, you will not tell anybody I was here."
"Does nobody understand what a slave is?" Nova growled, forcing the Caelumese from between her teeth like bitter poison. "I can't. My owner will look for me."
"If you don't, I will kill the girl."
Nova met Grace's eyes, wide and frightened in the gloom. "Did Lucifer have anything to do with those demons?"
The Angel snorted. "I don't think you're in a position to barter with me for those kinds of answers, Anarabelle. But if you behave, I'll tell your sister you said hello."
She threw up a fist, trying to catch the spy in the nose, but he caught her wrist in a strong grip. His breath tickled against her ear as he laughed.
"What does he want?" Grace asked. Her attempt at sounding confident was admirable, but wasted on an audience that could see the reality in her aura; she was absolutely terrified. Nova, to her own surprise, wasn't. She'd expected some kind of reckoning with her uncle some day, and if anything did shock her, it was that it hadn't come before now. Her own panic, she realised, came from the knowledge that the spy had no intention of letting Grace live. Perhaps no intention of letting either of them live. She could sense it.
"A way out," she said, once again in Common, "Though I don't know how he thinks we'll manage it with all this pandemonium. He'll be torn to bits by demons no matter which way we go."
"Enough talking," the Angel growled. She squeezed her eyes shut as the blade bit further into her throat, already bruised from their last encounter.
"We know a way," Grace blurted out. Nova stared at her, and Grace stared back with determination. Nova ground her teeth; did Grace not see there had to be more to it than this? It wasn't just coincidence that the spy had found his way into the room of the one maid Nova would ever visit of her own volition, and the whole thing stank of Ethred. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense, and she had as much desire to play along with Ethred's plans as she did with Lucifer's.
"At least one of you knows what's good for them," the Angel hissed in Caelumese, and within two strides had Grace pinned instead, a blade glinting at her throat. Nova touched her neck, and her fingers came away red. "Lead the way, then. You try to get help, I kill her."
"Heard you the first time," Nova said, scowling. She could pretend she didn't care; it might throw Ethred off Grace's scent, at least for a short time. Equally possible was that the Angel would take her at face value and kill Grace right there and then, and that thought was horrifying.
She frantically searched through all her knowledge of the castle for an escape route. If she took any route that passed right through the main thoroughfare, the spy would guess she was trying to get him caught. But if she picked anything too obscure, they had no chance of rescue. She couldn't rely on Jeorge this time, and the chaos of the demon attack meant that their chances of an intervention were already slim. Faellian wouldn't look for her until it was over, and she had no role to play that someone was expecting her for. She cursed herself for predictability; those very same factors had led someone to think it was likely she would use the opportunity to see Grace.
"You're going to have to unlock the door," she said. "Or none of us are going anywhere."
The spy growled in irritation, pushing Grace ahead of him towards the door. Nova didn't move as they drew level, and Grace's clammy hand grasped hers for only a second. She felt around the dimensions of the object now sitting in her palm, and realised it was a broken knitting needle.
"There," the Angel said. As the door swung open, voices carried along the corridor towards them, and he was too distracted by that to notice that anything had passed between them. "Now go."
"Who do you worship?" Nova asked in Caelumese. She rolled the needle in her fingers.
"What? Get moving!"
Nova only took one step back, and then stopped again, blocking the doorway. "Vestra? Elandriel?"
"What does it matter to you?"
"Did you ever serve with my brother?" She forced her voice not to choke on the question. "You look around his age. Did you know Leo? He worshipped Elandriel. They put his symbol on the memorial. I was just wondering."
She was stalling for time, but seemed to have unintentionally hit a nerve; the Angel's eyes widened, and while he was formulating a response she stepped forward and stuck the length of wood in his eye.
Her aim had been poor in her rush, but it had the desired effect; he howled and stumbled back. His knife clattered to the floor, and Grace snatched it up before grabbing Nova's hand and pulling her the other way. Her weeks in the household had done her strength a favour, since Nova now found herself dragged along with ease.
They were close enough to hear the commotion in the foyer when the Angel caught up with them. Nova sensed him come up behind, sensed the rage boiling off his aura, and squeezed Grace's wrist hard. The otherworld girl glanced over her shoulder and put on a spurt of speed, but a hand clasped around Nova's other arm and wrenched them apart. The air in her lungs left her in a great gust as she stumbled back and hit the spy's chest, and then he lifted her near-bodily around the middle and began to drag her away. She tried to find purchase under his sleeves with her nails to no avail, and her head was too bruised already to put any real force into trying to head-butt his chin. Angry tears welled at her helplessness; she knew her life as a slave had left her weak, but it was rare that it stared her in the face quite so baldly.
A scream echoed behind them, and Grace threw herself at the Angel. Nova fell hard, crying out as her wings were crushed between her body and the floor. She scrambled to her feet. Grace stood over the spy, prone on the floor and bleeding from the knife buried in his side.
"I've killed him," Grace whispered. She looked like she might faint. "Oh my god, Nova, I think I've killed him."
"He's still breathing, probably just stunned," Nova said, then looked again to check. "Wait here while I get the guard."
"No!" Grace caught her arm. "What if he dies? Nova, what'll happen to me if he dies?"
"A Caelumese spy? A slapped wrist at worst." She studied Grace's face for a moment. "You do know he was going to kill us both, don't you?"
Grace's expression didn't change from its horrified contortion, but she didn't get the chance to respond. A shockwave went through the castle, rooting Nova in place, setting her blood singing and instantly starting a headache behind her eyes. The air was hot with buzzing static. Through watering eyes, Nova saw Grace staring at her in bafflement.
"The outer wall just fell," she ground out between her teeth. "Hurts some if you're sensitive to it."
Grace rubbed her arms. Her hair was sticking up in every direction from the static. The shouting in the foyer had reached a din, and the front doors closed with a bang. "Oh god," she choked, on the verge of tears. She looked at the Angel bleeding on the floor. "Oh god, oh god, fuck."
Heat throbbed behind her eyes. Demons screamed outside, much closer than before. Her other wing was broken, too, she was sure, and a Caelumese spy was dying in front of them.
Fuck barely covered it.