Zade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Zade knelt in the snow where the last of his court had died, and tried to lift a shard of black ice the size of his hand. It weighed nothing. He could not move it. Three winters ago, he had held a ridge alone against a thing without a name. It came out of the deep frost and it broke his people the way a boot breaks a bird's nest. He had sworn, as their guardian, to shield each of them. When the last one fell, the oath fell with her, and his power went quiet inside him like a snuffed lamp. A fae of his order could not weave shadow to its full weight without someone living to protect. He had known this. He had not believed how empty it would feel. He stood. Seven feet of him, wrapped in a cloak that once moved like a second skin and now only hung. The silver veins under his tan had gone dull. His wings would not come at all. He had tracked the thing that killed his court for three winters, following claw-marks in ice and stories in mountain villages. Each time he closed the distance, he felt how little he could bring to the fight. A guardian without a charge. A blade with no hand. Something small coughed in the snow behind him. He turned. A snow leopard cub lay on its side under a broken pine. Silver fur, spotted like old coins. One ice-blue eye open, the other crusted shut with frozen blood. Its tail-tip glowed faintly, a smear of pale green light on the snow. He knew what it was. The old stories called them aurora-kin, born once in a hundred winters, and the thing he hunted ate them first. Claw-marks scored the trunk above the cub. Fresh. The cub tried to hiss at him and managed a small wet sound instead. Zade crouched. He had walked past dying creatures before. His job had been men, women, the sworn. Not this. "If I take you up," he said, "I take you for keeps." The cub bit weakly at his glove. He lifted it anyway. It fit in the curve of one palm. He pressed his thumb against the ruined eye and spoke the old binding under his breath, the words a guardian says once and never takes back. Heat moved through his chest. The silver veins under his skin brightened and began to pulse. Behind him, without his asking, his wings unfurled in a rush of smoke and cold air, and the snow around his boots went dark as a well. The shard of black ice at his feet lifted an inch off the ground on its own. The cub looked up at him with its good eye. Zade tucked it inside his cloak, against the warmth of his ribs. Then he lifted his head and looked at the fresh claw-marks on the pine. The thing that had killed his court was close, and now he had something to lose again.