A Court of Secrets and Moonlight

62: Waves

Leur

1 month before the first war

I was falling.

The rush of wind in my ears, the feeling of weightlessness, the screeching of my shadows. Crystalline clear water rose up towards me, crashing with heavy waves and glistening with foam. I dove straight for it, willing my wings not to catch me. A final moment of freedom before the inevitable end, a moment of peace and serenity as I glided through the air. A breath, and I hit the water.

Then there was only silence.

Like clarity had came and swallowed me whole, like I was drifting in an endless plane. Nothing but utter silence, utter nothingness. I let myself linger in the endless blue, let the water claim me for a moment as I drifted away. Just one moment of peace before I swam upwards, my legs kicking hard against the pull of the alcohol in my veins. Up and up through the endless drift of the sea. The saltwater burned my eyes a bit as I watched the surface glow closer and closer, rays of sunlight dancing over the water as my arms slipped through, breaking through into warm afternoon air.

Cassian was howling with laughter as he treaded a few feet away, "That was fucking awesome!"

"I told you!" I called back to him.

My brother had been in a terrible mood lately. He was worried about the upcoming war, about our family being split into so many directions. He was still struggling with his placement in the Illyrian army, working as a mere foot soldier when he was just granted another siphon to control all of the power flowing within him. That brought him to a grand total of five, more so than any Illyrian soldier in history besides Azriel. He was a generational power, the kind of warrior that would go down in history books, and yet he was confined down to the lowest ranks simply because of status.

I wasn't doing well either. My father had me training with all of his personal spies day in and day out, preparing for my scheduled appearance in Hybern in two weeks. The others were told I was going into hiding in some undisclosed location. In reality, I was to be sworn into the inner court of our enemy.

That was why I decided to spend a day with just Cassian and I, showing him to this spot I had found hidden on the coastline of the Summer Court. Introducing him to cliff diving seemed like a good way to lift my brother's spirits. So I gathered bottles upon bottles of wine from my father's cellar, and winnowed us here. It was a remote beach, nothing but a few buildings on the coastline, fish processing factories and a few rickety old canneries. A massive cliff rose on a small peninsula jutting into the sea, the perfect spot for diving as the water was deep and the fall was long.

That was how we spent our afternoon, getting rip roaring drunk and throwing ourselves off of the cliffs into the waters below. The fishers out in the distant sea paid us no mind. I knew some of them, had spoken to them when I first found this place and introduced myself. They were used to seeing me here.

It didn't take long for Cassian to take a liking to it. He had already copied my movements and taught himself to do flips. He dove over and over again, seeing how many flips he could do before he hit the water, laughing like a little kid as he flew back up again. I laid on the rocks above, the sun warming my skin as I drank straight from a bottle of 150 year old wine. Music blared from a symphonia behind us.

"Did you see that one?" Cassian was smiling, as gleeful as the child he never got to be as I watched him.

"Yes, you flipped like ten times." I smiled at him, "I think you can do eleven though."

"I'll take that bet." He smirked at me, pulling the bottle from my hand and chugging it before flinging himself off the cliff once more.

In reality, it was more like three flips but I wasn't going to tell him that. Not when he was happier than I had seen him in a long time, carefree and experiencing freedom for one of the first times in his life. I got up and jumped after him, my body gliding into the water as the tang of the alcohol made my head spin. We were laughing like fools as we shot from the water, black wings flaring wide to carry us back up.

"I have an idea." Cassian turned to me, a bright smile on his face.

"What's that?" I asked, popping the cork of our next bottle. I had lost count after the first three, my words slurring as I spoke them now.

"What if we fly up higher and then dive from the air?" He mused, taking the bottle from my hand and taking a slug. I copied him as he handed it back to me.

It was purely the alcohol that answered him, "Fuck yes."

So we did. We made it a competition to see who could fly higher and drop from the sky, plunging into the deep waters below. My vision was blurry, my thoughts barely there as I we tried from higher and higher. There was nothing but our laughter, the utter glee from the both of us.

Until Cassian got the bright idea to gain more speed by flying as high as he could go, and pushing with his wings as he rushed towards the water. His power flared out behind him, uncontrolled by the lone siphon on his hand as he descended. I watched as he hit the water curled in on himself in a ball, just a bit too close to the coastline. A massive wave appeared, powered by glowing red light, unrestrained, raw, and destructive Illyrian power pushing it higher and higher, faster and faster.

"Oh shit." I muttered.

The wave crashed onto the shore with such force that the entire ground shook with its force. And then, I watched in utter horror as the old cannery was swallowed by it.

Hours later, I was sending out prayers of thanks to the Mother that my father was currently busy in the Hewn City meeting with Kier. He had sent Rhys in his stead when the High Lord, Nostrus, had heard what we had done and called for him.

And I was still drunk off my ass as I watched my brother get screamed at by the High Lord of the Summer Court.

Cassian and I sat in the corner like petulant children as Rhys worked the man over, who had been calling for whippings for us both. Instead, my brother bargained it down to just a lifetime ban for the both of us from the Summer Court.

When we all winnowed back to the House of Wind, Cassian and I still drunk and missing most of our clothes, I expected Rhys to be at least a little angry. I expected, at bare minimum, a few stern words before he made fun of us.

But it never came. He just sighed, a moment of silence stretching between the three of us as Cassian and I waited with bated breath. He plopped down on the couch, his head in his hands. Time seemed to slow down as I waited for that small outburst.

But then he started laughing.

Cassian looked over at me as if he was wondering if our brother had lost his mind. But Rhys's laughter only grew, until he was a howling mess on the couch. It was infectious, not long before everything that had happened came rushing back in my mind, and all I could see was the look on Cassian's face as he resurfaced and saw the cannery in utter shambles.

The three of us could barely breathe, holding our stomachs as laughter poured out of us. I was leaning over the couch, gasping for breath when Azriel walked into the room.

"What the fuck is going on in here?" He said, brows raised, sheathed in pure black shadow as he stared out at the three of us. Our laughter paused as we looked at him, and then back at each other.

We all burst out laughing again in sync.