by Mary Weber
“Continue,” Rolf yells. “Aim for their heads!” And the archers begin another set of one, two, three releases.
It’s effective, but not effective enough against corpses that feel no pain. Their hissing just grows louder and the black mist around them blows thicker.
“Nym?” King Sedric says from behind me.
I slide off of Haven and hand her reins to one of the soldiers assigned to me. “Stay away from her face,” I warn and move to retake my place beside Eogan. And raise one arm.
Waiting for it . . .
The airships drone closer—enough so that I can see their decks are also covered in wraiths and they’re carrying something attached to their hulls. I squint. What—?
“Bombs,” Eogan says.
“Nym?” King Sedric says, and this time I hear the nerves lacing his voice as the archers keep their arrows flying. The look on his face says I should feel free to make Draewulf and his Dark Army regret they ever crossed that channel to reach us. “Have at it,” he growls.
My lightning strikes rake across the hulls of a single ship but miss the others. The one I hit rocks and shivers and abruptly explodes into a fireball that is so far from natural it turns purple amid the flames. I jump back along with every soldier beside me as the pieces of wreckage drop down onto the wraiths beneath and take out as many as were on the ship itself.
“Bleeding litches,” one of the nearby soldiers mutters. “What are those things carrying?”
“Let’s not find out.” I drag another two bolts from the incoming clouds and shred through the air, but just before they hit a second ship, that black mist reaches up and surrounds it. And I swear it’s as if the sky’s fire bounces right off.
Another attempt, but the same thing happens.
“He’s fighting you,” Eogan says.
“Question is, where is he?”
“Keep focusing on the ships.” Eogan slips his hand over my owner circles and presses down until I feel my abilities respond to his and ignite. “Perhaps he’s on one.”
“He’d not be that idiotic.” But with one flick of my wrist, I pull down the entire cloud cover and slam it into the dark mist. A charge of friction snaps through the atmosphere so powerfully, it knocks against me and heats up my face. “What the—?”
Eogan grins at me, and I yank the storm clouds down again and again, in hopes of rattling Draewulf, or at the very least annoying him.
They spark and shiver and fire goes every which direction, but when I ease them up the ships are still in the air and the black mist is as thick as ever. And my arms and hands are aching and sweating.
The awareness pricks my thoughts that Draewulf is simply playing with me. What is it he’s waiting for? Why doesn’t he just unleash his hellish abilities and attempt to end this all now?
Litch. That overwhelming sense of helplessness settles over my shoulders. I grit my teeth. Fine, then.
“Your Majesty, might I suggest we engage at this time also?” Kenan points to the diminishing gap on the hillside between the Dark Army and us.
“Do you need me?” Eogan asks.
I shake my head. “I’ll let you know when.”
He moves over two paces before lifting his arrow weapon and pulling back the metal string. Then releases it into the oncoming mass of undead. The machine he’s holding is so powerful and sure, the arrow pierces three wraith heads before getting stuck in a fourth.
From behind me a number of men utter curse words, and I swear one of them is King Sedric. Ignoring them, I clench both fists and stir the clouds until they’re swirling above the Valley, and as they swirl, I create hailstones. Large, hard, and deadly. And lower the clouds again onto the mist, where the static meets, then releases them.
From the sound of the horn that blasts, my damage has made it through, and I sense a pushing back on the atmosphere. As if Draewulf is physically lifting my storm back. I press in harder, fiercer, only casually aware of Eogan resetting his weapon against his shoulder. Nearby me he holds the undercarriage with one hand while pulling back the metal string with the other.
And that’s when I feel it. Draewulf’s presence creeping closer.
I create more hailstones and let them fly beneath the mist.
Except something’s nudging in my head—something I should know. Something I should’ve realized.
Draewulf.
I glance around at the men surrounding me—at Sedric, at his soldiers, even at Eogan for a brief moment. Long enough to check the color of each of their eyes before scanning the faces farther out.
How fast can he heal enough to shape-shift from person to person? How many people here could he be inhabiting?
All he needs is one. The right one.
Rasha is standing stock-still with a sword in her hands, as if reading everything and everyone as fast as she can, while behind her Myles is studying the scene from behind his bars. I glance again at Eogan.
“You feel him too,” he mutters before sending three cross arrows into the heads of ten different wraiths.
I nod and pull down a strip of lightning and rip it across the entire first two rows of wraiths rushing beyond the mist to close the distance between our army and theirs. The ground beneath them explodes in dirt and rocks and fire—throwing them into the air and ripping apart many of their bodies. Those who’ve not lost their legs or heads keep running though, until they trip over the fallen wraiths.
Suddenly a group of Faelen farmers is descending with a battle cry. King Sedric’s sent them upon the rest of this first wave to finish them off.
I wipe sweat from my forehead and repeat the scenario four more times as more wraiths emerge from the mist. Perhaps there is a limit to Draewulf’s magic if he’s not stretching it after them to protect them.
Not that it matters, though. They just keep coming.
And my fire isn’t fast enough, nor are the archers or farmers, because the growling, slimy, decaying wraiths have broken through our ranks and all hulls breaks loose.
CHAPTER 37
THE SURGE OF BODIES ERUPTING FROM BEHIND US is accompanied by a war cry that curdles the blood beneath my skin. For the few battles and skirmishes I’ve been near over the years, I’ve never heard the Faelen people do this . . . scream this loud, this furious, this scared.
Five seconds later they’re shoving by the circle of grassy space the kings and I are standing in and slamming into the wraiths headed toward us, wielding their swords and hammers and axes with a fierceness that breathes hope and pride into my lungs.
My eyes warm as, in my peripheral, I catch sight of Allen the dwarf atop the largest oliphant with Kel moving toward us at a rapid rate along with his entire host of travellers. The smallest of which are blowing fire at the wraiths and the larger are performing acrobatics, leaping over and around the undead, their blades flashing as they lop off the monsters’ heads faster than imaginable.
The sight is so gruesome yet so effective I’m tempted to laugh a bit crazy-like. Instead, I continue tearing lightning through rows of the Dark Army lower down the hillside. The bolts coming down are also keeping the airships at bay. As if there’s an invisible line neither of us can cross—where Draewulf’s magic protects them, and where my storm will destroy them.
I shove harder—
“Nym, wait.”
King Sedric has turned from the beasts he’s just annihilated long enough to point his sword drenched with black wraith blood at the next wave heading up the hillside toward us.
“I know, but I can’t get through Draewulf’s barrier!” Even as I say it, the sight makes me sick. There are so many.
M
y hands falter and I stop in my tracks.
Good hulls, there are so many.
I’d been so busy focusing on fighting and feeling proud of those fighting beside me I hadn’t stopped to actually look at the effect we were having.
Which is none.
We are having no effect whatsoever compared to the hordes still waiting their turn to come against us. And as I peer around, I begin to see the bodies. My countrymen. Slashed and maimed by claws and teeth much sharper than any ax or dagger they owned.
Litch.
I aim icicles one at a time into the skulls of four, five, fifteen wraiths. But the people I was trying to protect are slaughtered anyway by the few who got through.
I look away and try not to vomit.
Our people are dying in droves.
I shut my eyes and feel Eogan and Kenan nearby, their weapons releasing arrows at whatever was just coming at them and me and King Sedric. I curl my hands into fists again and this time allow the dark ability in me to shiver. To swirl in just the slightest with my Elemental blood until the smallest hint of its hunger claws at my chest.
Good.
Slowly, carefully, so as not to lose it or let it take over, I push it out my lungs, my mouth, my breath into the sky above. Into the air hanging above that wretched black mist.
And begin to allow the ability-infused air to tug.
At Draewulf’s magic. At the mist. At the mass amounts of dead souls housed inside those hideous, empty shells.
A crack—like one of the fissures Colin used to create—appears in my mind’s eye, or perhaps in my Elemental blood, which is at one with the atmosphere enough to sense I’ve caused a disturbance in Draewulf’s layer of power.
And it’s all I need.
I slice lightning through the fissure and onto the wraith army underneath.
There it is. A smile forms on my face. This is how we might win.
“Nym, wait!” Sedric’s voice comes more urgent this time.
I open my eyes and frown. He’s pointing down again, and when I follow his gaze I realize I can see through the misty haze to the army below. Their black mass is interrupted by large patches of moving color. Wait, what the—? I peer harder.
It takes less than half a second to register what the colored patches are—and then for my lungs to dry up inside my chest. They are people.
Live people.
Wearing Cashlin and Tulla clothing.
Oh hulls. The wraiths have brought over innocent hostages from those kingdoms and sectioned themselves around them.
And surrounding them? Giant wraiths.
The Uathúils who’ve been turned.
“Eogan.”
He tosses aside his used-up metal weapon and pulls out his broadsword from the sheath across his back.
“Eogan.”
He looks up, then over, following my gaze to the beasts who’re moving the earth and calling out magical chants and traipsing toward us as if all the world’s elements are at their wicked disposal.
Litch.
And in that moment I sense it.
I let my fists fall and stare at the hostages and powerful wraiths. If I continue to fight with the elements, I will kill the people too. But it’s not just that—it’s something different about the atmosphere, about the scent of blood in the air and the smell of fear.
“Draewulf’s using more of his magic.” Eogan gasps and rips his sword up through the chin of a wraith’s head before yanking it out and taking off another’s.
“Yes, but for what exactly?” I yell back.
Eogan glances over long enough to bestow me with a sly wink. “To win the war.”
“I’m not sure your attempt at humor is well timed, Your Highness.” I yank two ice picks out of the air to shove into the heads of the wraiths about to lunge at us. And besides, this feels different.
When I turn back to Eogan, an enormous Uathúil wraith is moving in—from the looks of the way she’s holding her hands, she used to be Mortisfaire.
This feels like the monster’s done toying with us.
Eogan nods just as a splash of black blood lands on his cloak from the beast he’s gutted, and I duck the Uathúil claw coming toward me.
But the claw wasn’t for me.
It was for Eogan.
Hulls. I lunge at the beast to touch my hand to her head—to scald it with my bare skin and Elemental blood—and just as I do, Kenan steps in front of his king.
The claw comes down even as the wraith crumples beneath the ice from my hand.
Too late, though.
Kenan’s cry is cut off by the spurt of blood tearing from his throat.
“Nooo!”
Eogan’s yell is broken and more furious than I’ve ever heard him. He grabs Kenan as the soldier falls and presses his hands to the man’s neck, trying to stanch the blood.
I lean over him and use the ice still on my hands to try to help seal up the wound, but with the amount of blood leaving his body and the way his eyes have already rolled back, it’s all too clear.
Eogan’s face is flushed in fury. In pain. And in the distance I swear I hear Kel screaming. And running.
I don’t have time to respond to it, though, as a sudden, visible shuddering of the atmosphere ripples across my sight, my skin, my spine.
Lord Myles’s ability has just been activated.
Bracken.
I release the cloud cover and turn to the cart where Myles is being held. Rasha is standing beside him with her hand on his arm. I can sense the fog parting above us and the shafts of sunlight filtering through. I wave a hand and press the storm back farther farther farther until it’s out over the ocean and the daylight is reflecting off the thick, black mist now spread up almost to where we’re standing.
With it appears a mirage of a giant dungeon—one that looks startlingly like the inside glass walls of the Cashlin Castle. What the—?
Luminescents are suddenly walking around, giant size, and I swear even the wraiths stop in their tracks and stare at the beings in confusion.
I squint enough to clear the mirage from my sight, and then Eogan rises and shoves me aside to take another wraith’s head off with his sword.
I flip around to him, but rather than speak he simply points across the way toward the caged carts.
Bleeding hulls.
Draewulf is standing there with Lord Myles, Lady Isobel, and Princess Rasha. And at Rasha’s feet lie her dead Luminescents.
CHAPTER 38
BLEEDING LITCHES,” EOGAN MUTTERS, AND HIS tone is full of more malice than I’ve heard from him. “I’m going to rip his—” He grabs my hand and we start running—shoving through the wraiths and people alike toward Draewulf, who’s leering down at Rasha from his over seven feet of height. Whomever he disguised himself as in order to make it up to the cage area doesn’t matter—he’s in full-gloried wolf form now. And seeing Rasha beside him, facing him . . . My chest squeezes.
She’s wielding her sword—at first at him, I think, which he dodges adeptly and, I swear, appears to laugh. Except next thing I know the blade’s hit the door of Myles’s cage, then Isobel’s.
I frown. She’s freeing them.
For what?
I glance back at King Sedric and am relieved to see him still unaware of the monster’s presence as he fights alongside Rolf and the guardsmen right in the thick of it. Good. Let us take care of this before he gets himself killed too.
“Nym, look out!”
I p
eer back just in time to see Eogan flip his blade around and stab at a wraith who’s appeared from nowhere behind me, before turning to decapitate the disgusting thing. “Focus,” he says to me.
I tear a strip of lightning down to eliminate the five monsters to the right side of us. “What about Kel?”
“I lost sight of him right after Kenan fell. But I know he saw it. His face . . . I’m sorry.”
Bleeding hulls, please let Kel survive. My stomach clenches as the glimpse I get of Eogan’s face before he’s launching another attack says he’s thinking the same.
I rip through another four with a hail of ice picks. They were headed for Draewulf too, to assist him by the looks of their size and rags. How I know this, I’m not sure, but they remind me of the higher-up general wraiths who entered the War Room first in Bron.
When we near the place where Draewulf is standing, the black mist is already curling its way along the ground and our feet. As if drawing us in.
I shake it away from my ankles even as the spider in my veins reacts in hunger. Quiet, I tell her, and will more freedom to my Elemental blood.
“Eogan, I’ll go to the right, you—”
My voice cuts off with a guttural inhale as Draewulf shoves a claw around Rasha’s neck and snarls. Then he stops and his gaze swerves to me, ten paces away. He grins.
“Ah, there you are, pet. I’ve been waiting.” His eyes drop the briefest second to the body that lies at his feet.
Tannin. Or what’s left of him.
I stumble back. How did he—? When did—?
It doesn’t matter. At some point this morning he consumed the sweet guard and that is enough to know.
I let loose five shafts of ice so fast the first two pierce his arm before the mist surrounding him lifts into a shield. “You bleeding—”
He twitches a finger and Rasha cries out as if he’s snapped something inside her, and instantly Myles’s mirage lessens. “You know she’ll go just like her mother. Easier, in fact, now that I’ve got her mum’s ability.”
He licks his lips, but the next moment Lady Isobel’s stepped between me and her father and grins at me. Then slowly turns her gaze to Eogan, who has just taken out two of her wraiths.
