“I’m more than happy to swear my sword to Alek and help in any way I can,” Wymund said, exchanging respectful nods with the other man.
Wymund joined us at the morning’s cook fire as we discussed the plan to take back the city. We wouldn’t have the element of surprise for long—while the Tamers’ familiars had left us alone since Evie’s whistle rocks, I knew they still sent spies. Not every familiar was a dog, and it was hard to trust that other animals weren’t watching us.
Zhari was the primary concern, though we also didn’t have numbers on our side. The cavalry would provide some advantage to a point—provided the Sonnenbornes didn’t have an equally large army of their own skirmishers. Mare told them about all the horses she’d seen at the Winter Court’s stables, which meant that they likely had at least a few. What concerned me most was Zhari’s ability to throw magic back in the face of the most powerful magic users we had left to us—she’d defeated us with no effort at all, and after draining Fadeyka’s power, she was as strong as she possibly could be.
But then the queen swept in with ideas of her own.
“If what Zhari wants is to kill me,” the queen said, “then we pretend to give her that chance.”
“Your Majesty,” Wymund said, his expression shocked, “we can’t have you risk yourself that way.”
“Oh, but we can, and we also need to make use of the few magic users we have left,” the queen said. “Zhari is no fool. By now she knows that a few of you have escaped her clutches, and her spies will bring word that I’ve arrived. It won’t take long for her to mount an attack. It wouldn’t surprise me if she sent an army of Sonnenbornes and Tamers to destroy this camp before sundown.”
I shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold.
We talked through all of it and decided to make our move that night. We split up the cavalry into small groups paired with foot soldiers, devising a plan to have them enter the city in small batches that would make it more difficult for the enemy to determine their numbers. The narrow, sloped streets would make for poor fighting grounds for a large force of cavalry anyway. They’d go in and choose their fights carefully until I gave a signal that they were to converge on the Winter Court. Those who weren’t fighters would slip into the city in manifest form and disarm as many Sonnenbornes as they could by stealth.
And the strongest magic users remaining would go after Zhari herself.
The stealth contingent left first, just before sundown. Cavalry and foot soldiers followed when the sun hit the horizon, and the queen winged off ahead of them, ready to draw Zhari out of her tower. I watched them go with anxiety drawing its noose ever tighter around my neck. Those of us traveling by magic did so in the cover of darkness. This time, Evie and Tristan came with us—we needed every weapon and Affinity we had at our disposal. Only Laurenna stayed behind, still recovering from her peaceroot exposure and, in my opinion, not entirely to be trusted. When the time came, Alek, Evie, and I pooled our powers to support Tristan as he opened the portal to the shadowlands. I murmured a prayer under my breath as we stepped in. Zumorda might be a godless place, but it still gave me strength to feel like the gods might be watching over me.
There wasn’t time to be sick when we dropped from the shadowlands into the Winter Court’s mausoleum. I gathered my nerves, trying to focus on the necessity of the battle ahead rather than the fact that people I loved were walking into mortal danger. If we couldn’t defeat Zhari, she’d kill Queen Invasya and throw Zumorda into chaos. Defying customs and traditions by choosing an heir, as the queen had once suggested, was one thing; a demigod murdering the monarch for revenge was entirely another. It put all the Northern Kingdoms at risk.
From the mausoleum it was a short walk upstairs to the medics’ building, where we encountered the first Sonnenborne sentries outside. Alek and Mare sprang into action in front of us to attack the three fighters. I clenched my fists as the nearest soldier came at Mare with a mace, holding in my magic and the emotions that made me want to rain hell on anyone who tried to hurt her. I needed to reserve my energy for the battle with Zhari. Mare made the sword work look easy, and though she’d said credit was owed to her weapon, I could tell it was more than that. Her dark winter clothes couldn’t entirely hide the way her figure and bearing had changed in the moons I’d been away. She fought with the same pride I’d seen her radiate on horseback.
“This is it,” I said as soon as the bodies of the sentries had been moved out of easy view, and I lifted my arm to the sky. I shot a beacon into the air, a crackling explosion of flame above the tower that gave our small army the signal to move toward the court. I prayed they would be successful. Everything else relied on us.
I opened the shields on my mind for no more than a heartbeat to share the message: It’s time.
We rushed through the medics’ building as the queen swooped down to the courtyard and landed with white wings outstretched. She unleashed a burst of flame, sweeping it across the area to incinerate at least a dozen Sonnenbornes, some of whom were posted as guards, and others who were attending a few dead bodies I had to surmise had been casualties of Alek and Mare’s first trip to the tower. The acrid smell of burning hair and bodies filled the air, making us choke on the smoke. It took everything I had to settle the churning in my stomach enough to keep moving forward.
Several of the dead soldiers lurched to their feet at Tristan’s command as we passed their bodies, stiffly hurrying ahead of us to provide a shield. I shuddered involuntarily. As grateful as I was for Tristan’s presence, some of his powers were deeply unnerving. I doubted the reanimated fighters would help against Zhari, but at least a moving wall of corpses was likely to slow down any additional Sonnenbornes we encountered inside the tower.
As it turned out, we didn’t get a chance to enter the building. The doors opened as we approached. Bright light flooded into the courtyard and Zhari walked out, a wicked smile on her face at the sight of the queen in dragon form. A delicate circlet adorned her brow, and six Sonnenborne soldiers flanked her on all sides. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up at the sight of her.
“Would you like us to dispose of them, my queen?” one of the Sonnenbornes asked.
Queen? I reeled with shock. Her plans went far deeper than killing Invasya. If she was already considered the queen of Sonnenborne, then she must have been also after the crown of Zumorda. It would be the start of an unstoppable empire. Mare glanced at me, and I saw my own love and fear reflected in her expression. I set my jaw and summoned my magic, letting heat flood into my closed fists until I was poised for attack. If Zhari wanted to destroy Zumorda and kill the people I loved, she’d have to get through us first.
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Tristan said, launching his undead soldiers at the Sonnenborne guards. The dead men swung their swords wildly, splattering the flagstones with blood as they connected with the enemy and were hacked to pieces.
Zhari raised her hand, and all four of the dead men came to a standstill, then dropped to the ground. She smiled at Tristan, but there was no warmth in her expression. “There is no Affinity or power in the Northern Kingdoms I haven’t seen ten times over,” she said.
Alek shoved a wave of water toward Zhari. At a small gesture from her, the water surged up and away, evaporating and re-forming overhead as a cloud. With a single breath, she blew on it and it dissipated. My determination faltered. She made it look so easy to counteract every spell, as if it took her no effort. For all I knew, it didn’t.
I pulled on everything I could, opening myself fully to what I was capable of. Chunks of stone dislodged from the surrounding buildings, and I ignited them with streams of flame pouring from my hands. With a feral yell, I shoved everything toward Zhari. Rocks slammed into the tower behind her, shattering the ornate plasterwork that hadn’t already been torn up.
When the dust and smoke settled, Zhari stood amidst it with not a single scratch on her. If anything, she looked more powerful and radiant than ever. Fear raced down my spine, and I c
ouldn’t help worrying that we were fools for even trying to fight her. With a wave of her hand, Zhari surrounded herself with a silvery bubble of magic. We kept up our onslaught of attacks, but every spell that hit the shield only served to make it glow more brightly. The queen blasted Zhari with power, her anger seeming to override the logic that what she was doing wasn’t working. I held back, desperately searching for weaknesses in Zhari’s magical shields, but there were none.
Nothing we did had any effect on her.
I leaped out of the way as Zhari reflected back one of Alek’s spells to shoot icy missiles in our direction. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Mare narrowly avoiding the thrust of one of the soldiers’ javelins. Rage blazed through me, and without thinking I launched a series of fireballs at the fighter. He swiftly fell over, blazing like a human torch. Zhari collected some of my flames in her hands, drawing them from the air and the burning man. I watched in horror as the flames turned to sparks, which morphed into bolts of lightning that gathered around her hands. She flung them at me in a killing blow. I tried to run, but the breadth of the magic was far too great for me to escape. Time seemed to slow down as the bolts crackled through the air. Just as the magic was about to hit me and I had resigned myself to my fate, Alek leaped in front of me. His water shield had taken on a glow luminous as the moon, and it hissed when the bolts struck it. Blinding light flashed and the shield collapsed in on itself, then back on him. He fell heavily on the ground. I stumbled out of the way of Zhari’s next attack, but when I looked back to check if Alek had stood up to rejoin the battle, he lay as still as the stones beneath him.
TWENTY-NINE
Amaranthine
“ALEK!” I SCREAMED, BUT MY VOICE WAS LOST IN THE din of fighting and he didn’t respond. I wanted to run to his side, but I’d only make myself an easy target for Zhari or the next round of her Sonnenborne defenders.
I edged along the wall of the medics’ building in the shadows as Denna rejoined the fray. Tears glistened on her cheeks as she slung fireballs with what I knew to be deliberately poor aim. We had moved on to our contingency plan, which my uncle Casmiel would have summed up as “if you can’t dazzle them with brillance, baffle them with horseshit.” Tristan filled the courtyard with illusions of death meant to confuse and distract, and Evie focused on neutralizing anything Zhari attempted rather than casting spells of her own. Zhari stumbled forward, clearly disoriented, her face twisted with anger. I was almost behind her, and Evie stepped in front of me to give me cover. Everything counted on the others keeping Zhari distracted, and I prayed she wouldn’t turn and see me behind her.
“Now!” Denna yelled.
I thrust my arm forward, plunging my sword through the bright light surrounding Zhari. As Denna had predicted, Zhari hadn’t shielded herself from physical attacks. The sword slid between the woman’s ribs and curved out the front, straight through her heart. My blade burst with light and I screamed, stumbling back from Zhari’s body as it shattered into sparkling dust.
I dropped my sword on the courtyard’s flagstones, cringing because I knew Alek wasn’t going to care about my ringing ears—he would still scold me for ever dropping my weapon. But as the last few Sonnenbornes were chased off and the magic users slowly dropped their guard, Alek’s reprimand never came.
When my vision cleared, I grabbed my sword and rushed over to where he’d fallen. Evie knelt by his side, her hands on his chest.
“Is he . . .” I didn’t get through the rest of the question.
“It’s too late,” Evie said.
Denna stepped up alongside me with tears pooling in her eyes. “He shouldn’t have jumped in front of me like that. I could have shielded.”
Tristan joined the circle around Alek. “Not from Zhari, you couldn’t. He saved your life.”
I put my arm around Denna as a sob racked her body, my own chest tightening with grief. Alek had seemed indomitable, not like someone who could be taken out by a single blow, even if it was dealt by the hands of a demigod. And in spite of our differences and how much I’d hated him for most of our acquaintance, he had always been a steady presence I could count on. His gruffly barked instructions had chased me around the salle even when he wasn’t there. The unimpressed expression that never left his face had become so familiar to me that it was as comforting as it was infuriating. There were a hundred more things I’d hoped to learn from him, and another hundred comebacks I’d hoped to dream up to match his barbed comments.
I knelt beside him, ignoring the sound of horseshoes clattering over stone as my cavalry drew closer to us.
I placed a hand on his shoulder and took a deep breath. “May our swords always meet on the same side of the battlefield.”
“And may our shields always be side by side,” the others said softly.
I stood up and leaned into Denna. Zumorda had lost its greatest warrior, and I had lost someone I never expected to be a mentor—or such a loyal friend.
THIRTY
Dennaleia
WYMUND’S FOOT SOLDIERS POURED INTO THE WINTER Court shortly after Zhari’s death, escorted by one of the small bands of Mynarian cavalry. What they found was a small cohort of exhausted magic users huddled around Alek’s body, and nothing left of Zhari but the coronet she’d worn during her brief reign as queen of Sonnenborne. I stood beside Mare, clutching her hand. She’d managed to regain some composure. The breakdown would come later, once she had some time to process all we’d been through—especially the loss of Alek. I kept my gaze focused on Mare, letting her be my anchor. My eyes would flood with tears if I let my gaze linger on Alek’s body. He’d saved my life at far too high a cost, and though I knew I couldn’t have stopped him, guilt racked me to know he’d exchanged his life for mine. As for Queen Invasya, she’d already taken to the skies, swooping over her reclaimed city and looking for stragglers to kill, lest they think about returning to her kingdom.
One representative each from the cavalry and foot soldiers came to us as soon as their people were organized in the courtyard. As they approached, the cavalry rider sat astride her gray mare with the grace I’d witnessed in nearly every Mynarian I’d met, and the tall Zumordan foot soldier beside her recounted a story that involved more gesturing than I would have thought possible wearing relatively heavy armor and carrying a battle ax. There was a surprising ease between the two fighters, no doubt forged in the battle that had taken place in Kartasha’s streets.
“The streets are ours, Your Highness,” the Mynarian rider reported to Mare.
“Mostly ours,” the captain of the foot soldiers corrected the rider. “My people are still purging the last of them from the city. It’ll be hard to make sure they’re all out until daylight.”
“Zhari’s quarters and the tower need to be searched immediately,” Mare told him. “Do you have enough people to spare?”
“We do,” he replied. “When will the refugees be allowed back into the Winter Court—is there a repopulation plan?”
“After we confirm that people can return, we need to make sure they get in safely,” Mare said. “Most important, they need to feel safe once they’re here. First, let’s get soldiers to search the areas where Zhari would most likely have been hiding anything unpleasant. Split them into two groups, and make sure no one goes anywhere alone.”
“We’ll see to it.” The leader of the soldiers saluted. “I’ll send you a group to allocate shortly.”
“As for the cavalry, please assign a few riders to search the stables and make sure the horses are fed. The Six only know where the usual stable help is in this mess.” She cast her eyes toward the barn, and I knew she was thinking of Flicker. I had no doubt she’d be down there to check on him as soon as she was able.
Pride swelled in my chest at Mare’s easy command of the fighters. She was making such wise decisions in spite of the tragedy that weighed on all of us. Who knew what else Zhari had lurking in the tower or hidden elsewhere at the Winter Court? There were no guarantees she’d been a
cting entirely alone. Part of me itched to search buildings with the soldiers, though I wasn’t ready to be separated from Mare. I was curious how deep the conspiracy ran between Zhari and the Sonnenbornes, and hoped some of the evidence the soldiers turned up might help explain that. What I longed to know most of all, though, was more about the seventh god. It seemed unfathomable that the religion I’d been raised in was somehow incomplete or wrong. I wanted to seek the truth.
But first, I wanted to be with Mare.
“You’ve become so strong,” I told her when she finally had everyone organized and set off on their tasks.
“I have Alek to thank for that,” she said softly.
“I don’t just mean that you learned to use a sword,” I said. “It’s more than that. Command suits you.” And it did. As hotheaded as she often was, being in control tempered that, giving her the opportunity to execute her ideas instead of blowing up because no one was listening to her. She was thinking things through and asking more questions.
“I have no idea what I’m doing.” She looked out over the courtyard, weariness heavy in her expression. “What I learned in the last two moons . . . it doesn’t feel like enough.”
“There will always be more to learn,” I said. That held true no matter where one was in life. “The important thing is that you are enough.”
“What can we do to help?” Evie asked. Both she and Tristan looked exhausted.
“Nothing,” Mare replied. “You were both brilliant.”
“Find your family,” I said softly to Evie.
Mare nodded her agreement.
“I’ll go with her if you don’t mind,” Tristan said.
Evie grabbed his hand and gave him a tired smile that brought a flush to his cheeks.
“We’ll catch up with you later,” Evie said.
The four of us said our temporary good-byes, and then hand in hand, Mare and I walked toward the wall of the court. We climbed the narrow stairs to the lookout on the wall, and were rewarded with a view of the city.
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