“You would ask?” he repeats slowly and with incredulity.
I hold my ground, hoping that by giving him a choice, one that I doubt Father gave him, it will sway him to our side.
Water churns over Bree’s palm in a small sphere, and she shifts her weight. “Caden…” she says, with warning in her tone.
She’s urging me to make a move, but I have to try to reach him.
“Your power isn’t enough,” Olivia calls, dropping down from the branches above us and landing like a lion about to pounce. “We’re well-matched, you and I. Shaker brethren.” Her lips curve and leaves dance up her limbs. “Work with us. Aside from being outnumbered, you’ll have the comfort of knowing you fight for the prince. For the side of right.”
I suppose it’s good to know that Jospuhr’s people actually want to fight with us instead of simply being commanded to.
Elena jumps in next. “I know what it’s like to have decisions taken from you, Everett. I had to fight for him once, too.”
“But if we have to take the decision from you…” Liam says softly, trailing off.
“We will,” Meddie finishes, voice grim with a promise that her knives will keep.
Everett is quiet for a moment, still, with a hand to his lips in thought.
Then, he smiles.
“No.”
Bree draws herself up, the water in her hand rearing back like a snake about to strike. “So be it.”
Twenty-Three
Bree
Dark branches twitch from Everett’s form like a spider’s legs, waiting for prey to wander into its web.
The words are spoken; our positions, clear. And I will not be prey. Caden’s efforts for peace have failed, so I see no point in wasting more time with words.
Everett wants a future as violent as one of his quakes? Fine. I’ll give it to him.
I hurl the first strike, water pummeling into Everett’s face like a heavy fist.
He reels back with the blow, his Adept hood knocked from his face, and Meddie seizes his distraction to throw one of her knives, pinning his cloak to the ground. Like different parts of the same, well-greased wheel, Caden sprints forward to deliver the final strike.
But the moment that he’s moved, dirt kicking up behind him, Everett thrusts out a hand that fairly trembles with the force of his rage. His expression dark, his eyebrows drawn, the innocent soil pelts Caden back like a thousand tiny arrows.
Caden throws up an arm, trying to keep the pellets at bay. Fabric tears at his forearm, and my breath catches in my throat as I twist water for another blow, unable to tear my eyes from Caden’s exposed and vulnerable skin. The earth continues to pelt him, slicing into skin already puckered and scarred from injuries past.
Blood streaks from his wounds in a polluted red river. But he struggles onward, keeping a tight grip on the pommel of his sword.
Olivia shoots forward, a hand raised to the air.
Makers bless her. The dirt stills.
She gives Caden a nod when he glances at her in thanks.
My attention snaps back to Everett, who has scrambled to the edge of the trees enclosing us. Ducking my head, I dodge one of his sinewy tree branches, writhing like a tentacle of pure muscle. The next strike, however, comes from a root and sweeps my feet from beneath me.
I slam into the ground with a graceless thud. Breath vacates my lungs as the root twines its way around me as though trying to create a chrysalis over my form. It gropes beneath my arms, ties around my stomach as I’m lifted high into the leaves.
The root squeezes.
Steel flashes in the light—Meddie and Liam, flying to my defense, slashing angrily at the twisting wood that holds me captive. Caden throws panicked glances our way, trapped in a duel with Everett’s tree limbs, while Elena does her best to give aid, blasting them with flame.
Olivia crashes to the ground below me, and though her hands work furiously in an effort to free me, the root does not relax. Air is not restored to me.
My heart thunders in my chest, panic setting in as spots dance in my vision. But I will not go so easily. Others have attempted to steal my breath away before. And I’ve learned how to think through it, even as my mind is deprived of the sustaining force.
An epiphany strikes like lightning: slippery objects are hard to hold onto.
There’s little time left as water whizzes through the air at my behest. With a drawn fist, I pull it down around me to line my body, icing my skin, making my form slick. Before Everett, with his attention focused on defending his position and attacking the others, can compensate for the change, I wriggle free, landing, once again, with a thud.
I heave a strangled gasp as air rushes into my lungs, waving away Liam, Meddie, and their ministrations.
“Go,” I choke out.
They don’t require further assurance of my well-being. I can move and speak; I’m alive and we’re fighting to stay that way, so the two of them dash away. Trained for battle, they run pell-mell toward Elena, having a hurried conference that I can’t hear as Olivia and Everett fight for control over the earth.
Caden and his sword come to my side. “You’re well?” he asks, extending a hand to help me up.
“Are you?” I’m barely on my feet when roots shoot toward us again. This time, my palms propel ice forward, the black roots freezing in their tracks. Caden crashes the butt of his sword down and they shatter.
A scream looses itself from Everett’s throat.
Closer to the source of our trials, Liam makes a cup of his hands. Meddie takes a running leap into them, and he heaves upward, launching her toward Everett. Aided by a burst of wind, courtesy of Elena, I suck in a breath as Meddie and her blade very nearly slash into Everett’s face.
Nearly.
That’s before a branch knocks her from the air.
Meddie hits the ground and groans, curling into herself and shaking her head in an attempt to clear it.
“Medalyn?” Liam calls across the swimming air, sword in constant motion as he engages the earth Everett commands. His brow is furrowed in worry, but he dares not move his eyes from the battle he’s waging.
“Fine,” she manages on a gasp, coughing around the blow and waving a hand at him. “Carry on.”
“Good girl,” Elena murmurs in approval as she flits past me.
Caden’s darted away to lend them aid, and I stand alone as another branch heads toward me, but I’m ready for it. Again, I send water arcing around it so that it laces its outside and burrows into its available crevices. Concentrating, it turns white as it ices from the inside out. Then, I draw a blade from my own belt and stab, the frozen plant fracturing where my ice nestled into it.
Everett screams in pain and fury, the sound ripping from him as if it was one of his own limbs I stabbed into.
Startled for a moment, I drop my knife and scramble to snatch it back up again.
My eyes flick about, trying to figure out which of them need my help the most. Caden slashes frantically at a tangle of vines—thorned ones, the likes of which I’ve never seen in Abeline. Olivia swears, doing her best to keep them at bay, but Everett is either more practiced or more powerful than her because every time one vine stills, it births a new one. First a thorn, then it grows. Sprouting, crowning like a newborn babe, until it’s matured in the span of seconds—a lifetime before our eyes, grown and waging a war against us.
Makers, how we’ve underestimated him.
Fire streams from Elena’s palms, turning the spindly branches that reach for her to ash. Her gift wraps itself around Caden’s sword until it is a blade wreathed in flames. The fiery weapon seems to have a greater effect—for the moment, anyway.
Olivia reels back from one of Everett’s blows, catapulted through the air. I watch in horror as she streaks toward the ground at a devastating angle.
A glove of leaves snatches her up like a child catching a ball, saving her, and I breathe a sigh of relief. The leaves deposit her gently beside me and Meddie, who’s appeared
at my side as she fends off the wild strikes of some of the innumerable branches.
“This is going well,” Meddie comments. She swings a pointed left hook at one of Everett’s tree appendages and leaps back as it tries to retaliate.
“Swimmingly,” Olivia agrees dryly. Dirt streaks her cheeks. She manages to gain control over the tree limbs that we’re engaged with and sends them darting toward Everett like pointed spears.
My heart pounds, and my head is beginning to swim from the energy I’m expending with all of this Throwing. How is Everett maintaining this level of control for this long?
And more importantly, where is our backup? By now, a veritable fleet of Elementals should have swarmed into this space. I fight back the stab of doubt that, even with them, we’d gain ground. Everett’s far more powerful than I bargained.
But when I chance a glance around, I remember that blur of movement when Caden and I had slid past trees coalescing into a wall.
We’re trapped. The only way out is up, toward the endless expanse of sky. But with only one Air Rider in our party—a Rider who is more of a Torcher, at that—our only hopes of an escape are defeating Everett and getting Olivia a spare minute to work a gap in the tree trunks, or one of the other Shakers doing so from the outside.
But when I glance at Everett, a slow smile slides across his face and everything—all of the swinging branches, the dried leaves slashing through the air, even the singing sound of steel once the plant life returns to an insensate stillness we’re used to—stills.
Bewildered, we all lower our weapons, eyeing Everett in confusion. Why would he surrender now? Now, when he seems only to be drawing strength from the fight, but the rest of us are beginning to show our fatigue.
No. That’s not it at all.
“I see we’ve got company,” he says.
Damn. Caden’s eyes meet mine, mouth slack in dismay.
There will be no element of surprise here. The cavalry’s arrived, but in all of the commotion, I’d allowed myself to forget his Locus abilities. Everett is barefoot. In all of the battle’s chaos, he’d managed to kick off his boots, giving himself an even greater advantage. He’s tethered to the earth. The skin-to-soil contact only strengthens his connection, allowing him to be warned of incoming adversaries.
“Don’t worry,” Olivia mutters from the side of her mouth, eyes on Everett.
‘Don’t worry?” A twig slithers over her foot, and I eye it. What is she playing at? Something as minor as a twig won’t have any effect on Everett, not when he’s wielded dozens more, ten times its size, and managed to coordinate their strikes simultaneously, without batting an eye at the complexity of the Shaking.
The twig lengthens into a slinking vine, creeping along her toes and around her heel. Not wanting to betray whatever move she’s trying to make, my eyes dart back to her as she continues speaking.
“Lord Jospuhr’s other Shakers are skilled. They’ll get through his wall and the battle will turn. They just—”
The dark vine sharpens into a spear and stabs into Olivia’s spine.
Her mouth opens in a wordless scream as she stiffens. The plant only burrows deeper beneath her skin, wriggling through the gash it created without care for how it splits her skin, how our screams—hers, of pain; mine, of horror—rend the air. The others’ heads whip toward us. I grab Olivia by the shoulders, heart in my throat, trying to rip her from Everett’s grasp as his laugh echoes in my ears. Makers, it hadn’t been her wielding that little snake of a vine at all.
Everett had allowed us to think he was distracted. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
As though she’s nothing more than a puppet on a stick, he draws Olivia’s limp form toward him. Her eyes are wide, seeing and unseeing all at once. She looks at us…but through us. Her pain casts her gaze somewhere far beyond all of this.
Caden casts one horrified look back at me, and we turn to look at the forest floor, twitching beneath our feet. It writhes with dark little vines, hungry for playthings as their brethren had just been gifted with.
It could be this easy for Everett. This could prove all of our undoings.
“We should show our guests in,” he says and grins.
As Olivia hangs like a scarecrow in the branches above him, the wall falls—and my heart with it when I see what waits behind it. Not the battalion we need. Only Aleta and Tregle with their hunting party.
We’ve scarcely taken a breath before Everett spears their Shaker in the same fashion that he captured Olivia—a berry, plucked from their grasp.
Aleta’s mouth drops open, but she recovers from her shock expediently. A vine grumbling toward them is batted away with a blast of flame.
Lilia’s sword slashes up to behead one of the deadly brambles. She spits as it falls to the ground. “Never did have much of a green thumb.”
I throw up a wall of ice as one dives toward me.
I can’t keep this up alone for long.
But—thank the Makers—Aleta and Tregle have brought another Wielder with them. She rushes to my side, and back-to-back, we extend the wall to the ground beneath our feet, keeping us safe from that direction, at least.
“I’ll defend for a moment. Take my flask, Your Majesty. You need to drink. And badly,” she says, barely needing to look at me to see it.
I can’t afford to swoon from fatigue here, so shaking—sweating from the effort—I unhook her flask and drink, swiping a hand across my lips and resuming my fighting stance. The Wielder returns my share of the defense as I screw my eyes up in concentration. From the corners of my eyes, I see Elena ring herself, Liam, and Meddie in a cage of fire.
But she won’t be able to keep non-Torchers safe that way for long. Already, their cheeks are red from heat and streaked with trails of sweat as they strain toward the sky, desperate for air, but Elena’s minute Rider abilities seem to be exhausted.
Still. They’re as safe as they can be in this moment.
But not Caden. He’s alone, only a sword to defend him. Everett’s vines back him toward the edges of the trees and one of Caden’s palms sprawls across the wood, seeking an avenue of escape.
There isn’t one.
Panting, he seems to realize this at the same time that I do. His eyes flash up to meet mine. His mouth firms and he attempts a futile effort to save himself.
My defense drops, and the Wielder swears, seizing my share of the task as I abandon her.
Caden. No, no, no. I can’t have him lost to me again. I streak toward him, shouting, as he propels himself from the trees, trying to dive over the vines that attack him from every angle.
If I can just grab him with my water… I strain. Almost there. Almost. Caden stretches out his hand, and desperate, I extend the water in a last lunge, as far as it will reach.
It races forward, frosting the ground on its track to reach Caden. I am just behind it.
We are fast, the water and I.
We are not fast enough.
In a movement reminiscent of a whip, Everett’s root snaps. It slices into Caden’s back and drags him away.
My rage is a monstrous, incoherent beast of a thing.
I scramble after Caden in the fallen leaves. My arms slash the air, water slicing at Everett like knives, but he doesn’t even wince, simply lifts a thick bough to block my strikes.
I’m fighting to keep my attention on the battle, but rage blankets my vision. The only hole in it is Caden.
My heart twists at the sight of him because his body is limp.
But his eyes are screaming.
With the prize of the prince in hand, Everett seems to have tired of this farce of a battle. His head turns away, and my rage-blindfold lifts enough for me to see his intention.
Aleta.
Lightning-quick, another bramble lashes toward her. No. I can’t lose her, too. A shout of warning rips from my throat, and she turns to heed it.
Too slow. I can already tell that it’s too slow.
Knowing it’s a fruitless effort, knowing that
I have to try, I scrabble to reach her. But the branches are upon her.
And then…they are not.
Aleta’s body bows in the middle, convulsing with the impact Tregle makes as he barrels into her.
Sprawling and free, her body rolls to safety. She tumbles through the scattered leaves and dead earth, over rotting roots and lands, panting, hair scraggly in her eyes as Everett recovers from her unexpected evasion. Another vine pummels toward her, but Aleta is quicker this time, blasting it with a white-hot scorch of flame. The plant withdraws petulantly—a child’s hand, struck reaching for a forbidden sweet.
In the spot where Aleta stood, Tregle cries out.
I barely have time to process the horror in Aleta’s eyes before my head whips around. Like Olivia—like Caden, Makers—Tregle has been strung on a vine like thread through the needle.
And just like the others, there is no way for us to reach Tregle as Everett draws him close.
Makers, the Shaker looks like drawings of sea monsters we'd see in old storybooks, meant to frighten us as children. Roots like tentacles; branches, extra arms over his head; our friends, his puppets—marionette dolls.
Dangling like bait on a fisherman's hook.
My shouts coalesce with Aleta’s. I can’t divine her sounds from my own. Can’t tell them from Elena and the Wielder’s swears, from the exertions of Lilia, Liam, and Meddie as they hurl their muscles toward the task at hand. Our strikes grow wilder with increasing desperation. My arms weigh heavy with the exertion of hurling water toward them—never ceasing movement. I am intent on keeping the battle and our hopes afloat, but rage is an anchor tied to my ankles.
Aleta’s eyes squint against tears, and I can sense them building at the corners of my own. She roars her fury, keeping careful aim toward Everett as she unleashes the breath of a dragon protecting its hoard.
Everett smirks. He gestures with a single hand, and dirt rears at his unspoken command, smothering the flame before it can feast upon his flesh.
“You will pay—o” I start, my tongue thick with rage and uncertainty, but I am cut off by Aleta.
Fall of Thrones and Thorns Page 14
