A Soul Like Glass (Kingdom of Betrayal #4)

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

T he snowstorm hits us.

But Blackbird manages a far more powerful jump than I was expecting, quickly gaining height.

Thank you, wolf legs.

He extends his wings a moment later, and for a second, it feels as if we’ll shoot right up into clear air without problems.

My hope is quickly stripped away.

The snow is like glass, icy particles ripping at my face before I bury my head against Blackbird’s neck, circling my face with my arms, praying that the fur coat I’m wearing will resist the cutting icicles.

It’s nearly impossible to breathe in the force of the wind.

But Blackbird… Oh, he’s still fighting to rise up through the storm.

I can’t see the tips of his wings, but his lightning surges and thunder rumbles with every beat he makes. He moves with the wind, slipping from stream to stream as if he’s reading the air.

If he really was somehow born from the bones of the Fae Queen’s thunderbird, then that thunderbird was a powerful creature indeed.

A terrifying second later, we burst up into quieter air.

It isn’t clear air. Far from it. We’re surrounded by churning clouds that flicker with blood-red energy. But we’ve risen out of the worst of the snowstorm, and it’s peaceful by comparison.

As Blackbird finally levels out, both Erik and I no longer need to lean so low.

We adjust our position, neither of us speaking as we drag air into our chests.

Erik’s left arm slides around my waist, and he brushes a kiss to the side of my neck. He’s still pressed up against the hammer at my back, which must be horribly uncomfortable, and the bulk of the satchel has slipped to my side beneath my right armpit, but he doesn’t seem deterred from hugging me.

I close my eyes and hold on to this moment. His touch. His warmth. His scent. And the weightlessness of being airborne, even though there’s a terrible storm around us.

Erik is alive.

I will fight any battle to keep him that way.

When another streak of lightning cuts across the clouds directly ahead of us, Blackbird swoops low to avoid it.

I grip with my legs, my stomach muscles straining, as he descends even farther.

Then, just like that, we drop beneath the cloud cover.

The air is tinged with crimson, an awful hue that fills the space in every direction, but we’ve left the mountain peak behind, and the clouds overhead have yet to open up and release the blood-rain they clearly hold.

The air is heavy with energy, but it’s eerily quiet.

The Cursed City comes into view on the plain up ahead.

The city is surrounded by a ring of mountains that closes it off from the rest of the world. It lies closest to the edge of the western mountains, which makes the journey from this direction shorter than it would have been if we’d been approaching from the north.

The city itself is circled by a high stone wall, atop of which have battlements. The wall has only four gates leading to the outside—one each in the north, east, west, and south.

On the northern side of the city is the vast wasteland, which stretches all the way to the northern mountains and is covered in white ash and dotted with skeletal trees.

To the city’s east is the Sunken Bog, a writhing swamp in which lies the Toxic Thirst—a poisoned lake—and which I can just make out as a small, silver, oval shape from this distance.

On the southern side is the farming land. The crops and livestock have further defenses in the form of a myriad of high stone walls that cordon off multiple areas.

We’re approaching it from the western side, so our view encompasses both the northern and southern sides of the city.

While red clouds boil above us, the bells located on top of the city’s wall continue to ring out.

But as we fly closer, my heart sinks.

The stone wall has three gaping holes in it, each one a large, crumbling fissure with piles of rubble within it. Two of the gaps are on the north side. One is harder to see because it’s closer to the eastern gate, but it’s large enough that I’m not imagining it.

All of the gaps are wide enough that a monster could get through.

Erik must have spotted the gaps, too, because he stiffens, his arms tightening around me.

“What happened there?” I cry, trying to be heard over the wind. “Could it have been a monster?”

It’s startling to me that I don’t see a beast yet. True, the rain has started to fall, but the wasteland in the north looks far too calm. There are no large figures approaching the walls from any side—or even within the city as far as I can see.

Which makes me think the damage to the wall happened before now. But from a monster or something else, I can’t possibly know.

Anything could have happened here since we left.

On my last day in the city, a group of humans betrayed Erik. Nero, the leader of the metalworkers’ guild, and Vincent, the leader of the carpenters’ guild, stood high up on the northern ramparts, looking down on me. Laughing at me.

My former guard, Braddock, stood with them, and he laughed loudest of all, his ruddy face gleaming with triumph.

They had just shot Erik with a giant crossbow bolt that I had fashioned with my own hands.

I had forged for them that crossbow, along with a harpoon, a net, and weighted chains, each powerful enough to take down a monster within moments.

I vowed that I would come back and destroy those humans.

Now, again, I have to remind myself why I’m flying toward this city instead of leaving its people to their fate.

Maybelle. Kedric. Mother Solas. Rachel. Councilor Genova.

Even the Wasteland Warriors who were as loyal to Erik as humans could be. He trained them to defend the city, but they were nowhere to be seen on the day he was betrayed. I have no idea what happened to them.

“That damage looks days old,” Erik growls in my ear. “It looks like it was caused by explosions, not claws and teeth. Can you see the burn marks at the edges of the holes? And the rubble in the industrial area to the north?”

I reach back with my left hand, brushing my fingers against my hammer, instantly giving myself the benefit of enhanced eyesight.

I follow where Erik is looking, my eyes widening as I make out the blackened buildings to the city’s north. Those buildings are used for metalworking, carpentry, and textile manufacturing.

“Could it have been caused by crimson coal?” I ask.

When the humans tried to kill me, they ground up crimson coal into an explosive powder and set fire to it, creating a blast as deadly as a fire dragon’s breath.

“Very likely.”

As Erik speaks, lightning flickers again, this time sizzling across one side of the city to the next, bringing the damage into full view.

Many buildings in the north are blackened and burned out, and the carnage continues southward as far as the castle in the center of the city.

I’m surprised to make out a blockade there. It extends out from the side of the castle’s walls, cordoning off the southwestern corner of the city. I can’t see exactly what that barrier is made out of—maybe stone and wood—but it’s clearly made of many objects piled high.

A whirlwind of possibilities flies through my mind, first and foremost that the explosions in the north could have been an accident.

Crimson coal is incredibly volatile. If the humans were crushing it up in the north and a fire broke out, the explosions could have decimated those buildings and blown holes in the city’s external wall.

Or… the explosions might have been deliberately caused.

Acts of destruction. But by whom and against whom?

It’s concerning, but the threat of a monster is more so.

“We need to get these furs off,” I say. “They’ll be a liability if it starts to rain.”

“Agreed.”

I lean low over Blackbird’s neck, spotting a small clearing in the forest below, still a safe distance from the city’s western wall. “Blackbird, take us down.”

I have no idea if he understood me, and I’m concerned he doesn’t, but then he alters his course slightly, dipping to the clearing like I hoped he would.

We jump off as soon as he lands, stripping off our coats and fur pants and quickly repositioning our harnesses and weapons. My satchel is unwieldy, and the toolbox is beyond problematic with its bulk, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I position it at my back, and Erik helps me adjust it so that it doesn’t impede my hammer.

Then we’re back on Blackbird and rising into the air again.

The bells continue ringing, the sound peeling out through the air.

The clanging grows louder as we near the city’s western wall, and now that we’re nearer to it, it looks like only the bells on the walls in the west and south are ringing.

The city streets appear deserted. So is the top of the wall in the north and east. There are no guards there.

As Blackbird angles to the left, now heading northward around the city wall, the status of the weapons I forged becomes visible.

Only the harpoon and the net launcher appear intact. Where the crossbow and the launcher for the weighted chains were installed, there is only rubble.

What has remained intact is the stone monolith of the last monster I fought. It was a giant wolf with black, onyx tusks protruding from its face. I used my power to turn it to stone near the city’s northern gate, where it has remained like a sentinel.

After turning it to stone, I broke off both of its tusks and used them to make a stretcher to carry Erik across the wasteland. He used one of those tusks—half of it, to be precise—as the handle of my hammer.

Now, I focus on the heart of the storm that’s building over the northern wasteland.

It’s growing worse by the second.

The clouds are thicker there, heavy with rain that has yet to fall, and the lightning is at its brightest.

Lightning was never a good sign in a storm.

A monster that forms from lightning is always stronger and harder to kill. A fact that makes me now wonder…

Does it have something to do with the thunderbird that might have been buried here? Unlike the wolves and bears and birds and deer that were buried here, a thunderbird’s body already carries magic. Its strength and magical power could have leached into the soil, combined with Blacksmith magic, and influenced the strength of the monsters that formed.

I watch the flickers carefully, the way they sizzle through the clouds and snap at the air halfway between the sky and the ashen land.

Wherever the lightning strikes the ground, that is where the monster will rise.

Finally, we reach the edge of the city’s northern wall, where the scent of blood grows unbearably strong.

I remain focused on the clouds ahead, waiting for them to break.

Waiting for the blood-rain to fall.

I take a last deep breath as the energy in the air increases to the point where it feels like my chest is being compressed. I brace for the freezing cold water to fall, anticipating how cold it will be.

A second later, the downpour starts.

A moment after that, we fly into it.

But when we hit the rain, it’s like a trigger.

Lightning explodes across the sky directly above us, splitting into a myriad of strikes that spear down around us.

Blackbird darts left and right to avoid the deadly strikes while I try to keep my eye on as many of them as I can. I sense Erik’s tension behind me, catching the way he follows the path of each strike across the air.

We need to anticipate where the energy will hit the ground, but as all of the bright strikes spear downward at an equal speed, my fear grows.

Other than the time Thaden appeared, there has only ever been one monster at a time. Sure, they might be as close as a day apart, but there were never two in a single day.

This time already feels different.

Blackbird must have risen from the ash earlier and found me.

Another monster is already about to rise.

But if more than one beast forms…

My eyes widen when the already splintered streaks of lightning split again.

There are now so many possible strikes that I can’t count them all.

I hold my breath, waiting for one of them to hit the ground.

And then…

None of them do.

Every strike stops midair, snapping at nothing before vanishing.

The rain also stops.

A sudden, heavy silence settles around us. Blood-rain drips from my hair and down the back of my neck. If there wasn’t a little slit in the bottom of my scabbard, my hammer would be swimming in blood.

Confusion fills me as my gaze flies across our surroundings, and I try to understand what has happened.

Then, from within the silence comes the sound of wings.

I draw a sharp breath.

Oh. No.

Fear is like lava sizzling through my body as I realize I’m looking in the wrong direction.

I tilt my head backward, sensing Erik do the same.

Up.

I look up.

To the swarm of flying beasts descending from the clouds.