Chapter 46
Ashterion watched the former human collapse over her dragon’s corpse, her sobs tearing through the forest silence.
The sound was… unnerving. He’d witnessed countless deaths, orchestrated more than he cared to count, but there was something raw about this grief that unsettled him.
The dragon’s death hadn’t been intentional. The creature had swerved at the last moment, putting itself directly in the path of a shadow spear meant to disable, not kill. An unfortunate miscalculation, but war was full of such miscalculations.
Still, feeling the bond sever—the psychic scream that had rippled through the air when the connection snapped—Ashterion found himself regretting the necessity of it. Dragon bonds were sacred things, even among enemies.
Around him, the aftermath of their ambush was proceeding exactly as planned. Elowyn had successfully captured both Cindrissian and Shaelith. Merrick had subdued Varyth and the pink-haired female Ashterion didn’t recognise.
They’d already secured several other members of Varyth’s inner circle from earlier strikes.
All that remained was collecting the shadow fire wielder.
The female’s sobs gradually quieted, her body going unnaturally still against the dragon’s scales. Ashterion stepped closer, shadows lashing around him. Perhaps she would come quietly, broken by grief and the loss of her bond.
Then she turned.
For a heartbeat, her expression was vulnerable. The look of someone expecting to find comfort, a friend come to offer solace in the darkness. The hope that flickered across her features was painfully human.
That hope died the moment she saw him.
Her eyes—those strange, jade green eyes that had caught his attention during their first encounter—went flat and cold as winter stone. The grief didn’t disappear, but it transmuted into something far more dangerous. The shadows around him recoiled instinctively.
She was still for only a moment. Less than a heartbeat.
Then she exploded into motion.
Two daggers seemed to materialise in her hands. No, not materialise. He simply hadn’t seen her draw them, hadn’t caught the movement despite his enhanced reflexes. The blades gleamed with an opalescent light that made his shadows hiss and writhe.
Moonsilver. Fucking moonsilver. Of course the female had ended up with moonsilver blades.
She came at him like a force of nature, all feral intensity and killing intent. No technique, no strategy—just pure, undiluted fury channelled into violence. The first blade swept toward his throat in an arc that would have opened his jugular if he hadn’t thrown himself backward.
The second followed immediately, aimed for his heart.
Ashterion barely managed to deflect it with a wall of solidified shadow, the moonsilver edge carving through his darkness like it was paper.
She didn’t pause, didn’t give him a moment to breathe or think or coordinate a proper defence. She was on him again before he’d fully recovered his balance, moonsilver singing through the air. The desperate, vicious movements of someone with nothing left to lose.
One blade caught him across the forearm, parting leather and flesh with equal ease. Blood welled, dark and hot, and the wound burned with the particular agony of moonsilver poisoning. Another swipe nearly took his eye, close enough that he felt the wind of its passage.
“Clever little human,” he murmured, dancing backward as she pressed her attack. “But mourning makes you sloppy.”
She snarled like a cornered animal and lunged again. This time he was ready, shadows erupting from the ground to snare her legs. But black fire bloomed around her in response, consuming his darkness with hungry flames that felt like ice and midnight combined.
The collision of their powers sent shockwaves rippling through the forest. Trees groaned, their leaves withering as shadow and fire warred for dominance.
She broke through his shadows like they were cobwebs, moonsilver flashing as she drove both blades toward his chest in a cross-pattern that would have carved him open from throat to navel.
Ashterion twisted. One blade missed entirely. The other opened a line of fire across his ribs that made him curse in three different languages.
Impressive.
The thought flickered through his mind unbidden as he watched her recover from the strike, already spinning into her next attack. She moved like water given deadly purpose, adapting to each of his defences with a speed that spoke of natural talent rather than learned technique.
Most opponents became predictable after the first few exchanges.
They fell into patterns, relied on familiar combinations, telegraphed their intentions through subtle shifts in posture or breathing.
Warriors with centuries of training often became slaves to their own expertise, locked into forms that could be read and countered.
This female was chaos incarnate.
Her moonsilver blades wove patterns that defied conventional combat doctrine. She attacked from impossible angles, used her smaller size to slip through gaps in his defences. When he threw up walls of shadow, she burned through them.
Ashterion had expected many things when he’d descended from the storm clouds—screaming, begging, perhaps a clumsy attempt at negotiation.
He had not expected this. Had not expected the grieving human to move like liquid death, to fight like someone who had been forged in violence and tempered by loss.
When she came at him again, he caught one wrist, shadows wrapping around her arm like iron shackles. For a heartbeat he thought he had her, then pain exploded across his jaw as her free hand drove the pommel of her second blade into his face with enough force to rattle his teeth.
Stars burst across his vision. Blood filled his mouth, copper and salt. The shadows around her wrist loosened just enough for her to twist free, and then both blades were coming at him again in a flurry of opalescent steel.
“You killed him,” she snarled, and her voice was empty of everything except the promise of violence. “You killed him, and I’m going to carve out your fucking heart.”
The words weren’t a threat. They were a statement of fact, delivered with the same certainty someone might use to comment on the colour of the sky.
For a moment, Ashterion was thrown completely off balance.
He’d never seen a former human fight like this.
Most of them retained their essential humanity even after the crossing, clinging to their mortal limitations like familiar chains.
But the female moved like she’d shed every constraint her human life had imposed, like she’d embraced whatever darkness the crossing had awakened in her.
It was... fascinating.
And those moonsilver blades. Where in seven hells had she gotten moonsilver?
One swept past his face close enough to part the air he’d been breathing a split second before. The other carved through his attempt at shadow-weaving like it was made of smoke and wishful thinking.
She was faster than he’d anticipated. Faster than most fae, certainly faster than any former human had a right to be.
But then she overextended, putting too much force behind a strike aimed at his throat. The movement left her off-balance for a fraction of a second—barely a heartbeat’s worth of vulnerability.
It was enough.
Ashterion’s shadows exploded from the earth beneath her feet, not tentacles this time but solid walls of darkness that slammed into her from three directions at once.
The impact drove her to the ground hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs, hard enough to make her lose her grip on one of the blades.
Before she could recover, before the black fire could flare to life and burn through his bindings, he was moving. Shadows flowed around his hand like living metal, solidifying into the collar he’d brought specifically for this moment.
The thing was a work of art, obsidian inlaid with runes that pulsed with their own dark light, sized to fit the delicate column of a fae throat.
His shadows pinned the female’s arms to the earth as he knelt beside her, the collar solid and cold in his hand. She was still fighting, snarling and thrashing like a trapped wildcat. But the impact had stunned her just enough to make her movements sluggish.
“Hold still,” he murmured, almost gently. “This will hurt less if you don’t fight it.”
Her eyes blazed with such hatred that for a moment he thought the sheer force of it might kill him. “Fuck. You.”
He almost smiled. Even now, even broken by grief and pinned by shadows, she had fire in her.
The collar closed around her throat with a soft click that seemed to echo through the forest silence.
The effect was immediate.
The black flames that had been flickering along her skin sputtered and died like candles snuffed by wind. The rage in her expression dimmed, replaced by shock as she felt the magic drain away.
She tried to summon it anyway, of course. He could see the strain in her face, the way her body went rigid as she reached for fire that was no longer there. The collar pulsed once, twice, its runes flaring brighter as they absorbed and dispersed the magical energy she was trying to gather.
It was clearly straining to contain her power, the obsidian was warm against his fingers where he’d touched it. But it held.
“Let me go,” she whispered, and there was something broken in her voice that made his chest tighten unexpectedly. “Please. Just let me go.”
For a moment, looking down at her dirt-stained face and hollow eyes, Ashterion almost did exactly that.
Then he remembered Xyliria’s expectations. The plan that depended on acquiring this particular weapon. The consequences of returning empty-handed.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said, releasing her wrist and standing.
The look she gave him then was pure violence. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to watch the light die in your eyes and I’m going to smile while it happens.”
This time he did smile, an expression that held no warmth at all. “I look forward to it, little human. It’s been far too long since someone provided me with genuine entertainment.”
He gestured, and shadows rose around them both like a tide of liquid night.
Time to deliver her to Xyliria.