Chapter 13 #2
A storm of shards rains down upon me. I throw myself behind the bed, trying to protect my face. I want nothing more in this moment than to avoid being cut to ribbons, and my orbital magic responds.
It manages to spin the worst of the glass away from me, and I glance up through my fingers to see Leon sparring with the injured fae.
His side is oozing from a nasty burn, but he swings a sword at Leon with surprising force.
The aesteri who shattered the glass is coming toward me, a knife glinting in her hand.
Unluckily for her, she’s just given me a whole load of sharp objects too.
She barely has time to mutter an oath as the swarm of glass comes swirling toward her. She hits the floor, impaled by a hundred shards.
Leon’s opponent falls just a few seconds later.
There’s movement and noise out in the corridor now, screams of pain through the smoke and the fizz of magic. Through the huge hole I burned in the door, I can see more intruders—fae dressed in the same all-black clothes—fighting Leon’s soldiers and the others.
I glance at Leon, checking he’s alright, and he gives me a nod.
“Let’s go.”
We sprint through the bedroom door, into chaos.
An arrow flies past, exploding in a shower of splinters as it hits a fae in the back.
I follow it to see Tira crouched in a doorway with her bow.
Hyllus is wrestling with a fae almost as large as himself as Phaia fights an attacker who seems to be mostly holding her sensic magic at bay, though tears are streaming down his face.
Duke Ribold is beside her in a bed robe, spinning a ball of water into the face of an intruder with impressive precision as shadows shift unnaturally across the hall—I assume with Corrin inside them, taking out some surprised fae.
Mal reaches out to touch his attacker on the arm.
The fae goes pale as a sudden fever comes over him.
But as hard as everyone is fighting, the advantage is with the attackers.
There must be more than twenty of them, and the dark-clad intruders are fighting as if they’re possessed.
They’re not the only ones. Damia spins past us, engaged in a ferocious fight with a man with the same brown-toned skin as her.
Their blows are so heavy the sound of their clashing swords rises above all the other noise.
Damia’s face is contorted with rage, and as she lifts a boot to kick her opponent in the chest, slamming him into the nearest wall, something about it tells me this fight is personal to her.
My mind goes to the woman in our bedroom muttering an oath before she died. I can guess who these people are.
I sense Leon studying the scene, wondering where best to dive in and help.
Before he can decide, something goes wrong with Damia.
Her opponent says something as she charges at him.
I don’t hear what it is, but it throws her, her footsteps faltering for a fraction of a second.
It gives the other fae time to move as Damia’s blade drives into the section of wall he’d just been standing against. She struggles to pull her sword free, and something bursts out of the wall beside it—a snaking tendril of wood, wrapping itself around her and squeezing her tight.
It reminds me of the tree roots in the Miravow.
“Help her,” I say to Leon, even as he’s already moving, falling in beside his friend to hack her free.
At the same time, the brown-skinned fae who attacked Damia narrows his eyes, a determined look crossing his face as he lifts his blade once more and takes a step toward Leon.
No. It happens in a second—the wild spike of horror as I imagine Leon lying dead on the ground. I’m not letting him get hurt again; I’m not letting any of my friends get hurt. Not when I can save them just like I did Alastor.
I can end all of this now.
My anger finds the dark space inside me, pouring into it, mingling with the blackness. I reach out toward Damia’s opponent, finding the flame flickering within him. My darkness surges toward it.
And I snuff the flame out.
There’s no fighting it this time—the rush of my magic works too fast. The fae’s eyes go blank, and he hits the floor, dead. There’s a wave of heaviness as a chunk of my celestial magic drains from me all in an instant, but I don’t care.
Instead, I turn toward the next fae nearest to me, the big one with his hands currently wrapped around Hyllus’s forearm, twisting it backward as Hyllus yells in pain and tries to yank himself free.
I find the flare of celestial fire inside the attacker and let my darkness swallow it.
Hyllus groans as the heavy fae falls backward. The floor shakes with impact as he hits it, his lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling.
My hearing starts to fade. The noises of the fight slip away from me as blood rushes in my ears, muffling the world. I don’t pay it any attention, moving further through the chaos, finding another attacker—this one fighting Stratton with one of his dark-clothed friends—and snuff his life out.
Stratton stands back, bewildered, as the other intruder looks wildly around him, searching for the cause. His eyes fall on me, and he goes pale, making some reverent sign with his hands that I assume is a prayer of protection.
He shouts to his friends, though I can’t hear what he says. Their heads turn, and I make sure they see it when I wipe out this fae too. As his body crumples to the ground, darkness dances at the corners of my vision.
I think I’m about to faint, but I reach out to Stratton, who helps me steady myself.
The intruders are spooked now, I can see it in their wide eyes, and with that fear comes distraction.
Our side presses their advantage. Within a minute, five more intruders are dead.
The tide has turned, and everyone knows it.
The other dark-clothed fae start to back away down the corridor, shouting to each other and pointing to me. Leon and the others follow them. Duke Ribold lifts a curved blade just as my hearing starts to come back to me.
“Finish them off, friends!” Duke Ribold crows as they cut the intruders down one by one. The ferocity seems to have left the dark-clothed fae, and they quickly fall.
When there are no more left, Leon turns to the duke.
“My people will search the house and the grounds to make sure there aren’t any others.”
“By all means,” Duke Ribold says breathlessly, watching the soldiers sprint to the end of the corridor, fanning out into the rooms beyond.
My hearing mostly returns to normal, and as my vision clears and the darkness ebbs, Tira appears at my side.
“Did you do that?” she asks, a note of awe in her voice as she nods toward one of the fae I killed. There’s not a mark on his body.
“Yes,” I say, finding it hard to process the swirl of emotions. There’s some negativity there—fear and maybe shame—but I also have a sense of triumph at having helped end the fight.
“Did you hear what they were calling you?” Tira asks me.
I start to shake my head, but I’m distracted as I notice Lafia emerging cautiously from the room Tira was crouching in front of during the fight.
“Is it over?” she asks, a slight tremor in her voice.
Tira must’ve taken my request to heart, protecting the young woman from the battle and guarding her room. It throws me a little how much things have changed. I used to worry about looking out for Tira, but now she’s become someone else’s protector.
“No, I didn’t hear,” I say. Whatever it was that one fae had shouted to the others before I killed him, it clearly scared them. So what was it?
“They called you Mithanas,” Tira says.
I frown, recognizing the name but not being able to place it.
“Mith—what?” I ask.
Lafia clears her throat beside me.
“One of the old deities,” she says. “No one really worships her anymore; she fell out of fashion centuries ago because she was considered too dark. But she’s mentioned in some of the Ethiran texts.”
“What did she do?” Tira asks. “And why were those fae using her name for Ana?”
“She was supposed to be a soul harvester—along with her brothers Hastoni and Ouska,” Lafia shrugs when we stare at her blankly. “Mithana is a goddess of death.”