Chapter 39
Nelle
I’d never witnessed Graysen like this, not even when he’d fought the Pellans’ small army. This was something else entirely.
The night felt alight with power, the likes of which almost felt the same kind that radiated from a Horned God. Every footfall Graysen made charged the ground with energy, a low rumble of angry might traveling through the cobblestones, shivering beneath my bare feet, electrifying my bloodstream.
The Crowthers’ enforcers were woefully unprepared for him, and the courtyard echoed with the deafening clamor of shouted orders, the stampede of rushing warriors, the thud of strikes, and startled cries of the wounded.
The fight was ruthless. Savage.
Graysen moved so fast I couldn’t even track him.
He was there and gone in a blink, impossible to predict where he’d appear next.
His powerful body had been a blade slicing through the air as he reappeared out of nowhere, twisting above the heads of soldiers to land with a heavy thud that cracked the stone beneath his boots.
He became a blur of lethal motion—tornado kicks, crescents, and ax strikes—his body spinning fluidly.
As he carved a path toward Jett, there was nothing to be seen of him, only the aftermath.
Bodies flying. Soldiers collapsing. A chain of them toppling like dominoes.
Remaining near the whipping post, I snapped the long length of my adamere bracelet into my palm, releasing and catching it, the beads chinking together in a steady rhythm that matched the fiendish melody of vengeance singing in my heart.
I was drunk on retribution.
Woozy with the reckoning unfolding before me.
It was intoxicating, and I swilled it down, wanting more.
I didn’t have my wyrm. I couldn’t burn the Keep down and every Crowther in it.
But I had Graysen.
And as his brothers arrived, it occurred to me there might be a way to twist him to my will.
I continued to dig deep, gathering my soul, my very being, and fed my fury into it.
Let it vibrate and skitter beneath my flesh like a quake that could shatter mountains.
Poured my craving for bloodshed, my scorching need for violence, into the otherworldly threads binding Graysen to me.
And I leaned, using the sway—just as he had yesterday.
I turned Graysen into a weapon I could wield against his own family.
And now Jett dangled uselessly in Graysen’s fist, his other hand a bloodied blade.
END HIM! END HIM! END HIM!
Hate and madness were a red shroud that shadowed my sight.
I wanted Graysen’s body drenched in Jett’s blood.
I wanted Valarie’s blood to splash all over him next.
I wanted her gone.
Preferably fucking dead.
I was so enthralled by the wicked chaos that I didn’t hear Sage barking until he slammed into my thighs, knocking me off balance. Widening my stance, I steadied myself as he prowled in front of me, his silvery eyes locked on the fight, a low, protective growl rumbling from his chest.
A few soldiers poured into the courtyard, shouting orders, calling for medics, adding to the moans of the wounded. My fury faltered when I saw the cursed weaponry. Zrenyth’s, too.
They’d brought the same ropes and rattling chains that had trapped my wyrm, all of them thrumming with dark power. But this time, they were aimed at Graysen.
Jett wheezed, his swollen face mottled with pain as he dangled helplessly in Graysen’s iron grip.
Kenton and Caidan rejoined the fight, grimacing through their injuries and barely upright.
“Let Jett go!” Kenton bellowed, charging like a bull.
Caidan snatched up the whip, slinging it with his good arm.
Graysen drove his bloodied fist toward Jett’s chest—
—but the whip’s lash coiled around his wrist, jerking his strike short.
Caidan leaned back, heels digging into the ground as he hauled with everything he had.
Kenton slammed into Graysen sidelong, but it was like he’d hit a brick wall. He rebounded, then surged again, punching Graysen square in the jaw, snapping his head sideways.
Graysen didn’t budge, and glared back with fierce, gray eyes.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Kenton whirled behind his brother, wrapping an arm around his throat in a chokehold.
Graysen only strangled his hold on Jett tighter.
Caidan and Kenton were yelling at him to “Stop!”
While I screamed, “End him!”
A hand suddenly clamped around my wrist and spun me away from the violence.
The lace tied across Ferne’s brow snapped in the wild wind, her skirt billowing around her tall, slender frame. Her features twisted in furious confusion. “What are you doing to him?!”
She knew. Somehow, she knew I was manipulating her brother.
I pressed my mouth together petulantly. Spiteful.
She yanked brutally at my wrist, and pain speared up my arm. “Stop it!” she shouted, shaking me. “Stop using him!” She kept shaking me as her panic rose, and Sage barked, shoving at her, trying to force her back.
In the corner of my eye, I saw Graysen fling Jett to the ground. He lay like a discarded doll, gasping for breath, unable to move his broken body.
Ferne froze, her grip loosening as strange, feral winds surged through the courtyard, guttering torches and tearing at pennants fluttering on the parapets high above. Sandstorms rose from the training pit, the whirling clouds scouring adamere and stinging my skin as they raked past.
Graysen moved like a rogue wind.
He seized Kenton and hurled him clear across the courtyard.
Spinning around, Graysen flicked the lash free from his wrist, vanishing from sight.
And reappeared right in front of Caidan—
—pivoting into a violent kick in the guts.
Caidan hit the far wall with a sickening crunch and slithered into an unconscious heap on the ground.
The victory was fleeting.
My heart lurched as a soldier fired a crossbow loaded with a stinger-tipped bolt.
It tore through the air.
But Graysen was faster, lowering, sliding sideways.
The bolt flew past him and struck one of Valarie’s cronies. The stinger pierced her upper chest, releasing its poison, and she fell unconscious, collapsing where she stood.
Valarie stood on the porch landing like a general, bellowing commands at her cadre and the soldiers.
Soldiers unpinned cursed grenades.
The world erupted in explosions of blinding light and writhing black clouds that gobbled the illumination bleeding from Keep.
Graysen disappeared within a flood of seething black tendrils.
He burst free a heartbeat later, ripping the tendrils from his body as he ran, flinging the writhing threads into the training pit.
Another grenade detonated before he could evade it.
Tiny translucent spiders swarmed up his figure in a frenzy, spinning thick blue webbing. He was bound like a fly. His limbs strained, shoving against the otherworldly cocoon.
I waited, worry ricocheting in my chest. Part of me feared he’d be hurt. The rest fretted he wouldn’t finish what I’d started.
Graysen erupted into a thrashing fight. The webbing torn to scraps, fluttering outward like dandelions caught in a breeze. Freed, he moved like a machine, a blur of rageful speed, crushing the spiders with his fists, squashing them in a shower of furious stamps.
Just as he smashed the last of them, a cursed bolt whizzed toward his boots. It detonated with a jarring crack, flinging warped lightning around his body. Graysen froze, shuddering as the electrifying magic held him in place—trapped as if time itself had seized him.
A grenade of repeating thunder was unleashed.
It discharged with an ear-splitting BOOM, and Graysen staggered against its might.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
He stumbled to his knees, bowing once more.
Soldiers rushed in with Zrenyth’s ropes and chains, ready to bind him like a prisoner.
Oh gods…
A voice beside me snapped my attention away.
Ferne stood rigid, listening to the sounds of warfare, to Graysen’s pained grunts as he shuddered where he knelt, enduring hit after hit of raucous thunder.
Her fingers trilled in the air, senses unfurling across the courtyard.
“They’re winning against him, aren’t they? ”
“Yes.” A sinister part of me still seethed that Graysen was losing. That he wouldn’t destroy Valarie.
“My aunt won’t let him stop us from doing what we need to do to save our mother,” Ferne whispered. “She’ll do everything in her power to bend him.”
An icy fingertip of alarm slid down my spine. “What do you mean?”
Her chin quivered. “When he returns, he won’t be the same. You won’t recognize him!”
And then Valarie and her cadre turned my way.
“They’re going to come after you too,” Ferne warned.
“Free me,” I begged, although there was little chance I’d make it ten footsteps before they recaptured me.
“Little bird.” Ferne’s brows pinched together above the strip of lace. “That’s what he calls you, right?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
She released my arm and drew back a step. “Then fly, little bird.”