Chapter 32 #2
All around us, the resurrected army lurches down alleyways, weaseling into any open door or window they can squeeze through. Every once in a while, I catch sight of a fishline tangled around a cadaver’s leg. A child in rubber clamming boots. A locket dangling around a mangled neck.
These things were people once.
Peaceful, just trying to eke out a living before Thracia poisoned their lands.
And then, we skid out into the Glassmarket. Or rather, what’s left of it.
Once, it was a large, open square paved with stone, where glassblowers set up their workshops, smoke pumping out of fires all day, the repetitive clink of hammers on anvils.
Now, shattered glass litters the earth. Half the surrounding buildings are razed, and the other half is on fire. Walking corpses lurch through the wreckage after the wounded victims who can’t get to their feet in time to get away.
“The dead didn’t do that,” Rian mutters under his breath, nodding at a toppled municipal building.
As though on cue, Tòrr suddenly tears into the center of the square, letting out an ear-splitting shriek as his hooves paw through glass shards.
Sabine rides him, strong and true. She’s a sight in her fae appearance, her fey lines blazing silver at her temples, almost blindingly so.
“Sabine!” I climb onto the wreckage of a glassblower’s forge and wave my hands to get her attention. “The southern gate—it’s open!”
She looks my way, but there’s something off about her eyes. It’s like she’s both here and not here. And then, I see the silver blood pouring down her hands. She’s clenching Tòrr’s razorwire mane so hard it’s shredding her palms.
“I can barely control him!” she shouts. The monoceros dances sideways beneath her, steam blasting out of his nostrils, his eyes wide and wild. “He’s gone mad from the violence. The more he destroys, the more he wants to tear apart!”
I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut. Fuck, when are we going to get a break?
“I know a thing or two about monoceroses,” Rian says, wiping soot from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Especially that one.”
“You kept him locked in an iron cell for a year without a glimpse of sunlight,” I point out.
“Exactly,” he says. “At their heart, they’re the wildest thing in the world.
Sabine controls nature, but fae creatures are a different set.
They’re as untamed as the gods themselves.
It doesn’t matter how fond he is of Sabine.
That she gave him his power, his name. She can’t control him—not like before. ”
“So, what?” I bark. “He’s just a loose cannon with pure violent delight?”
Rian looks grim. “Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“Basten!” Someone calls my name from the opposite side of the square.
I catch sight of a few figures who have taken refuge on one of the few intact rooftops, a guildhall with a water tank on its roof.
Lady Suri waves her arms, her face pinched and bruised.
Ferra is beside her, clinging to a narrow iron spire, her silk dress in tatters.
Folke guards the stairs with a broken spire as a makeshift spear, shoving it at any of the walking dead who attempt to climb the precariously balanced ladder.
I smack Rian, jerking my head toward the others.
We jog across the square, smashing moving corpses in our wake, until we reach the bottom of the guildhall.
“The castle is overrun by the dead,” Suri calls down, clutching her shoulder like it’s dislocated. “Folke got us out. We were fleeing toward the southern gate, but the dead were too many.”
“Stay there!” I shout.
And then I turn around. Look over the chaos. Once, none of this would have been my responsibility. I would have happily swiped a gin bottle from a burning pub and strolled out into a forest, worried about nobody’s hide but my own.
Everything’s different now.
People rely on me.
Dammit—I rely on them, too.
Tòrr rears up in the center of the Glassmarket, shrieking toward the sky. He catches a beam of sunlight in his horn and sends its blasting across the square, where it shatters a nearby church spire. More screams sound as rubble falls.
But then—a different scream.
“Sabine!” I cry.
I turn just in time to see a blast of grave-black fey crackle over her; she tumbles off Tòrr’s back and slams hard onto the broken stones.
I whip around. Motherfucker.
It’s that bastard, Immortal Woudix.
He strides out of a throng of his undead corpses, moving with sickening calmness as they snap their jaws at everything that moves—except him.
Their god.
Sabine shoves herself upright, bracing on blood-slicked hands. Silver pours from a gash on her temple, trailing down her jaw—but she doesn’t falter. Her teeth bare in a feral snarl as she throws one hand into the air.
Power ignites at her fingertips.
Her fey crackles—hot, wild, electric—and the ground beneath Woudix shudders. With a roar, roots explode upward, thick and gnarled, lashing like serpents to ensnare him.
But Woudix barely lifts his chin. One whispered word, no louder than breath—and the roots wither midair, shriveling black, collapsing to ash before they can strike.
Sabine’s fingers twist sharply again, undaunted.
This time, wind whips in a rising spiral, faster and faster, until a razor-edged cyclone forms in the heart of the Glassmarket, made of dust, debris, and shards of shattered glass.
The whirlwind tears through his armor. Shards of glass slash his leather and draw blood—but Woudix doesn’t flinch. He leans into the wind like it’s no more than a breeze, his eyes locked on Sabine.
Then he raises his hand.
And the dead answer.
A wall of his undead soldiers lurches forward in formation, groaning with hunger.
I start to charge, sword already high—but Rian grips my arm.
“Don’t,” he hisses. “They can’t hurt her—she’s immortal. But they can kill you.”
Sabine doesn’t hesitate. She slams her hands together.
A pulse of silver fey explodes outward like a shockwave, knocking the nearest undead back into the street.
Still, more press in. Dozens. Too many.
Sabine falters, breath ragged.
But then, a bell clangs loudly from the direction of the castle, and Woudix whips around.
He narrows his eyes. “I’m being summoned—but this is far from over.”
He strides back through his dead army, torn cloak whipping behind him.
“Rian,” I bark. “Go to her.”
He bolts toward Sabine, reaching her just as she stumbles to her knees.
I don’t wait.
I wrench a sword from a fallen soldier, strap his shield onto my arm, and begin to push forward—straight through the shambling wall of dead.
“Hey!” I slam the sword’s blade against the shield to get their attention. “Over here. I’ll give you a fight.”
I’ll be honest—this doesn’t look good.
In fact, it’s fucking bleak.
Sabine is weakened. The city is on fire. Risen corpses shuffle out of the smoke to attack anyone in sight.
And Tòrr? That murder horse is going berserk. He stampedes toward the guildhall, too crazed to stop now even if he could, and I can see what’s going to happen a second before it does.
He’s going to smash into the only pillar left standing. The guildhall is going to collapse—with Suri, Ferra, and Folke falling with it.
“No!” I cry.
Suri and Ferra scream, hurling down clay roof tiles, but the projectiles only smash against the horse’s iron sides and shatter.
I meet Folke’s eyes—at the same time, we both look at the water tank.
He swings his sword at the tank’s nearest wooden support, hacking through the wood to weaken it. Then, he shoves his weight against the opposite side. His face turns red from exertion, sweat beading on his brow. He pushes harder, his one good leg trembling from the effort…
…and the water tank tips.
Falls.
The water tank crashes down, smashing into Tòrr just as he’s mere feet from colliding with the guildhall’s remaining pillar. The wooden tank shatters over the monoceros’s powerful head and neck, and thousands of gallons of frigid water splash over his body.
Only…Folke falls, too.
He tries to catch himself at the last moment with his one good leg, but he’s already off-balance, limbs strained from the effort.
He pitches forward, pinwheeling his arms.
Ferra screams.
Folke crashes to the ground, his head connecting hard with a broken board.
“Folke!” Ferra cries, gripping onto the rooftop railing as she holds a hand out, as if she can go back in time and stop him from losing his balance.
For a second, I can only stare.
I’ve been trained for this—for the unexpected. I’m a soldier. A hunter. A street fighter. I’ve seen so many accidents and deaths that by now, they all blur together.
But this?
This fucking breaks me. It feels like someone reached into my chest, smashed through my ribs, and ripped out my beating heart.
“No!” I surge forward, leaping over rubble and around the lumbering dead, and fall to my knees at Folke’s side.
He’s breathing. But it’s strained. Wracked with choking sounds.
Blood stains the front of his shirt like a poppy flower blooming.
“For…fuck’s…sake…Basten,” he chokes out. “Leave this…old…man. Get…the…gods.”
My eyes go wide. I clasp his hand, unwilling to let go. I can’t tell from here how bad his injuries are. It doesn’t look good, but with care, there’s a chance he could make it.
Only, how the fuck is he supposed to get to a healer in the middle of a siege?
“Tòrr!” Sabine’s weak voice croaks from the wrecked square. Weakly, she reaches out a hand toward the monoceros. “Tòrr, come!”
I realize three things at the same time:
One, Tòrr’s no longer rampaging. Folke’s stunt with the water tank shocked him out of his craze.
Two, the falling water tank broke his solarium horn, which hangs now by a small shard.
And three, Sabine isn’t using her inner voice. The one she’s always used to communicate with animals, especially Tòrr.
I look around at the wreckage.
It’s…not good.
Be a king, Basten.