29. Just Me
29. JUST ME
If you hesitate in battle, you die , Zako had admonished enough times that I could actually hear his lilting voice in my mind, warning me, telling me to move . Dammit, move, already .
And yet…
I couldn’t seem to help the seconds I wasted gawping at the chaos that had erupted so suddenly and so completely.
The pygmy ogres’ brute strength more than made up for their lacking intelligence. Though Ryder, West, and Hiroshi—with his mangled arm—resisted Cambo’s pull on their glowing chains, leveraging all their weight to remain standing, the ogre managed to lift all three of them at once. The drakes slid across the floor, bowling into Saffron, who cowered and whimpered at the end of the chain Gorko held. The men did their best to avoid further injuring the little dragon, but they crashed into him regardless, bounced, and then dangled from their bindings—before Cambo resumed his swinging. Up and over his big, fat, round head, he circled and looped and twirled the chains, gaining momentum with each pass, until the guys flew around the large room—that wasn’t vast enough for that kind of activity.
Ryder and West knocked into a low hanging chandelier, dozens of crystals shattering and showering downward, and then on the third pass, the fixture tore loose from its supporting beam and teetered, about to come crashing down?—
On course to land straight on top of Saffron.
I shook free of my stupor—and moved .
Yanking a pair of throwing daggers from Rush’s belt as I lurched forward, I jumped over Sundo’s sizable torso, slid through his blood, and pushed Saffron out of the way.
Half a heartbeat later, the chandelier exploded as it crashed to the floor, crystal fragments shooting in all directions.
I slammed my body over Saffron’s. The projectiles sliced into my upper back and arms, a downpour of shrapnel that made the three cuts from the Gladius Probatio finale seem like nothing.
My grunts weren’t the only pained ones to color the space.
I dared to hope the queen was one of them, but a glimpse her way revealed her sitting atop her throne as before, a shit-eating grin on her face. Her dress and skin were pristine, though shards of crystal were embedded in the dais just a foot beyond the end of her skirts. Ivar stood behind her, clutching his cutlass, eyes roving in all directions at once.
Invisible magic of some sort protected her and Ivar. Dandy . So much for the throwing knives I’d swiped that I’d destined for her.
Gorko plodded past me, dragging Xeno, who was in the process of climbing the chain to reach the ogre, when the chain binding Saffron went taut.
He stared up at me with big, terrified eyes and whined, as if he realized what was about to happen. I had no reassurance to offer beyond rising off him so I wouldn’t hurt the little creature by trying to keep him with me.
Ryder, Hiroshi, and West still careened around and around above our heads. Blood whipped around with them, spattering in all directions. Blinking rapidly, Hiroshi appeared to be working furiously to keep from passing out from blood loss.
Ryder cursed loudly, hurling one insult after another at the ogre in a spitfire rhythm, as if words alone might stop him.
On the next loop around his head, the ogre grumbled from the effort, perhaps finally feeling their weight as a burden, and the chain drooped for a beat, dropping West lower than before.
Wrists and ankles still bound, he somehow managed to grasp the ogre’s head and drag his nails across Cambo’s face, digging in so hard the pygmy ogre screamed—and West came away with the brute’s blood dripping from his fingers .
Cambo roared and dropped the chains to clutch at an eye, and the three warriors went sailing in different directions.
Hiroshi slammed into Bandel’s body with a pained grimace; Ryder took out a series of chairs lined up for the queen’s future audience; and West tumbled as he went, tugging hard on his chain.
He pulled Cambo’s feet out from under him.
Meanwhile, Rush was slashing at Gorko with his sword. The pygmy ogre was using the glowing metal links as a weapon, Xeno and Saffron jerking around in whatever direction he slashed their chains toward Rush.
I’d lost track of Braque and Larissa, and a rapid scan of the room didn’t reveal either one of them.
The queen’s alchemist might not be brandishing a cutlass like Ivar, but his omnipresent satchel was no doubt filled with replacements of those elements capable of opening a whirling chasm that devoured anything in its path—and possibly worse.
Wincing, I stood, feeling at once every crystal shard stuck into my back, yanking out all of them I could reach, then skirted around Bandel’s swarthy legs, and crept up on Gorko. Saffron squealed every time he was yanked and flew without aim, and Xeno was crawling along the broken crystal, appearing intent on taking out the pygmy ogre’s legs. Blood streamed in dozens of rivulets along his arms and face.
I tucked the two throwing knives into the band at my waist, heartily regretting that I’d let Pru swap out my fighting leathers for a frilly dress, grimaced again at how every movement pulled at the crystals still in several places in my back and shoulders, and clutched the icepick. Though slim, it was wickedly sharp, and if I rammed it through just the right organ, a tool as slender as this could take down a beast as large as the ogre, who didn’t seem to have much pygmy about him. What were full-sized ogres like if pygmy ones looked like this?
Zako had taught me hundreds of ways to disable and end a man. The pygmy ogres resembled men in that they had their external body parts in all the corresponding places, but what about their internal organs? Would they be the same?
I didn’t know but had to try anyway.
With a terrible rending of my shoulder muscle, I surged upward in a leap and rammed the pick up and through what I estimated was Gorko’s ribcage.
Straight into his heart, I hoped.
Rolling past, I left the eight-inch blade where it was, praying it was long enough to pierce fat and reach my beating target. I crashed into Xeno, who lost his hold on the chain and slammed onto his hands and knees hard enough to rattle teeth.
I didn’t spare so much as a smile or word for the friend I’d so worried about. Not even for the dragonling I wanted to defend as fiercely as if I, too, were a dragon protector.
I rolled and looked up.
Gorko blinked heavily, then attempted to glance behind his back. Rush capitalized on his distraction and shoved his sword through his belly.
Rush yanked the blade upward, and Gorko shrieked like a saw grinding through wood.
Swiveling, I caught sight of Cambo, his features twisted into a horrible promise of retribution, now thundering toward West—and Braque behind them all, clutching two vials and wearing a matching grin to the queen’s.
Faster than Braque could register my presence, I rose, drew a blade, and threw it at his throat.
My aim was true, and I anticipated watching metal slice through his jowly flesh—but, just inches from his body, it hit another of those invisible shields and dropped to the floor with a harmless clatter.
Braque snapped his head around, seeking the source of this new threat … and saw me.
His eyes widened in affront, but then, even worse, his grin grew, stretching his puffy cheeks.
I clutched my final throwing knife. And as he uncorked the first of his vials, I spun and launched it at Cambo.
It lanced through the pygmy ogre’s thick neck, his bellow choking out on his blood.
When I next turned toward Braque, tendrils of festering green and black snaked toward me, Xeno, Saffron, the rest of the guys, Rush … everyone.
“No,” I whispered without any idea what, precisely, Braque’s spell would do to us.
“Oh yes,” Braque said as if he’d heard me over the braying, grumbling, and grunting of the gravely wounded pygmy ogres.
Streams of green and black magic wove together, bands of smoke braiding themselves into one before drifting toward me.
I backed up, my steps crunching, a shard of crystal slicing through my useless satin slippers, before I knocked into something large and fleshy. I stopped and stared at the smoke as if it were a viper and I was unwilling to make any sharp moves.
It undulated, as if considering, then pulled back to attack.
“No,” I snarled at it.
It hesitated, oscillating in the air directly in front of my face.
Again, it drew back to strike.
“No,” I repeated, more strongly this time, with more authority. “You shall not attack.”
The vine of Braque’s magic stood still as if sentient.
“Enough of this,” the queen said from her perch, though I didn’t dare break my stare from the magic to study her. “Braque,” she added, “end it.”
“It will be my pleasure, my queen,” he answered, beginning to chant, low and steady, in a language I didn’t recognize.
The green and black magic stiffened like an adder … and followed the commands of its charmer.
Its jaws widened, then snapped onto my face.
It was the last sight I saw … until I found myself blinking back to awareness, slumped against the wall be neath the line of windows, pressed against the chunks of crystal that remained in my back.
Biting down on the waves of pain, I turned to lean against my side instead, and discovered Xeno, Saffron, Hiroshi, Ryder, West, Rush, and Larissa—who must have hidden behind the curtains she sat against, I realized—in a long line. We were spaced out far enough away from each other that we couldn’t touch, not even if we stretched. Everyone else appeared to sleep.
Rush and I were now shackled like the rest of them, though Larissa still wasn’t. I supposed they really meant it when they said females in Embermere didn’t fight—not even when their lives were endangered.
I tested my limbs and discovered them able to move, but barely, as if I were swimming against the torrential current of a waterfall. I could wiggle my fingers but not make any real progress.
Not that I’d felt my power—whatever source my occasional glow had—before, but with the manacles shining black like luminous shadows around my wrists and ankles, I felt hollow—empty.
Powerless.
Devoid even of my usual strength and skill.
Gorko and Cambo were gone. The bodies of their felled kin remained, still leaking blood in slow trickles.
“Elowyn’s awake, Your Majesty,” Ivar said.
I faced the dais where he still stood, flanking his precious monarch, as Braque tutted and said, “I was just about to tell her that, Ivar. It’s my magic.”
“And so is Rush,” the queen commented .
I leaned forward, peering down the lengthy row of us. His eyes were dull, no moonlight shining through them now, and narrowed menacingly at the queen, until he sensed my gaze and faced me.
His brow furrowed, his lips tugged low with his concern. Not for himself or the sister who dozed at his side, I thought, but for me.
For the woman he claimed to love.
“You see how vulnerable you all are,” the queen told Rush. “Your friends could die before they even realize their end is nigh. Your dear sister, the one you’ve sacrificed so much to protect, will you let her fall now? Without a real fight?”
It was true. Though we had fought, our efforts had been futile when the woman could so easily overpower our will and our bodies. What chance did we stand against someone like her? With the magic of Ivar and Braque at her disposal?
“I don’t like to show too much mercy,” the queen said, and I would have snorted if not for that void I felt inside. “I have to keep my subjects in line, you know. They can’t go thinking they can get away with too much beneath my rule.
“But Rush, I like you. I’ve always liked you. The people and creatures of the mirror world like you. That’s worth more gold and jewels than your entire Amarantos clan possesses.”
Unhurried, she uncrossed her legs, crossed them anew in the opposite direction, swept idle fingers down the rich taffeta of her skirt with a melodic crinkle that grated.
“But I’ll show you a little more mercy, Rush. No one will ever know, and I want to help you.”
I couldn’t help my scoff from escaping this time. She flicked a glare my way but otherwise ignored me, pinning those deceptively beautiful eyes on his once more.
“Once you kill Elowyn, only I, you, Braque, and Ivar will know the choice you made, and my friends will never tell.”
“We’ll never betray your confidence, my queen,” Ivar stated staunchly.
“Never,” Braque echoed, the two men for once in easy agreement.
“You can tell your friends and sister whatever you want.” The queen smiled—easygoing, affable, pleasant.
Yeah, right.
“You can tell them I threatened you with”—she waved a hand in the air—“whatever you want. Tell them I threatened the entire Amarantos clan if you’d like. Your friends’ clans, too.”
She dropped her hands to her lap, clasping her fingers, her jaw clenching. “But you must kill Elowyn, and you must do it now. This is your true final chance. I won’t be giving you a single other one, Rush, I promise you that. If you don’t take me up on this last offer I’m making you, and a most generous one, you’ll find yourself my enemy, and you know you don’t want that.”
Despite the fact that the queen had given Rush what seemed like an unprecedented number of chances, I believed her.
This was it.
I stared at his face until he looked my way, and in those troubled eyes I so loved, I saw that Rush believed her too.
I swallowed, wondering what advice Zako would have had for me going up against someone as corrupted as the queen. Why he hadn’t warned me about any of what would one day come for me, I still didn’t understand. Knowing the queen, he should have anticipated that things would end like this. The king wouldn’t have been able to keep my existence secret forever—not from her.
“It’s okay, Rush,” I said, the words sounding foreign, as if it were someone other than me forfeiting her life. Giving it all up without more fight. Without a final struggle worthy of a warrior’s death.
Though what was the purpose of a warrior if not to give up her life when it would most safeguard the defenseless? It’s what the dragon protectors woke every single day of their lives ready to do.
And everyone lined up against this wall with me was worthy. Even if Rush was proving to be my enemy to the very end.
But it was either Xeno and Saffron and Hiroshi and Ryder and West and Larissa and Rush, forever in danger if not also dead … or me. Just me.
One of me versus all of them.
“Rush, do it. Kill me and save everyone else. ”
His eyes didn’t spark with his shock, his mouth didn’t alter its grim line.
I laughed nervously. “I won’t lie and say I’m excited for it, but…” I shrugged, not sure what one did in moments like these. “You know she’s gonna find the way to kill me anyway. I don’t have power or magic to resist her. She’ll get to me. So you may as well save everyone else and be done with it.”
My words, my conviction, dissolved into bitter ash across my tongue, coating my throat, dipping into my stomach and making it churn.
My last few minutes of life.
But I didn’t recant. Everything I’d said was true. The queen would find the way to get me. Whether it was today or ten years from now, she wouldn’t stop hunting me.
“Do it, Rush,” I whispered, unsure if he’d hear me at the end of the long array of people and the dragonling he’d spare by not sparing me.
But he swallowed so regretfully that I saw his throat bob. “Okay,” he eked out. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
His face was a testament of sorrow and grief so overwhelming that tears stung my own eyes.
He looked to the queen. “But if I’m going to do this, I want you to agree to my terms first.”
The queen’s brows rose. “You’re in no position to bargain.”
She ran a hand in the general direction of all of us, how many of us she was willing to slay to get her way— and she hadn’t even mentioned Pru and her kin, thank sunshine.
“True,” Rush said. “But if you acquiesce to my demands, I’ll go along with everything you ask of me … without resistance. I’ll be agreeable and carry out your every wish without complaint. Even once I’m eventually crowned king, I’ll still bow to your orders.”
Her brows arched more. “You’ll swear to this?”
Rush gulped. “I will.”
She slid back in her throne. “Very well, then. Let’s hear it.”
“Have Braque put up his silencing spell.”
My heart squeezed as if not allowing me to hear his terms were the greatest of his betrayals, not the fact that he’d just agreed to kill me.
The queen’s eyes glittered. “Of course. It will be our little secret. Braque.”
Braque rummaged inside his potions satchel while I glared at Rush. But the man I’d dared to hope might actually love me didn’t so much as deign to glance my way.