Chapter 58 Devora
Devora
Silas is dead.
He broke the wards.
Scarven is here.
Nox flew south faster than I thought possible.
It took everything in me to keep Arowyn and myself atop his back.
I called on my shadows to provide a protective barrier, and they slipped around our bodies, weaving us to his scales with an ironclad grip.
They pulsed viciously with every breath, desperate to get back.
Desperate to act. Desperate to do something.
After what felt like an eternity but was probably less than an hour, the eastern coastline of Drakorum came into view. As Nox descended, I saw the familiar outline of my tower, then the top of the mansion, lower and lower until—
My heart stopped.
It was a war zone.
Magic hung in the air, so thick I could taste it, sharp and bitter on my tongue.
My own power responded in kind, surging toward the action.
Bolts of light and swarms of shadows shot through the clearing in front of the mansion.
Figures were illuminated by the bright moonlight and fires burning in the surrounding trees.
I could hear shouts and screams, hissing and howling of the various Shifters, steel clashing and reverberating through the air.
Nox landed with a resounding crash. He lifted his head and let out a roar. The nearby trees bowed under the force, flames flickering and branches colliding. Even my shadows cowered at the sight of his fury.
A line of Scarven’s men in all black spun to face the new threat, but a stream of dragon fire shot out of Nox’s mouth, reducing them to ash.
In front of me, Arowyn stirred. “Wh-what’s going—”
“You need to get out of here,” I said hastily. “It’s a bloodbath, Arowyn.”
Her icy blue eyes widened as color rushed back to her cheeks.
“I—I can fight. I have to help.” She tried to swing her leg over Nox’s back and almost fell to the ground.
We used his scales as footholds and landed in a crouch on solid earth.
When she stood, she gripped my shoulder to keep from keeling over.
“You can’t fight,” I argued. “You can barely walk!”
More screams made us whip around to face the battle. Scarven’s men had grown smarter. Instead of crowding Nox and risking incineration, they plunged into our own people, making it to where one blast would take out as many of our allies as it would our enemies.
Tessa and Kieran fought two attackers each, their weapons a blur as they used their Shifter speed to move as quick as lightning. Behind them were dozens of refugees, some as young as teenagers, all struggling to hold their own against the onslaught.
“Can you stride inside the Keep?” I asked Arowyn. She nodded. “Go make sure the kids are safe.”
She turned to face the mansion and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
At my side, Nox shifted back to his human form and grabbed me by the arms.
“You should go. Run,” he shouted, his eyes blazing silver, wild and frantic. “Get out of here before he finds you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t run, Nox. This is my family too.”
A growl ripped from him as he yanked me closer. His shaking fingers clenched around my arms. “I promised I wouldn’t let him hurt you again. I can’t—” His breaths were ragged, his chest heaving. “If he takes you, if he—”
I pressed my lips to his to silence him. Magic, shadows, and lightning whipped around us, the wind swirling my hair in the air. My power thrummed to the beat of my heart, aching to join his.
“He won’t.” I broke away and rested my forehead against his. “I can protect myself. Let me help our family.”
He took another deep breath, and I could’ve sworn smoke came out of his nostrils when he exhaled. “Stay with me. Don’t leave my side.”
“Always.” I kissed him one more time, then we spun and dove into the fray.
As we got deeper, I saw more and more of the battle. A line of our Alchemists—young and old—stood outside the walls of the Keep, with faint, shimmering force fields lifted in front of them. Several bodies in all black—Scarven’s men—lay at their feet.
Even though Nox had taken out a group of them with his dragon fire, we were still outnumbered two to one.
Refugees from the Keep who weren’t holding the shield were fighting their hearts out.
Nox had said they were training the older ones in defensive combat, but they were still so inexperienced.
Their movements were choppy and delayed, their magic uncontrolled.
One teenage Lightbender and Strider hybrid accidentally shot a beam of light at Nox, who easily dodged it as it sank into the ground, the grass smoldering where it hit.
Another one tried to send a shadow whip toward an opponent, only for it to nearly hit me square in the head.
A barrier of vines sprang up from the ground just in time to block it.
I whirled to find the source. To the right stood Milo, his hands outstretched and a look of raw, savage grief etched onto his youthful face. His unruly curls were streaked with dirt and whipping around his head from the rush of wind.
After rescuing me, he turned to a new opponent, clasping his hands together and shouting an incantation. Flames ignited on the black leathers of his attacker, and with a jerk of Milo’s hand, I heard a loud crack.
The man’s neck snapped.
He fell like a rock as Milo surged forward to take on two more at once. When he moved, I saw what he’d been standing in front of.
A body.
Linen pants, a tweed jacket over a white button-down now shredded and soaked in blood, a single suspender strap hanging limp on the ground. Cracked glasses. Tawny skin. Brown-and-gray hair covered in dirt.
Silas.
The older Alchemist lay there in a pool of his own blood, with a dagger sticking straight out of his heart. Bile crept up my stomach and stung my tongue.
He was dead. They’d killed him. I hadn’t believed it until now.
“Devora!” Nox exclaimed sharply. I looked back to find a man in a lion’s mask barreling toward me.
I’d never used my magic in combat, besides the training sessions with Thecae.
But my shadows were ready. It was like muscle memory, the way my hands rose to form a shield thick enough to absorb the dagger thrown at my chest. I fed my shadows more energy, throwing all my grief and sorrow and anger into it.
Several wisps broke away from me to form rows of spikes, solidifying and sharpening with each second.
The man lunged, and I flung the shadow spikes at him. Two flew over his shoulder and dissipated. Two more got caught in the thickness of his leathers, but three of them…
They sank into his neck. He howled and dropped his other weapons as his veins enlarged and blackened. Clutching his face, he clawed his skin, and I watched with wide eyes as my shadows traveled up his head.
I hadn’t tried to do that. I just wanted to slow him down.
He tried to hurt you, a familiar voice echoed in my mind. It sounded almost like my shadows. He hurt your people. He deserves this.
Shadows began to leak from his eyes, his nose, his lips. His eyes bulged out of his head, and his skin stretched, blood pouring out of every orifice as if the darkness was forcing it out.
His screams rattled my brain. I frantically called the shadows back to me, but they kept swirling around him, eager to taste his blood.
Do you really want us to stop? The voice hissed at me again, a chuckle brushing against the back of my mind.
“Devora, look away,” Nox said at my side. With a whimper, I spun around, and there was a slice of steel before my victim’s cries were abruptly cut off. Only then did my shadows slink back to me, curling around my body like armor. The familiar blackness was tinged with red streaks of blood.
I didn’t have time to worry about the way my magic seemed to have a mind of its own—and a vicious one, at that.
Several of our fighters were blasted back by a powerful wind spell, allowing Scarven’s men to attack with newfound ferocity at our smaller numbers.
One of them leaped into the air and shifted into an enormous bear, spit flying from his large teeth as he swiped at us.
Out of nowhere, a black and tan jaguar the size of a lion came soaring toward him.
Tessa bared her claws and gripped the bear’s head, both of them landing on the ground in a heap.
She shredded through his fur with ease, her graceful form able to dart around him while he staggered back to look for her.
“Kieran!” Nox shouted as his second came bounding forward, a sword in each hand. “What happened?”
“They showed up without warning,” Kieran said with a grunt, slicing his sword upward to fend off an attack.
“A tremor went through the entire Keep when the wards fell from the outside. Silas, he—he ran out to see what the problem was, and—” The stag Shifter swallowed hard, and the image of Silas’s body flashed behind my lids.
“We didn’t get to him in time. Another man vanished right as we came outside, and then we were ambushed.
” Kieran and Nox stood back-to-back, each taking on one of Scarven’s men.
“We held them off for a while”—Kieran grunted and feinted right—“but then we had to either take the fight outside or risk them infiltrating completely.”
Nox growled when another man in a lion’s mask appeared out of thin air, striding between him and Kieran. The masked man struck Kieran in the side with the hilt of a dagger, then strode to Nox’s left, flicking a blade at his neck.
Nox’s arm shot out faster than I thought possible. His hand shifted into a claw and caught his opponent around the neck, squeezing until his eyes rolled to the back of his head. Nox flung him to the side.
“Where’s Scarven?” Nox asked Kieran, his voice deadly low.
Kieran shook his head. “We haven’t seen him. He didn’t come with the others.”
Confusion swept over me. Scarven wasn’t here? He’d caused all of this, and he couldn’t be bothered to show himself? To fight back?