Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
“Bane!” Ferris yelled as I got the upper hand in my fight with Islasees at last, wrapping one leg around his knees and felling him. He hit the ground hard as Ferris’s voice rang through the air. “The Great Elm demands that one person must bring all the amulets to her. You have to give me yours!”
That news rattled through me and shattered everything I believed about how the end of the Hunt would go. I brought my sword down for Islasees’s head, but the bastard rolled aside and kicked me hard in the shin, making me stagger back a step.
He gained his feet but instead of coming for me he turned and sprinted for Ferris with his weapon in hand.
“No – not lightwing!” I raced after him as she turned and fled, one bough of the Great Elm lowering down to allow her to climb onto it.
Islasees grabbed for her ankle but the Great Elm lifted her out of her harm’s way and he snarled in anger, slashing his sword into the spirit’s roots. The tree shuddered, the ground quaking with her utter rage at what he’d done and he fell onto his ass two steps ahead of me.
I leapt toward him with murder in my veins, sword raised and fury fuelling my limbs. I’d take his head for what he’d done. He would die this day; I would not miss this chance.
But Islasees gained his feet, scrambling upright and darting aside before I could land my blow.
My sword scraped down his arm and he cursed as blood poured from the wound.
It wasn’t enough. But I had him on the back foot now, retreating and nearly falling time and again as the Great Elm’s roots undulated, trying to knock him asunder for his strike against her.
“The forest is on my side it seems,” I jeered him as the Lost Children sang louder in the trees and the spirits around us turned from the Great Elm and clashed together once more with escalating ferocity.
“Death knows your name, Islasees Bellatorn. I have whispered it in her ear and she has whispered it in return.”
Islasees’s red hair was out of place and true panic ignited in his eyes, the sight a sweet one to behold. He swung at me wildly, trying to find his rhythm again but between the rippling roots and my oncoming advance, he was losing control.
“Bane! Please listen,” Ferris’s voice reached me from the branches above. “We can only end this if one of us returns all of the amulets to the Great Elm.”
“Then hand me yours!” I shouted back to her, lunging for Islasees but the bastard ran, tearing away from the roots of the Great Elm before turning to face me among the ring of battling spirits.
I snarled in frustration, turning from the tree and racing to meet him once more, his sword meeting mine in a clash of steel that reverberated down my arms.
He was no longer losing this fight and the world was falling into chaos around us.
All I could think of was how I needed to seize the boon and of what would happen when I claimed it.
It was all I’d sought after for years. It had kept me hungry in a life that had long been empty of sustenance.
And now the time had come, I would not turn from my path.
Even if doing so was going to break Ferris forever and shatter my heart in the process.
I despised myself for hurting her, but I couldn’t break my promise to my family.
I owed them this. I’d just never expected to bear the weight of so many doubts in my heart when it came to this moment.