CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Violence rages through Ironhold as I rush through it. People fight in every corridor, in open spaces, in rooms. Magic flashes on every side of me, so that I must dodge bursts of acid and deadly cold as well as Selene’s deadly bursts of power.
I don’t even know who’s throwing it all.
Both the resistance and Selene’s followers have magic, so that the conflict is as much a battle between different elemental forces as it is about the clash of steel on steel.
I’m forced to leap over questing vines that try to grab my ankles, then spin away as a whole section of wall bursts outwards.
I take turning after turning through the fortress, but it isn’t at random. I head down into the depths of Ironhold, following a route I’ve been along before. Selene follows behind me, moving at an almost sedate pace now, as if certain that she has me trapped.
“There’s nowhere you can run, Lyra,” she says, her magic bursting on the wall near me. “I’ve learned this fortress as well as you have.”
I hope not, because that would let her know exactly where I’m heading.
I reach a knot of fighting in a great hallway, where Alaric and some of his people are taking on a group of magical practitioners mixed in with Selene’s guards.
Alaric is spinning through the fight, his illusions in full flow so that it seems he’s everywhere at once, opponents forced to parry illusory swords while a real one seems to come out of nowhere.
I dart past him, to the solid door of what was once Ironhold’s armory. I stand before it, and when Selene throws another blast of power my way, I dodge at the last second to let it slam into the door behind me.
Half of the door is blown away in that blast, leaving me more than enough of a gap to clamber through. I hurry into the armory beyond, ignoring most of the stands of elegant but impractical armor, the racks of swords, the shields.
Instead, I snatch up a trident and net, the tools with which I fought in the colosseum for so long, and with which I trained to exhaustion here in the fortress.
I turn back towards the door, and even as I do so, Selene blasts the rest of it out of her way, standing framed in the doorway with her blade in her hand.
She smiles as she sees the weapons I hold.
“Ah, so you’ve reverted to what you know. Being a pathetic, captive little thing waiting for her betters to decide to put her down.”
“Try,” I snap at her.
Selene goes to one of the racks of swords, taking up a longer, curved blade in place of the short sword she had before. It’s the weapon she’s been using in the colosseum, so clearly she wants to be comfortable too.
She comes forward quickly then, using blasts of magic as a distraction. I duck behind a shelf of shields, thrust with my trident to keep her at bay, then whip my net around, threatening to entangle her.
“Still not strong enough or fast enough,” she says, lashing out at me with her sword. She opens a fresh wound on my arm, almost making me drop my trident.
Selene is right. I need more power, more speed, more strength. I draw more from the animals outside Ironhold, pushing myself to the limit. I hope against hope that I can do this without either changing myself permanently or harming them.
I keep spinning away from Selene, keep moving.
That’s the first rule of fighting with the combination of weapons I was trained to use.
My weapons were never meant for me to stand and trade blows with an opponent, but instead to stalk them at longer range, tricking and taunting them until I find an opening.
The trainers who first gave me these weapons to work with did so in the hope it would draw out my first fight a little before my opponent inevitably killed me.
But I survived, just as I intend to survive here.
Selene keeps coming for me, and I sweep my trident around, catching her sword in its tines.
We stand there struggling as I try to wrench the weapon from Selene’s hand, and she raises her other, clearly planning to kill me with magic while I’m caught up in that more physical battle.
Fear fills me at the thought of the magic that’s growing in her hand even now.
But I don’t just have one weapon either. I swing my net around, wrapping it around Selene, pinning her arms to her sides even as I pull my trident back and swing it low to trip her. For a second, just a second, she lies there tangled in my net on the floor of the armory.
I stand over her with my trident held ready.
Alaric and Marcus both wanted me to kill her, and now I can feel a more primal need to do it too.
The ferocity and bloodlust of the animals I’ve borrowed power from is flooding through me, the predatory nature of the caged beasts urging me to thrust the weapon down into Selene’s heart.
I could do it. I could end this here and now.
If I kill Selene, Aetheria will never have to worry about her rising up to become its empress.
Its senators won’t have to worry about her controlling their minds.
Its nulls won’t have to worry about her treating them as just something to be crushed beneath her heel.
I think of all the promises she’s made to kill me, and also to slay those I care about.
The idea of Selene hurting Alaric or Marcus terrifies me, and that’s enough to push me over the edge.
I’m going to do it. Regardless of the consequences, regardless of the fact that I’ll have to live with it, I’m going to kill Selene Ravenscroft. Perhaps she sees the certainty of that in my face, because her strange, violet eyes fill with fresh fear. I hold the trident, ready to slay her.
That’s when I see Alaric. There’s only one of him now, and he’s fighting against two of Selene’s followers at once.
Everyone else in the hallway seems to have fallen or fled, but they’re crowding him, a pair of armored, blonde haired women cutting at him from either side with slender blades.
They attack Alaric with magic too, one throwing bursts of flame, the other ice, the two of them working in tandem so perfectly I know Alaric only has a second or two to live.
Can I finish Selene and then go to him? No, there’s no time.
Already, they’re pressing him back against the wall, one of them lifting her blade for what I know is going to be a killing blow.
I curse and throw my trident with all the force I can muster.
It sails through the air, the tines of the weapon punching through the attacker’s armor with so much force the trident pins her to the wall beside Alaric.
I’m already running forward as her compatriot turns, snatching up a sword from one of the racks and throwing myself into a slide, my heart hammering in my chest not in fear, but with the bestial power of the animals I’ve taken strength from.
Alaric’s attacker throws a sheet of ice at me, but it goes above my head as I slide, my weapon thrusting up through her stomach, into her heart.
She stares at me for several seconds as if she can’t believe what I’ve just done, then topples to the floor of the hallway.
She isn’t the only one. The hallway is littered with bodies, both of resistance fighters and guards. Many bear the marks of Selene’s magic, suggesting that she slew them before she came into the armory after me.
I put my arm around Alaric, letting go of some of the power I’ve taken from the beasts, because it’s too dangerous to hold it any longer. Already, I can feel my flesh wanting to shift into something different, a shape bestial minds insist it should be.
“Are you all right?” I ask Alaric.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Selene?”
We turn towards the door to the armory together, which means I’m just in time to witness the moment when she destroys the net holding her, standing a little unsteadily, before raising one power filled hand.
For a second, I think Selene is going to throw that energy at us, and I tense, ready to drag Alaric out of the way. Instead, Selene blasts the wall to the armory, creating a gap through which she slips out into the night. She’s gone.
Alaric curses. “You had her. I saw the net. You had her down, Lyra, but you didn’t kill her.”
“I had to help you,” I say. “I wasn’t going to let them kill you.”
“I could have lasted a few more seconds,” Alaric insists.
But he couldn’t. Is he really prepared to sacrifice himself to see Selene dead?
“I wasn’t going to kill her,” I lie, not wanting to admit just how close I came to finishing Selene. That was animal instinct, not conscious thought. And maybe, if I say it enough, I’ll make myself believe it. “There must still be a way to stop her without that.”
“If there is, I don’t know what it is,” Alaric insists.
Nor do I, but now I stare at the bodies of the two women I killed, and horror fills me. I did this. I did it to save Alaric, but I still did this. And I was just a second away from slaying Selene.
“Come on,” Alaric says. “Selene’s gone. We need to rally with the others and get out of here.”
I let him guide me from Ironhold, slipping away into the darkness to fight another day. I have no doubt that another fight is coming. We stopped Selene’s plan today, but it will only be temporary. She’s out there in the night somewhere, and the thought of what she might do next terrifies me.