Chapter 67
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
RYOT
The battlefield is splintering.
It is no longer a line—no longer a war we can see and control.
Every front we’d managed to hold is breaking apart.
The Kher’zenn breach our defenses and stream into Amarune, sweeping through the city streets, slaughtering everything in their path.
Screams echo—high, terrified. Too many of them small.
Down below, in the shattered city of Amarune, Caius fights like a man possessed as civilians cower in the streets behind him.
He cuts down one Kher’zenn after another, but there are too many.
A draegoth slams into him from behind, a spear punches through his side, knocking him from the saddle.
Faelon dives after him in a reckless drop, his hand outstretched, but he’s too late.
Caius strikes the cobblestone streets below and doesn’t rise.
Faelon hovers, stunned for half a beat, before he throws himself into defense of the women and children Caius died trying to protect, launching dozens of arrows in seconds and calling them all back—ripping them from the chests and heads of bodies that are still falling—with a rage I’ve never seen from him.
Further back, Thalric fights alone above a temple square.
Oryndel bleeds from a dozen wounds, his wings barely holding them aloft as they battle to protect a family hiding behind the marble columns.
Kher’zenn surround him, whips lashing, circling for a kill.
To my right, Nyrica makes a sound in his throat—low, broken, inhuman—and abandons our line, flying toward Thalric.
I reach out, stretching my shield impossibly far, toward Thalric. My commander. My brother. My family. And it won’t quite reach him. No matter. I gather it tight against me, preparing to fling it out like a net instead, until Leina and Vaeloria dart past my line of sight.
Blood streams from Vaeloria’s wings, from Leina’s arm and face. They falter. Dip. A shredwhip lashes out, and blood pours from Vaeloria’s back leg.
Another strike, and my heart will be dead.
I bite down against the scream rising in my chest and fling the shield upward, hurling it toward Leina with everything I have left. Thalric disappears beneath wings and blades.