Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Thorn
I should have known better. I should have made Senara stay with me, told her to shadow me, but I just assumed that she would.
The idea that she'd go running off by herself didn’t even occur to me.
I was still berating myself when I came out of the house I had just cleared and moved toward the next house in our squad’s pattern. Of course, that was when I saw her.
She was a battle goddess standing at the edge of the town square, surrounded by corrupted fae, her swords winking and shining in the light as she moved, her feet hardly staying still as body after body fell in front of her.
The problem was it wasn’t just one or two of the corrupted fae that she was facing, but most of the horde that we were out there to fight. As much as the sight of her made my blood boil with pride and desire, frustration bubbled up in me, not just with her for getting herself into this situation, but with myself, for allowing it.
I couldn't go about our usual clearing activities with her in danger like that, not that there was much point since almost every house had been emptied of its inhabitants, or they were already dead. Still, there were at least three houses to clear that would fall to me if we followed our regular pattern.
Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t holding out hope for any survivors of this attack outside the few we’d already found and my own squad, or the fact that I knew I would be useless until I was sure she was safe…Whatever it was, I found myself running forward, ignoring the buildings between me and Senara.
One of the soldiers exiting a house stared at me as I ran by; concern pinched his brows.
“Clear my targets, would you?” I shouted and got a nod in return as I headed straight for the cluster of corrupted fae that were closest to me.
I'd unsheathed my sword as soon as Senara had left my arms. I hadn't even had a chance to use it yet. All of the houses that I had cleared hadn't had a single corrupted fae in them. There had been a couple people in one, hiding, hoping to survive, but that was it. I had sent them on their way, promising that if they headed out of town, everything would be fine. Of course, I couldn't guarantee that, but it was safer for them to do that than to remain in their home, where the corrupted fae knew that they could track down survivors and infect them.
I sent my mana along the edge of my blade, lighting it, covering the steel in magical flames. It was one of the small talents I had, and I was damn sure going to make use of it if it was going to stand a chance of getting to Senara and keeping her safe.
The corrupted fae were too focused on her to pay much attention to me, which was fortunate as it allowed me to cut through their ranks as I made my way to her. My mana flames made their skin glow a sickly yellowish-green and the flames themselves seemed to take on a greenish tint as though the two magical forces were influencing one another somehow. I’d never encountered anything like it before, and I knew I’d have to ask the College of Mages about it when we got back.
“Senara!” I boomed as soon as I got close enough that I thought she could hear me.
She turned and a mixture of hope and relief flickered across her face just briefly before she went back to battle mode. There was still a chunk of space around her when she swung her sword at nothing, looking meaningfully at me before she held it, pointed at the center of the town square at the obelisk that stood there.
Confusion filled me, but as my gaze followed the direction of her sword it cleared. Well, cleared as much as it could.
Standing on the far side of the obelisk, there was a mage of some kind that I didn’t think I’d seen before. A silver mask adorned his face, and the only thing that gave him away as male was the cut of his mage robes.
I watched him, and after a split second, I understood what Senara was trying to tell me and it made my stomach churn. The mage seemed to be controlling the corrupted fae. His fingers danced like he was playing the lute, and the fae around Senara followed along. If he was truly controlling them, then there was a chance that they wouldn't stay down until we took him down as well.
There was no choice, instead of going to Senara like I had planned, I altered my course and headed towards the obelisk. Once the mage noticed me heading toward him, the corrupted fae began paying attention to me as well.
The corrupted fae that were close enough moved to attack me, but I was faster than they expected and darted through the crowd, moving toward the mage, hoping that I could get to him before he sent more of the horde after me. Though if they did come after me, at least they wouldn't be going after Senara. That would be something.
As though he had heard my thoughts a whole wave of them seemed to appear out of nowhere, heading in my direction. I forced more magic into my blade, making the flames brighter and hotter so they were almost a bluish-white color. I swung out as the corrupted fae drew close, slashing at them, taking one's head off, another's arm, slashing one across the chest.
I struck out at anything I could in order to carve a path through them so I could get to the mage. The glow of the flames on my sword cast an even sicklier light on their skin, making them seem even more corrupted as though they were half decayed already; but most of them had been residents of the town, so there was no way that they had rotted so quickly, unless something else was at play here.
As I rotated through the horde, I kept the mage in the corner of my vision, but as I got closer to him, he seemed to wink out of existence. When I caught a flash of metal on the other side of the square, I turned to find him standing there, watching us.
Had he just teleported?
I wasn't sure that kind of magic existed, at least for us. But maybe the moon fae had something like that? Or maybe it came from whatever this corruption was? I wasn't sure, and I didn't know how to find out without sounding like a crazy person.
It wasn't something I could spend too much energy thinking about while I was also working on fighting for my life, so I pushed the thought to the side. As I moved toward the mage once more, I realized that he’d moved closer to Senara somehow.
Dread congealed in my stomach.
My fighting took on an edge of desperation that it hadn’t had before. After all, the mage had seemed more interested in taking Senara out of play than anything else, but now he was watching her, and even though I couldn’t see his face past the bestial mask, I could still sense the intensity of it, as though he was using magic somehow to observe her more closely.
The thought made me distinctly uncomfortable.
A savage part of me raged that he had no right to be looking at our bonds like that.
She was mine.
And mine alone.
No one else could or would lay a finger on her if I had anything to say about it.
I snarled outwardly now, a great roar leaving me as my primal side overtook my rational one. Both Senara and the mage looked at me and I could sense him evaluating me.
With a surge of power, I pushed the flames out of my sword so they became a tornado of fire around me, burning everything they came into contact with. Corrupted fae became ash in the wind, turning the sky cloudy as I stalked toward the mage intent of bringing his life to an end.
Senara was still fighting, though, and with a moment’s hesitation I debated going to her instead, and that was when the mage struck out directly for the first time. Before I knew what hit me, lightning was crackling over my skin, destroying the power that was emanating from me and reducing me to a quivering lump on the ground.
There was no way he should be as powerful as he was, no way he should be able to control the corrupted fae and send out a blast of mana lightning like that at the same time.
Panic flared through me, but it wasn’t for my own life, but for Senara’s. Whatever the mage had done, he knew I was either incapacitated or dead.
“Queen. Come.” The voice was harsh and guttural as though this was not the mage’s native tongue. He extended his finger toward Senara, drew a circle in the air, turned his hand and crooked his finger.
The dread that had been in me turned into terror as Senara was pulled along the ground by a force unseen as the corrupted fae ceased their attacks.
“I’m not your queen! I. Never. Will. Be!” She grunted as though each word took a monumental amount of effort, and judging from the way her body was completely rigid otherwise, I understood why.
“ Sk’lar, vash Mothsil faeven ,” the mage spat at the ground after he spoke as though he was cursing her. It was a language I didn’t recognize, which chilled me to the bone.
Whatever this corruption was, it was much further spread and much more powerful than any of us had realized. To my understanding, it had been assumed to be a disease of some kind, something that turned the fae mindless, stripped even the most moral of their values and reduced them to nothing but base creatures searching for their next feed or fuck.
“Yeah? Well, fuck you, too!” Senara replied, and for a moment I wondered if she actually understood what he had said, but she looked just as bewildered as I felt.
The mage sneered at her, clearly understanding the sentiment if not the words themselves. She was directly in front of him now, close enough that if she’d had control of her body she could have tried to fight him, but she didn’t, and whatever she could see or sense at that distance had made her eyes go wider than a child’s but not with wonder. With terror.
“Captive. Or. Queen. Choose.” Each word from the mage sounded like it caused him severe pain to say, and each word dropped like debris after a spell went wrong into the silence that hung over the square.
Senara seethed, not only could I see it in the small twitches of her body that showed how hard she was resisting the magical binding the mage had placed on her, but I could feel it through the paper thin bond that we shared, that and a cold, deadly determination.
The hand holding the dagger I’d given her twitched, and I realized that at some point during her fighting she’d strapped the weapon to her hand, which was the only reason she still held the weapon as she’d dropped the other sword she’d been using as soon as the mage took control her her body.
Her breathing came in heavy pants as she did everything she could to fight for control of her own body. When she glanced at me with sorrow in her eyes, and resignation echoed through our bond, I felt a terror the likes of which I’d never known before.
“Neither.”
Her hand jerked up and brought the blade to her own throat.