Chapter Seventeen
Piris
Piris had been in her room, trying not to think. She’d taken the morning to indulge in some alone time, to lounge and be a tad lazy. She hadn’t been lazy in a long while, not since before she had arrived at Hollythorn Manor with her trunks, ready to fight with and for her best friend. She’d been on the defensive so long, and if she were honest, she needed a break. Throw in her current madness with Jarok and the ever-looming threat of Engad Monti and his Benders, she was tense. The only time she wasn’t was when she was tied up by Jarok, but the afterglow of those encounters made her tense in a different way she was unwilling to examine too closely.
It’d been ages since she took breakfast in her rooms. The soft yellow-and-cream palette was a comforting blanket wrapped around her. She remembered the days of discussion with her mother when she’d come of age and been given the opportunity to recreate her own space. The place was familiar, warm, a hug of wallpaper, paint, and carefully curated art. It represented a softer side of herself she let few see, one she wanted kept secret and safe, maybe more than her magic. Possibly because of her magic.
Needing more warm cover than her usual sleepwear gave her, she’d changed into a large wool nightshirt after Jarok had left the night before, and when she’d crawled out of bed to eat her breakfast tray by the fire, she’d slipped on an even thicker velvet robe the color of brilliantly cut emeralds with a sash of golden braids. It was a decadent piece of clothing, a luxury to wrap herself in as she nibbled on toast, drank tea, and read an old favorite book. The spine, so worn and cracked, flopped open to all her favorite parts. It was peace, calm, a moment to be alone. To be. Until it wasn’t.
She heard the running steps long before they came to her door, to tell her that her home was under attack. She was gripped with equal parts fear and rage at the sheer gall of the Benders to dare attack her home. Attack her family, blood and not.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t change from her lush, lazy garments. Piris grabbed a dagger belt hung by her door, the leather rubbed smooth and blades honed sharp though rarely used. They were backups maintained as diligently as the blades she favored, and she thanked herself for keeping up the habit for so many years as she sprinted down the hallway.
Gem was staying in a room a few down from Piris, and the warrior caught up with her in several hard beats, coming up on her right and yelling, “What are we running into?”
They stayed in step, Piris pushing her long legs to meet the challenge of Gem. She had no answers for the Fae, so she shook her head. Gem didn’t press further as they skidded around a corner, slowing only a few steps. They’d hit the vast central hallway, its padded, intricately decorated rugs dampening the sounds of their feet as they pushed forward, forward, forward. Toward the sounds of fighting they heard clear and harsh ahead.
Piris spared a glance to her right when she heard her mother giving gentle orders before taking a small handful of guards with her as she disappeared into a darkened alcove, in the direction of the kitchens. She’d do what she could: shield and comfort the servants in the house in the lower-level kitchens, trying to keep them safe in her home. Piris cried out, wordless, fighting through the need to go to her mother, for comfort and to protect. Lady Volesion’s head whipped around, worry causing lines to spider out on her forehead where there usually were none. She waved her daughter on before blowing a kiss her way, encouragement and love a gut punch she didn’t need in the moment but savored nonetheless.
She and her warrior friend hit the high, black doors of Volesion Peak and followed the gravel path. Piris took a moment to thank the gods Benders were not at the doors. Not yet. She gritted her teeth and vowed they never would be, pushing herself harder, Gem having to match her speed then.
The clang of metal on metal, the neigh of frightened horses, and the men's gasps and shouts led the two down the central lane leading to the house. They found a battle in progress. Her father and his men were gathered in the center, a wall of flesh and steel ready to defend their home at all costs. Jarok and Cylian flanked them, a swirl of snow and branches around them telling her the prince was wielding magic as he wielded his sword. Burning things, cloth and steel and flesh, let her know the Autumnlands lord was also not holding back. A sonic screech, the outside edges of the sound all she heard, almost brought her to a stop.
The sound of her father’s magic, his ability to direct sound as a weapon, echoed around as one of the Benders fell over, knocked unconscious by the hit from yards away. It was an imperfect weapon, she knew, because to direct sound at a single enemy and not catch others in the vortex lashing out was hard to do in the heat of battle. When Lord Volesion’s screeches hit their mark, they did serious damage to his targets. She’d grown up watching it in training, when he had been trying to teach her how to hone and wield her own magic. For good and bad, this was the first she’d witnessed it used in battle.
An arrow flew by her head, nicking her ear but only skimming her because Gem had been paying attention and had pulled her friend to the side several steps. Piris whipped her head back, scanning the large hedges, a perfect place for archers to hide and hit with secret precision. Given the arrows riddling the gravel lane at the group of men ahead, she figured Jarok was using his wind as defense, which was why so many Benders were fighting with swords and daggers rather than the large bows at their back.
Moments later, a soft cry fell from the hedges, and a body followed. The Bender thumped hard to the gravel, blood pooling from the arrow piercing clean through his neck. The sold black fletches, sharp as the glinting bronze of the tip, told her it wasn’t a stray arrow from a Bender. Darin was out there, in the shadows of the hedges, picking off hidden archers as he found them.
Piris had no more time to take in the scene. When she heard a cry from her father, she pushed against the wind, her eyes narrowed. Jarok must have dug through his power to reach them, because the air eased for a moment, letting her and Gem join their ranks. Piris ran right to her father and the two Benders bearing down on him as he tried to defend, only one hand to his sword while the other hung limp at his side. Every other Fae in their ranks was engaged with one or more men, so it was on her to help her father.
Without a sound save the slip of her feet on gravel, she came at the backs of the men fighting her wounded father. She leaped, her green velvet wrapping fluttering like wings around her as she used her running speed to propel her hard and high at the back of the man to her right. Her legs wrapped around his waist from behind, and she felt him stiffen for a second before she reached around him and buried one of her blades into his eye, the one place she knew for certain they were vulnerable from their previous encounters.
He made no sound as he dropped at her feet, and without stopping to consider another death at her hands, she turned so she and her father were facing off with the remaining Bender beside them. He shifted to defense, taking a blow her father landed with a hard clash at his upraised sword. With her teeth gritted so hard they felt they might crack, Piris crouched like an animal ready to pounce, ready to defend her father at any cost.
The Bender, singling her as the easier target, stepped forward with a hard swipe of his large sword. Her daggers, hilts spread wide for such defense, met his blow at an X far above her head. Piris shoved him away, to her right, so he stumbled right into the incoming sword of her father, tipped up high to bury itself in the center of his throat. He sputtered and gasped when Lord Volesion pulled out his blade and let the Fae’s body fall to the ground.
They took a moment, one single moment, to send love. She blinked up at her father as he stared down at her and gave her a quick, swift kiss to her forehead before turning to his men and shouting commands. His move away, his proof of trust in her as a fighter, filled her with purpose and determination. She damned the Benders, knowing then they would forever be sorry they’d come to the doors of Volesion Peak.
Fierce energy surged through her and she spun on her heels, scanning the crowd of fighters to find a new target. She didn’t need to. A Bender had pushed his way through Jarok’s wind when the prince had allowed Piris and Gem entrance. She didn’t hesitate, as the Bender did not, moving toward the Fae man on swift feet she then planted firm in the loose gravel.
The man swung at her with a mace of all things, a powerful swing matching the muscle and heft of the Fae in front of her. Luckily, she’d trained fighting against all weapons, her father long ago teaching her that swiftness, flexibility, and knowledge could outperform pure strength among many Fae. She bent back, her upper body going nearly parallel to the ground as the massive ball of spiked metal sailed over the space where her head had been. Twisting her waist in a move she knew would twinge in the morning, she whipped her body around toward the man’s torso, shifting so her chest faced the ground and she slashed at the man’s belly with both daggers. Whatever defensive spell they had was impressive, but it did little against the force of blows. Neither of her daggers sank into flesh, but the push of them made the man stumble backward, the massively heavy bit of weaponry in his right hand causing him to lose his balance.
Piris took advantage, pushing herself into his middle and tackling him to the ground so she straddled the surprised Fae warrior. Giving him no time to recover, she sliced one dagger hard across his exposed throat, spilling his blood on the ground as it splashed up over her.
She pushed off the man, who’d dropped his mace to cover the death blow at his neck, trying not to think of the multiple deaths she’d caused when only days ago she’d never killed a man. Piris did a quick survey of the fighters. Her father and his guard had formed a strong semicircle of protection across the lane, fighting man-to-man any who tried to push past them.
None did. They were not focused on the house. They congregated here, dropping into the fray as quick as they could, as if focused on a single point in the group.
Jarok, she realized when she saw Cylian singe the upraised hand of one of three men surrounding the prince and trying to wear him down. The prince. They wanted the prince.
Heat bubbled inside her. Seared across her vision. The rebels were fighting for their leader, who fought for himself. They had no care for others, not like she’d seen from the king and queen, from Prince Ghel… care she knew without doubt lay in the heart of her best friend, the new princess. Or what she now knew also rested easy in Prince Jarok—a level of care and concern for the Winterlands and all in it. The responsibility, to his people and land, hung off him like a cloak… like the bloodied robe she wore, a lush and warm thing easily made heavy with blood and fight and need.
Gem came up beside her, nodding with a quick clip of her head, before she ran full tilt toward her cousin, an Aurora battle cry ringing out loud in the air. Piris followed steps behind, pushing through the few in her way, swinging her daggers as she went. Her target, one of the men attempting to join the group surrounding Jarok, swerved before she collided with his side, somehow sensing her running attack at him.
The Bender dropped and rolled, then popped up with surprising speed to face Piris—speed he mimicked as he dodged and ducked Piris’s hard blows meant for his throat. His speed did little when she tracked his direction and managed to slip a foot in a spot she knew he would hit, tripping him. He fell hard on his back. His eyes popped open on impact, in time to watch Cylian’s long, thin rapier blade slam down into his throat.
The Autumn lord twirled then, sending a small blast of flame into the man who had been about to skewer his back. The attacker screamed, hitting his breast with an open hand as Gem came up from behind and dropped him, blood trailing from his throat to the singed portion on his chest.
“Jarok. Down.” The words came from far away, but not. Darin was standing outside the defensive winds Jarok was maintaining around the group.
Piris took a second to look around. No more Benders pushed outside the circle. Seeing Darin outside also made her assume no more Benders skulked in the hedges of the lane. Their attackers were contained, the remainder fighting inside the vortex of air Jarok created.
Darin, his face under his hood cold and clear and stark as a bright spring dawn, stood tall, waiting with three wicked arrows notched in his bow. She felt the whoosh of wind receding, and the arrows flew, taking out three Benders at the same time. A fourth and fifth, fighting the prince, were downed by arrows a moment later, almost too fast for Piris to comprehend for a Fae without speed as his affinity. Then Darin was gone, and she saw the sliver of shadow at the hedge’s edge and followed it instinctively with her eyes, seeing the assassin pop back into sight down the line so he could fire one, two, three more arrows in quick succession into the eyes of Benders still engaged with her father’s guard.
They dropped, as did the swords and daggers of the rest of the group. All the Benders were now gone. Maybe some had fled when they had seen the direction of the fight, but many bodies of Benders were now piled there by the group panting from exertion around her.
“Piris,” Jarok called, stalking toward her. He took her face in large, warm hands speckled with blood.
She stared deep into his eyes, still processing the heat she’d felt when she realized he was their target, the rage she tried to stuff back into a little box in the back of her mind. She couldn’t say anything. Wouldn’t.
Jarok opened his mouth to speak but was stopped at the loud commands of her father. “Clear the lane as quickly as possible. Prince, Piris, Lords, Gem. Come with me. We have much to discuss.”
Jarok was the royal, but all followed after her father. The prince said nothing to Piris, giving her time to fit all those messy emotions back in their tight hiding spots. Still, when he let go of her face, he gripped one of her hands tight, immovably so, and she didn’t fight it. She even squeezed back as they fell in line and headed toward the black doors of Volesion Peak.