Chapter 40 The Jagged Blade
The Jagged Blade
Panic sweeps through the apartment. The cohort crowds the balcony in a barrage of frantic questions.
Around the Maw, the concentric nova-light panels flicker on, casting a white glow on the slick surface.
Figures are spilling out of the Dark, so fast that at first Sascia can’t comprehend what she’s seeing.
Then she notices their shape, their size, their wings. The aesin are airborne.
Onyx saddles hold them in place atop winged Darkcreatures, wyverns with heads of crimson feathers and long curved horns.
Shrill cries leak out of the beasts’ mouths; Sascia has heard the sound before, deep within the aesin compound.
The Queen must have commanded the aesin to hide these army mounts from Sascia.
The army of the Jagged Blade shoots up from the Maw in a torrent of hundreds.
At their head flies the Queen in her menacing helmet.
Wearing heavy armor, the army swoops low against the barrier that surrounds the Maw and thrusts their longswords into the nova-light panels, the first line of defense against the Dark. Shards drop into the gaping hole of black below as though in slow motion, a rainfall of fading light.
Nugau steps up next to Sascia on the balcony. Their presence forces Sascia back into her body, standing there against the frigid wind in her borrowed pajamas and bare feet. Moths hover in the air around her, beating wings that have gone hard and lethal.
“The Battle of Feathers,” Nugau hisses. “We didn’t stop it.”
They didn’t even have the time to try.
The muscles at Nugau’s jaw are tight. Their bare torso shivers with anger.
Magic responds to their call; swaths of black are twirling around their fisted hands.
“How did they even find a way out?” they ask.
“The Queen returned from the tunnels because she couldn’t tear one open no matter how she tried. ”
A riot of clarity blares through Sascia’s mind. The Queen’s goals have been clear from the very beginning: a way into the human world, an attack, a war to sow vengeance and put an end to the bombings.
“She knew you wouldn’t kill me,” Sascia whispers. “She knew you would leave with me. She was counting on your choice…so that she could use Mooch’s rift to tear open a way through. I led the Jagged Blade right to the humans’ doorstep.”
The realization hits her like an arrow to the chest. All her sacrifices, all her blood and sweat and tears—for this? To be tricked into starting the very war she was trying to stop?
“It is done now,” Nugau states. “They are here. The war has begun. The only thing we can do is end it quickly.”
The hue of their Darkprint shifts from the many colors of siff into a brilliant blue.
That cold mask drapes over the princess’s face, only now it is carved into a wrathful, dangerous shape.
Dark gathers over her skin. Shadows coalesce into matter.
Onyx armor plates lock around her arms and chest. Her scythe crystallizes out of thin air: its long stem, its curved blade, the luminous gemstone of its surface.
Her eyes land heavy on Sascia. “You said our choices are still our own, despite the ymneen. So what will be yours, little gnat? Will you commit treason against my kind?”
“No. Never.”
“Will you fight with me to stop this destruction?”
“Yes. Always.”
Nugau gives her a grim nod before turning her gaze back to the army.
Yet her magic is hard at work; armor pieces are smelted out of the Dark, a breastplate and arm and leg guards that swathe Sascia’s borrowed T-shirt and pajama pants.
Sascia struggles with the straps at her side, until a new set of fingers takes over.
Shivani tightens the breastplate around Sascia’s chest while Andres helps her into her Doc Martens.
Danny looks at her, his face paper white. “Are you sure?”
For a moment, Sascia considers. The adults are involved now; she could step back, find a place to hide with the cohort and let Chapter XI deal with this.
On her hair, among the dozens of other moths, Mooch ruffles its wings.
Sascia exhales. Who is she kidding? There has never been a moment in all her complicated, unorthodox life when she has stepped back. She has always marched forward, through successes and failures, through gaping maws and ice-frozen ponds. “I’m sure.”
Sharp, muffled blasts of nova-guns permeate the air. Soldiers run along the pathways of the barrier. Beams of light shoot through the aesin formations, sending them scattering left and right. Darkwyverns are shot out of the air, spiraling back into the blackness.
Yet after every hit, the Jagged Blade comes together again.
Fallen warriors are quickly replaced by newcomers.
Small groups slip out of formation in quick, efficient attacks.
Their focus is on destroying the nova-light panels that guard the perimeter of the Maw and the mortars mounted on the top of the barrier—no doubt to allow the full force of the army to come through.
And then it will be war in earnest. Sascia remembers the counterattacks humans launched on Darkbeasts: air strikes, blasters, bombs.
Nugau places her fingers in her mouth and lets out a long, shrill whistle.
Seconds pass, then the surface of the Maw splits.
A bullet of a creature flies out of it, a Darkwyvern smaller and lighter than all the others.
The moment she spots it, the princess hoists herself onto the balustrade of the balcony and flings herself off.
Sascia’s stomach plummets. The entire cohort rushes to the edge of the balcony to peer down—a gust of wind throws them back as the Darkwyvern shoots upward.
Nugau is atop it, flying parallel to the building, both of them cawing piercing battle cries.
Holding her scythe low against her thigh, the princess crouches on her stirrups, her body shifting with every beat of her Darkwyvern’s wings.
With a swoop, they come to hover before the balcony.
Nugau extends an arm. “Let’s end this, little gnat.”
Sascia lets the princess’s grip hoist her onto the saddle and then—she’s flying.