Chapter Twenty-Three #3
Her second scream cut off abruptly as a chair slammed across the room to crash into Gwynira—and this time Einar caught the hint of movement in the shadows of the broken wall.
A slim older man with pale skin, black hair going silver, and a cruel smile twitched his fingers again, sending Gwynira flying.
Only Arktikos surging into her path and catching her with a grunt kept her from crashing through a window.
“Arktikos!” When the large man swung his head Einar’s way, he jabbed a finger toward the man. Gwynira’s guard needed no more prompting. One moment there was a burly man standing there, in the next a massive polar bear crashed out of him, shaking free of his confining human form with a snarl.
The floor rattled under the massive force of his charge. The older man frantically raised his hands, and Einar could feel the power rip through the room. It crashed into the bear—and nudged him back barely a handspan.
Terror replaced glee in the man’s eyes and then he was gone, fleeing into the night with Arktikos charging after him.
The clash of steel filled the sudden silence, and Einar saw Aleksi dancing through the debris, easily fending off the attack of a burly blond warrior.
A casual flick of Aleksi’s wrist bound the other man’s blade and sent it flying, but he simply growled and reached into the air.
Power crackled, and a new sword formed as if from smoke, coalescing in time to block Aleksi’s next swing.
How many of these people did Sorin have?
Too many—and too cleverly chosen. A man who could summon weapons from air to battle a known swordsman.
A woman who could summon fire to face down the Ice Queen.
Someone who could rend the earth and tear stone from stone to counter the island that answered the call of its goddess.
Had the old man been meant to keep Einar penned by knocking him back any time he tried to charge?
Or had his focus on Gwynira and Isa been meant to accomplish exactly what it had in luring their potent guard away?
A shriek of anger filled the air, whipping Einar’s attention back to where Naia faced off against the furious blonde. Her rage-filled eyes swung past Naia to Einar—and then to the servants gathered behind him. “Kill them!” she screamed, and for a moment Einar wasn’t sure who she was talking to.
The man . . . oozed out of the shadows on the far side of the room, his movement so unnatural it made Einar’s basest instincts scream for destruction.
The new man’s golden beauty was jarring against the darkness that seemed to cling to him, as if delicate vines of a starless night sky twined around him, rolling over his skin in sinuous movements.
He must have avoided the battle by clinging to the wall and moving silently, and now he stood near the bulk of the servants, a quiet, dreamy look in his startlingly blue eyes as he bent down and touched one fingertip to the cracked marble floor.
Darkness flowed out of him. No, something worse.
Corruption, those vines twisting across the floor like a living thing that left destruction in their wake.
The marble melted beneath them, crumbling into rot and ashes.
The vines found the boots of one of the guards, and he screamed as they shot up his legs, tiny thorns sinking in like hooks.
His flesh sizzled. Melted. Rotted.
Panicked screams broke through the silence, followed by Hilja’s bellowing command to run. They did, scattering toward the doors, barely outrunning the threat. Inga staggered to the guard’s side, hands already trembling as she reached for him.
There was only one thing that would end the threat.
Einar swept up the broken leg of a chair and started toward the source of that corruption, but a waifish redhead with big green eyes stepped between them.
She lifted her hands with a feral smile, and some ancient instinct warned Einar to move.
He dove to the side, wincing as his body slammed into the uneven rubble strewn across the floor.
Then pain seemed immaterial. A rift of darkness opened in the air where he had just been, as if the new woman had torn through the barrier between this world and the Endless Void. The jagged rip hung there for a moment, tendrils of the Void licking outward as if seeking something to touch.
If Einar had still been standing there, even his demigod form would not have saved him. She would have ripped his body in half.
The thought had barely formed when the redhead pivoted, and Einar’s body moved before his mind caught up.
He rolled out of the path of her next attack just as nothingness opened up through one of Gwynira’s few remaining chairs.
It shattered the wood and sent little bits of stuffing flying in every direction.
The pieces drifted down on Einar like snowflakes as he rolled again, not stopping until he could hunker down behind a large chunk of rubble.
A heartbeat later, a Void tear reduced it to jagged chunks and fine pebbles.
Einar snatched up the largest piece and whipped it at the woman with enough force, it would have taken off her head if it had struck.
She dove out of the way, earning him enough of a respite to put his hands on another chunk of debris—a shattered piece of a table, with an end sharp enough to serve as a spear.
He came to his feet, cocking his arm back to throw. The redhead smiled and lifted her hands.
The enraged roar of a polar bear shook the room.
It happened so fast. The floor shivered as huge paws slammed down. The Void ripper spun, eyes going wide when she saw the massive polar bear charging toward her with teeth bared in a furious snarl.
They moved at the same time. Arktikos swiped at her with claws long enough to tear her stomach open. The force of the blow lifted her feet off the ground, flinging her back like a rag doll. She screamed, her hands flying up.
Reality ripped apart between them, darkness exploding in an uneven line across Arktikos’s unprotected body.
The Void ripper’s body crashed to the floor a dozen paces away, broken and unmoving. Arktikos stumbled, slamming to the broken marble in a confusing explosion of blood and sparkling light.
By the time Einar reached his side, Arktikos was a man again.
His face drew tight with pain, and his shredded armor revealed torn skin and things that should not have been visible, because parts of him were simply gone.
Blood poured from him so freely that Inga slipped in it as she appeared suddenly at his side.
“No,” she said quite clearly, dropping to her knees in the puddle of blood and viscera. Her eyes glowed with feverish light as she took his face gently between her hands, thumbs smoothing over the grooves carved by pain. “No,” she said again.
Arktikos let out one gasping moan, and Einar swayed, as if Inga had become the heart of a whirlpool, pulling everything toward her.
Aches he had barely noticed vanished, bruises that hadn’t yet formed sinking deep into his body before melting away.
Inga seemed to glow from within, like diamonds and rubies refracting light that wasn’t there.
Then the whirlpool released him. Moments later, frigid hands slammed into his body, shoving him across a floor that was suddenly slick with frost. Gwynira fell to her knees at Arktikos’s side, naked grief in her eyes as she clutched at his hand. “Arktikos—”
Her voice trembled, and Einar turned away, sickened. Surely even Inga could not rebuild organs that had been obliterated by the Void itself. Arktikos would die, and there was nothing Einar could do to stop it. All he could do was stop Sorin from taking anyone else.
Locking down the pain, Einar found his makeshift spear and rose to his feet. The Void ripper sprawled, still unmoving, across a pile of rubble. He paused to make sure of her death with one swift and ruthless stroke to the heart, then turned to follow the path of corruption, seeking its source.
“He fled,” said a voice at Einar’s side. Hilja, with blood streaking her forehead, and dripping from the cleaver still clutched in one hand. “When—” A hitch. “When Arktikos came.”
Grief filled her eyes. Einar could not let it claim him. He reached out a hand to squeeze her shoulder. “Get the rest of the servants outside,” he told her, tightening his hand when she parted her lips to argue. “No excuses, Hilja. It will break Naia’s heart if even one of you dies tonight.”
She swallowed, but nodded and turned away to gather the others. For one moment, Einar let himself hope they had a chance to keep the mortals safe.
Then the ceiling gave a shuddering groan—and fractured in two.
The sound was terrifying, like nothing Einar had ever heard before.
He couldn’t even guess how many tons of stone stood above them.
The palace rose for five stories with towers rising farther into the sky.
That stone groaned now, the sound of the abused supports simply .
. . giving way. No human trapped beneath this avalanche would survive.
Einar wasn’t even sure his bones could heal from being crushed so completely.
Only Naia was holding back the onslaught, her face strained as her hands flexed against nothingness. “Get them outside,” she gritted. “Now.”
There was no more time. Einar grabbed a kitchen boy by the back of the shirt and all but tossed him out into the night. A maid followed, and a pair of stable boys. They would heal from bruises, at least. They would live—
Einar turned back to find that furious little blonde who had started all of this with her explosive powers striding toward Naia with a glint in her eyes.
Her hands swung up, power gathering there.
She laughed as she let it free, crashing into the already groaning ceiling and causing a hundred new cracks to spiderweb out from the main fracture.
Naia gasped, the strain of holding back the cascade of stone seeming to bend her nearly in half.