Chapter 1 #2
I slip my free hand between the folds of my riding gown’s skirt and retrieve another knife from the hidden sheath there. As we barrel onward, I tap Casimir’s arm to offer the weapon.
The courtesan glances down and shakes his head with a glint of his deep blue eyes. “I fight better with my hands. Holding something will throw me off.”
I’ve seen him dissuade a judgmental nobleman with a wrench of the fellow’s wrist, so I know he has some defensive skills. I doubt he’s ever found himself in the middle of a full-out battle, though. “If you change your mind…”
He manages to shoot me a fond smile. “I know who I can count on for extra blades.”
At the bottom of the stairs, a short hall leads to a doorway half-filled with collapsed stone. Stavros curses and scrambles over the rubble, the rest of us following in his wake. The rough edges scrape at my palm.
The sprawling room behind is a picture of carnage. One of the inner walls has partly crumbled; the lanterns flicker wildly.
I nearly trip over a body half-buried by the doorway. More corpses lie scattered across the stone floor.
The wavering light gleams off a golden crown. King Konram is wearing his where he’s braced next to his wife to shield a few smaller figures I assume include their children.
Six guards continue fighting valiantly in front of them, but one of them is swaying and another’s sleeve is drenched in blood.
At least twice as many opponents have closed in on them, half of them in guard’s uniforms, the others in plainer clothes like I saw upstairs. Most of them are wielding swords and daggers.
But in the first moment after I leap into the room, one man swipes out with his bare hand.
A crackling light escapes his fingers and smacks into one of the guards, searing blackened lines across his face. As the soldier staggers backward, a pool of ice forms in my gut.
The daimon have their own supernatural powers. Now we know how they barbequed the gate.
Another man snatches up a huge chunk of broken rock and hurls it at the royal guards. It slams into one woman’s head, and she falls to her knees.
Stavros roars and throws himself forward with his sword whipping through the air. He cuts down two attacking men, who smash into clay shards on the floor before any of the others can react.
The largest of our opponents whirls. As Stavros moves to swing his sword, the equally immense man charges right into the former general like a battering ram. They slam through a side door and careen into the shadows of the room beyond.
Another attacker races to fight with Stavros, and two more spin toward the rest of us new arrivals. A burly man slashes his sword at me.
I duck and whirl around to kick at his legs. He stumbles backward but only for a second before he’s lurching toward me again.
The other attacker has hurled herself at Casimir and Alek. Alek swipes inexpertly with his confiscated dagger before Casimir lands a blow to her head with both strength and his usual grace. The impact sends her reeling sideways into the wall.
The instant she hits the stone blocks, more energy sizzles from her hands. The wall cracks and bucks.
A deluge of stone batters the two men. I have to roll to the side to escape the slice of my attacker’s sword, and when I glance again, both the scholar and the courtesan are pinned to their waists beneath the rubble.
Stavros gives a vicious cry and heaves one of his opponents back out of the side room. But that man takes the same tactic the woman did and slams his hands against the side of the doorway.
The stones crumple inward, cutting off Stavros from the room the rest of us are in.
Grit prickles in my throat. I cough and dodge, landing a blow with my knife to my attacker’s thigh. As he staggers sideways, I kick his legs right out from under him.
He thumps to the floor but doesn’t drop his sword. And as he tenses to lunge at me again, my gaze slips past him to the royal family.
More clay litters the floor now, but so do more bodies of the real guards. The last of them is just collapsing with a blade through his gut.
The five clay-captured daimon still standing near the king launch themselves at the unguarded royal family.
No! Julita cries as my pulse stutters.
I hurl my knife at one of the attackers, but the others don’t even look as their companion topples over.
Both King Konram and Queen Ishild have drawn blades of their own, but I can see those won’t be enough. They’re an instant from being overwhelmed.
Nothing would be enough.
“Ivy!” Alek rasps out from where he’s shoving at the rubble on his legs. “Quick—you have to.”
My stomach sinks at the same moment as my magic thrums through my bones.
Right. I would be enough.
There isn’t time to think, isn’t time to plead with the lesser god who’s guided me in the past to help me control the backlash.
One of the attackers stabs his sword toward Konram’s heart just as the king parries a different blow from another—and with a choked sound, I fling my power at the swordsman.
The magical force wrenches the man to the side and snaps his neck. He collapses into a jumble of clay.
I heave my arms upward and will the stones from the walls to rise. My power surges through my limbs, vibrating to the core of my bones.
As I shove the stones back into place, a booming sound from above suggests my magic has torn down other walls somewhere else in the palace. I can’t find the capacity to care just yet.
The woman who destroyed one of those walls stares at me with a flicker of light behind her eyes. “Riven!” she cries.
Stavros hurtles out of the newly restored side room and crashes straight into another of the attackers sword-first. Alek and Casimir scramble to their feet.
The courtesan grabs at the swordsman in front of me, who was just making a lunge of his own. He yanks the man’s arm around sharply enough for bone to crack just as I snatch another knife from the sheaths at my thighs.
As I push forward to slit the swordsman’s throat, Queen Ishild plunges her short sword into the nearest figure’s gut. King Konram stabs another in the chest—just as the man jerks his hand toward the ceiling.
The stone surface cracks. I let out a yelp of warning.
A surge of my own magic rattles up through my ribs.
The broken chunk freezes just inches from cracking Konram’s skull. Then it slams back up to re-meld with the ceiling.
My skin twitches with the effort, sweat beading on the back of my neck.
Stavros cuts through the last of the attackers, and suddenly everything is still except the rasp of our labored breaths.
I wobble, and Casimir grasps my arm to steady me. I let myself lean just slightly toward him, relief washing over me at his calming presence.
We fended off the attack. King Konram and his family are alive and relatively uninjured.
My magic settles into a restless churning within my chest, uneasy but satisfied that it’s pitched in as much as was necessary.
Julita’s voice travels through my thoughts. Well, I’d rather not ever do that again.
I might have chuckled, but right then I notice the king staring at me.
Konram’s gaze flicks upward to the mended ceiling and then back to my face. His expression has tensed even more than it was during the battle.
A chill pools in my gut.
His head jerks toward Stavros. “You heard what that one traitor said. You saw what she did.”
Stavros’s forehead furrows. “Your Highness… Ivy saved your life.”
The king stares at him for a moment before a sickly pallor creeps over his face. “You already knew. You brought one of them into my palace, straight to my family…”
Stavros’s entire massive frame goes rigid, as does his voice. “She saved your life,” he repeats, as if he thinks possibly Konram missed that point the first time.
The king adjusts his grip on his sword, though he doesn’t dare raise it toward me. At least, not yet. “She might have been behind this whole attack. My own guards turning on me—”
“The scourge sorcerers were behind it,” Alek snaps. “Look at those guards now. We told you the conspirators were conjuring creatures out of clay that looked alive, and probably people too.”
Julita gives a soft huff. He can’t seriously think we went through all the madness of the past few weeks just to turn on him now. I’d hope the man who governs all Silana has more sense than that.
I can’t summon much hope of my own. King Konram has been one of the biggest advocates for slaughtering all riven sorcerers. He parades every captured riven before his people so they can watch the sorcerers hang and know the country is that much safer.
I swallow against the sudden dryness in my throat. “Your Highness, I mean you and your family no harm. Now that the threat is dealt with, I’ll leave.”
Konram flinches as if my words were a threat themselves. He glances at Stavros again. “You know what needs to be done.”
“Wait!”
I know that voice, but my pulse still skips in surprise when a familiar light brown face framed by sleek black hair appears from the corner the king and queen were guarding.
Petra must have been visiting with the royal family when the attack started. I didn’t realize she associated with them that closely. From what Julita said, she’s only a distant niece of the queen’s.
But I had started to wonder if King Konram asked her to spy on me at the college. Maybe this is confirmation of my suspicions.
“F— Your Highness,” she says with a brief fumbling of her words. “I don’t think Ivy— We should at least hear them—”
“The laws are clear,” the king interrupts, holding out his arm to push her back. “Stavros, if you’ll continue to harbor a riven sorcerer, I have to consider you a traitor to the Crown as well.”
The former general’s jaw ticks, but that’s the only sign he’s affected by the words of the man he swore to serve to the death. “Please, Your Highness, if you understood—”
King Konram’s knuckles whiten where he’s clutching his sword. “The only thing to understand is that I’ve been betrayed from all sides.” He raises his voice. “Guards! Guards!”
I don’t know how many are left from the fighting to answer his summons, but footsteps pound against the ceiling overhead.
Stavros lunges forward to grab my arm. “We’re getting out of here.” He cuts his gaze toward the king. “Because this is how I can best serve you.”
Konram takes a stiff step forward. “How dare you—”
Stavros doesn’t give him time to finish his caustic words. He yanks me toward the doorway, and all at once I’m running again.
Alek and Casimir dash after us. We’ve barely made it to the stairwell before the king’s voice reverberates through the air again, and I realize he’s got some blessed item that’s amplifying it through the palace.
“Guards, don’t let Ster. Stavros and his companions leave the palace! Cut them down if you must.”
“Shit.” Stavros hustles me even faster, but I don’t need the encouragement. My feet fly up the steps.
If we can’t get out of here fast enough, we might be slaughtered by the same people we raced in here to protect.
I don’t know whether to be thankful or horrified that the scourge sorcerers’ clay attackers took down enough of the guards that we’re able to dash through the side hall without encountering even one. Does the king truly realize just how close he came to dying himself today?
We’re almost at the main entrance when a yell carries from behind us. “There they go!”
We sprint past the fallen door and onward between the bodies of flesh and clay to the blasted gate—and run straight into a small herd of saddled horses in the lane beyond.
Rheave peers at us from the steeds’ midst, his luminous blue-green eyes as eerie as always beneath his chocolate-brown curls. “I brought the horses like you told me to. Does the king need them?”
Casimir sputters a laugh. In the chaos, I’d forgotten that Stavros had sent the daimon-man to the stables in case the royal family needed to make a hasty getaway out the front of the palace.
“He doesn’t,” Stavros says grimly, catching one set of reins from Rheave. “But we do. Everyone, ride!”