Chapter 56 Breach
brEACH
“Move!”
Kairos hauled me onto Morvaen, vaulting up behind me, the mairen lunging into the main thoroughfare.
The road was wide, built for parades, but the upper levels crowded inward—balconies, parapets, and battlements stacked tightly above us. Our warriors thundered after us as arrows screamed down.
Archers leaned over parapets, firing straight into the street below. Shafts shattered against stone. One skimmed past my ear. Another struck Morvaen’s armor and ricocheted away.
Kairos snapped his fingers. Mist erupted upward like a white geyser, coiling around throats, yanking bodies over the edge. Archers wailed as they plummeted, hitting the cobblestones with meaty thuds.
A shield wall slammed into place across the far end of the thoroughfare. Dozens of Skaldir soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, spears braced.
“Another line!” Elwen spat.
Kairos drew his scimitar, his blade gleaming with the red light. “Sanguir!”
“Sanguir!” the warriors shouted.
Kairos loosed a war cry that rattled my teeth and Morvaen lunged forward.
Arrows hissed. Someone behind me howled. Mist billowed, deflecting bolts, but not all of them.
Oh gods, we’re going to—
“Hold on!” Kairos roared.
The collision nearly ripped me from the saddle. Bodies flew. Shields splintered. Blood sprayed hot across my face.
I couldn’t watch.
I buried my face in his back, listening to the crash of bodies, the wet crunch of steel meeting flesh. Magic sizzled and crackled, the heat of it washing over my skin. I felt every strike as Kairos hammered blows.
“It’s done,” he grunted.
I opened my eyes and counted heads. Uther, bleeding from a gash on his scalp. Elwen, her shield arm hanging wrong. Torvin and two others. One of the warriors who’d ridden with us was gone—I didn’t see where.
Skalgard was unrecognizable. Streets I’d known my whole life twisted under fallen stone. The angles were strange as if the city were bending and soldiers ran, shoving each other. Debris skittered in one direction as if drawn by an invisible hand. A cart rolled past, moving uphill.
“What the fuck is this?” Uther muttered.
No one answered.
We raced through crowds, heading deeper into the human quarter, toward the Square—the heart of Skalgard—where all roads converged and where the seal waited.
A woman spotted Kairos and screamed. People recoiled, flattening themselves against walls, cramming into half-collapsed doorways. A man snatched up his daughter and ran.
A flicker of pain from Kairos throbbed in my chest. Don’t listen to them.
“I stopped listening centuries ago.”
I tightened my arm around his waist. “Did you just…hear my thoughts?”
Kairos grunted as eight guards burst from a side street. Armed with spears and crossbows, they blocked the road.
He closed his fist.
The first guard halted mid-stride. Blood welled from his eyes, then poured—from his ears, his nose, streaking down his face. Two of them crumpled, choking, and a third fired his crossbow. Elwen lifted her shield, the bolt skittering off with a metallic whine. Uther rode through the opening.
We followed, thundering into the Square.
The market was deserted. Stalls lay overturned and splintered, bright fabrics torn and trampled into mud. At the edge, untouched by the chaos, was the platform. The same one Kairos had stood on for a century while crowds gathered to watch him kill.
He stiffened, his discomfort rolling through me.
I’d grown up in the shadow of the Square, too. I’d watched executions, walked over that drain after it swallowed rivers of blood, and never knew the real cost of those lives. Every execution…fuel for a rune that kept dragons trapped.
The rune sprawled across the cobblestones, far larger than it had ever been, its lines too thin and stretched, throbbing with crimson light.
“Kai,” Uther shouted.
Kairos pulled back on Morvaen’s reins, and the other riders reined their mairen into a tight ring.
Runecloaks poured in, their armor polished like mirrors, forming a circle around us. They moved until we were completely surrounded, but didn’t attack.
Morvaen stamped and snarled.
My gaze snapped to the altar. More Runecloaks, encircling a dark-haired male in midnight-blue armor. Regal, composed, his handsome face illuminated by a red glow.
Vaeris.
And beside him, hands pressed to the seal, was a figure I knew better than my own reflection. Rheya’s hair was wild and she gritted her teeth, panting.
“No,” I choked.
I lurched forward in the saddle, and the ground buckled.