Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
E veryone had heard stories about the slyviks—they were, after all, the sort of creatures that lent themselves particularly well to childhood ghost stories and nightmares. But not even the wildest of those tales could match the reality of witnessing one in front of you. It wasn’t their appearance that made them terrifying—it was their entire presence. Legend said that they were no natural beasts, that they had been created by Sagtra, the god of animals, to be the ultimate hunting opponent. Gods, I could believe that.
The slyvik moved in fits and starts, its slender, scaled body contorting eerily around the craggy stone. Its arms—webbed—allowed it to glide, hurling itself from wall to wall, so quickly that neither vampire eyes nor my magic could fully track it. It had a long, serpentine neck and a face that seemed shaped specifically to accommodate its massive jaws.
Jaws that were currently closed around Atrius’s arm, as he slashed and fought fiercely.
I took this in just in time for the slyvik to drag him up like a rag doll, spread its wings, and leap into the mists.
I bit down on his name, a scream that bubbled up in a burst of panic.
Behind me, the other warriors had jumped to their feet, a ripple effect of awareness spreading down the line as they realized what happened. Erekkus pushed past me, starting to shout, when I said, “Sh!”
If there were more of them, the last thing we wanted was to bring the others down on us—or down on Atrius. I leaned against the stone, my heart beating wildly.
“We have to go after him,” Erekkus hissed, doing a poor job of keeping his voice down.
“I am going after him,” I shot back. “Let me concentrate.”
Weaver, I couldn’t orient myself. I had never seen a creature with such a slippery presence. The slyvik seemed to leap from thread to thread, the movement in between impossible to track, almost like—like it was Threadwalking?—
Another screech reverberated through the fog, this one an even higher-pitched wail. A spark of pain in the threads.
I prayed it was the slyvik’s.
I felt it jerking wildly. Felt it venturing closer and then —
“Sylina,” Erekkus said, “no more waiting.”
I pushed him back, my jaw clenched, arm trembling against the wall.
There.
It wasn’t the slyvik’s presence I latched onto. It was Atrius’s. I grabbed my sword, held onto that thread, and flung myself into the darkness, while Erekkus’s shout of my name echoed behind me.
I timed myself well. My blade struck flesh. The slyvik screamed. Something whiplike and cold snapped against my face, making my ears ring with the impact, but I fought through the shock to grab onto the beast—not that I knew what I was grabbing onto, just whatever my arms could reach. I dug my blade deep into its flesh, giving me something to hold as I tried to make sense of what I’d grabbed?—
A tail? Was this its tail?
I was whipped ferociously before I could brace myself. SNAP , as the reptilian flesh smacked against the stone. Sheer luck that I wasn’t sandwiched there.
I got my bearings just in time to reorient myself—just in time to sense Atrius, still dangling from the creature’s jaws —
“Vivi,” he gasped, like he didn’t mean to speak aloud.
“Move!” I ground out.
A shift in his resolve, as he realized what I’d just done: bought him a critical moment of distraction.
He seized it.
I couldn’t tell where his blade struck, only that it struck deep, judging by the vicious spasm through the threads. The slyvik screeched, a sound that turned my skin inside out. A burst of air threw my hair back from my face as it dropped Atrius from its jaws, spread its wings?—
—and leapt .
Time slowed. When my stomach dropped out beneath me with the sudden jerk of weightlessness, I was utterly terrified. And as Atrius fell to the ground, one hand outstretched to reach for me, that terror was shared between us.
I wondered if he was thinking of the promise he made me. I was.
But there was no time to be afraid. I wanted to live long enough to see the Pythora King’s death.
Or at least the death of this fucking lizard.
Rigid determination fell over Atrius’s presence. His hand opened. I recognized what he was getting ready to do.
I’d move when he did.
The world shook as the slyvik careened against a wall, turned so fast my neck felt like it was about to snap, then leapt again, leaving me clinging to it in another stomach-churning freefall.
I prayed to the gods that this thing was a male, as I jammed my dagger as hard as I could beneath its tail.
And at the same time, a fine mist of salty, acrid blood filtered into the air, as Atrius’s magic seized control.
A spasm rocked the slyvik’s body. I couldn’t let go yet, not with it this far into the air. I clung to its tail as it whipped from stone to stone, clawing deep gauges into the granite as it writhed in pain. Still, it slid down with each leap.
Another stomach-dropping jolt.
From the ground, Atrius’s focus was entirely on us. I could feel his magic attempting to manipulate the creature’s blood, albeit with limited success—slyviks, it seemed, were as resistant to blood magic as they were to most other weapons.
My shoulder was killing me. My left arm was struggling more and more to cling to the slyvik’s tail, now slippery with blood. I’d slipped a little—the hilt of my blade was now just out of reach, lodged into the beast’s flesh.
In the rare seconds of stillness, I reached for it. My blood-slicked fingertips barely managed to brush the hilt.
Weaver fucking damn it.
I managed to push myself a couple of inches further up its tail when —
My stomach lurched as we fell— three terrifying seconds of utter weightlessness.
My breath jerked from my lungs.
I’m going to die, I thought, matter-of-factly, and then used the momentum from that fall to throw myself forward.
It was a miracle I didn’t topple to my death. A greater one still that my hand actually wrapped around the hilt of my weapon.
Below me, I felt Atrius’s presence, strong as a heartbeat—shaking with the effort of the magic he was using to pull the beast down. Erekkus was at his side now, bow drawn—ready to make the shot. Not close enough yet. Not quite.
With the last of my strength, I hoisted myself onto the slyvik’s back—just for a moment, just long enough to throw myself off it.
Just long enough to aim my blade at its wing, thin and membranous and spread wide for me in this critical second.
I lunged. My blade tore open the delicate skin as I fell.
I hit the ground hard. Everything went distant and fuzzy. The sound of the slyvik’s scream of pain sounded as if it was underwater.
“Shoot!” Atrius commanded.
Three arrows lodged into scaly skin. The slyvik’s agony rang clear and vivid in the threads—oddly mournful. It fought death the whole way, thrashing with increasing weakness. But finally, the creature slumped to the rocks.
I pushed myself up just as it fell, its final breaths labored, before slowly fading.
The air was, once again, unnaturally quiet.
I approached the dead slyvik. It had fallen awkwardly into a narrow part of the cliffs, so its body was suspended above us. One broken, shredded wing dangled to the ground, its twisted neck wedged against the stone.
When it was moving, it was difficult even for me to get a full sense of the scale of the creature. Now, I felt a little dizzy that I’d just thrown myself at that thing. It was perhaps the length of four grown men, nose to tail.
I touched the wing, and a darker realization settled over me as I sensed the remnants of its aura.
“This is a juvenile,” I said.
Erekkus muttered an Obitraen curse.
“What were you thinking?” Atrius’s voice snatched my attention away. He approached me, palpably furious. But my attention immediately fell to his shoulder, which was soaked in blood, and his right arm, which hung uselessly at his side.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
Erekkus eyed the corpse. “A juvenile ,” he repeated.
His tone of voice said it all.
“I don’t think they get much larger than this,” I said, “but they do get stronger. And cleverer. They usually don’t venture this far south.”
“Or wander away from the pack,” Atrius said.
No surprise that he’d done his research.
Erekkus’s eyes went wide. “ Pack? ” he yelped, grabbing his bow again.
“There aren’t others here,” I said quickly. I pressed my hand to the stone again, making sure I hadn’t just made myself a liar—but I felt no other living creatures but us, save for the distant reverberations of what must have been other slyviks far ahead.
“This is a young male,” I went on. “They’re often driven away from the pack when they reach maturity.”
“And this one wandered far from home.”
Atrius touched the corpse’s tail, and I wondered if I imagined the brief pang of sadness in his voice, at something that maybe seemed a bit too familiar.
My attention fell again to his shoulder. And his arm. He still hadn’t moved it at all.
I cursed myself for not being a more useful healer.
Atrius must have read the look on my face. “It’s fine,” he muttered.
“You’re right-handed.”
A brief pause, like it struck him I had noticed. Then, he said breezily, “I’m just as good with both hands.”
Arrogant man.
“We’ll patch it up,” I said. “And then we need to get moving. We’ve wasted too much time already.”
Erekkus was already rummaging through his pack, withdrawing a roll of bandages and a bottle of medicine. He started to approach Atrius, then, when Atrius scowled at him, he handed them to me instead.
“Tell the others to be ready to move,” Atrius told him, wincing as I poured the medicine over the wound. Up close, I could feel the heat of the broken flesh—the teeth had cut deep and torn, and the saliva posed risk for infection. Nasty stuff. I prayed that his vampire hardiness would fight it off better than a human could.
“That wouldn’t have happened if I was awake,” I muttered, as I lifted his arm to wrap the bandage over his shoulder.
His other hand caught my chin, tipping it toward him. “You did an incredibly foolish thing,” he snapped.
Weaver, I was sick of being told how stupid I was.
“You—”
But then he said, “Thank you.” And his kiss was so soft and quick that I barely felt it before it was just his breath cooling on my lips.
I paused, startled more than I’d like, before resuming my bandaging.
“You’d do it for me,” I said quietly. It was the only thing I could think to say, and I wasn’t even sure why—until I realized that it was undeniably true.
Atrius and I didn’t say anything else as I finished his bandage. I secured it, and then we were off into the mists once again, one step after another.