Chapter 63
I place my next step on what appears to be a dense mound of moss, only for my boot to sink through it, knee-deep in mud before I find steady purchase.
Dammit.
Glancing over my shoulder, I gesture for Pyrok to skirt farther left as I pull my boot free—slowly. Not that it stops it from squelching loud enough to wake a sleeping dam.
We still, listening for the heavy thump of beating dragon wings. Moltenmaws may be fierce in packs, but they don’t know how to silence their flight like Moonplumes do.
If we were about to get flocked, we’d know about it. But the only sound is the near-constant flutter of disoriented parchment larks flitting about in disarray, seeking a path free of the fuddling mists in their desperate efforts to deliver themselves.
Pyrok lifts the small copper cage to eye level.
Inside it, our own parchment lark continues to flutter frantically, trying to wriggle between the thin bars and get to the young protégé.
Its nose points through the dense mist too thick for us to see much of anything.
The wall could be ten steps ahead and we’d be none the wiser.
Finding a sturdier path through the pale gloom, we continue forward, moving between giant trees we barely see until we’re almost up against them. The quiet presses on us like a hungry threat; the sort of quiet that makes thoughts blare.
As if mine needed more room to scream.
Again, I’m struck with the vision of Raeve cast in too many spent runes to count. So many layers she was almost as luminous as Slátra herself.
I’m haunted by the words that passed between us on the bog’s shore, feeling as though my chest is ripping wide every time I consider the implications—
No.
If I dig too deep, I’ll break apart until I’m just as scattered as Slátra once was. And right now, we have a job to do.
Pyrok grips my shoulder, squeezing.
I glance back to see he’s not watching me, but the lark—now bashing itself against the cage’s ceiling.
The far corner.
The back.
I mimic Pyrok’s frown.
Either the cage is broken … or—
The hairs on the back of my neck lift.
A whip of wind brings rumbled words straight to my ear. Like Clode just snatched someone’s command and blew it in my direction.
“Gurth aath ahn aileen duh, Bulder … huth-uh.”
My blood turns to ice.
I scan the ground, seeking signs of disruption. Bulder’s so diluted in these parts that it takes him a while to pull together in answer to a command. Certainly for something as solid as a stone spear.
There’s the slightest swirl of disruption between Pyrok’s feet—
I shove him back.
He goes stumbling through the mud, almost dropping the cage before he gathers his footing.
“What the fuck?” he mouths, eyes bulging as a blade of stone drives up from beneath the muddy depths—right where he was standing.
It doesn’t stop until it’s at our shoulder height, sharp enough it would’ve sliced him through.
Our gazes clash with silent correspondence.
We’ve been noticed …
I shut Rygun out split moments before something strikes the back of my arm, snuffing Bulder’s song. Pyrok whips his hand up to his chest in the same instance, his fingers coming away bloody.
Iron pins.
It’s an effort not to growl so loud I wake the entire nesting ground, gesturing for Pyrok to retreat toward a nearby tree we can shelter behind. Regroup. Maybe cut these fucking pins out.
He’s two steps forward when a large net snaps up from beneath the mud, catching him in its messy grip. He’s lurched skyward—so deep in the mist I lose sight of him entirely.
My blood runs cold.
This is an ambush.
FUCK.
Ripping my short sword from the sheath at my hip, I spin, scanning the fog. Squint at numerous smears of red pitched against the white.
I realize I’m surrounded even before the mist pulls away—a brief lull that reveals a ring of Fade soldiers glaring at me through the thin slits in their ruddy helmets, some holding swords or spears. Others, bows with arrows notched and aimed.
Bitter understanding sinks its claws deep.
If I clash weapons with them, we’ll be ambushed by a flood of angry Moltenmaws desperate to flush us free of their precious forest. But if I don’t meet them on this boggy battlefield, we’ll be captured. Likely passed off to the Tri-Council, then executed for my recent misdeeds against the Citadel.
The options are dire.
I edge back a step—
The ground shifts beneath me, and I’m snatched skyward so fast I almost lose my guts, cradled by a muddy net now dangled amidst the dense mist.
Sword gone.
Blood raging.
Through gaps between the webbing, I glimpse Pyrok wrestling his confines. He meets my gaze, green eyes flashing with disbelief when he sees me in the same predicament.
“Fuck,” he mouths.
I’m inclined to agree.
I push out a hand and point up, shaping the word “climb.”
He nods, getting his dagger against the crisscross of thick rope as I fan Rygun’s gifted ember, intending to burn through these fucking ropes. But then the sound of slitting fibers comes to me, twinged with the grate of metal on metal.
Pyrok pauses, meets my stare. “Laced with iron fibers,” he mouths, and I repress a snarl.
If I burn through it, the liquid iron will drip all over me.
I’ll probably never be free of it.
I resort to pulling a blade from the hidden sheath in my jacket sleeve—
The hairs on my arms lift, the air becoming still, plagued by a deeper silence than before.
A cold, hungry silence.
My heart drops.
Líri slices past with silent precision, moving so fast she’s like a pale streak through the milky haze, the robed rider on her back too small to be Raeve.
I notice the strange way Líri’s holding her claws, like she’s hugging her chest. Or perhaps holding something close to it.
No.
Someone.
The mist clears as the air suctions, like I’m caught in a lung that just pushed out all its breath. In the same instance, the closest ring of advancing soldiers falls to their knees, eyes bulging while they claw at their jerking chests and taut, constricting necks, mouths agape, faces flushed.
Gasping for breath they can’t seem to grab.
Líri’s gone like a blast of wind, leaving Raeve crouched in the mud beneath our dangling nets, wearing a sneer, wild blue eyes, and so much blood that it looks like Fade armor.
My gut knots.
She slashes me with a glance almost sharp enough to cut me free. “Stop trying to die on me!”
Her words are blunted, like they’re banging against walls I can’t see.
She’s catching our sound, preventing it from spreading …
Movement heaves my gaze to where a thicker band of soldiers is approaching through the warping wall of mist. I whip my head around, seeing they’re coming from all angles, like a tightening noose.
I’ve never felt such cold, bladed fear.
“GO!” I roar with my entire chest.
Raeve snarls, drops to snatch my sword from the mud, then cracks her neck from side to side. The last thing I see before another wave of mist sweeps in, smothering my view of her.
Of the soldiers.
Of everything except the odd parchment lark darting close, fluttering in confused circles.
Then comes the thunk of daggers and hack of blades. The heavy, sloppy thumps of bodies dropping, and Raeve’s voice on the wind, speaking Clode’s language with such poise it’s like she’s weaving a billowy tapestry—each word a gusty stitch.
I rage, slicing the net with violent strokes. But it’s like being caught in a web. The more I hack, the more I get twisted up, the more I need to cut away.
The more my heart feels like it’s about to burst past my ribs.
Another break in the Mist reveals Raeve in the eye of a red storm of soldiers. Teeth bared, she swings through the chaos like she’s made of wind, her hair a black slash in her wake.
All around, folk fall to the briefest touch of her blades, blood spurting from severed arteries while I continue mutilating the net. Others choke on minced lungs bulging past their lips, hands clawed at their throats, weapons forgotten as they collapse in the mud.
The way she moves … It’s a deadly dance of precision that sends a chill crawling up my spine.
A body doesn’t move like that unless it’s lived and breathed too many battles.
Too much death.
Another sheet of mist sweeps in and blocks my view, and I rage like a dying ember—slashing at my tangled confines.
More clanging. Gurgled screams that taper. The air pressure begins to loosen so much I worry sound is slipping through—
Raeve’s voice lilts through the chaos, tugging the drawstring tight again.
The mists whip away.
It feels as though I’ve turned this dagger on myself and shoved it between my ribs at the sight of Raeve almost directly beneath me, on her knees, arched backward. Eyes bulging as she paws at her chest. Like something’s ripping her up from the inside out.
A soldier ambles to his feet behind her. He binds a deep gash in his neck with his bloody hand, stumbling forward, fist clenched around the hilt of a small dagger.
I roar Raeve’s name so loud I taste blood.
With another violent slash of my blade, the net releases me. I drop like a rock, landing on the advancing soldier.
His body crumbles beneath my heft.
So much volcanic rage pounds through my veins that my vision blurs, my movements a feral thrash that barely feels real until I find my hands on either side of the soldier’s helmeted head.
The red metal implodes in my grasp, collapsing with such force his eyes burst from their sockets, chased by a gush of gore.
I loosen my grip, letting him fall to the mud.
Rise onto my knees.
Heaving breath, I lift my head and look straight into wide, glacier eyes. Find Raeve no longer knotted in pain, but loose and gaping at me. Defenses down for a split moment before she slams those walls back in place, scrambling to regain her composure.
But I’ve already seen.
There’s the distant twang-twang-twang of pins being shot—
I whip my arm around Raeve’s back and tackle her into the mud with me. The pins whizz past, and we jerk up, gasping.
More of Clode’s airy song gusts from Raeve’s lips as she swipes the mud from her eyes, brandishing me with a glower that suggests she’d rather have gotten pinned than stuffed in the mud.
I laugh low, though I feel no fucking humor. Grab my sword from the bloody muck as Raeve rips daggers from hidden pockets in her garb, tossing them in quick succession.
They find their mark with soft thuds, followed by the wet slap of bodies falling.
An arrow slits toward us. I slash it from the air with a whip of my blade as Pyrok splats into the mud beside us, groaning.
“That hurt,” he drudges out, then shoves up, tossing his muddy hood back from his face with a dash of his hand.
The three of us edge onto a firmer lump of ground, backs facing one another. Though Raeve has Rygun’s small scales protecting her chest, I keep my arm firmly shielding her heart as we scan the fog, searching for movement.
The enemy’s advance has slowed, but I know the beats of battle. Have no doubt they’re regrouping before another surge.
“How many do you think there are?” Pyrok asks, jerking his sword free from the sheath down his spine.
“Over a hundred.” Raeve’s voice is cold precision. “Líri scented the area before she dropped me off. They’re surrounding us like a flood.”
Pyrok and I curse in unison.
“Any bright ideas?” I ask, hoping to avoid pulling Rygun in. The moment he gets a sniff of danger, he’ll be ripping through this forest like he did in Bothaim, and then he’ll have the entire nesting ground upon him.
That, and he’s petrified of the Mists. He’d charge in without hesitation, but his fear would bruise.
“Me,” Raeve bites out, like she’s chewing into a grisly piece of meat. “But I hate it.”
I arch a brow, looking sidelong at her.
“Don’t step off this mound, or you’ll get swallowed with the rest of them.”
“Swallowed?” Pyrok repeats.
Raeve sighs. “Fucking teardrop stone,” she gripes, then lifts her chin and squares her shoulders. She begins lashing through a gutting blend of Bulder’s and Rayne’s languages, woven together like a dance I can’t see, but can feel so deep beneath my ribs that it almost brings me to my knees.
Though I don’t understand the segments that speak to the Water Goddess, I understand Bulder’s. Hear her demand he soften so much he breaks down to a weaker, more vulnerable version of himself.
Tears streak into the filth on Raeve’s cheeks as a ripple pulses through the mud.
The Mists rush away, like Clode arched over and blew her mightiest breath upon us, offering a clear view of the bands of advancing soldiers stopping in their tracks, confusion clear from their pinched brows and widening eyes.
They look at each other.
At the ground.
At us.
Over a hundred glinting soldiers, there one moment, gone the next. Gulped beneath the surface so fast they don’t even have a chance to scream before they’re entombed within the boggy nether.