Chapter 19 #3
There were screams. There were swords. I gave myself no time to think about any of it as I swung Eihwaz at grasping hands and heaving chests, cutting down guards like blades of grass.
Something cut through my upper arm, and I barely felt it.
Scalding hot water splashed my leg as a broad guard tumbled into a pool beside me, and I refused to register that, too.
Close to me, someone hollered, ‘Keep them alive! Prince Belloc wants them alive!’
Fucking Belloc, indeed.
No time to think about that now.
I stabbed and slashed. Cut and dodged. Soldiers kept pouring from the mist, their eyes wide with fright above their makeshift masks – surrounding me, circling me, trying desperately to stay out of reach of my knives and runes.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Durlain every now and then, flickers of fire lashing around him.
He didn’t look about to kill a few dozen people in one swoop.
If anything, the muted glow of his flames suggested he was holding back on his defences.
Building up strength, perhaps?
He had to be doing something, hadn’t he?
I stabbed. I dodged. I bit away the pain. Clash after clash after clash, a macabre, never-ending dance, and then, out of nowhere—
‘Get out of my bloody way!’
Jay.
I snapped around just quick enough to avoid the double-edged blade hurtling towards me; it landed instead in the shoulder of a man behind me, whose frantic screams suggested the steel had been treated with the usual unpleasant substances.
Aranc’s youngest messenger bird looked even more elfin than usual, looming up from the deadly, churning mist. Blond.
Boyish. A slender knife in each hand, a vicious gleam in his wide blue eyes.
But there was nothing fragile about the way his gaze darted over my weapons, taking my measure with a veteran’s ease, and his high voice didn’t tremble as he snapped, ‘You can leave her to me!’
Death’s fucking arse.
Around me, the Brainne guards retreated with obvious relief.
On the edge of my sight, I could see their ranks close around Durlain instead – which was fine, I tried to tell myself, definitely fine, and hell, what was I going to do about it right now, with Jay circling me like a particularly sneaky hawk?
My grip on Uruz tightened.
His small fingers shifted in response, twitching around the hilts of his throwing knives.
‘We don’t have to do this,’ I said hoarsely, knowing better, unable to help myself.
We hadn’t been friends. Birds didn’t do friends.
But he’d been his ratty little self for almost as long as I’d been at Mount Estien, and if we started this fight, one of us was going to be very, very badly harmed.
‘I’d prefer not to hurt you. Tell Aranc I bewitched you, for all I care. ’
He gave one of his high-pitched chuckles. ‘Oh, Aranc is so bloody pissed.’
My guts twisted. ‘Gathered he wouldn’t be too pleased, yes.’
‘Took it real personal,’ Jay cheerily continued, guileless blue eyes piercing my face – waiting for a moment of weakness.
He’d never gotten rid of his gutter accent even at court.
Here, days away from Mount Estien, it was thick as mud.
‘Fuming for hours. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought you were his sweetheart running off. ’
Did he have to rub it in?
We were moving farther and farther away from the main fight, circling through the squelching mud, around the blood-stained pools. If not for Durlain’s whip of fire, I would no longer have been able to make out his silhouette at all.
Buy me time, he’d said, and hell, I was doing a shit job of that.
‘Think you’ve made your point,’ I rasped, eyes on Jay’s knives now rather than the blushing face above his makeshift mask. ‘If that was all …’
‘Wasn’t all. You’re not fighting your way out of this.’ The cheer slid from his eyes. ‘Kestrel—’
‘I know,’ I snapped. Bile rose in my throat. ‘And you also know that’s not going to stop me from trying, so why don’t you end this pretty dance and fight me?’
‘Oh, I’m not coming any closer,’ he informed me with a huff. ‘Rook says five feet is about as far as you witches can do your spells. Now will you listen to—’
A rumble shook the earth.
We froze simultaneously.
Behind him, through the murky haze, Durlain’s fire flared blindingly bright.
Another roll, like the boom of distant thunder, and this time the marsh shook more vehemently beneath our feet – large bubbles of air splattering from the mud, hot water sloshing over the pathways.
Around us, men started running. Jay’s eyes grew wide.
So did my own, I realised a moment later – because I knew that sound, I knew that feeling, had heard it too many times as Aranc stood by the Estien craters and …
‘He’s waking the fire?’ Jay breathed.
Don’t come too close.
Shit, shit, shit.
‘Get out!’ I heard myself scream – at him or myself, I didn’t know. ‘Get—'
The world blew apart.
A colossal blast of scalding water and mud erupted from the marsh, spewing dozens of feet into the air, engulfing the fleeing men in a torrent of searing sludge.
Screams pierced the air. The ground heaved and buckled.
I staggered back, then lost my balance – mud splattering my face, my hair, my clothes as shockwaves rippled through the earth beneath me.
My ears rang.
I blinked against the haze of steam and debris as the air cleared, seeing—
Durlain.
Nothing else had been left standing. No rotting trees.
No city guards. Even the algae-stained boulders had been flung aside, jagged lumps scattered across the steaming quagmire.
He stood at the heart of the devastation, head tilted back, arms half-spread – a pitch-black silhouette against the swirling fumes, as though he’d stepped straight from the misty gates of hell.
The silence was absolute.
Next to me, Jay breathed, ‘Tor?’
I struggled to my feet, arms shaking, knees shaking, mud dripping from my hair into my eyes.
A hundred feet away, Durlain snapped around and began striding towards us – heat shimmering around him, pale skin still aglow with that otherworldly, luminous sheen.
His steps left charred imprints in the mud.
His eye was darker than the blackest obsidian, and just as cold.
‘Tor!’ Jay screamed.
He was running before I could stop him, as if Durlain wasn’t even there – uneven, staggering steps through the mud and rubble, towards the motionless shapes of fallen humans on the other side of the crater. Durlain raised his arm. Fire flickered on his fingertips.
‘Don’t!’ I choked without thinking.
He stiffened.
Then his hand came down, and Jay lurched past him unscathed, splashing through the sodden earth to reach the bodies.
Already the mist was closing in again. By the time Durlain reached me, the light beneath his skin dulled to the usual alabaster paleness, I could no longer see the other side of the clearing or Jay’s frantic movements.
Just the two of us – my muddy presence and the deathmade Averre prince who’d just obliterated half a garrison of city guards, surrounded by nothing but poison and death.
You’re alright? he should have asked.
Why did you let him go? he should have asked.
Instead, he absently adjusted the buttons of his coat. Flicked a splatter of mud off his sleeve. Gave me a single swift lookover, then averted his gaze and said, ‘Tend to those wounds and change into something dry. We have a long day ahead of us.’