Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was no preamble, no slow build. Only violence, splitting the air like a strike of lightning, and every bit as powerful. A streak plummeted from the sky, a winged warrior carving the guard who had been holding Zefiah in two before she could chase us.
Septimus and I ran for our pathetic lives, though I had no idea where we’d go. Zefiah’s hilt in my grip gave me a much-needed burst of strength, though my body was still so weak I could hardly walk, let alone run, especially hauling her considerable weight one-handed.
I struggled to tear my eyes from the sky.
The Nightborn were the only vampires who bore wings—feathered for the Rishan clan, and batlike for the Hiaj—and though I had seen a few of them, I’d never witnessed an army like this.
The Houses of Blood and Shadow were Nyaxia’s forces, leading her charge against the human nation.
But the Houses of Night and Death had broken their ties with Nyaxia and instead pledged their loyalty to Acaeja.
They spent most of their efforts fighting their vampire siblings rather than in the human nations.
I had heard recent whispers of that changing, and now, I hoped fiercely they were untrue.
Because one Nightborn vampire was intimidating.
But an army of them? Holy gods. It was a natural force.
Hundreds and hundreds of wings, blotting out the sky, wringing out what little light seeped through the sunless night.
Drowning out every sound but the beat of their flight.
Drowning out all light but the gleam of their weapons and teeth.
Every vampire House had their strengths.
The House of Shadow was the stealthiest. The House of Blood was the most vicious.
The House of Death blurred the lines of life and death itself.
The House of Night, they said, turned warfare into an art. An entire kingdom built to be a monument of bloodshed.
Now, I was certain that it was true.
They hurtled to the ground like shooting stars, weapons drawn, blood spraying from every strike.
Battle cries fell into garbled, wet silence.
Septimus and I wove through the bloodshed, listening to those death wails ring out behind us, and then listening to them slowly be replaced by shouts and steel as the Shadowborn rallied, recovering from their surprise.
“You did this?” I managed to choke out, barely.
Septimus shot me a wry smirk over his shoulder. “I told you I like other people to pull the triggers. The Nightborn have been hunting me for a decade now.”
I glanced up at the sky, black with a cloud of wings. “You’ve managed to evade these fuckers for ten years?”
“Eleven years. That’s why I knew that once I made my presence known to them, they’d come. And quickly.” He lifted his closed palm. A chain and a silver pendant bearing a bright blue gem dangled from it.
“What’s that?” I panted, nearly tripping over a severed limb that plummeted from the sky—arm or leg, I wasn’t sure which.
“A useless magical trinket I stole from the House of Night some years back. They didn’t know that I knew they would be tracking it, if I used it.” His gaze flicked to the sky. “Was saving it for a convenient distraction.”
This man stole from Nightborn royalty solely so he could turn them into unwitting weapons when they’d be more useful. I almost had to admire it. Well, he’d created a distraction all right. My boots slipped on the slick pool of black vampire blood thickening over the floor with each step.
Zefiah’s light sputtered with her bloodlust. It was killing her, I knew, to be in such close proximity to so many vampires and not be skewering any of them.
Her tip scraped against the ground every few steps.
I could barely hold her up with one arm, and my other still dangled, useless.
I wanted Egrette’s heart, too, but I was in no position to take it now.
“There will be aethergates downstairs,” Septimus said. “The Shadowborn use them to travel here and back. That’s our way out.”
“Won’t those just take us deeper into Shadowborn territory?”
“I can redirect them.”
{Of course he can,} Zefiah grumbled. {Taking advantage of magic of the White Pantheon for his own ends.}
I really wasn’t willing to be morally superior about it.
A broken Shadowborn body dropped from the sky and landed on the stone ground with a wet crack. I had to practically jump over him to avoid tripping.
“So you expect us to fight our way not out of this cage, but deeper into it,” I managed, between gasping breaths. At this thought, my throat tightened.
“Your typical strategy of chopping off heads has been serving you well, if you’d prefer to try that,” Septimus said sweetly.
I could probably find a way to chop off his head right now, if I really, really wanted to.
But then I smelled the smoke.
Nightfire.
It was such a distinctive smell. A magical element, most commonly used by the Nightborn vampires but occasionally leveraged by others, too.
Instead of burning orange and red, it moved in licks of searing white and blue.
The smell was sweet and acidic, almost pleasant, masking its true, horrifying nature.
It moved faster than flames and felt cool to the touch.
But when it consumed, it left nothing at all.
Already, it was everywhere.
“How did the Nightborn do this so fast?” I panted as we ran.
Septimus’s mouth thinned to a grim, humorless smile. “Egrette doesn’t want her resources taken. Certainly not by the House of Night, where they could be used against her. She’d rather feed the flames or start her own and let them destroy everything.”
I looked up at the cages with fresh alarm. My stomach turned, bile rising in my throat. My gaze landed on one face, a terrified woman clutching at the bars, and the sight of her fear dragged me back—
{Get back!} Zefiah bellowed, right as a deafening crash rang out. I jumped backward just in time to avoid a sheet of stone falling, ablaze in white. I barely glimpsed Septimus, hand outstretched, calling my name, on the other side of the debris.
Fuck. I cursed my moment of distraction. I squinted through the Nightfire, tracking Septimus’s silhouette through them. He was yelling something, and though the words were swallowed by the chaos of the battle, I could tell from his gestures that he was saying to find a way around the fallen wall.
{This way,} Zefiah said, a beam of golden light shooting through the flames. {I sense a path.}
I followed her guidance, stumbling over uneven floors, practically blind between the darkness and the searing light of the Nightflame.
I made it through one narrow path between the debris, and then another.
The screams had risen to a terrible crescendo—shouts of warrior soldiers, yes, but worse were the sounds of the trapped prisoners, too familiar in ways I never liked to think about.
I tripped over something hard and barely caught myself, then leaned against the wall, drawing in a deep, shaky breath.
Get a grip, Kyrene, I told myself. But my heart clawed against the inside of my ribs like a wild animal trying to get out, frantic to escape the flames.
And gods, those screams. I wished I could escape those, too.
No one ever prepares you for the sounds.
No one ever could. I’d seen bodies chopped up, often by my own hand.
I was intimately acquainted with all the ways flesh could tear or rot or break.
I knew the smell of it, too—fresh bodies and stale ones, the way the scent differed in a hot climate or cold.
One must adapt to this quickly enough. Just part of the job.
But the sounds were so much worse.
Sometimes, I could understand why vampires saw us as animals. Because the sounds that humans made when they were locked up with their own inevitable demise were the same ones that animals made at the slaughterhouse.
I was seventeen years old again. I was in Vostis, in the Citadel of the Destined Dawn, and we were locked up in here, and there was no way out—there was no way out—
I clutched Zefiah tight to my body. Her form was a wordless reminder that I was not the girl I had been that night. A girl who had never held a sword before, and who did not know how to kill.
{You know now, Kyrene.} Zefiah’s voice was firm, offering comfort in steel. {You have me.}
I held her so tight that the whorls of the glyphs on her hilt dug into my palm.
“Y-you’re the Vindica Ultis.”
The voice was small and young, and the words spoken in perfect Oketian.
My eyes snapped open.
I had barely paid attention to my surroundings as I’d stumbled here.
Now, I saw a sea of blood and flames unfolding in the hallways beyond.
And in front of me, pressed up against the bars, was a teenage girl.
She had short blond hair, and smears of dirt or soot on her cheek.
A younger boy, practically a child, crouched beside her, knees hugged to his chest, dark eyes round.
The girl said again, more urgently, “You’re the Vindica Ultis!”
I knew that look, that voice, so well. She didn’t even need to say her real question at all for me to hear it anyway:
Are you here to save us?
“Kyrene!” a voice bellowed from behind me. “This way!”
I looked over my shoulder to see Septimus across the hall, standing at a metal door that he propped open with his foot. He’d found a path forward, though who knew how long it would stay open. He jerked his chin toward it in a clear command—Let’s go.
“Take him.”
The words were a frantic slurry. I looked back at the girl. She now gripped the boy’s forearm, as if to hand him to me through the bars. A crash rang out as another shelf of stone collapsed, taking a handful of screaming prisoners with it.
“Take him,” she said again. “Please. Take him.”