Chapter 4 #3
“Kier!” Rook yelled instead, his deep voice carrying through the fog as I dragged us closer to the pool at the heart of the square. Speaking for me—Rook was speaking for me.
I grabbed both of Rook’s shoulders and squeezed. He’ll kill Kier, I mouthed, silent but not wordless. Kier will die. Get him out.
Rook ground his teeth, torn with indecision, but after a moment he nodded, releasing me just as Jyrard shoved Corvyr and let his brother drop to the fog-wreathed stones underfoot.
He’d killed him. Fuck, he really killed him. How?
So glad you asked, Zaba, Cleodora purred. It takes sacrifice to kill a goblin prince. Poor Corvyr was the result of an affair with a human. Not truly a goblin prince, but a halfling bastard. No sacrifice required to kill him and yet…
I shoved at Rook, pushing him towards Kier as knowledge and ice pierced my body. I dragged myself across the square, resisting the exhaustion that drained me, startling when Odele fell into step beside me.
“You’re fighting it?” she whispered, as if to avoid the monster who controlled me overhearing. A nice thought, but the parasite was inside my damn head.
I tapped the side of my head. My hand wrenched down to my side when Cleodora snapped, Drop your arm. Keep them at your sides.
I couldn’t. I had to get to Kier before Jyrard used the sacrifice to—shit.
Stand where you are. I was so stunned that I instantly rooted to the spot.
Jyrard lifted the dagger I threw into his throat, the same dagger he’d used to kill his half-goblin brother, and now blue crystal seemed to wrap around the sharp steel, extending the dagger, forming around it. Shaping into a wand.
I threw a panicked stare at Odele, unable to move anything except my eyes, not able to even twitch my damn pinky finger. I’d taken that pinky for granted, but if I ever got free of this compulsion I’d cherish every moment with the little digit.
Cleodora’s compulsion to stand here like a fucking lemming freed me from her command to kill everyone, but it meant I could do nothing except freeze and stare and cry as tears rushed down my cheeks.
“One second,” Odele whispered. “Hold on.”
She pulled out a flat circular gemstone. I could just about see it in the edge of my vision, though it was mostly dominated by the sight of the guards storming across the last few paces to Jyrard, swords flashing with bright light, magic dancing through the fog in sapphire and cyan and midnight.
Two of them dropped dead when a wave of dark, dark blue burst from Jyrard, their charred bodies hitting the stones like they’d been roasted over a barbecue. The sudden horror of it made my breath snag in my throat.
“This will probably hurt,” Odele warned, but I was a little preoccupied with the sight of Jyrard now raising the wand capable of killing my husband.
I felt the magic buzzing up the length of that wand, as if my dagger connected me to the new weapon.
The same magic that had just charred two guards to death, now built to kill Kier. I didn’t even know the guards names.
No, I tried to say as Kier leapt into the air, the sapphire gleam of his dragon streaking through the fog, lighting up the whole square for a moment in rich, magnetic blue. My heart crashed when Kier jumped onto the dragon’s back, the two of them soaring above our heads.
Something hard and cold drove into my chest, right over my heart.
My mouth ripped open on a scream as sharp, biting magic tore through me with all the crackling power of a thunderstorm. Lightning blasted through my veins, screamed along my nerves, reaching into my head until my brain turned to soup.
Moments or hours later, Odele’s face filled my vision, a deep furrow in her tanned brow, her eyes strangely sympathetic. I decided I must have died, to have her looking at me like that when I knew she despised me. “Still with us?” she asked, a little dubiously.
My reply was a grunt. But hey, I could grunt now. A win was a win.
Another electric charge went through my chest, pulsing through my heart in a way that messed up all my heartbeats, muddying all the thoughts in my head. My knees buckled, but Odele’s arm snapped out, surprisingly strong for someone so slim.
A smear of blue light raced past us, making Odele’s breath catch, but my head was too mushy to figure out what it was.
“Kier!” Rook yelled, his voice spearing through my chest, forcing my heart back to its regular rhythm.
I reached for Kier through the bond, searching for the place I usually felt his affection, his snarly protectiveness, his irritation when I brought up that one time he tripped over a misplaced sock and nearly flew out the balcony doors with his dick swinging out. “Watch out!”
The urgency in Rook’s voice ripped my eyes wider, and I blinked them into focus in time to watch the horror unfold.
Kier’s dragon swooped through the air in a wicked curve, carrying him right over his brother’s cooling corpse, while Jyrard kicked off the ground with the wand extended, all its killing power glowing a menacing cobalt.
It was instinct to burst into action, my body’s immediate motion every bit as shocking as that wand being on a clear trajectory to Kier’s chest. I could move. There was a flat blue stone glued to my chest, and I could move, speak, and breathe at my own command.
I drew my sharpest, serrated-edge blade and called on all my training, every bit of experience racing through the streets of Seagrave, all the speed I’d gained while travelling with my troupe, running from whatever law enforcement wanted us in cuffs each day.
Time seemed to drag, to stretch before me as my boots beat the pavement, bright magic alive in the fog all around me.
I skidded, swerved around the huge neck of Kier’s dragon, and whipped my wrist up to angle the jagged edge of my knife into Jyrard’s stomach. A messy, fatal wound that would, with any luck, hurt like hell.
Blood poured hot over my hand and I had a moment, a split second to grin in the bastard’s smug face, until the burning ice in my own gut registered. Cold spread through my stomach in icy waves, like I’d been speared by an icicle, but I knew even before I looked down that it would be the wand.
“Good thing I’m not a prince, asshole,” I laughed weakly, twisting the knife in his stomach when he ripped the wand from the gaping hole in mine. Ah, that wasn’t good. Neither was the shocking amount of blood.
“What the…” Jyrard hissed, his lip curled back but a flicker like unease in his dark, dark eyes. So blue they were almost black. His attention shot to something behind me a moment before I heard it—wings. Beautiful, flapping wings.
I allowed my smile to grow as I tore my knife free of his gut, though the cool blood spilling down my shirt and pants threatened to dim my smile.
Threatened to, but it remained in place because those were hawks beating the air as they flew, their light cutting through the fog.
And that was a truly impossible amount of magic making the ground shake, bringing to mind a collection of rings of power against deep blue hands.
“What the fuck?” Jyrard muttered, backing off. Retreating—he was retreating, and Cleodora’s voice hadn’t invaded my head since Odele put this disc on my chest. I would kiss that woman when I saw her again. Maybe when I wasn’t bleeding from a very dangerous stomach wound.
I blinked, my lashes sticking together, and when I opened my eyes again Jyrard was in front of me. His hands slammed into my chest, throwing me back, and then he fled.
Coward, I tried to taunt, but the sleeproot was catching up with me. The stab wound didn’t help either. Wand wound? I didn’t know what to call it. Didn’t know what it was doing to my insides by turning them icy and, oh, was I falling?
Water splattered my face, the pool coming closer, and I groaned as I waited for it to engulf me, for water to force itself into my nostrils and mouth.
Instead, something grabbed my shoulder, and then there were arms around my middle, dragging me up.
The world blurred, black spots crowding in.
I was honestly impressed I’d managed to hold onto consciousness this long.
“Letta?” Hames’s very welcome voice inquired, his less welcome hands slapping my cheeks. “Hold on. We’ve got you now.”
“Took you long enough,” I slurred, and passed out.