Chapter 40 #2
Gods. I still don’t know how it’s possible that Alexus Thibault is here, alive, but my blood sings for him.
Witch Walkers spread out along the roadside and chant a song of power, their magick scorching the air. Finally, shaking off my shock, I charge into the fray.
It’s like being back in the village all over again, only this time, my sister and Hel, the Frost King and Witch Collector, and this new person named Rhonin, whom I might call friend, are with me.
I face off with my first attacker, a warrior I vaguely recall from the ravine. He wields a longer sword, making it hard for me to measure my strikes.
With every twist, stab, and slice, the dark sky, flaming torches, and Elikesh song sends me back to that night, memories rising in a dark tide. My anger and pain build into true rage as I’m forced to remember the moments when I watched my life burn to ash.
But I’m not alone. On the periphery of my vision, my sister wields a spear and Hel her swords, both stabbing, ducking, and lunging with nimble motions.
Rhonin is a beast with a dagger, and Colden is a violent force all his own with that hatchet.
He and Alexus work off one another, and even though Alexus fights with a wounded knee, their movements still play out in artful form.
The remaining Eastlanders are dwindling, fewer than a dozen left. There are no magick-cast arrows this time. No stolen fire magick to make this easy for them. Their prince is losing his power.
Even in the cold night, sweat slicks my skin as I fight. It’s a true battle, clashing swords while maneuvering around fallen bodies and blood-slicked snow.
And this Eastlander is strong. With every swing of his blade, he drives me across the path, forcing me to navigate the littered ground with backward steps, not knowing what lies behind me.
He meets my sword with a swift undercut. I stumble back a step, but then I spin, changing our direction. He pivots and, on the advance, raises his weapon.
I block him, bracing his arm in my hand, and with the distance between us lessened, push my shorter blade into his chest. It takes a second effort to drive the tip through the bone, but his body gives, my sword sliding deep.
I withdraw my blade, and the warrior falls, the light in his eyes dimming. When I look up, my gaze catches on two men standing in the wood beneath the trees.
The Prince of the East and General Vexx. They weren’t there before.
Though the general looks ashen, fists tight and face drawn in a mask of tempered rage, the prince dons that halo of crimson shadows and wears a sickening grin. It’s as if seeing his men die is blood sport.
He lifts his chin and reaches toward the sky, fluttering his fingers. One of the souls drifts down from the treetops, surrendering as commanded. It hovers over him, a helpless husk. The prince opens his mouth, and…inhales it.
A wave of ecstasy comes over him, chest rising and falling fast, his rapture evident. His eyes close, he licks his lips, and I want to vomit.
When it’s over, the prince lowers his face, and his hooded gaze meets mine.
I lift my sword, on guard.
At first, there’s a moment of surprise in his eyes as he takes me in—I’m not supposed to be here, let alone with a weapon—but his malicious smile returns and spreads.
With a flick of his hand, fire blooms around him, though consuming nothing.
It’s a wall. A shield.
I can smell the Summerland mage’s magick in the air, laced with his prolonged death, that same scent from earlier in the tent. The aroma of fire, of a sweltering day, of dust and earth.
The prince and I stare one another down. He stands like a pillar of stone untouched by flame, amusement bright on his face. To him, we are nothing, and he is all.
He moves up the embankment, Vexx on his heels, circling the scene, hands clasped behind his back as a trail of scarlet shadows follows. The two men walk right past the singing Witch Walkers. No one else looks at or tracks them. Because they can’t see them.
But I can.
I turn, breathing hard, keeping my eyes on the prowling prince even as my friends and sister fight only footsteps away. This moment reminds me of all the times he came to me, a mirage, watching from some other plane.
Coward. I push that thought through the air the way I did days ago.
I pray he hears it, feels it, knows it. He is a coward, letting his men die, hiding in the wings, doing nothing, standing behind his shield of fire stolen from someone else’s magick.
Someone else’s soul. All while draped in the cloak of his Shadow World, too scared to face his enemies on his own.
A glimpse of Nephele snags my attention. She jabs her spear into a warrior’s mouth and jerks it out, but then she goes still. Eyes wide. Blinking. She clutches her throat, gasping like an invisible hand has a hold of her neck.
Before I can get to her, an Eastlander advances on me. Her moves are so swift that I struggle to match each strike.
I stagger back and almost lose my footing on the embankment, but the Witch Walkers’ song reaches me once more from the fringes of the wood. They lift their voices, singing down power, unaware that a devil lurks so near.
Pure energy falls over me, warm as summer sunlight amid all this cold, awakening something primal deep inside.
With every swing of my blade, the tiny deaths I’ve stolen swell, filling me with a flood of emotions I’m not sure I can contain.
My heart throbs, brimming with sorrow, misery, hatred, fear, disgust, anguish, adoration, serenity, craving.
There are so many that I can’t discern them all, but they boil over, a fount of infinite connection to feelings that were never even mine.
I lunge forward, my grip on Killian’s sword tight and unrelenting, and with sure footing, thrust my blade into the Eastlander’s middle.
Before I can free my weapon, another Eastlander crashes into me. I stumble, and he takes the advantage, lifting his dagger, firelight glinting off its razor-sharp edges and in his equally sharp eyes.
When he brings down his arm, I grab his wrist. He carries so much force that I must release the sword and use both hands to hold him off.
He bears down, pressing me to a knee before him.
“Lunthada comida, bladen tu dresniah, krovek volz gentrilah!” Alexus. I can’t see him, but I can hear him, that deep voice giving me life, reminding me what I’m capable of.
Lunthada comida, bladen tu dresniah, krovek volz gentrilah. Lunthada comida, bladen tu dresniah, krovek volz gentrilah. I think the words, holding them in my mind, closing my eyes, I reach for all of that emotion, knowing what I want to happen. Willing it to be so. Envisioning it.
The sword I made when we entered Frostwater Wood—I see it now, thrusting through the Eastlander’s stomach into his chest.
Lunthada comida, bladen tu dresniah, krovek volz gentrilah!
The pressure weighing down on me slackens, and a crude gasp leaves the man’s body, a gush of wet breath across my face. I open my eyes to find him staring over me with an empty, lifeless gaze, a sword of amethyst light protruding from his gaping mouth.
When his death scent hits me, I lose any mental hold I had on my magick, the sword drifting away, purplish dust mingling with the still-falling snowflakes. The Eastlander topples, and I dodge his weight, slipping in his blood and falling flat on my back.
A noise reaches my ears as I stare at the sky.
Laughter.
I turn my head and spot the Prince of the East. His mockery lies on the edge of another sound—the rising cry of a flock of cawing crows.
The birds burst from the trees, flying high into the dark night, beyond the place where speckles of glowing, floating embers and twirling snowflakes whirl hand in hand. They fly to where the souls of the dead gather.
And inhale them—one by one.
I bolt upright, slipping in blood and snow, landing on my elbow with a bone-jarring thud. I look up and meet Alexus’s green eyes, shining in the night. He’s three strides away, Hel at his back. They each fight with two short swords that they must have taken from the dead warriors at their feet.
But Nephele is nowhere.
When Alexus’s attacker rears back his hatchet, Alexus raises and crosses his blades over his head and, with deadly force, slices them down, their sharp edges tearing across and through the warrior’s body. Blood sprays the snowy path, and innards fall, more crimson to add to this white graveyard.
The man collapses—the last of the Eastlanders—and in the next blink, Alexus is with me, drawing me to my feet, clutching me to him.
He fists in my hair, and his lips crush mine. “You beautiful virago,” he says against my mouth. “I’m so godsdamned happy to see you.”
I throw my arms around him and kiss him again. Touch his cold chest. Feel his pounding heart. Just to make sure he’s really here. He’s smiling, the way Nephele smiled at Colden. His dimple appears, the sight sending enough relief into my heart to heal it forever.
But how is he here? How?
He reads the question in my eyes. “The God Knife didn’t kill the prince when you cut him because it cannot kill with a simple swipe, only maim like any other knife.
Though it is a god remnant and dangerous in the wrong hands, the blade I forged is only lethal to living gods because it can penetrate their bones.
That’s all.” He presses my hand to his chest, where the blade had penetrated to the hilt.
“It isn’t lethal to me,” he says, “because a clever sorcerer knows better than to create a weapon that can be used against him. I mark what’s mine.
The God Knife knows me. It bears my rune.
My name. My blood. Mine. Vexx could’ve plunged into my body a hundred times, and I still would’ve walked away from that ravine. ”
Another kiss, deeper and so intense that I’m gasping when he pulls back.
“Get down!” Hel screams.
The crows turn and swoop, hundreds diving toward us in an unnatural attack. Because they are unnatural. These things are not birds. They’re demons who steal the souls of men.
Just like their maker.
And I’m done with these bastards. All of them.
“Fulmanesh. Fulmanesh, fulmanesh, fulmanesh, fulmanesh, iyuma.”
I form the words with my hands, drawing from the torch fire around us, channeling all my anger and power into lighting these little pricks up like fireflies.
The second the fire threads form a flame in my hands, I will it skyward. The crows retreat, but I throw my arms out at my sides, spread my stance, and dig deep into my darkness, making those little deaths flutter with delight.
The prince’s winged demons catch my flame. The sounds that leave them are unholy screeches clawing my bones. Instinctively, I clamp my fingers into fists and squeeze until my fingernails cut into my skin.
The flames flash higher but then extinguish, and the birds collapse in on themselves, darkness into darkness. Ash falls from the sky like raining death.
Alexus stares at me in wonder, his eyes darkening with a look I learned far too well that night in Nephele’s refuge, one of ignited passion, as if he likes my violence.
Victory rushes through me. In the heat of the moment, with confidence and power thrumming in my veins, I turn toward the Prince of the East.
But he isn’t there. Neither is Vexx.
I spin around, scanning the wood, searching.
Vexx is escaping into the forest. I start to chase him, but a surge of hot wind blasts down the path.
Alexus throws his arm up and leans over me, a shield against the heat, and the Witch Walker magick I’d felt so abundantly vanishes, their song falling silent.
Alexus and I straighten, and I turn, as though my mind knows exactly where I need to look to find the man I’d searched for moments before.
My gaze comes to rest on the Prince of the East’s still-scarred face. He stands on the eastern side of the path, twenty feet from the slaughter, near the tent where I saw inside his disgusting soul.
Nephele is with him, on her knees, the God Knife’s black edge laid across the pale column of her throat.