Chapter Twenty
WILDER
W ilder had been so focused on Thea that he’d nearly missed it: the prickle at the back of his neck, the quiet tendrils of darkness testing the air around him.
But then he’d seen it, and without thinking, with terror in his heart for his apprentice, he’d sent one of his blades hurtling for the rheguld reaper surveying them from the wall.
With shadows of its own, the reaper had simply batted the flying sword away, as though it were nothing but an inconvenience, as though it didn’t have the Furies-given strength of a Warsword behind it, or Naarvian magic imbued in its steel.
It had stared at Wilder, a challenge, a dare.
And then the reaper hadn’t moved.
It watched from the top of the wall, drinking in the sight of Thea battling the wraith with its clouded blue eyes, sniffing the blood-drenched air as she carved out its dark heart.
Wilder didn’t take his eyes off the reaper, trying to anticipate its next move. He felt it when Thea turned to him, felt it when she saw what he saw.
And he heard the thud of the wraith’s heart hitting the ground as she stalked back across the rubble to stand at his side.
‘What’s it doing?’ she murmured.
Wilder flexed his fingers around his remaining sword. ‘Spying.’
The reaper blinked at them, which was more unnerving than a swipe of its claws or a lash of its power. Wilder had never seen one blink before. It was almost reptilian, a slimy lid swiping slowly across the eye.
Its ominous gaze was trained not on him, but on Thea, full of hunger, as though it could taste her from where it stood atop the wall. Wilder didn’t make the conscious decision to step in front of her, but he did it anyway, trying to block the monster’s path to her.
But Thea pushed him aside and faced the reaper with her shoulders squared. ‘What do you want?’ she said, her voice cold and sharp.
The creature tilted its head in interest, a strange noise escaping it. At first, Wilder thought it was a feral hiss, the same racket its rancid species made, but it wasn’t a single sound; it was many… A language he didn’t understand.
In challenge, Thea lifted her chin, still covered in the wraith’s blood.
The reaper spoke again, words not known to any race or kingdom of the midrealms. An ancient tongue from beyond the Veil, its tone low and full of malice.
Then, the darkness lashed out.
One moment, Wilder could see the creature clear as day in the ruins. The next, it was pitch black all around him.
His first thought was of Thea.
Gods, where was she? If it got its talons in her again, he had no Aveum springwater left to save her. Blindly, he reached for her, but his hands only met air, air that shifted in the wake of the power lashing all around him.
A scream caught in his throat as he fell through the darkness.
He landed in Islaton, by the monument to the Furies in Naarva, and he watched in horror as his past, as Malik’s and Talemir’s past unfolded before him —
Wilder himself was duelling a wraith on the outskirts of the stone circle, the damn creature meeting his blows with strikes of onyx power, nearly sending him sprawling backward.
He ignored the panic seizing his chest, ignored the internal scream that he needed to rejoin the unit.
If he could kill this fucking monster, perhaps shred its wings for good measure, it was one less the others would have to contend with amid the fray.
Somewhere in the near distance, Malik and Talemir were fighting side by side, the most formidable of them all: the Shieldbreaker and the Prince of Hearts.
‘Glory in death, immortality in legend,’ Malik had said to Wilder before launching himself into the chaos with a manic grin. Those same words were carved into Malik’s dagger, were tattooed down Wilder’s spine: a vow and motto the brothers had claimed for themselves long ago.
The clang of steel rang out across the circle of white stones, the shouts of his fellow warriors too.
The acrid scent of burnt hair tangled with the metallic tang of blood.
All around their forces, wraiths shrieked and carved through their Guardian and Warsword brothers, breaking them apart with talons and shadows.
Wilder deflected a slash of already bloodied talons with his great sword, and carved a slice through the wraith’s abdomen, the creature screaming and flapping its wings in fury.
‘Fuck!’ Sharp plain sliced across Wilder’s neck and shoulder. The fucking thing had managed to get a blow in.
Ignoring the warm blood soaking through his undershirt and shitty armour, Wilder pushed the wraith back —
Someone yelled in the near distance.
Not someone.
Malik .
Wilder whirled around, already charging towards the sound, only to see his brother being lifted bodily from the ground. A giant creature, perhaps ten feet tall, swept Malik into the air as though he were a rag doll, not an enormous man in his own right.
‘Mal —’
But his brother’s name died on his lips as Wilder watched in horror. His boots still pounded the earth beneath him, but that brutal sinking in his chest told him he wouldn’t make it. He knew he wouldn’t make it —
Time unfolded slowly as Malik’s huge frame was dwarfed by the leathery creature, as it lifted him unthinkably high into the air and slammed him down into the rocks.
Face first.
A sickening crack sounded upon impact.
Over and over again.
A strangled scream escaped Wilder. There was still so much distance between him and Mal.
His brother’s body went limp in the monster’s clutches.
His face, an unrecognisable bloody pulp.
Wilder’s knees buckled, just as another familiar voice broke through the turmoil. Gasping for air, suddenly frozen in shock, Wilder turned to it.
Talemir.
Wilder couldn’t breathe, not as he saw Talemir’s legs kicking out underneath him, flailing beneath the death grip of a wraith – no, not a wraith; not like the others.
This thing was different. It had horns atop its grotesque head, it was bigger —
Wilder’s shout rang out across the stone circle and he flung himself towards Talemir, just as the monster pinned his mentor to the white rocks and pierced his chest with its talons.
Shadows danced around them as the rheguld reaper reached for Talemir’s heart —
Lightning carved through Islaton.
And then it was no more.
* * *
Wilder opened his eyes to a storm surging through the ruins of Delmira; to Thea, who was wielding forks of lightning against the reaper, driving it back from the rubble, driving it back from him .
Wilder was in the dirt, on his knees.
While the lost heir of Delmira defended him against the darkness.
Deep, heavy clouds swallowed the sky and an icy wind whipped through the ruins, the hair on Wilder’s arms standing up. Not taking his eyes off Thea, he staggered to his feet as the reaper buckled beneath the onslaught of her magic.
She was a beacon of power, thunder clapping overhead, bolts of brilliant white light pouring from her fingertips and into the sky, raining down upon the reaper.
Its shadows were retreating. It was retreating…
Thea cleaved the sky in two.
The canvas of clouds tore apart, as though to reveal a world beyond this one.
Ribbons of darkness surged, before vanishing into thin air.
Thea’s shoulders sagged, the magic at her fingertips snuffing out bolt by bolt, the storm raging overhead quietening. She rushed to him, her expression intense and raw.
‘Are you alright?’ she rasped, scanning him, her hands tracing his body for signs of injury.
Her concern nearly broke Wilder. He was still struggling to catch his own breath. ‘It was baiting you,’ he panted, leaning against a collapsed pillar for support.
Thea looked from the vine blight turned to stone in the corner, to the wraith heart she’d discarded in the rubble. ‘It knew to come here…’ she murmured.
‘Yes,’ Wilder managed. What he didn’t say was that the vine blight had been a perfectly positioned trap for an heir, one that he should have seen coming.
For a moment, he wanted to tell her everything he knew, wanted to share it all so they could face it together.
But doubt crept in like a high tide. What if it was all too much, too soon?
Thea watched the final wisps of shadow fade in the sky. ‘It knows who I am now. What I am.’
‘It’s likely reporting back to the Daughter of Darkness as we speak… It seems that they want to know what you’re capable of,’ Wilder allowed.
‘Good.’ Thea met his gaze with nothing but unflinching steel in her eyes. ‘Now they know to fear me.’