Chapter Thirty #2
‘What a shame,’ Torj said lightly. ‘You sure you don’t need our protection?’
Thea couldn’t help the scoff that escaped her then, nor the smug grin as Wren replied tersely, ‘I manage well enough on my own.’
Thea half hoped she’d blow a pile of Widow’s Ash on the Warsword for his arrogance. That was how her sister had dealt with Seb Barlowe and his lackeys, rendering them infirmary-bound for days.
Wilder seemed to be fighting a chuckle himself. He looked from Wren back to Thea. ‘You’re more alike than you realise.’
Thea didn’t know why her knee-jerk reaction was to deny this, but Wilder’s words from the ruins came back to her: ‘Life is too short – yours, in particular – to hold grudges against the people you love.’
Furies be damned, she hated it when he was right.
She went to say something to Wren – what, exactly, she wasn’t sure – but her attention snagged on the fact that Cal and Kipp were unnervingly quiet for a change. And then she saw why. She followed their gazes to another table, where a beautiful raven-haired woman sat.
Thea recognised her instantly. It was Milla, the beauty Kipp was always on about, the one he’d gone off with the last time the trio had been at the Laughing Fox.
Only now she sat in the arms of another man, his tongue halfway down her throat.
Cal seemed to catch on at the same time as her. ‘Is that —’
‘It’s – it’s fine,’ Kipp stammered, plucking his tattered kerchief from his pocket and picking at the loose stitching. ‘We weren’t… Uh… It’s fine.’ A deep blush spread across his cheeks and he trained his focus on the loose threads of the embroidered fox tail.
Cal looked helplessly at Thea. She shifted on the bench. She was sorely tempted to storm across to Milla’s booth and give her a piece of her mind —
Kipp grabbed her arm as though he could read her thoughts. ‘Honestly. She’s not doing anything wrong. We weren’t together. Not… not, you know… officially.’
Thea’s anger softened, but she didn’t know what to say.
It was Wilder who seemed to have the solution. The Warsword slid a tankard towards the strategist without a word.
* * *
The unlikely companions sat in the Laughing Fox for some time, with Thea insisting they eat.
‘Wild boar?’ she asked Kipp with a knowing look.
Her friend gave a heavy sigh, still nursing his drink. ‘I don’t think I’m in the mood.’
‘Not even for roast potatoes?’ she pressed, trying to keep a straight face. ‘And sticky toffee pudding?’
Kipp’s gaze slowly slid to hers. ‘Depends…’
‘On what?’
Kipp’s expression was all business. ‘On who’s paying.’
A laugh burst from Thea and she held out her coin.
‘Well, if the king’s paying, better add a few more things,’ Wilder declared.
Everyone stared at the Warsword.
‘What?’ he said defensively. ‘I’m fucking starving.’
Torj laughed loudly before looking pointedly between Wilder and Thea. ‘Oh, I bet you are.’
‘No one asked for your opinion, Bear Slayer,’ Wilder replied gruffly.
‘Long night, was it?’ Torj teased.
‘Furies save me,’ Wilder muttered, shaking his head.
But Thea couldn’t keep her smile at bay now. She loved this, all of them together – and seeing Wilder caught off guard because of her, well… It made her stomach flutter.
They ate and drank, chatting as they did. Thea kept glancing over at Wren, knowing that she and her sister were well overdue for a conversation, but it wasn’t the right time or place for it. Instead, Thea tried to revel in the normality of the meal, in the joy of it.
She hadn’t realised that Cal and Kipp had become so familiar with Torj, but she supposed that was natural with how much time they all spent together. Torj seemed to treat them like younger brothers, with the occasional stern word of a father figure. It suited them.
She looked across at Kipp, whose cheeks were flushed from the liquor. He seemed very much recovered from his heartbreak.
He nudged Wren. ‘Wren, what say you and I give it a go, then? We’ve had something special since the moment we met. Don’t you think?’
Thea nearly choked on her ale, but Wren simply raised a brow. ‘I’m nobody’s second choice, Kristopher.’
Torj let out a low whistle. ‘Albert’s right. You’ve got a set on you, Kipp… And perhaps a few screws loose up here.’ He tapped the side of his head.
Kipp sighed dramatically. ‘You’re not the first to say that.’
Cal snorted. ‘Nor will he be the last.’
‘But did you hear the bit about the big set of balls?’
‘I don’t think that’s what he said.’
‘That’s what I heard,’ Kipp replied with a shrug.
Torj laughed. ‘You tend to hear what you want.’
Thea was so busy trying to stop the ale coming out her nose that she almost didn’t hear the men’s voices carrying from a few tables over.
‘— the guild is so desperate they’re accepting women now, haven’t you heard?’
A cruel laugh followed. ‘Only because the whores are spreading their legs for the Warswords. Weren’t you in here last night?’
Thea felt Wilder tense beside her, her own body going rigid at their words.
She tried to find that pocket of calm Audra was always on about.
But all she found within was icy rage. She didn’t allow herself to blush, even as her friends and sister registered what was happening, even as the filthy, insulting words penetrated the pleasant time they’d been having.
Regardless of what was between her and Wilder, Thea had earnt her place at Thezmarr, had earnt the right to wield a blade among the Guardians of the midrealms. She knew that.
‘— no amount of cock-sucking is gonna save the kingdom from the tyrant building an army of monsters. The guild should never have let the bitch in. She’s cursed us all. And for what? So the warriors can feel better about passing around some whore —’
Wilder moved, but Thea was quicker.
One second her throwing stars were in her hands; the next they were embedded in the patron’s table, between each of his five fingers.
‘Call me a whore again,’ she said quietly, lacing the words with threat as she pressed her dagger not to the man’s throat, but to the soft flesh of his groin.
His beady eyes flared in panic. ‘You —’
‘Me,’ she said simply, her magic roaring in her veins along with her fury. She wanted to end him just as she’d ended those leering mercenaries in the storehouse.
The man’s companions didn’t move, each of them staring at her not with scorn or ridicule, but with fear.
They should fear me , Thea thought, shifting the blade slightly so the man winced. ‘Suddenly nothing to say?’ she asked casually.
Outside, thunder cracked, rattling the walls and windows of the tavern.
Thea felt it in her chest.
Lightning followed, illuminating the dimly lit bar in a vibrant flash. Rain sounded on the tin roof before another rumbling shook the ground and a near-deafening crack boomed.
Thea felt its call in her bones, her magic coming alive within her, thrumming in anticipation for what chaos would be unleashed next. She inhaled deeply through her nose, plucking her throwing stars from the table, the lecherous man’s fingers still splayed between them.
Glancing at him, she removed her dagger from his groin, where a wet patch had spread across his lap, the stench of urine filling the air. ‘Talk about me or another woman again like that, and…’ She gave a savage smile and cast a pointed look at his crotch. ‘Well, use your imagination.’
Another fork of lightning speared the sky outside and Thea took a step towards the window, the men and their poisonous words forgotten. She lifted her eyes skyward. Thick, dark clouds had gathered, blocking the sun, another rumble rolling through Harenth as more thunder clapped.
Wilder was at her side. ‘Thea…’ he said, his voice low in warning.
‘It’s not me,’ she whispered.
Her Warsword’s eyes widened. He glanced back at Wren, who was still sitting in the booth with the others, talking quietly with Kipp.
‘Then… it’s just a normal storm?’ he breathed, peering out at the downpour.
‘Doesn’t feel normal.’ Thea couldn’t explain the lure of the bedlam beyond the tavern, only that she recognised a part of herself in it, that it beckoned to her.
Without thinking, she was moving.
‘Thea —’
But Wilder’s voice was distant now, and as Thea left the Laughing Fox, the door swinging in her wake, she was completely untethered from herself, sealed away from the midrealms and locked in the lawlessness of the storm.
Her legs were moving, but she didn’t know where. Thea simply followed the pull of the tempest as it caused a vibration across the realms, offering a symphony of brilliant white light and thunder.
It sang to her, and coaxed her magic to the surface, a strange, primitive power, as old as time itself.
Thea found herself on the top of a small hill, overlooking the lower end of Hailford, which was clouded in the haze of the storm, rattling with the full fury of the gods.
The lightning quartered a tree.
And Thea fell into a vision.
* * *
The Veil towered at the edge of the world, a wall of impenetrable mist that hugged the earth before stretching up into the clouds, as though part of the sky had fallen in. It muted whatever lay beyond, and contained whatever lay within, a divider of realms.
A creature stood before it, tall and proud, membranous wings tucked in at its – her – back.
A woman.
Of sorts.
Her hair was shaved close to her skull and she wore simple, boiled leather armour across her lean frame, a hand resting on the pommel of a sword at her hip.
Thea was there, staring at her in wonder.
A brutal scar sliced through her right eye, from above her brow to halfway down her cheek.
Anya.
She was the fiercest thing Thea had ever seen, the most terrifying.
Shadows leaked from between her wings, from the hand that hung casually at her side as she turned her back to the Veil, facing the unit of half-humans and monsters behind her.
‘My people,’ she called, her strong voice projecting to the far lines. ‘We have fought long and hard these many years.’
A ripple of agreement passed through the unit.
‘But now we must fight harder. Now is the time we must come together, stronger than ever before,’ the woman called. ‘Do you know what they have done? To our brothers? To our sisters?’
Angry cries rang out before her, and the beating of weapons upon shields.
It sounded like war drums.
Shadows poured from the woman now, like serpents from a nest, and she turned to face the Veil once more.
‘We will come for them!’ she shouted, thrusting her hands forward, the darkness bowing to her command.
Cords of obsidian lashed at the mist, a vicious assault, wave after wave of shadow magic.
The Veil shuddered —
Before it split in two.
* * *
Thea staggered as the force of it shook the ground. But she was no longer in that strange land, no longer watching on like a ghost as evil incarnate brought down the shield between the midrealms and the darkness beyond.
She was on the same grassy hill, where she’d chased the storm to the outskirts of Hailford.
Wren was there, clutching her hands, pressing her brow to Thea’s clammy forehead.
Around them, the storm had cleared, the afternoon sun high and bright once more, as though nothing had happened.
But Thea panted, fighting back a wave of nausea, reeling from all she’d just witnessed, from that power felt across the realms, from the shock she still felt in her bones.
Wren was squeezing her hands hard, painfully hard.
And it was then that Thea looked at her sister, taking in the lack of colour in her cheeks, the tremor in her grip, the tears lining the eyes that mirrored her own.
‘You saw her too…’ Thea said in slow realisation.
Wren’s throat bobbed as she nodded, collapsing into Thea. ‘I saw her… The Daughter of Darkness. She’s been in my dreams, too.’
Thea held her sister, her heart hammering mercilessly, the back of her neck prickling with awareness. She peered over Wren’s head.
Wilder and Torj were waiting at the edge of the hill, stoic as ever.
But Cal and Kipp were staring at her and Wren, their mouths hanging open.
She knew that she and Wren had both been in the heart of the storm, had been tethered to it in such a way that there was no denying what they were.
Storm wielders.
And now their friends knew it too.
The Warswords and Guardians slowly approached her and Wren as they clung to one another by the blackened remains of the lone tree. But just as Thea dug for words of comfort for Wren, movement caught her eye.
And then a blanket of darkness blocked out the sun.
Ribbons of obsidian passed over the sky, tendrils coiling around the clouds as one giant shadow darkened all of Harenth.
‘What the fuck is that?’ Cal whispered as he reached her.
‘An army of darkness,’ Thea heard herself say, dread unfurling in her.
Wilder’s fingers laced through hers. ‘It’s heading straight for Tver.’