Chapter 49
Allie
Dax and I stood face to face, arms outstretched. His shook.
“Just a show,” I muttered, placing my palms above his.
The avalanche claiming hundreds of lives in a blink had already set the stage for dangerous magic.
Now we only had to use that opportunity.
He nodded. Once. Twice, trapped by his own ghosts. He would have kept on nodding if my voice hadn’t burst out of me.
“Steal my voice. Make it bloom and boom.” The chant ripped from me as Dax’s power lapped it up greedily.
Blood recognized blood.
From between our palms, blue smoke began to sizzle and billow. The warriors stepped back, mystified and cautious. I wished they hadn’t been here at all. Old Vegheara tricks didn’t need to be witnessed. I just hoped they didn’t realize what we were doing.
From the side, it looked like our powers melted together. But I knew better.
Whereas my power coiled into lean, precise tendrils, Dax’s rose as a darker, thick mist, snaking through the air and changing directions on a whim, so that nobody could predict its next move.
It undulated higher and higher, swelling into a terrifying tower.
Glimpses of that awful green mist threatened to break my concentration.
I gritted my teeth and fought against them, as Dax’s power yanked on the parched well of magic inside of me. Sweat poured from my temples once more.
Dax gritted his teeth, eyes squeezed shut. He didn’t want to see his own magic and I didn’t blame him.
It was an otherworldly sight, like a monster who’d been caged for too long, finally free to wreak havoc. It whirled toward the heavens, as if it wanted to swallow everything in its wake.
“Make me their worst fear,” I whispered.
His brows knitted together and his lips parted as the smoke grew and shifted. It surged into a skull that looked not of this world, a great big gaping mouth open to show its fangs.
The she-beast they all feared me to be.
Screams erupted as it billowed past the rim, blocking the sun. Thick, snake-like vines slid between the fangs and into the dark holes of its eyes.
My throat bulged and burned, the words scratching as they bolted out of me.
“This was only a warning.” My voice shook the crater’s edge, scraping against the ice. “Tell your leaders Solkar’s Reach is protected by The Huntress. And I will not back down,” I chanted. “We’ll parlay. On my terms.”
The wisps of blue smoke twisted harder inside the jaws of the great beast.
“Now get off this land before the ice swallows you, too,” I growled. “This is your only chance.”
Dax shivered as the mist rushed over the rim, the wisps turning to tendrils that charged forward.
Terrified roars echoed from above. Fifty or so, no more.
So the Northern Clans hadn’t sent their full force upon us.
Sylvester circled above, his excited screeches announcing their cowardly retreat.
The mind could always be controlled faster than the body.
On my cue, Dax pulled his power back with a hiss. The elongated skull dropped back down toward the ground, like a beast resting after a bloody feast. The sun shone upon us again as the smoke dissipated.
He swayed on the spot as the wisps jumped back into him.
I tightened my hands in his, keeping him upright even as my own body shook from the strain.
“You alright?” I whispered.
He nodded and licked his lips, but said nothing. “Is it gone?”
“Yes.”
Only then did he open his eyes. They were wide and reddened.
“Thank you,” I said, holding on tighter to his fingers.
I was one of the very few people who knew how this display, untainted by death as it was, had taxed him.
But it had done its job.
Around us, the warriors were terrified. They’d put even more distance between us, some muttering prayers.
I nodded at Vylkor, who looked caught between old fears and new admiration. “Do we have palaver portals with the Northern Clan leaders?”
He tilted his head. “Northern leaders usually parlay on top of the Sky Summit.”
“Is that in Solkar’s Reach?”
“No.”
“Then we’re not doing that.”
They already knew I was here. The last thing I needed was them knowing I was trapped.
“The Warden of the Silence has to verify good intentions and truth,” he said. “You’ll not know if they’re lying to you.”
“They’ve just attacked us. The time for good intentions has passed.” I turned to the sky and whistled at Sylvester, who floated down with the grace of a being that could go wherever his feathers wanted. He landed on my shoulder gently.
“Thank you for sounding the alarm.” I nuzzled his soft head, digging my nose into his feathers.
To anyone else, it looked like a happy, gentle moment after the battle.
“I need you to fly to Ryker and tell him what happened,” I whispered. “We need defenses on the rim. Traps, explosions, anything the Blood Brotherhood can spare.”
Sylvester squawked, but kept on rubbing his head against my cheek. He very much understood the assignment.
“Think you can do that?” I asked.
He bristled his feathers, insulted I’d even asked.
“Yes, yes, you’re very fierce. Go get fed and rest in the city, it’s going to be a long journey. Leave only under the cover of darkness and fly low,” I muttered. “I can’t guarantee you haven’t just become a target.”
His sharp talons dug harder into my flimsy tunic, as if trying to reassure me he’d be fine.
“And tell him–” I licked my lips, throat suddenly parched. “Tell him the crater feels his absence.”
It was the only thing I could say. It wasn’t a lie.
Solkar’s Reach needed him.
As for me, I would have been more…serene if he’d been here.
It was the most I would allow myself to admit.
With a final reassuring caw, Sylvester lifted off my shoulder, circled us three times, and took off in the opposite direction. With a heavy heart, I watched him vanish into the glint of the sun, praying for his safe arrival, before my gaze settled back down on the carnage I’d brought down.
I understood war.
I’d been trained to survive it. Learned its tactics and the sacrifice it entailed, so I’d never start one without good cause.
But this…snuffing out hundreds of lives with my own weapons…
I could tell myself the ice had claimed them and that I was only protecting more lives by ending theirs until the sky turned dark.
It still lay heavy on my shoulders.
These soldiers didn’t deserve my mourning–and they wouldn’t have bothered with ours–but they would get it nonetheless.
One thing was obvious.
This attack had only been the spark. We’d caught it before the fire could start and rage. Scaring the soldiers and making my power seem menacing and brutal hopefully delayed the flames, but the blaze was coming.
We just didn’t know when.
“Why didn’t they send more troops?” I muttered, as if asking the crater itself.
It remained stubbornly silent.
“More were about to rappel down,” Vylkor said.
“Only after the battle had started.” I shook my head. “That hadn’t been a full army.”
As my mind whirled with possibilities, each more grim than the other, Dax froze next to me. “Allie? What–what am I looking at?”
The dread in his voice made me whirl around.
My heart dropped as figures began to emerge in the distance.
Coming toward us.