Chapter 27 #2
Our thornback has carried us dangerously close to the fight.
We’re no longer at the rear of the formation.
The tide of battle has shifted the lines, and we’re in the thick of it now.
An icefae soldier lunges at our mount with a spear.
The thornback swats him aside with a swing of its armored head, sending the guard spinning through the air. Another comes at us from the right.
I draw my sword and lean out from the thornback’s spine, catching the soldier across the shoulder as he thrusts. My blade bites through the gap between his pauldron and breastplate. He drops.
Isla throws fire from her palms. A bright, hot stream that catches an icefae in the chest as he comes at us, hands held high. The magic he was weaving dies with him as he goes down in a heap.
“On your left!” she shouts.
I twist. Two icefae with swords are coming at us from the ground, trying to cut the thornback’s legs.
I swing low and hard, taking one across the face.
The second ducks under my stroke and thrusts his blade upward.
I throw my weight sideways to avoid it, and the tip scores along my thigh instead of burying itself in my stomach.
The pain is bright and immediate. I grunt and bring my sword down on the back of his neck.
He doesn’t get up.
“You’re hurt.” Isla is looking at my leg, at the dark stain spreading through my trews.
“It’s shallow. Don’t worry about me.” It hurts like all hell, but it’s not deep enough to matter. “Watch the left side. I’ll take the right.”
She nods and turns away from me, her hands already bright with fire. Shadows curl between her fingers too, dark and quick, threading through the flames. She’s using both sides of her bloodline, and gods, she is something to witness.
But there is no time.
The shifterfae continue to cut through the icefae ranks.
Hy-weres bring down soldiers by the dozen.
A dragon lifts an entire cluster of guards into the air and drops them from a height no armor can survive.
The catlike creatures work in pairs, one drawing a soldier’s attention while the other takes them from behind.
But there are losses on the shifterfae side too.
A dragon takes a spear of pure ice through its wing membrane and crashes to earth, crushing three hy-weres beneath it as it falls.
The armored boar creature takes a concentrated blast of ice magic and freezes solid where it stands, mid-charge, a monument to the icefaes’ power.
Hy-weres lie broken across the battlefield in growing numbers.
Snow watches all of it from her carriage until three dragons come at her; she brings them all down with the mere swat of her hand. They are flung away, but she doesn’t kill them. They fall dazed. I’m sure they will be back in no time.
Then she steps down from the carriage.
Her feet touch the frozen mud, and frost blooms outward from the point of contact, spreading in delicate, lace-like patterns across the ground. She walks into the battle like she’s crossing a ballroom floor. Her gown trails behind her, untouched by blood or filth.
Hy-weres charge at her. They are all teeth and muscle and fury.
Snow raises two fingers and flicks them sideways.
The creatures are flung twenty feet through the air and land in a broken heap. They don’t rise but are still breathing. Again, she didn’t kill them. I’m sure she could have.
I think she is toying with them.
Like a cat would play with a mouse.
Another shifterfae rushes at her. Snow doesn’t even look at it. She waves her hand, and a pillar of ice erupts from the ground beneath the creature, launching it skyward. It comes crashing back down thirty feet away, groaning.
Two more attack together. She throws one into the other and walks on.
There is a trumpeting, and a whole squadron of riders on black steeds arrives. Their armor is dark. Their plumes are black. The crests on their breastplates catch no light because they’re carved in shadow.
Shadowfae.
My own people, thundering toward us on warhorses bred for exactly this kind of carnage.
“No,” I whisper. They’re riding for Snow.
They hit the far edge of the battlefield at a gallop and cut through the shifterfae flank with swords drawn and shadows swirling in thick, dark clouds.
The hy-weres try to regroup. The dragons wheel overhead, uncertain, their flames useless against shadow that eats light. The formation begins to buckle.
If something isn’t done soon, all of this will have been for nothing. The shifterfae will be ground between the icefae and the shadowfae, and Snow will walk away without a scratch.
“Stay here,” I tell Isla. I sheathe my sword and grip the bone spike, preparing to climb down.
“What are you doing?” She turns, her eyes wide. She grabs the side of my arm. “Stay…no…you can’t.”
“I have to go. Stay on the thornback. Don’t follow me.”
“Sebastian, no. Whatever you’re thinking—”
“Isla, please.” I cup her face with one hand. Her skin is flushed. There’s blood on her cheek that isn’t hers and ash in her hair from the fires. Her eyes burn into mine. “I need you to do as I say, just this once, please.”
“Don’t do this. Don’t you dare—”
I kiss her. Hard and fast, then I drop down from the thornback’s back, landing on my feet.
Pain shoots through my injured leg, but I ignore it. Isla screams my name, but I don’t look back.
I planned to do this anyway. I need to try, or all will be lost. We’ll be overrun and recaptured.
I run through the madness, through the blood-slick mud, dodging bodies and magic and the thrashing limbs of creatures locked in combat. An icefae soldier swings at me, and I duck without breaking stride. A hy-were snaps at me as I pass, and I twist sideways, my shoulder brushing its matted flank.
I need distance from Isla. If what I’m about to do goes wrong, I don’t want her anywhere near me when it happens.
I stop in an open stretch of ground not too far away from Snow’s carriage. She’s there, standing amid the wreckage.
I close my eyes and reach inward.
The magic is there, as always. It’s vast, a building pressure that has had little release. The last time I used it, I nearly destroyed everything around me, and I barely tapped into it.
This time, I will try to control it, but if need be, I won’t hold anything back.
The power comes more easily than before.
It rises through me like a tide, filling my veins, my very bones.
Shadows pour from my hands, my arms, my chest. They erupt upward in great spiraling columns of living darkness that blot out the sky above me.
The ground beneath my feet splits and cracks as the magic pushes outward.
I throw everything at Snow, while still maintaining some sort of control. I would prefer not to have to die.
The shadows tear across the open ground between us, a wall of pure dark energy moving with the speed of a loosed arrow and the force of a collapsing mountain.
Yes!
It hits her hard. Only, Snow doesn’t stagger.
She doesn’t fall.
When she laughs, dread washes over me.
I refuse to give up, so I push harder, loosing an avalanche of shadows that just might destroy me, but I don’t give a damn.
She opens her arms and welcomes my onslaught.
Snow keeps laughing. It’s the laugh of someone unhinged and drunk on something she’s been craving.
My magic pours into her, and she takes it. All of it. She pulls it from me the way the mirror pulled magic from the fae.
I try to stop, but I can’t. She won’t let me.
My shadows don’t destroy her as I had hoped; they wrap around her and sink beneath her skin. The dark columns I raised from the earth bend toward her as if she’s become the center of everything, a gravity that my magic cannot resist.
I feel it leave me. Not all at once, but in a steady, merciless draw that picks up speed with every passing second. Strength drains from my arms. My legs tremble. I try harder to pull back, but I can’t. She has her hooks in me now, and she’s pulling with a hunger that is bottomless.
Snow turns her head and looks at me.
Her cold eyes find mine across the churning battlefield, and she smiles.
“Hello, Sebastian.” Her voice carries across the distance as if she’s standing right beside me. “I have been looking forward to seeing you again. I missed you so very much.”
Like hell she did.
I can’t respond. It’s taking everything in me not to fall to the ground.
I grit my teeth and growl from the pain of trying to stop her. Of trying to pull back. It doesn’t work.
I drop to one knee.
The mud soaks through my trews; cold against my skin. My hands shake. I think I might be dying. My life force is being taken now.
I’m sure I hear Isla screaming. I want to turn to look, but I can’t. I can’t so much as move a muscle.
My other knee hits the mud.
The last thing I see clearly, before my vision fades to gray, is the smile on Snow’s face. She’s completely insane. There is no humanity left in her. She’s nothing like the beautiful young lady I remember.
Nothing.