Chapter 40
Isla
My mother’s eyes flare the moment they land on Sebastian.
The warmth and the tears vanish in a single breath. The color drains from her face.
“You?” she says under her breath, her eyes narrowing on him.
Before I can answer, a thunderous banging erupts from the corridor. The door shudders in its frame.
“Ruler General! Is everything alright?” The guard’s voice sounds muffled but urgent.
“Mother, call them off.” I keep my voice steady. “Please. Tell them everything is fine. Let’s talk about this.”
Her eyes are glinting now. I see it for what it is – hunger for power.
“Call out, or we will break the door down,” the guard yells.
She doesn’t look at me. Her hand goes to the wall behind her desk.
“Don’t,” I beg
She’s too quick, my mother yanks on a braided cord by the drape, and somewhere deep in the castle, a bell tolls.
“No!” I lunge for her, but it’s too late. The cord swings back into place, and the damage is done.
Wood groans, then splinters. The heavy door buckles inward with a cracking sound that echoes through the stone chamber. Four guards pour through the wreckage, swords drawn, shadows coiling along their forearms.
Sebastian moves, putting himself between the guards and me. His stance is low.
Why did he come here?
This was never supposed to happen.
He put himself in harm’s way. The stubborn, pigheaded fool.
I push the thoughts aside. I need all my wits about me if we are to survive this.
“Take him into custody,” my mother commands. Her voice doesn’t waver. “My daughter stays with me. The bounty on her head is no more.”
Sebastian turns his head. His eyes find mine.
Something passes between us. I give the smallest of nods, which he returns. There is no way I’m allowing him to be taken into custody, and there’s no way he’s letting the Ruler General get her claws into me.
We move at the same time.
I throw my hands forward, and shadow erupts from my palms. It slams into the two guards on the left, sweeping their legs and sending them crashing into the wall. Their swords clatter against the stone floor.
Sebastian is already on the other two. He drives his shoulder into the first guard’s midsection and rips the sword from the male’s grip in the same motion. A sharp crack echoes as his elbow connects with the second guard’s jaw. The male drops.
The first guard scrambles back, reaching for a dagger at his belt. Sebastian doesn’t give him the chance. He spins the sword and brings the flat of the blade against the guard’s temple. The male crumples.
One of the guards I knocked down is staggering upright, calling shadow magic to his hands. I hit him with a burst of fire before it can take shape. Orange light floods the chamber, and the guard staggers, slapping at the embers on his armor.
There is the scent of smoke and burning.
“Let’s go,” Sebastian says.
I’m already moving. I sprint for the window, throwing the shutters wide. Night air rushes in. We’re high up, but that doesn’t deter either of us.
Sebastian is right behind me. He slides his arm around my waist, and I grip his shoulder.
“You know how this goes,” I say, and I don’t wait for a reply.
I leap.
The ground drops away beneath us. Wind tears at my hair and clothing. For one wild, weightless moment, we are falling, and there is nothing beneath us but cold air and cobblestones.
Then my magic catches hold.
Shadow solidifies beneath my feet, forming a narrow platform of compressed darkness, wrapping Sebastian to me.
The air responds to my firefae blood, generating a current that pushes upward, slowing our descent and carrying us sideways toward the nearest rooftop.
I don’t need silks anymore. I don’t need ropes or hooks or anything except the magic burning inside me.
We land on the sloped tiles of an adjacent tower.
My feet hit, and I’m already launching again, shadows forming stepping stones beneath us as I carry us both from one rooftop to the next.
Sebastian holds on without a word, his body moving with mine, adjusting his weight as I twist and turn through the night.
The power flows through me like water finding a path downhill. I know what I am, and I know what I can do.
Sebastian knows it too. He moves before I do, leaning right when I need him to lean right, tucking low when I drop altitude. We don’t speak. We don’t need to. His body reads mine, and I adjust to him.
Behind us, my mother’s voice tears through the night.
“Sound the trumpets! Sebastian is here! He must be caught!” She keeps ringing the bell in sharp, piercing clangs.
The trumpets answer soon after. Three long blasts that rip across the castle grounds. Torches flare to life along the battlements, and shouts echo from every direction.
I launch us from the tower roof, arcing over a wide courtyard. Below, guards spill from doorways like ants from a kicked mound. Orders are barked. Horses are brought out at speed from the stables.
I angle toward a lower section of the castle, a run of connected rooftops above the kitchens and servants’ quarters.
My feet kiss stone for a fraction of a heartbeat before I push off again, shadows spinning out from beneath me, fire warming the air currents to give us lift.
Sebastian adjusts his grip, drawing me tighter against him, and together we soar over a large gap.
I come down hard on the far roof, my knees absorbing the impact. Sebastian rolls off me and into a crouch, scanning the darkness.
“There!” a shout from below. “On the rooftops!”
Two bolts of shadow magic streak past us. One misses wide. The other clips the edge of the roof, and the tiles explode in a shower of shards. I throw up a shield, and the next bolt, aiming straight for us, deflects off it, spinning into the night.
“We need to go,” Sebastian says.
We drop from the roof into a narrow alley. My landing is soft, cushioned by a pocket of heated air. Sebastian hits the ground beside me with the grace of someone born for this.
Boots pound at both ends of the alley. Guards are closing in. I grab Sebastian’s hand and pull him through a low archway that opens onto the inner courtyard. The space is wide and exposed, flanked on all sides by high stone walls. Torchlight paints everything in shades of amber and black.
Six guards block the far exit. They see us, and their shadows bloom to life around their fists.
It looks like all of the guards still have their magical ability, which doesn’t bode well for our escape.
We have to try.
A tendril of shadow snakes toward my legs. I jump over it and send a wave of hot fire sweeping across the courtyard. The guards scatter, breaking formation. Sebastian charges into the gap.
He fights hard, his sword flying. Even without his magic, he is devastating.
He parries a strike and drives the pommel into a guard’s ribs.
Another swings at his head, and he ducks, coming up inside the male’s reach and slamming a fist into his throat.
The guard drops, wheezing. He cuts the next guard down, and blood spatters.
I cover his back. A wall of shadow catches a blade that was aimed between his shoulder blades, and I send the guard who wielded it spinning with a blast of compressed air.
Another tries to flank us from the left.
I wrap shadow around his ankles, and he goes down hard, his chin bouncing off the cobblestones.
Sebastian finishes the last of them off and turns to me, his chest heaving. There is blood spattered across his tunic that isn’t his.
“To the courtyard gate,” I tell him, and we run.
It’s made of iron and stands open. We barrel through it and into the wide avenue that leads from the castle to the outer wall. Ahead, the grounds spread out in rolling lawns and hedgerows. Beyond that, the dark line of the forest.
There is the sound of hooves behind us. I turn and see riders bearing down on us at full gallop, their shadows trailing behind them like dark cloaks.
“Into the trees,” Sebastian shouts.
We sprint for the tree line. My lungs burn. Sebastian matches my pace, keeping himself between me and the approaching riders. An arrow whistles past and thuds into the ground two strides ahead of us.
I reinforce a shield, which is tough while having to run this hard and fast. I do it anyway.
We crash into the forest.
The trees are dense here, their branches interweaving overhead. The riders will struggle to follow at speed. I can already hear the horses slowing, their hooves stumbling on root and brush.
But the guards don’t stop. They dismount and come on foot, and they bring their magic with them.
Shadows leap at us from the darkness between the trees, lashes of dark energy that snap like whips. Once again, I throw up another shield, and two of them strike it and dissipate. A third catches the edge and wraps around my forearm.
I yank it free with a snarl and hurl fire at the source. The bolt illuminates the forest for a blinding moment. Before us, dozens of guards fan out through the trees.
Nooooo!
There are more coming. They crash through the undergrowth behind the first wave.
Sebastian has picked up a second sword along the way. He fights with one in each hand, spinning and striking. He isn’t holding back anymore. He can’t afford to. It’s them or us.
A shadow tendril wraps around his sword arm, and he twists free of it with raw strength, snapping the bond.
I weave shadows between the trees, creating false images of us that flicker and move through the forest in the wrong direction. Several guards head that way to chase them down. It buys us time, but not much.
“This way.” Sebastian grabs my arm and pulls me down a narrow ravine. We slide through wet leaves and loose earth. At the bottom, a shallow stream runs between moss-covered rocks.
We follow it, and our footprints disappear in the current.
Behind us, shouts ring out. The guards have lost our trail. I hear them arguing, splitting up, sending scouts in different directions.
Good!
Maybe we’re in with a chance.