Chapter 35 #2
“I’ve got you.” But the words were strained as he levelled out, giving me just enough stability to haul myself back into position.
Below us, I caught a flash of twilight purple as Lincatheron’s dragon spiralled down toward the burning camp in a dive. Even from this distance, I could see the way Lincatheron sat his mount like he’d been born for this.
He landed in the middle of the chaos and was off his dragon’s back in one fluid motion, steel singing as he drew his blade. Lincatheron carved through Nyxarian soldiers like they were made of paper, rallying the scattered defenders with bellowed commands that carried over the din of battle.
That’s what a real warrior looked like. Not some half-trained girl clinging to a dragon’s neck like deadweight.
“Kaelen.” I had to shout to be heard over the wind and screaming. “Take me down. I need to be on the ground.”
“Absolutely not. You’re safer up here.”
“I’m fucking useless up here.” The admission tore out of me. “I can’t fight like this—I can’t even stay on your back properly. On the ground I can actually help.”
“On the ground you can actually die.”
“I’m going to die anyway if I can’t contribute to this fight.” I could see more shadow dragons closing in, could see our allies being overwhelmed. “Please, Kaelen.”
He was quiet for a long moment, banking away from a stream of poisonous flame that came too close for comfort.
“You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Not today,” I promised, already preparing myself for the controlled fall that would get me to the battlefield. “Not if I can help it.”
“I’m staying close,” he warned as he began his dive. “The moment things go sideways—and they will go sideways—I’m pulling you out of there whether you like it or not.”
The fierce protectiveness in his voice made something warm and desperate unfurl in my chest. “Please do,” I said, meaning every word. “I’m not ready to lose you either.”
Kaelen hit the ground like a meteor wrapped in emerald scales, his claws carving furrows in the blood-soaked earth as he skidded to a halt. The impact rattled through every bone in my body, but I was already rolling, already moving before we’d fully stopped.
The battlefield was chaos. Soldiers screamed, steel clashed on steel. The acrid stench of burning canvas and spilled blood thick enough to taste. I hit the dirt hard and came up running, moonsilver daggers singing as they cleared their sheaths.
That’s when I saw him.
Lincatheron had his back to me, locked in combat with two Nyxarian soldiers whose armour drank light like hungry mouths.
His blade moved like liquid lightning, but he was focused entirely on the enemies in front of him, completely unaware of the third soldier creeping up behind him with a wicked curved blade raised high.
Time crystallised.
The blade was already descending toward the vulnerable space between his shoulder blades. Lincatheron’s death was written in the arc of that strike, inevitable as gravity.
I threw myself forward without thinking, without hesitation, without any regard for my own mortality. My boots found purchase on the churned mud and ash, every muscle in my body coiling like a spring as I launched myself between them.
The blade met my crossed daggers with a shriek of metal that carried over the battlefield din. The impact drove me to my knees, moonsilver humming as it held against the darker steel, sparks cascading around us like falling stars.
The Nyxarian soldier’s eyes widened behind his helm.
“Behind you.” I snarled at Lincatheron through gritted teeth, my arms trembling with the effort of holding the larger weapon at bay.
Lincatheron spun with the fluid grace of a predator, taking in the tableau in one quick glance. His glaive found the would-be killer’s throat before the man could recover from his surprise, opening him from ear to ear in one devastating cut.
Blood sprayed across my face, hot and copper-sweet.
“You magnificent, reckless idiot,” Lincatheron breathed, but there was something fierce and grateful burning across his face as he offered me his hand.
I took it, letting him haul me to my feet, moonsilver daggers humming with the memory of that impact. “Someone has to watch your back, Commander.”
“Wildfire.” Kaelen’s mental roar crashed through my skull. “Move.”
I looked up just in time to see a shadow dragon diving straight at us, claws extended and maw gaping wide enough to swallow us both whole.
The shadow dragon’s dive became a screaming plummet as Kaelen slammed into it mid-air, emerald and obsidian scales tangling in a storm of fury and violence. They hit the ground twenty feet away in an explosion of dirt and roars that shook the earth beneath my boots.
But there was no time to watch, three more Nyxarian soldiers had spotted us, their black armour gleaming with malevolent purpose as they closed in.
The first soldier came at me with an overhead strike meant to cleave me in half.
The black fire erupted from me like a geyser of pure destruction, but it came too wild, too hungry. Instead of the controlled streams I needed, it burst outward in writhing tentacles of shadow that lashed at everything within reach. I cursed and yanked it back, the effort leaving me gasping.
The daggers sang in my palms. A harmony that resonated in my bones as the moonsilver awakened to the taste of my blood and fury. I could feel them learning me, adapting to the rhythm of my heartbeat, the cadence of my breathing, the particular brand of violence that lived in my soul.
As they struck again—a slash aimed at my ribs—I sidestepped and let the dagger in my right hand rise to meet his descending blade, deflecting it just enough to slip inside his guard.
The moonsilver found the gap between his gorget and helm, sliding home with a whisper that sounded almost like satisfaction.
He dropped like a stone.
The second soldier was faster, smarter. He came in low and vicious, trying to gut me before I could recover from the first kill.
Golden flames lit at his fingers, but my daggers were already moving, already singing their lethal song as they wove through the air.
Left hand parried, right hand struck, and suddenly his weapon was spinning away through the smoke while his lifeblood painted the ground crimson.
The third hesitated, just for a heartbeat, just long enough to register that her companions were dead. That hesitation killed her. By the time she hit the ground, she’d been opened in four different places.
I moved like water, like death given form, the daggers flowing through patterns I’d carved countless times.
The daggers hummed in my hands, warm and eager and satisfied.
“Behind you.” Kaelen’s warning sliced through my mind just as I spun to face a new threat.
But Lincatheron was already there.
His glaive slashed through the air with deadly grace as he brought it around in a devastating arc. But it wasn’t just steel that met the Nyxarian soldier’s charge—the very air around Lincatheron rippled like the surface of deep water disturbed by something vast moving beneath.
The scent of brine and crushing depths flooded my senses.
The soldier’s eyes went wide as water began pouring from nowhere. It flooded from the air itself, from the ground, from the spaces between spaces. It rose around his ankles, then his knees, then his chest with impossible speed as it held its shape in a perfect column around his thrashing form.
He tried to scream and choked instead, salt water flooding his lungs even as he stood on solid ground. His weapon fell from nerveless fingers as he clawed desperately at liquid that had no surface to break, no edge to escape.
Lincatheron’s glaive took his head while he drowned standing up.
The water vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving only a corpse and the lingering taste of deep ocean on the wind.
“Fucking hells,” I breathed, staring at Lincatheron with new respect. “Remind me never to piss you off near a bathtub.”
“The ocean doesn’t forget,” he said, silver spray trailing from his blade like seafoam. “And neither do I.”
The daggers purred in my grip, eager for more blood, more death, more of the beautiful violence they’d been forged to deliver. And gods help me, I was eager to give it to them.
But through the chaos, I saw her.
The woman before me was a striking vision, utterly out of place on the battlefield.
She strode through the chaos with the ease of a morning walk, an unsettling confidence radiating from her every step.
Her gown—a flowing, blood-red silk—fluttered behind her, the fabric cut daringly low across her shoulders.
It was an absurd choice for a battlefield, and yet she moved through the carnage untouched.
Her figure was tall, slender, poised, a predator who had long since grown accustomed to her surroundings.
Her fine, straight black hair flowed around her, catching in the breeze, brushing at her waist. But it was her eyes, wholly black, cold and unblinking—that truly held my attention.
There was a wild, dangerous spark in them, a calm awareness that hinted at a readiness to strike if needed.
The fire and smoke swirling in the air parted for her as she moved.
Lincatheron turned. Spotted her. And his body went rigid.
He didn’t even look at me as he snarled just one word. “Run.”
His glaive gleamed as he shifted into a stance I had never seen him take before, his body braced, tense.
“Isara. Now. Run.”
My grip tightened on my daggers. My breath came harsh but steady. “No.”
Lincatheron swore low and rough, but there was no time for more.
The woman’s smirk widened as she slowed. “How touching,” she mused, her voice rich and dangerous. “She doesn’t listen to you.”
“Wildfire!” Kaelen’s roar almost drowned out all other thought, fury and terror bleeding through our bond. “Get away from her. Now.”