Chapter 55
“Assassins!” someone screams.
“Mother!” Ronan shouts. He starts to run, but I untether his clothes and yank him back.
I grip his shoulders. “Do you have a safe room? A place to hide that’s not on any floor plans?”
The crowd surges toward the main doors, but armored fomorians form a line, blocking the exit.
Ronan hesitates, paling as he looks back up at the balcony. He nods, then takes off his crown and skids it into the crowd. Good; he’s smarter than he looks. Maybe the fomorians won’t recognize him at first glance, and it’ll buy them some time.
“Take Evangeline and go,” I order.
A shriek whips Ronan’s head toward the stairs ascending to the balcony. Princess Cara’s body tumbles down them, her tiara rolling ahead of her. It’s covered in blood. At the top step, a fomorian stands with her battle axe dripping red.
The color drains from Ronan’s face. He gapes, paralyzed with shock.
I shake him. “Didn’t you hear me? Go!”
He jolts out of the stupor, grabs Evie’s hand, and says something to her. My sister glances at me once, and even with the mask, I can tell she’s worried. Then they run into the panicking crowd.
The screams are deafening. I have to find the others. Finnian. Min. Brandur. Maeve. Auri. Desmond. Once we’re together, we’ll think of something.
Someone spins me around. I reel my fist back and prepare to unleash my Gift, but it’s Desmond. His gaze searches me for signs of injury.
“I’m alright,” I assure him. Then I swallow the knot in my throat. “My sister is here.”
He pauses in shock, then looks at the ornate clock high on the ballroom wall. He swears. “We still won’t have weapons for another twenty minutes, but we’ll also lose our disguises.”
“Did you see Gashil?”
Before he can answer, a fomorian charges toward us. Desmond shields me with his body, but the fomorian pivots, attacking a guard who bursts out of the crowd beside us.
Gashil’s deep, disturbing laugh invades my mind. It’s easy to see why he’s overjoyed when the fomorians are fighting off the last of Queen Orla’s guards. I wait for Gashil to oversee the battle from the balcony, but another fomorian steps forward and stops at the height of the stairs.
She wears no helmet, revealing a face hardened by age and battle. Her silver hair is drawn back in a severe bun, and crow’s feet line her lavender eyes as they cut across the panicked crowd.
The last guard on the balcony falls, and the fomorians thrust Queen Orla onto her knees.
Smiling, the female fomorian draws her sword and plunges it through the queen’s heart.
My ears ring as the crowd around us screams. I can barely find air or stand upright as my legs shake. I’ve survived starvation, draugr, and an unnamed beast deep in a tomb. But the fear I felt back then dims in comparison to the utter dread that weighs my limbs now.
The entire royal line is dead—all except for Ronan.
“Why?” I whisper, spinning to search the room for whatever I’m missing. Why are the fomorians here when they’re warring with the fae? Why now? I don’t understand it.
Then I remember what King Olin warned when we awoke him in his tomb.
“They will come for me soon, now that the wards are broken. Then they will come for the others like me, the cursed revenants scattered throughout the continent. If they release this power with no siphons left to contain it, you will be doomed. Be warned.”
“The fomorians want to kill all the other siphons,” I tell Desmond.
He nods, his expression grave.
“Your Queen is dead!” the female fomorian roars. Her iron armor is engraved with filigree, a stark contrast to the plain armor of the soldiers around her. They bow in reverence, but keep their blades raised. Even Gashil inclines his head.
“Do you recognize her? Why does she look familiar to me?” I ask.
“No,” Desmond answers.
She raises her sword, the queen’s blood dripping down its tip. “Avedor is ours. We will slaughter you all as a warning of what becomes of our citizens when they don’t obey our rule.”
The fomorians holler and beat their chestplates.
“Let’s fight!” Brandur yells across the ballroom, flexing his arms back until his waistcoat’s buttons pop off. All the guests simultaneously realize that the only way out is to resist or die trying.
Magic bursts through the ballroom.
The marble columns crack from an earth-wielder’s magic, the chandeliers rock in a turbulent wind, and fire blazes. The fomorians charge the crowd, even as the earth-wielder cracks open a fissure and swallows several into the ground.
With the survivors rallied, maybe we stand a chance.
“Eldon’s gone. Let’s go,” Desmond says, but I grab his arm and stop him.
“We can’t let the fomorians take Avedor,” I urge him. “This is my home.” It feels wrong to ask him this when this is the same man who wanted to assassinate Avedor’s queen—the same man who was tortured by Avedoran guards, whose people have suffered under Avedoran rule.
It’s still my home.
I expect him to argue, or to pick me up and carry me out by force.
Desmond sighs. “The fomorians are collecting weapons from the fallen guards. We can fight them hand-to-hand for their blades.”
“No. We need magic.”
Masks have been thrown aside, gowns are torn short for mobility, and the elements rage. A fomorian shouts as a goblin’s sheet of ice freezes his boots to the floor. An animal shifter in the form of an ox charges, throwing a fomorian with its horns.
Any taste of victory is dashed when fomorian reinforcements storm in through the ballroom doors. Nullifying Gifts whip out, extinguishing fire, halting wind. A nobleman’s warding Gift fails, and his eyes widen just before a fomorian cleaves her axe through his chest.
With every scream and slash, we’re becoming surrounded by bodies.
I hold Desmond’s jaw, commanding his gaze to meet mine. “We need your Gift.”
He blanches. “A mask won’t be enough to keep everyone from knowing, Cynthia. There’s no going back if I do this.”
The thought terrifies me more than I want to admit. His Gift will be another cause for a bounty on his head. The rumors will spread as a horrific truth. He’ll be seen as a monster, not just feared.
I still nod. “I know. I’m terrified for you, but you’re our best hope. The guild members are still here. Gashil took Nikolai from us, and I refuse to let him take anyone else. But I’m not strong enough to stop him alone.”
“You are strong,” Desmond says with a gentle caress along my cheek. “You are strong because in spite of fear, you still hold onto your courage.”
A fomorian yells as his sword slashes toward me. Desmond pushes me out of the way and punches him, cracking his jaw. Before the fomorian can retaliate, Desmond knocks him out.
Then he glances at the balcony. His eyes widen, flashing with recognition. “Is that. . .”
I turn, and what I see stops me cold.
Maeve kneels atop the balcony before the lead fomorian female and bows her head. Then she kisses the female’s extended hand.
“Oh gods,” I whisper.
Finnian, Min, and Brandur run toward us, their masks gone. “How could she do this?” Finnian splutters, shaking his head in pained disbelief. “She’s been one of us for years.”
“Now is not the time,” Brandur growls. He balls his fists. “Traitors will be hanged, but first, we must survive.”
Sparks already crackle around Auri’s knuckles. “And to think my bet was on Rune.”
“It is always the ones you least expect,” Min gravely replies.
She couldn’t be more right. Maeve brought me pottage when I was healing. She taught me how to hold a dart. We bonded in the guild’s kitchen together while she told me about her evil grandmother.
Could that fomorian woman be Maeve’s grandmother? When Maeve said her mother was half-orc, I assumed it meant she was half-human. This doesn’t make sense. How could Maeve choose someone she said she despised over us—her new family?
I don’t have time to think about this anymore. We’ll deal with Maeve’s betrayal later.
“Here’s the plan,” I announce. “Desmond raises every corpse to fight with us. We protect the guests, eliminate the fomorians, and keep them from finding Ronan. He’s the last Meirden left.”
He may be the last human siphon. And he’s with Evie—two good reasons to defeat these fomorians without mercy.
“Finnian, lead the guests outside once we’ve taken out the fomorians guarding the doors. Auri and Min, secure the doors. Desmond and I will go after their leader. Brandur, Ronan is with a young woman in a hidden safe room. You should be able to monitor them with your Gift.”
Brandur flashes his canines as he nods. Gods, I hope Maeve is the only traitor. I want to trust everyone. I want to believe they’re my friends.
“Everyone ready?” I ask.
Auri looks to Desmond, lips pursed in hesitation, like she’s waiting for any revisions to my plan. But it’s brief, and he nods, encouraging her to listen to me.
“Ready,” Auri says.
Desmond wields his Gift, animating the fallen Avedoran guards and fomorians. Both sides of the fray scream, some scrambling back so far that they trip.
“The invaders have a necromancer!” a woman yells, raising her ward magic before her.
Injured legs drag. Blood trails from missing appendages. The revenants’ eyes are glassy, and their jaws hang open as they corner the fomorians. I untether weapons, yanking them from the fomorians’ hands to drop them right into the waiting grasps of the undead guards.
Min shifts, her dress tearing as her shoulders widen. Shreds of fabric float around her as she claws the rest of the fabric away. Heads turn when she roars, spittle flying from her jaws.
She pounces on the nearest fomorian, bats his shield away, and tosses him across the ballroom. He crashes into the buffet table, where Brandur is stuffing little cakes into his pockets. His lips are already smeared with frosting.
Desmond and I pivot, facing the stairs that lead up to the balcony. We run. A fomorian lunges out of the crowd to stop us. I untether his sword from his hands and slash his head off with it.