Chapter Fifty-Six
Skylar Cathal
“Zola!” Daxton roared her name with desperation, his shoulders heaving as his gaze fixed on his spymaster’s trail.
She paused and turned her head. “Go,” she signed as she began charging forward once more.
“What is she doing?” Adohan demanded.
“She’s—” I could barely form the words. “She’s trying to give us time to escape.”
The three of us raced down the stone steps, leaping from the final level as we looked out onto the wilted land between us and the fallen.
“We can’t leave her,” I told Daxton, knowing he felt the same.
“I’m not planning on it.” My mate’s jaw clenched as Valencia appeared in his hand. “You’re going, though.”
“Fat chance!”
“Skylar!” Daxton yelled as he turned toward me. “For me. Keep your promise. Turn and run.”
Bastard.
“Daxton, I can’t—”
“You must!” His eyes darted to Adohan, who came to my side.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I snarled.
“Skylar,” Adohan began, but stopped when the rasped voice from a nalusa falaya silenced us all.
“You—” One of the hooded figures stepped forward, its long, bony hand extending from its cloak, pointed directly at Zola. “You’re the one who escaped. You’re the one our shadows seek. The powers you wield are not for you to keep.” It glided forward with three others behind it.
“They can’t cross the ward line, right?” I asked.
Their lack of response gave me no comfort. Zola was in grave danger.
“The ward begins at the city gates,” Adohan said, stepping closer to my side.
“I’ve heard your whispers for nearly five hundred years,” Zola said in a deathly calm voice. “The time has come to put your words to the test.”
In a flash, shadows encircled Zola as a handful of fallen creatures surrounded her, beginning their assault.
“No!” Daxton roared, but Adohan jumped to restrain my mate from following.
Zola’s cries of pain tore through my center. They were killing her, using her gifts against her. The magic that flowed through her veins was now used as a tool for her destruction and torment. Summoning my courage, I darted around the two High Fae males and ran straight for Zola.
“Skylar!” my mate roared from behind me.
Zola’s screams muffled his cries.
Was it my brightest idea in the world? No, most definitely not. But I couldn’t just stand there as I watched my friend being torn to pieces.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, Shaw leaped ahead of me. His teeth were bared, claws outstretched, the look of death reflected in his eyes. I had never seen my friend hold this much hatred, this much rage. I slowed as I watched him lunge into the circle of nalusa falaya.
Shaw began shredding the creature with its hands on Zola’s throat. The circle of fallen creatures erupted in panic as Shaw stood protectively over Zola, shielding her body with his own, blood dripping from teeth and claws from his victory—a nalusa falaya slain.
“Z!” Idris’s voice bellowed from above as she and Astro swooped down from the sky astride their pegasi.
“Idris!” Adohan screamed in a panic as he and Daxton reached me. “Get back here now!”
Idris, a female after my own heart, ignored the command and flew with her blazing spear into the fight. I grinned, regaining my footing as I joined, with the males following.
“With me,” Daxton growled. “Stay right beside me. Guard my back, and I’ll guard yours. We fight together, Spitfire, or Gods help me, I’ll drain my reserves and teleport you to the wall myself.”
“Understood,” I rasped as I drew my alpha’s dagger, a twinge of guilt eating at me for trying to run off without him by my side. I knew I would be angry at him if the roles were reversed. “This will do the trick if Valencia doesn’t.”
Daxton nodded as Adohan sprinted with unparalleled speed, the urge to protect his mate driving him past his physical limitations.
In the circle of fallen creatures, Idris and Astro managed to corner one of them and break to the right. Shaw stood protectively over Zola’s limp body as three remaining fallen creatures circled him like sharks in the water.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at my beta as Daxton and I charged into the doom ring. “Shaw!”
Silence.
“Answer me!” I roared with the power of my alpha command.
“I had no choice.”
If the threat to our lives wasn’t knocking at my door, I could have pried more out of him, but for now, that would have to do.
Charging ahead, Valencia sliced through the air, colliding with a blackened blade drawn by the fallen who spoke to Zola from the mists. A shield of ice sprang from the ground to block the escape for Shaw to attack while I fronted the other with my short sword drawn and dagger at the ready.
“Champion,” a fallen creature rasped as a dark blade appeared from its hand. “Not all of us want to be saved.”
“I didn’t know I was offering,” I grunted as I swung my sword, blocking a strike to my right and left, trying to inch close enough to decapitate the creature.
“Fuck, Skylar!”
My attention snapped toward Shaw just as his teeth sank into the creature’s flesh.
His claws tore at the sickly gray skin along its neck, and a severed head rolled along the dirt.
It would have been a moment of relief, but the bleeding wound on Shaw’s shoulder wasn’t closing or healing. It should’ve been healing.
“I-it bit me, Sky. I-I can’t…”
“Shaw!” I screamed in a panic, feeling his tether to me beginning to fade.
The fallen I was facing took advantage of the distraction, lashing out at my side and making me dive into a roll and expose my backside.
An ice dagger flew through the air, colliding with the shoulder of the fallen, granting me the time to quickly roll to my left just as the blade came crashing down where I once was. The creature roared in frustration.
I kicked out against the flat side of the blade to disarm it and drew on my animal’s rising power.
Without hesitating, I flung myself onto the fallen’s injured shoulder, and with my alpha blade drawn, I sliced through its neck.
Black blood spewed outward in a fan as the headless body collapsed to the ground.
My hands began trembling as I clenched the head of the creature in my grasp, unable to look away at the life I was forced to take. At the face of the beast that I could have saved.
“Skylar!” Daxton came to my side, his hand gliding over mine, urging me to let go. “It’s done. You can’t carry the burden of their death. They were dead long before your blade made this cut.”
He knew. Gods be damned, he knew that guilt of taking the life of this nalusa falaya had struck a chord in my center, holding me frozen in place.
“But I—”
“Unlock the Heart,” my mate said. “Unlock the Heart, and perhaps not all those who were taken will be lost.”
I released the head, letting it fall to my feet as I stepped back and shook myself to try and regain my senses.
“Skylar!” Idris’s cry broke me from my trance.
“Shaw!” I yelled in a panic as I rushed to my beta’s side. “Shift,” I commanded, needing to assess the damage masked under his blanket of midnight fur.
“How bad?” Shaw’s voice was barely a whisper as he lay motionless on the earth in his human form.
“You’ve been through worse,” I lied.
“That’s a relief.”
Even though I was drained, I needed to do this. I couldn’t sit here, watch my beta become a nalusa falaya, and do nothing. The black threads of poison were already coursing through his veins. There wasn’t enough time to move him inside the wards. I had to heal him here, or else he—
“Here,” Daxton said, placing a hand on my shoulder, “take what you need. Heal him, Skylar.”
Placing my hands on Shaw, I gave a nod of thanks to my mate, feeling his magic flowing throughout our bond and somehow fueling my wells of power. My palms glowed in a golden hue, erasing the remnants of the fallen’s bite and eradicating the poison.
I gasped, collapsing backward into Daxton’s arms. Despite his help, I was exhausted. “Gods above,” I cursed. “Don’t do that again, Shaw.”
“I’ll do my best,” Shaw said in an unsteady voice. His wound was healed, but he was still a bit shaky.
Daxton cradled me in his arms, and for once, I didn’t fight against him doing so. “We need to get out of here.”
“Zola?” I asked.
“She’s alive but unconscious. We’ve got her,” Idris answered as she released a long whistle into the sky to call riders down to us.
“Let me take her,” Shaw said, rising to his feet. “I’m strong enough to ride.”
“Put a cloak on your lap, and then maybe I’ll let you,” Idris snapped.
“You are riding with me, Idris.” There was no room for argument in Adohan’s tone.
“The only reason why I’m even thinking of letting my best friend go with you is because you did just jump into a death circle and save her life,” Idris said.
“Shaw will look after her,” I mumbled, my head falling into Daxton’s chest.
I didn’t know how I knew this, but something told me that the safest place for Zola right now was with Shaw.
Idris glanced at me and flipped her eyes back at Shaw with a skeptical glare as Adohan jumped behind her in the saddle. Two riderless pegasi swooped down on the earth, their neighs alerting us to the ever-approaching mist that held more nalusa falaya ready to attack if we didn’t retreat soon.
With a wave of Adohan’s hand, loose pants appeared across Shaw’s bottom half. “Stop arguing about this. We need to get to safety. Our fight is far from over tonight, my mate,” Adohan growled as he took hold of the reins.
“I swear on my life she’ll be safe,” Shaw said with absolute clarity.
I tried to sit up to find my beta, but my vision swirled, unable to focus. I had depleted my magic reserves, and I was on the brink of a shifter’s sleep taking me under.
“It’s time to go, Spitfire,” Daxton said as he mounted one of the pegasus with me in his arms. “Idris, hand Zola over to Shaw. We need to get out of here now.”
Idris released her friend into Shaw’s outstretched arms as he dashed toward the waiting pegasus.
“Let’s get out of here!” Astro yelled as he ignited a wall of fire between us and the approaching mists. “I’ll be faster riding alone. The rest of you go. I’ll follow.”
Adohan gave his son a nod, and then the rest of us flew toward the safety of Crimson City.