Chapter 45
KIERAN
The western ward went black. For half a second, the Solstice Hall didn’t understand what had happened.
The musicians kept playing, someone near the terrace laughed, and an Elyndorian dignitary turned toward the dead lanterns with the distracted irritation of someone expecting a ward attendant to correct the problem.
Then the line carved through the western arch split down the center, black bleeding into gold, and every instinct my father had spent years beating into me came awake at once.
“Eiryx.” He was already moving. The first scream came from the western gallery.
It wasn’t the startled cry of someone frightened by a failed ward; there was pain in it, raw enough to cut through the music.
A body struck the floor behind the nearest column with a wet crack, and one of the musicians dragged his bow horribly across the strings before lowering it.
Around him, the others faltered one by one until the song died badly, leaving the scream behind.
People began turning toward the western arch.
A ward-master shoved through the nearest cluster of dancers, shouting for the doors to be sealed, while Mistress Calis crossed the hall from the eastern side with Light already gathering between her hands.
She never reached the ward. The southern arch flickered once behind her and went black.
Lyra moved beside me. I caught her arm before she got farther than a step. “What happened?”
“Sabotage.” I was watching the lines beneath our feet. Three separate failures, almost simultaneous, and none of the recoil that should have accompanied a ward being broken from outside.
Her gaze followed mine. “From inside?”
“Yes.”
A shape pushed through the western wall before I could say more.
The stone didn’t break. It gave. Blackness swelled through the dead ward until the arch looked soft around it, and a hand unfolded from the center with too many joints in every finger.
The nails dragged over polished stone. Then came an arm, impossibly long and thin, followed by a shoulder that seemed to dislocate itself simply to fit through the opening.
Somewhere behind me, a woman whispered, “Shadowwraith.”
“No.” I knew what wraiths looked like when they were hungry.
I knew the frantic twitch of them, the way instinct drove them toward whatever smelled weakest. This creature hauled itself upright with none of that frenzy.
It stood nearly tall enough to touch the arch, its face smooth and featureless, and turned its head slowly toward a room containing hundreds of living bodies.
Its mouth split open farther than any jaw should have allowed, teeth forming only after the black flesh had parted.
“Shadowkin.”
Lyra heard the difference in my voice. She had fought Shadowwraiths. Most people in the hall had at least been taught what they were: lesser things that prowled the edges of Shadow, vicious enough to kill but driven primarily by hunger. Predators. Scavengers. Minions sent ahead of the true horror.
Shadowkin were the worse.
A second shape crawled through behind the first, followed by three more.
They didn’t shriek or throw themselves at the nearest bodies.
They entered silently and spread through the western side of the hall with enough purpose that the back of my neck went cold.
One dropped from the gallery on all fours.
Its spine lengthened as it landed, black skin rippling over bones that rearranged beneath it.
It moved toward a cluster of guests, then stopped.
Its shoulders narrowed. Its limbs shortened. A face formed.
The man nearest it stopped breathing. “Mother?”
The woman standing in front of him was old, gray-haired, dressed in something that might once have been blue. Almost convincing. Almost. Her eyes were too dark, one cheek sagged slightly where the shape hadn’t settled correctly, and when she smiled, her mouth reacted a fraction too late.
The man stepped toward her anyway.
“Don’t!” I shouted. The Shadowkin’s hand disappeared into his chest. Bone cracked beneath the impact.
His mouth opened, but whatever sound he might have made collapsed into a wet gasp as black fingers emerged between his shoulder blades.
Blood poured down the front of his Solstice coat and pattered onto the floor between his shoes.
The creature pulled him closer, almost tenderly, and I knew what came next because I had seen it before, though I had spent years teaching myself not to remember.
His skin grayed around its hand first. The veins beneath his throat darkened, his cheeks sinking inward while thin strands of gold began peeling from his body.
Light. Magic. Life. The Shadowkin drew everything from him without distinction until his knees buckled and his hair went gray at the temples.
When it finally let him slide from its arm, the body that struck the floor looked old enough to be his grandfather.
That was when the hall understood.
The screaming became deafening.
People surged toward the exits all at once.
Tables overturned beneath the crush, wine glasses shattering across the floor as candidates collided with Council delegates and visiting families.
A woman near the western tables went down and vanished beneath running feet.
I heard bone crack somewhere inside the crush, followed by a scream that cut off when another body fell over the first.
“Hold your positions!” Halos’s voice thundered over the chaos, amplified by Light. Gold blazed around him as he forced a path through the crowd. “Ward-masters to the breaches. Instructors, get them away from the western side. Do not run!”
Nobody listened.
A Shadowkin vaulted the musicians’ railing and landed among the strings.
One musician barely had time to raise his instrument before a black arm swept through his face.
Blood and teeth struck the woman beside him.
She screamed and fell backward over her chair while the man collapsed over his ruined instrument.
Master Kaiz reached the platform before the creature could feed. Fire left his hands in a concentrated torrent so hot the air buckled around it. The Shadowkin caught fire, staggered, then kept coming.
Kaiz faltered for half a heartbeat.
It took three more steps before Mistress Calis struck it from the side.
A lance of gold tore through its ribs and ripped half the torso away.
The severed half hit the floor and immediately began moving, fingers scraping over polished stone while the ruined arm dragged what remained of its body toward the nearest candidate.
“Kaiz!” I shouted.
He saw it. Fire engulfed the remains, and the pieces curled inward, blackening until the twitching stopped and the meat collapsed into ash. The smell rolled across the platform a moment later—burnt flesh, spoiled sweetness, and a metallic tang sharp enough to tighten the back of my throat.
“Burn the pieces!” I shouted. “If you break them apart, burn everything!”
Kaiz turned toward the other Fire wielders scattered through the hall. “You heard him! Nothing stays on the floor!”
Eiryx reached the next Shadowkin before anyone else.
His knife crossed its throat, opening it to the spine, but the creature barely reacted.
He didn’t waste a heartbeat being surprised.
Shadow snapped from his free hand and wrapped beneath its arms, hauling it backward while I drove my own magic through its center.
The body tore apart.
Every piece started moving.
Lidia was there before I called her name. Fire swept low across the floor in a narrow white-hot line, catching flesh, severed hands, and half a jaw still snapping against the stone. The pieces curled and blackened until nothing remained but smoking streaks across the polished stone.
Lidia stared at them. Soot already marked one side of her red dress. “Those aren’t the things from Edenlo.”
“No.”
Lyra was looking at me. “Worse?”
Another Shadowkin pulled itself through the dead western ward. “Much.”
The breach pulsed again, and through it I caught movement beyond the wall. Too many bodies. Too coordinated.
This wasn’t an attack against the wards.
Someone had opened the Sanctum.
The eastern ward died less than a minute later. Mistress Calis had both hands pressed to the nearest Light channel when gold flared beneath her palms and snapped black so violently she was thrown backward. Damon caught her before her head struck the floor.
“Don’t touch the primary lines!” she gasped.
Damon lowered her carefully, then turned toward the candidates still crowding the eastern arch.
He looked nothing like the Council representative who had spent the evening moving politely between delegates.
Gold Light ran from both hands to his elbows, illuminating the blood sprayed across the front of his white coat. “Back! Get away from the ward!”
The line exploded.
Stone tore from the floor. A shard struck an Elyndorian Councilman through the throat, and he dropped clutching at it while blood pumped between his fingers. Damon was beside him almost immediately. He pressed one glowing hand to the wound, but I saw his face before he lowered his head.
He knew.
There was nothing to save.
Another Shadowkin came through the rupture. Damon looked up, and whatever grief or shock had been there disappeared. His Light hit the creature square in the face. The blast tore its head from its shoulders.
“Kaiz!”
Fire swallowed the corpse before it could move.
Damon stared at the burning body for half a heartbeat before turning back toward the crowd. “Anyone who can walk, move toward the interior columns. Do not touch the ward lines. Help someone who can’t walk.”
People listened to him. Not everyone. Enough.