Chapter Nine #2
By the time they left the marsh lands behind and the green heights of the canopy forests began rising toward them, Ina had nearly forgotten she was on her way to luncheon with Eogan.
That was when the attack came.
Not from fairies.
Not from animals.
Not from anywhere obvious.
From the air itself, it seemed.
One moment the five of them were flying through clear space above the forest edge.
The next, shapes tore into view so abruptly that Ina’s mind could not place them.
Wings, but not wings. Claws, then fur, then something scaled.
One beast plunged at Shayna and changed shape halfway through the dive, its long body shrinking into something thick-necked and broad-jawed before it struck.
Shayna shouted and rolled away. The thing clipped her shoulder instead of her throat, and blood sprayed out of it.
“Down!” Matilde yelled.
But down was no safety. Another creature rose from below them through the branches, its shape flickering as if some unseen spell refused to let it settle. Wolf. Bird. Lion. Something else with wings. Ina saw teeth once, eyes twice, and no true form long enough to name it.
Jasenka had her hands up instantly, fire and light and some type of knife forming in it. The blade gleamed, narrow and brutal. She drove it into the neck of a beast that came for Zuri’s back, and black blood sprayed in a brief arc through the air before the creature twisted, changed again, and fell.
“Keep together!” Jasenka called.
They tried.
It was harder than it ought to have been.
The things moved wrong. They did not fly as birds flew or leap as beasts leapt.
Their bodies kept shifting, spoiling aim and balance both, making it impossible to keep vision straight.
Ina threw wind at one and sent it spinning into a stand of upper branches, but another came at her from the side and struck her so hard across the ribs that the breath went out of her.
She dropped three body-lengths before catching herself.
Then she saw Zuri below her with both hands raised, violet light breaking from her fingers in narrow lances that pinned one of the creatures to a trunk long enough for Matilde to slash its throat.
Shayna, blood running down one arm, used a glowing hooked chain to snare another by a hind leg and drag it off course.
These were not ornamental ladies.
These were powerful marsh court women.
A shape came at Ina’s face. She flung out fire without time to think and caught it full in the chest. The thing screamed, changed shape twice in the burning, and fell away trailing smoke.
Then another hit Jasenka.
Ina saw it happen and could do nothing in time.
One moment Jasenka was turning in the air to call some order.
The next, a creature with antlers where no antlers ought to be had driven into her side and sent her crashing through a fringe of hanging branches.
The necklace at her throat flashed once between leaves and vanished from sight.
“Jassie!” Ina cried.
She dove.
A second beast slammed into her from behind before she reached the branches.
Pain shot white across her back and shoulder.
She twisted in midair, caught only a glimpse of scaled hide and yellow eye, and then struck the outer limbs of the canopy hard enough to rip her sleeve and tear skin from her forearm.
The world became leaves, bark, and noise.
She half-fell, half-fought her way free of the branches, landed badly on a thick limb, and nearly pitched off it.
Above her, the fight had moved lower. She heard Shayna shouting.
Heard one of the creatures make a choking wet sound and then go silent.
Heard Jasenka again, alive, which was all that mattered for that breath.
Ina tried to rise and found one knee had gone weak under her.
Zuri was there a moment later, blood at her temple, a loose curl plastered darkly across her cheek. “Can you fly?”
“Yes,” Ina muttered through the dark spots in her vision.
“That was a lie,” said Zuri, and hauled her upright, pulling her back toward the other ladies.
The fight ended as suddenly as it had begun. The remaining beasts broke away all at once, scattering into the trees and changing shape even as they fled, until the eye could no longer follow what had been animal and what was only shadow and leaf.
For a moment none of the women moved.
Then Matilde, breathing hard and bleeding from a cut across the jaw, said, “That was planned.”
“Of course,” Zuri answered.
Shayna emerged from the torn branches below them with one hand pressed to her side and the other around Jasenka, holding her up as her eyes fluttered between consciousness and not.
Her gown was ripped, one sleeve nearly gone, and blood had soaked darkly through the cloth beneath her ribs.
She was pale, but seemed to still be able to move, at least for the moment.
Seeing her princess in that state, Zuri became commanding. “We go to the canopy court. Now.”
No one argued.
It was the nearest place with warriors, healers, and walls. Shayna got herself further under Jasenka’s arm. Matilde moved to support Ina, wrapping an arm around Ina’s waist as though she could not resist the pull to be helpful.
Zuri allowed it, nodding once before they lifted again. “Yes, go on. I’ll go back to the marsh.”
Flying hurt.
That became the whole shape of the world for a little while.
Pain in her shoulder. Pain in her ribs. The sick, drifting weakness that comes after too much fear and too little blood.
She tried to stay conscious by fixing on details.
Zuri’s shadow in the distance. The silver-blonde sweep of Matilde’s hair beside her.
Shayna ahead and to the right, her face set and fierce despite the blood down her arm, helping Jasenka upright, who still refused to collapse by some private act of command.
Ina turned her head once toward her.
Jasenka’s throat was bare.
The necklace was gone.
Ina tried to say it. She was not sure whether the words came out. The air had gone thick and wrong around her, and the edges of the world were already beginning to dim.
The last thing she remembered before everything slipped away was that empty place at Jasenka’s neck, pale against the torn red of her gown.