Chapter 23 #3
“Unauthorized magic use?”
“Magic isn’t real.”
“Of course it is.
“That’s the Swift boy. I always knew there was something wrong about him.”
“It’s a joke. She rants and raves about make-believe every Evenlight. The Fae this. Magic that. She’s finally convinced herself it’s all real, though. She’s lost touch with reality.”
“What are we supposed to do, then? Lie? Tackle one of our own in the street?”
“Look, there’s a reward . . .”
“A reward . . .”
“A reward . . .”
Reward.
A year’s supply of water for your household: That’s what Madra was promising to the person who came forward with information that led to our capture.
It was worth more than money. In a lot of cases, it meant the difference between life and death.
It was the kind of reward that turned friends into enemies in the blink of an eye.
We didn’t linger in the street. We were only minutes from safety when we saw the first guardians.
They were waiting for us. Concealed deep inside the alleyway opposite Carrion’s apartment, I wouldn’t have seen them until it was too late.
But the Twins always shone in Zilvaren, and the Madra insisted that her guardians look resplendent in their glorious golden armor, didn’t she?
Patches of shimmering gold danced on the shop front below Carrion’s bedroom window, betraying the soldiers before they’d even come into view.
Swift noticed the mirrored gold on the stonework only a split second after I did. We both grabbed Hayden, pulling him back. The three of us backtracked the way we had come . . . but it was already too late.
“Here! They’re here! We’ve got them!”
The guardians spilled out of the alleyway like hornets swarming from a hive.
“Fuck!” I hissed. The men weren’t anywhere near as fast as Carrion and me, but we had a human in tow now—a human who couldn’t run very fast. We took off, sprinting, urging Hayden along as we barreled through the streets.
Thisss way, the quicksilver hissed.
“Shut. Up.”
This way, this way, this way! The tugging on my insides grew stronger, but the quicksilver was trying to pull me in the wrong direction, back toward the fucking guardians.
“What are we going to do?” Carrion panted.
People shouted, leaping out of the way as we hurtled by them.
We had no choice. Nowhere to go. The only option open to us was—
Ting!
“FUCK!”
An iron-tipped arrow ricocheted off the wall next to my head; they were fucking shooting at us.
“We have to fight!” I shouted. “It’s our only option. But we need somewhere open. Somewhere they can’t pen us in!”
If we kept running through this rabbit warren of streets, we were doomed. Fish in a barrel. It wouldn’t be long before one or all of us wound up shot.
Carrion nodded, quickly assessing our options up ahead. “All right. The square, then. This way. Follow me.”
Ting!
Ting!
Arrows struck the walls.
A woman to my left screamed, a spurt of bright red blood arcing in the air as an arrow intended for my back clipped her throat.
Carrion wheeled to the left. I took up position behind Hayden, using my body as a shield, covering him as best I could. “Faster, Fane. Hurry,” I growled.
“I’m going . . . as fast . . . as I . . . can!”
This way! Come! Find me! This way!
For such a tiny fragment of quicksilver, it certainly had some strength. I found myself veering to the right, my feet carrying me off in a direction I didn’t want to go.
Left.
Right.
Then right again.
My pulse thundered behind my breastbone, my heart beating like a fucking war drum. “If I die in Zilvaren, I am not going to be happy,” I snarled.
The square was large. At its center, a huge wooden platform had been erected.
It was covered in sprays of flowers. Pinks, reds, and purples.
I saw immediately that they weren’t real.
At the center of the podium was a long table, on top of which a line of bodies had been laid out in the baking reckoning suns.
Flies choked the air above them, their drone loud enough to hear above the shouting guardians.
“Stop! Stop those men!”
A large group of girls stood on the far side of the square.
They were young. Only teenagers. Their eyes were full of fear.
Two guardians already stood with them, and one of them had a girl pinned up against the wall.
She screamed as a male in a black shirt and pants approached and plunged something into her neck.
The square might not have been a good idea.
The buildings were taller here. If any of the guardians made it up there, they would rain holy hellfire down on us.
On the other side of the courtyard, the human in black directed the guardian to lay the girl—who was now limp in his arms—on the back of a horse-drawn cart.
Three seconds. That’s all the time we had before the guardians were on top of us and this went to shit. I drew my hands together and pulled them apart, conjuring a sword identical to Nimerelle in every way but the one that fucking mattered. It was not a god sword.
“What are they doing here, Carrion?” I called, jerking my chin toward the group of girls.
“It must be cleansing day,” he answered. “Once a month, they come and round up the marked girls who’ve turned fourteen. Seven out of every ten. They’ll sedate them and take them up to the palace.”
My blood ran cold.
Cleansing day.
At least twelve girls stood with their backs to the wall. Most of them were crying. The one at the front of the line wasn’t crying, though. She glowered defiantly at the man dressed in black, as he lifted the cylindrical silver object to her neck. She spat in his face.
“Here they come,” Carrion called. “I hope you have a fucking plan.”
I’d had one: Put the bastards down as quickly and quietly as possible. Try not to cause a scene. But I wasn’t liking that plan very much anymore.
No. That plan was no longer viable.
Because boy oh fucking boy, was I going to cause a fucking scene.
I didn’t need a god sword for this. I only needed my rage.
The second the guardians ran into the square, I leashed my magic and called on it. Every last drop. It roiled below the surface of my skin, angry as a rabid dog.
There were fifteen of them. That’s how many trained soldiers they’d thought they’d need to bring us down. They were going to regret that choice. It wouldn’t have mattered, though. They could have brought ten times as many men with them and it still wouldn’t be enough.
The men hesitated a second, taking in the scene, realizing that we were just standing there waiting for them—
“I don’t like this,” Hayden whispered.
“Get him out of harm’s way, Carrion. Now.”
—and then they charged.
Swift took my mate’s brother. They ran. I didn’t see where. Didn’t care.
These fuckers had rounded up Saeris and brought her here, too, once. I knew her. She would have stared them down and spat in their faces, just like that girl had a moment ago. She would have cursed them as they stole her choices from her. She would have raged.
When I drew on my power and set it free, I didn’t make shadows.
I made knives.
The blades weren’t made of metal. They were magic itself. Corporeal, shimmering magic. Like my shadows, they were black. Their edges were sharp, and when they hurtled through the air and found their targets, they pierced armor, flesh, and bone alike.
The guardians dropped like flies.
My vision sharpened, the square coming into focus. More guardians were arriving from the square’s south entrance. The two who were dealing with the girls had noticed what was happening now and were running straight for me. They were dead before their bodies hit the ground.
Blood soaked the sand.
The world was all crimson and death. More guardians thundered into the square, their armor clanking over angry shouts and the frightened screams of the young girls. I was deaf to it all.
Madra’s men appeared in droves, and as quickly as they came, they died.
My senses weren’t my own. Arrows rained down from the rooftops—my instincts had been right.
They’d sought higher ground in the hopes of making a kill box out of the square.
But I was the one who’d made the kill box, and it was piling up with their fucking dead.
I brought them down with ropes of shadow. I lashed them around their arms, ankles, torsos, and dragged them to their ends.
They had brought Saeris here.
My mate.
They’d hurt her. They’d taken something sacred from her here, in this awful place. Not her right to have children. But her right to make such an important decision for herself.
I made them pay, and I did not stop. Not when the new guardians who arrived turned and tried to flee. Not when they scrambled on their hands and knees and begged for mercy.
The men of this ward treated their women like chattel. Like possessions, without minds, dreams, or hopes of their own. They used them for sex, or else violated their bodies and stole their rights. They had murdered Saeris’s mother. They didn’t deserve to breathe . . .
“Kingfisher! Stop!” The voice was near. Distant. It echoed around the square. The haze fogging my mind cleared, and I found Carrion twenty feet away, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “We’re good! It’s okay. They’re gone. They’re all gone. We have to leave, Fisher.”
There were bodies piled high all over the square.
Too many bodies to count and still not enough.
This was just a small percentage of Madra’s troops.
The fire burning in my soul demanded I claim all of them for their cruelty, but Carrion was right.
We needed to get the fuck out of here. The ground shook, the sand vibrating as the sound of an approaching army filled the air.
“We have to go,” Carrion urged.
I was numb down into the basement of my soul. “Okay. Yes.” I nodded. “You’re right.”
“Carrion? Carrion!” The hiss came from the other side of the square.
It was Hayden, stooped down and hiding behind the horse-drawn cart.
The boy’s hair was wild, sticking up in every direction like he’d been struck by lightning.
His face was spattered with blood. There was a knife in his hand.
“Carrion, this way. I know where we should go.”
The smuggler didn’t even ask. He grabbed my arm and pulled me along after him, following Saeris’s brother.
Houses whipped past in a blur. I ran hard, keeping up, and with every step I came back to myself a little more.
I had just killed forty guardians. Fifty of them.
And I didn’t feel remotely bad about doing it.
Yessss, this is the way, the quicksilver purred in my head. This is the way!
The ground was quaking beneath our feet now. As we sped through the Third, toward our unknown end, Madra’s men drew closer, and a stillness settled inside me.
The guardians wouldn’t pose a problem to us if they couldn’t find us.
My magic should have been gone. The source of my power felt so far away, and yet there it was, ready to answer my call. I had just used a prodigious amount of magic back in the square, and yet, when I ran my fingertips along the surface of it, I found a mind-bending well of energy waiting for me.
I stopped running and brought it forth.
It slammed out of me in a tide of glittering black sand and shadow so overwhelming that it swallowed the street we were standing in. And then the ward. And then the entire city.
My magic encompassed all Zilvaren.
For the first time in history, the shining banner in the north fell into darkness.