Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Too much happens in a single, heavy heartbeat.
Glass throws back from the campfire, her hand reaching out for the rusty one, as if to stop him.
Arwyn whips around to watch the sudden commotion.
Warriors inch away from the path, a curiosity prickling through them.
But I am frozen as Rust shoves past Glass—and heads straight for me.
Blood gleams in his eyes, a thirst for mine.
Back then, on the road, he hungered for our deaths on his hands…
Now, he gets a second shot at it.
At me.
I stagger back a step, all that the rope will allow, and the moment I do, the cold one moves.
He plants his boot on the gravel, shifting his weight to block me—and in that alone there’s a message.
I can’t see through the bulk of his body to Rust, but I hear the faint whisper of murmurs rippling through the fae. More draw closer. Boots flatten on grass all around me, slow and curious steps.
I lean my weight to the side, not daring to move my boots over the coarse path, and as I do, the light of the nearest campfire arches over the cold one’s profile.
It sharpens his cheekbone, pales his full mouth with the hue of frost, and the faint blond of his hair still wears the dried streaks of crimson blood from the city battle.
Rust marches down the path—
Then stops.
That same searing rage in his eyes swells his chest with deep inhales, and he takes a stance across from Samick.
Gazes locked, Rust is motionless, but there’s nothing calm about it. It’s restraint, taut like a bowstring—one ready to snap.
His eyes reflect the flames as though they live inside him. Then they tug away from Samick before landing on me, unwavering.
My shoulders bolt under the assault of his stare.
It’s being touched without being touched, and everything in me whispers to turn on my heels and run, to cower behind the muscle of Samick’s body, to burrow into the earth and join the dead.
But I can’t move more than step away.
Samick’s fist is tight on the tether, and it flexes when a hoarse shout jolts through Rust.
Rust lifts his finger—and points it right at me.
I shrink back, eyes wide.
But my breath hollows out when the bone of my shoulder blade presses against stone.
My head whips to the side, neck fast to ache, and I look up at the stone wall.
Arwyn has crept up behind me, a tower of hard features.
I stare up at him, frozen, but he doesn’t bother with a single glance down at me. His stare is latched onto Rust—
Just as he takes a step forward.
The gravel crunches under his boots. That accusatory finger drops, but his shout returns.
Whatever the cold one says in response, I don’t know, but his voice is calmer, icier and it sends chills prickling down my spine.
Rust doesn’t have the same reaction.
In a sudden step closer, the slam of his boot on the path, the rise of his voice tears through the air, like claws through silk.
The words twist, harsh and grinding, a language that isn’t built for human throats. There’s nothing soft in it, nothing that can be mimicked. It’s a storm of syllables I can’t make sense of.
Again, the cold warrior answers. Each word is a shard of restrained ice.
All around us, the fae are closing in.
Their faces are lit by the shifting flames, severe and sharp. Their eyes glimmer—some with heat, some with hunger, some with the gleam of entertainment. A few lean closer, murmuring in that same strange tongue. One of them laughs softly, another mutters a name that sounds like smoke.
I spot Mika now standing on a headstone, her hair a curtain of glass that catches every hue of the firelight.
Unlike the others, there’s not a shred of entertainment to read on her, no amusement curling her mouth. Her face is tight with concern.
At the base of the headstone she stands on, Shark has his arms folded, and lips slightly parted, enough that I can see the sharpness of his off-white teeth.
Samick shifts in front of me.
It swerves my stare to him, then down to his hand as he passes back the tether—into Arwyn’s hand.
Arwyn takes it without a word and steps back, tugging me along with him.
My steps are heavy, unwilling.
The silent glare I aim at Samick’s back is nothing short of begging. I don’t know this other fae, and I sure as fuck don’t want to be tugged into the rows of headstones with him.
But then the hum of a blade hisses through the camp—
I stumble around.
My hip grazes the stone of an angel statue, just as my gaze finds Rust, drawing out a sword from the scabbard strapped down his spine.
The blade glints, that same strange material as the general’s diadem, black chalk—but this one gleams obsidian dusted with ruby powder.
And in the same breath, Samick has drawn his own sword, shorter and narrower, from the sheath strapped to his thigh.
The length of the blade draws out with a hiss, as clear as glass, frost etched down the edge.
They face one another.
Weapons drawn, stares locked, there’s a pulse of anticipation that strikes the camp.
Tension is taught in the muscles of Arwyn’s bulking frame.
I edge closer to him, but I don’t so much as blink on the two warriors facing off on the path.
My heart is as still as their stances, frozen—and I don’t dare even breathe.
The air trembles with something older than war, like the elements themselves bristle, fire and ice.
Rust moves first.
He lunges, a blur of black and red. His blade hisses through the air, and the sound is wrong, like a screech of a live animal.
Samick meets the strike with a sideways step, faster than my eyes can see, like he’s in one place one moment, then suddenly two steps away—
Before I can even process it, the way he can shudder through space with the wind, the swords collide in a burst of sparks that scatter like fireflies and crystals.
I jerk back with a wince.
The headstone presses into the bone of my hip, but still, I twist into it, as though I can wedge myself between the stone of a grave and the muscle of the new ice warrior.
Samick’s stance is low, balanced.
He twists, and the blades shriek again.
The onlookers stir with a murmur, some leaning forward, eyes gleaming brighter.
Each movement is deliberate, measured, precise.
Rust is fast, practiced, but reckless—his swings are wide arcs and all his weight thrown into each strike.
But Samick moves differently.
He moves with the winds, the sudden breezes that whistle through camp, with the ice in the air. He shifts from one spot to another, suddenly behind Rust.
Each strike he meets with his own blade, each lunge of his strength forward that has Rust staggering back, is done with calm calculations.
But that doesn’t stop Rust.
His attacks keep on coming.
And it coils in my gut, the knowing of it, that he’s fighting his way through Samick—to get to me.
Samick doesn’t back down.
Swords flash in the darkness, light bending around the strikes. The blackness beyond the campfires seems to press closer.
My pulse thrums in my wrist.
Arwyn’s body is solid in front of me, immovable, a wall of carved stone, and as the fight moves off-path with Rust’s stagger, I can hardly see Samick anymore, just glimpses of pearl and ink.
The battle is blocked from my view when a cheer rises—a single shout from the crowd. Then another. Then a ripple of voices, a split between shouts and laughs.
It’s a kind of ritual excitement, a fever.
Then Rust is backed into my view again, over the graves that arch around me.
Arwyn traces the path of the fight, turning to face it, and that manoeuvres me behind him again.
Now, I’m wedged up against the headstone, and without throwing myself backwards, there’s no way out of this little trap I’m stuck in.
Not that it matters.
Because a gasp jolts me just as Rust kicks off from a headstone and, twisting through the air, swings for Samick’s throat.
My hands smack to my mouth, stifling the shout that lunges through me.
Samick ducks, skidding under the blade; then he shoves upwards and drives the hilt of his sword into Rust’s chin, hard.
Rust snarls, sharp teeth flashing with dark blood.
Before he can get his footing, Samick turns with his staggering body, then drives his elbow up—a clean collision that strikes right into Rust’s chin.
The impact cracks.
I hear it, I feel it in my cringing bones.
Behind my hands, my teeth bare in a wince.
A blow like that to a human would shatter a jaw, dislocate it, and probably take off half of a face.
Rust is injured—but in no way the same way I would be from those strikes.
Black blood, thick like tar, sprays from his mouth. He doesn’t get a second to recover—
Samick pivots and boots him right in the gut.
The breath bursts out of Rust in a strangled sound. His boots slide out from under his stumbling legs, and he falls backwards.
He hits the soil, hard.
The fight should end there…
I should feel relief.
I should soften under the rise of laughter than comes from the onlookers, chuckles that the fae let grumble in their chests, and the ones who huff, who start to trade off coin and daggers and waterskins…
They gambled on this.
Bet on it.
But there’s no winner yet.
Their celebrations are premature.
Because Rust’s fall brings him dangerously close—to me. He’s sprawled out on the grass on the other side of the headstones.
If he reaches through the gap between two stones, he can snatch me by the ankle.
There’s no Samick or Arwyn to block him, I’m wedged between the bulking muscle and the gravestone, and Samick is rows ahead, looking up at the general.
It’s just a heartbeat’s moment, but it’s one that’s frozen, with Rust’s red eyes glaring at me.
In this frozen moment, we are the only two things in the world, and everything else is a hum of white noise in a dark room.
I would stay locked in his stare, rooted to the spot, if he let me.
But Rust tears our gazes apart as he flips like a fucking gymnast, and he’s suddenly on his feet.