Chapter 51
SAPHIRA
Ididn’t have time to take in everything we had just discovered. Movement deep in the distance caught my eye, nothing more than a shadow shifting in the dense forest, but it was enough to have me locking up tight and reaching for my dagger.
Kaeleron went one better.
He leaped to his booted feet and drew his sword, brandishing it in both hands in front of him.
“Is it them?” I hissed, hoping it would just be a creature moving through the woods, following a trail as it moved from one area to another, like the deer I had often watched back in Canada.
The shadows that rose and shifted around Kaeleron’s feet gave me the answer to my question together with the rising power that rolled off him.
It was them.
“How did they find us?” I hissed as I clambered onto my feet, grabbing our things and stuffing them into the satchels. “Never mind that, we need to move.”
“Magic,” Kael growled, his features darkening as inky tendrils branched from his eyes, staining his paling skin. “The ward that inhibited us. It must have had a tracking spell layered into it.”
I reached for his arm and snared it before he could do something reckless, like blasting off into the trees to fight them. I wasn’t sure how many there were, and I wasn’t sticking around to find out.
I summoned a teleport, thinking of somewhere far from this place, far from Sylvan and his warriors.
Light wrapped around us, warm and gentle, and then it faded to reveal a grassy glade.
Barely thirty feet from where we had just been.
I stared at the cave. “What the hell just happened?”
“Another ward. It activated the moment they were close to us.” He twisted and turned in all directions, keeping his back to mine. “I told you we were not getting out of this court without a fight.”
He hadn’t spotted movement as I had. He had felt that ward activating and had known they were coming.
Just as he had known something else.
I looked over my shoulder at him as I dropped our belongings and readied my blade, my senses reaching out around us to chart the forest. “You knew they could track us. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did not want to worry you.” He glanced at me, not lingering, just checking.
“Well, now I’m pissed off and you’re going to wish you had let me be worried instead.” My fingers lifted towards the small knives sheathed against my ribs, but I hesitated.
What if I threw them all and failed to imbue them with solar magic? I felt a connection to it again, but it was still weak. I wasn’t sure how much use throwing knives were against the approaching warriors when they undoubtedly had full use of their magic.
“We should run,” I hissed.
“I agree.” Kaeleron stooped in one fluid motion, snatching up our satchels, and twisted at the same time, seizing hold of my hand and kicking off.
Only to come to a dead stop when Sylvan appeared before us, resplendent in his bright gold and white armour, his long blond hair tied back in a ponytail.
That viper’s smile curved his lips, stretching them wide before they opened to flash straight white teeth, and victory blazed in his blue eyes.
Victory laced with amusement.
Warriors dressed in white and gold plate armour appeared around us, at first just one on either side of him, but then two more beside them, and then another two, forming a wall two dozen strong that swept in a circle around us.
Hemming us in.
Kaeleron had been right and we weren’t getting out of this without a fight.
I turned towards Sylvan, because there was more than one way to fight.
“You killed him, didn’t you?” I flexed my fingers around the grip of my dagger, aware of the warriors who watched us, their swords held vertically before them in both hands, the point pressing into the grass, as if they were statues.
“You killed Sylas so you could take the throne, but then he revealed the existence of his hidden heirs and you were forced to act as steward rather than king as you waited for those heirs to be found. And now you’re killing us, getting rid of us so you can finally wear his crown. ”
None of them reacted.
Sylvan canted his head, his eyes narrowing on me as his smile stretched wider.
Mocking me.
“I did not wait.” His words were calm, lacking emotion, as cold as that look in his eyes as he took a step towards us.
“I managed to kill most of them before their existence ever became public knowledge during the first one hundred years… except you. You eluded me. And then the first heir came forwards, prompting the court to demand I find others, and I could no longer risk killing you all one by one. So I decided to track down the remaining living heirs and let you deal with each other, keeping my hands clean, and once there is only one remaining, I will ensure they die before their coronation… because that throne my cousin sat upon should have been mine.”
“I bet Lorien was a dream come true for you.” I weighed my dagger, annoyed that my plan to turn his own men against him had backfired so spectacularly.
I hadn’t banked on them being in on it.
One look at their stoic faces told me these males knew what Sylvan was doing, and they supported him.
I decided to test that theory.
“He’s perfect really, isn’t he? A highborn male who believes in the old ways—that only the male line should rule. Just like your friends here.”
He grinned at me and gestured to them. “These men have been in my service since long before Sylas kept the throne from me. They were there the night we slaughtered his bitch queen and heir.” His sapphire gaze slowly shifted to Kaeleron.
“They were there the night we slaughtered your mother and father, and took your brother.”
Kaeleron’s fingers tightened against the grip of his sword, darkness pouring off him in great shadow wings, but he somehow found the strength to remain where he was, denying that reckless urge to attack Sylvan I could see in him.
His voice was cold and dark as an abyss. “Why did you take my brother? The plot was like for like, was it not? Murder my mother. Murder my brother. But you took him instead.”
“I needed leverage. Elduin had promised me he would influence the high king, that if I dealt with his problem that he would help me deal with mine. I did not trust him to keep his word, so I took the boy captive, refusing to carry out his death until the laws of succession were reversed and the throne was mine.” Sylvan looked from Kaeleron to me. “It is mine by right.”
“I don’t want it,” I snapped. “I never wanted it. All I wanted was to save my friend and deliver vengeance for my king.”
“Saphira,” Kael warned, and I refused to look at him, because I couldn’t let Sylvan walk away from this and he knew it.
But by protecting Meiryn from his plans, by keeping her safe, I might damn us.
The agreement between Kaeleron and Elduin still stood, and I wasn’t sure whether anyone would care if the truth came out about Elduin. Not if that agreement was complete, the contract between them fulfilled on one side. Kaeleron might have to pay the price.
I wouldn’t let that happen.
But he was right. Killing Sylvan right now could prove catastrophic.
We needed to break that agreement first.
“Let us go. I don’t want the throne. I don’t care about it. Do what you want with it. I renounce my claim to it. Is that what you want to hear?”
“The only thing I want to hear is your last, gasping breath.” Sylvan moved in a blur of speed, suddenly before me, his sword coming straight at my chest.
Kaeleron knocked it away with his own sword, showering sparks into the air as they clashed and slid along one another, and then he was in front of me, slamming his fist into Sylvan’s face to knock him back.
I wasn’t sure what the plan was—kill him or not—but I launched at two guards who entered the fray, managing to match them blow for blow, keeping them from Kaeleron as he fought Sylvan and three other males at once.
Ducking beneath the measured swing of one of their swords, I kicked forwards, thrusting my blade at the male’s stomach, and growled when it skimmed off the metal breastplate he wore.
I rolled as the second warrior’s sword came down in a fast arc, tumbling across the grass to find my feet a short distance behind him, and grinned as I slashed at the backs of his knees.
Where only leather protected him.
He bellowed as he went down and I was on him in a flash, dragging my dagger across his throat, painting the grass crimson.
His comrade lunged at me on a wild snarl and I rolled onto my back, pulled the dead male on top of me, bracing as his sword bounced off the male’s plate armour, and then shoved him off me.
I leaped to my feet, clashing with the male as two others joined him, and attacked with all the speed I could muster, slashing at his hands and dodging his blows, trying to make him drop his weapon.
A grunt burst from my lips as the pommel of a sword came down on the back of my shoulders, knocking me forwards, and twisted, bringing my dagger up to block the blade that came at me.
I kicked out, slamming my booted foot into the knee of one male as I slashed my dagger at another, driving them both back.
I glanced at Kaeleron.
More than half the seelie were attacking him at the same time, and while he was fighting admirably, his sword little more than a silver blur and his shadows sharp lances that kept several of the males at bay, he was in danger of being overwhelmed.
I slipped a throwing knife free of my holster, imbuing it with solar magic just as we had practiced, and launched it at one of the males coming at me.
It nailed him in his unprotected head, burying deep into his skull, and he fell backwards.
I didn’t wait to see him land. I growled as I turned and ploughed into another male, my shoulder striking him hard in his stomach, and shoved him off balance.
As he fell, I leaped over him, heading for Kaeleron.