Chapter 50
Everly
Ibarely had time to spin around before the first onslaught of mana came.
I threw my sister behind me, shoving back at the mana with a wave of my own. It melded with Draven’s, spinning into a jagged shield that shot through the air.
In spite of the circumstances, a small bit of relief flooded my veins when it actually worked the way mana was supposed to work, a natural extension of my thoughts and intentions that didn’t require my own knowledge or experience or purpose to wield.
After all this time, I had mana that could protect my friends and my family, and it wasn’t physically killing me to use it.
Just in time to die in this bloody war that my uncle had brought us. I hoped he was resting uneasily in the very seventh hell.
My intent was to protect, not harm, but several Skaldwings fell out of the sky, just barely catching themselves before they careened into the ground.
Frost damned hells.
Nevara’s words rang in my head. Fight together or die alone.
That was easier said than done. The Winter soldiers might have been somewhat swayed, but the Unseelie were still out for blood. I thought I would have time to talk to them, but when the palace soldiers were halfway to treason, we had lost our only window to stop this war.
Only the Shadow Clan made no move to advance, my mother still holding her hands out in front of her. Whether they followed her lead or she still had them in her hold, I couldn’t be sure.
“To the Heartstone!” A voice cried from deep within the Lupine ranks. “Let’s end this nightmare before it ends us!” War cries echoed through the ranks as the armies began to move forward.
A volley of flaming arrows sailed through the wind, piercing the air where the wards had once been.
My stomach lurched. They were still going to fight us. Still going to tear down our walls if they had to, and then what. Lead the monsters right inside the palace? Start a war that none of us had a chance in all seven hells of winning once the Frostbeasts arrived?
And if they made it into the Hall of Stars… Could the Thornharts blast apart Nevara’s shields the way they had the wards around the palace? If they destroyed the Heart of Winter, then what did any of it matter, anyway?
I took a steadying breath in, then out. For so long I had been weak, but I was not powerless anymore. I didn’t have to stand by and do nothing while my people destroyed each other.
“Stay with Wynnie,” I whispered to Lumen, ignoring his whine of protest.
Then I outstretched my arms, throwing up an enormous shield of gleaming shadow where the wards used to be.
“Enough.” I beat my wings once, twice, until I was high enough for my voice to carry.
The soldiers stopped moving, Winter and Unseelie alike. They were still poised to attack, but it was reprieve enough for me to speak.
“I know you’re here because you think this is noble,” I said, wings straining against the wind, “that you’re protecting your people before the monsters overrun you. But my uncle lied to you. He was the one who lured the monsters into your territory.”
I swept my gaze across their ranks, where a few hardened expressions wavered as doubt seeped in.
Some whispered to their neighbors. Others stood completely still, knuckles whitening around their weapons.
“And he did it because he wanted you to fight his war for him.” I let that sink in, let it echo across the battlefield.
“Thane Vaerin didn’t care about your dead.
He cared about vengeance, and he was willing to do whatever it took to claim it for himself.
But none of you are in danger from Winter’s curse. ”
Confused murmurs filtered through the ranks before a voice rang out louder than the others.
“Did he kill our people on Winter’s soil, too?”
“No,” I shouted. “Thousands of years of a pointless war did that. Aren’t you tired of dying in an endless cycle of vengeance for a cause history itself has forgotten?”
I met Zerina’s eyes in the crowd. She was fixated on my wings, a conflicted expression on her features.
“Haven’t we all lost enough?” The setting sun caught on expressions of grief. Of anger. Of a bone-deep exhaustion that only warfare could bring.
A battle cry came from deeper in the forest. Screams echoing through the trees, followed by the clanging of steel meeting bone. The trees swayed, and branches tore free as the Unseelie armies slowly turned to face the sounds.
I stiffened as shadows swept out from the forest canopy. More Skaldwing warriors coming to join the war… but then Kaelen’s familiar silver-veined wings caught in the light of the dying sun.
He flew next to me, his warriors doing the same, placing themselves between the palace walls and the Unseelie armies.
“I came as soon as I heard,” Kaelen said quietly enough for only Draven and me to hear.
Accusations bled into the air, the warriors snarling and shifting uncomfortably as they stared down the Stormbreak clan.
“The king did not abandon me when my family was in need,” he said, through panting breaths. “That is not a debt I will forget. Especially not when I’ve seen what’s coming.”
Kaelen gestured toward the forest, then up to the foothills of the mountains.
“What you all have called here. The monsters are on their way, and they are hungry for blood, for mana.”
As if in answer to his words, the ground began to quake beneath our feet. Twisted howls sounded in the distance, followed by blood-curdling screams.
Both armies shifted nervously, soldiers and warriors from all sides unsteady, as the sounds and cries poured in from every side, but Kaelen wasn’t deterred.
“For the first time in thousands of years,” he continued, sweeping his gaze across the gathering, “we have a chance at peace. We have one of our own on the Winter throne.”
His wings twitched once, restless with conviction.
“And I will not throw it away for a blood debt,” Kaelen said. “Nor could I face the family I have left if I stood by and let innocents be slain by our own actions.”
Several of the Skaldwings exchanged shamefaced looks, while others straightened with something like pride.
“My clan will stand for honor,” he vowed, voice ringing out like steel. “And we will stand with Winter against the real monsters… before we let ourselves turn into them.”
He lifted his hand again toward the horizon, toward the rippling shadows growing larger by the heartbeat, dark figures racing across the snow, coming straight for us.
Screams filled the air, growing louder with every passing heartbeat.
Hundreds of voices. Thousands. Children crying for parents. Soldiers shouting commands that dissolved into gurgling pleas. Familiar names ripped from throats in sheer terror. The sounds rolled toward us in a living wave.
And I realized, with a sickening sort of clarity, that many of those voices were already dead…
My attention snapped up toward the treeline just as Wretches spilled out in a writhing tide.Their elongated bodies twisting and jerking as they ran, limbs bending at the wrong angles, shadows clinging to their scaled flesh like rot to corpses.
Like living nightmares, their movements were too fast, too wrong. They skimmed over the snow instead of sinking into it as they continued to scream with the voices of the dead.
Tharnoks followed on their heels. Brakhounds and Ice-lurkers as well.
The ground gave another lurch, and this time it sent rows of warriors scrambling backward.
“Please,” I said once. The word was nearly lost to the chaos unfolding, to the monsters surrounding us on every possible side.
Another great quake shook the earth for several long moments, and then it split open entirely. The shrieks of Korythids filled the air, their spindly legs stretching out from the trench as they hauled their bodies up from the ground.
We were out of time.
The sun set fully over the horizon, and the monsters flooded the night.