35. Filippa #2
“Well I’m not going to be able to convince an army to turn around, am I?” she snaps. “The Infernum troops will listen to you, Syrus. If you can get them to retreat, the ephilium might give up too.”
My hands ball into fists. She’s right; I’m the only one with a hope of being listened to. And I hate it. In this moment, I wish I was just a man without a kingdom to protect. I wish all I had to care about was her.
But right now, I have to let her go or risk scores of my people being blown to smithereens.
“The moment that thing makes so much as a squeak, you drop it and fly away as fast as you can, you hear me?” I can’t quite keep the waver out of my voice, can’t fully hide my fear for her.
She’s already hauling the drum out of the dirt and into her arms. It’s bulky, but clearly not too heavy for her, as she begins to flap her wings and rises a few feet off the ground.
“You need to get going,” she says as I rise into the air too, stopping beside her.
“Leah.” It hasn’t escaped me that she didn’t actually acknowledge my instructions.
“All right, Syrus,” she says, urgency making her tone harsh. Then she softens. “You be careful too.”
I cup a hand briefly to her face, brushing a thumb across her cheek, then soar upward into the fray.
It doesn’t take me long to find the demon leading our army. Pajar, a Rancorite who rose to general under Kaliban’s rule, is fighting in the upper levels of the battle, her silver hair streaming behind her.
“General Pajar!” I shout over the sound of screams, crackling lightning, and the clash of metal on metal.
Her yellow eyes widen for a moment when she turns to see me, falling back so her soldiers can take her place on the front line.
“Lord Syrus,” she says, not lowering the huge battleaxe in her hand, dripping with silver blood.
I can’t read her reaction to the sight of me—but there’s no time to worry about it. I launch straight in.
“You need to retreat. Send the troops back to Infernum. There’s a weapon that your soldiers can’t protect themselves against, and it’ll kill you all if you stay on the plains.”
She stares at me, then scans the horizon for a moment, assessing the ephilium forces. “Is it pale-blood magic?”
I shake my head. “No. It’s poised to kill them too. But it doesn’t matter what it is. It’s dangerous. You need to call for a retreat.”
Her gaze hardens. “I’ll do no such thing.”
I flare my wings wider, letting the red of my eyes brighten as I bare my teeth to remind her who I am.
“As the Lord of Malice, I command it,” I say.
She spins her axe slowly in her hand, head tilting. “But the Lord of Malice does not lead this army. Especially not when he has broken his alliance with the Lords of Rancor, Baine, and Vyle.”
I lift my chin. Under other circumstances, I’d respect her refusal to bow to a lord just because he orders it. But her strong backbone doesn’t help any of us now.
“The lords and I have had a misunderstanding—a conflict that will soon be resolved. If you do not recall your troops, General, neither you nor this army will ever live to see that happen. That’s not a threat—it’s a warning.
I don’t want to see the forces of Infernum reduced to a pile of corpses. You must listen to me.”
For a second, there’s a glimmer of doubt in her eyes as she weighs whether to heed me. Then it’s gone, the hard stare returning.
“The answer’s no, Lord Syrus. I do not answer to you, and I will not cut this battle short when the tide is about to turn.”
She glances to the west, where I see a rift opening in the air, spitting out a fresh host of demon soldiers. My stomach drops as I watch the reinforcements collide with the ephilium. The battle’s intensifying, reaching its peak.
I scan the plains for Leah, throat constricting with worry that I won’t be able to spot her in the chaos. And then, with the strange sixth sense I seem to have for her—the one that doesn’t need my eyes or a possession bond or anything else—I look up.
A figure with a pair of black feathered wings is soaring upward above the battle, barreling higher and higher with each passing moment. She’s still clutching the drum in her arms—a dark smudge against her body as she speeds toward the clouds.
She said she’d carry it away from the plains. If she’s abandoned that plan, it can only mean one thing.
She doesn’t think she’ll make it in time.
The weapon is about to explode, and this is the fastest way to get it away from the battle.
I’ve heard that in moments like these, time is supposed to stop. That when you’re about to watch your world shatter before your eyes, the powers that be give you a second to really take it in before it’s ripped away.
Whoever says that is a damned liar. I barely have the chance to comprehend what I’m seeing before she’s disappearing into the thick, gray clouds far above us. Unreachable. Unsavable.
I blink once, and the clouds collapse inward, something huge dragging them into a swirling vortex. I blink twice, and a deep, resonant boom rolls through the sky, hitting my ears like a physical blow.
Then a small, dark speck drops from the clouds.
Not a speck—a person. Wings back, head pointed downward, straight as an arrow. Leah.
She’s alive and racing toward the earth like—
Like she’s being chased.
From the swirl of gray cloud matter comes a wave of darkness unlike any shadow I’ve ever seen. It burns. Tendrils of darkness snaking out, engulfed in blue flame, licking its way across the shadows like it’s fueled by them. And it’s biting at Leah’s heels.
I’m already moving, shooting across the battle as fast as my wings will carry me.
I start conjuring shadows in my hands, though I’m unsure if they’ll do anything to protect her.
I rush to meet her anyway. If I can’t do anything to stop the darkness, at least I might be able to reach her in time to hold her as we both perish in whatever evil force has been unleashed. There are worse fates.
She has shadows in her hands, stretching them between her palms and—
Wait. Those aren’t just shadows. Flashes of white light are dancing across there too, forming a kind of web, with the darkness filling the gaps between the light.
It shouldn’t be possible. One kind of magic should cancel out the other.
And yet Leah weaves lightning and shadow together, then hurls the resulting concoction in the face of the oncoming storm.
The resulting blanket of magic is huge—perhaps half a mile across—a shield of ephilium and demon power designed to protect not just her, but all of us.
And the armies of Aradis and Infernum see it too.
Soldiers’ heads jerked upward across the plains at the sound of the explosion, but now the shout of urgent orders rises above the noise of battle, and the ephilium and demon forces are splitting apart, trying to put distance between themselves and the wave of strange power bearing down on us.
The weapon’s magic hits Leah’s shield like a blacksmith’s iron thrust into water, sending up a spray of blue sparks and hazy mist with a resounding hiss.