Chapter 61
Robin ran down the stairs, holding her bow above her head. She had kept it trained on Ian until the black cloud had consumed him. She would not risk firing a shot into the dark.
Ian turned to look for her as she ran across the room. His eyes went up to the balcony, where she no longer stood, before dropping to find her nearly right in front of him.
“Did you see where he went?” Ian asked.
Robin shook her head. “Through one of the back doorways,” she said. “The darkness blocked my view, but he did not emerge in this direction.”
Ian looked over her shoulder. “They have this under control,” he said. “I’m going after him.” He did not ask her to join him, but the invitation was clear in his eyes.
“Left door or right?” Robin asked.
Ian looked to the back wall. “Right. He would not have gone into the antechamber. It has no other exit.”
Robin ran past Ian, leading the way to the door on the right, which opened to a long hallway that ran down the center of the castle.
“He survived the arrow,” Ian said behind her as they ran. “His eyes have changed. And his teeth were strange.”
Robin skidded to a halt, looking around her. They were near the center of the keep now, with other hallways that led to the royal family’s wing, various council rooms, guest rooms, and the working rooms of the castle. They had no idea where Gareth had gone.
Ian stopped beside her. “I think he has been turning himself into one of his own beast-men.”
Robin looked back at Ian. “No, not a beast-man. He has been using the magic to create a stronger man.” She shook her head as understanding dawned. “The first attempts—Aden and the one at the monastery—failed. They had the strength but they were all beast, with not enough of a man left.”
Ian nodded, quickly understanding her. “The ones we just fought were more man than beast.” His eyes drifted past her, unfocused.
“He said something . . . He was angry about the chaos Meena and Sol destroyed. He was draining my father because he needed more magic.” Ian looked back at Robin, his gaze sharp again.
“He is not done using the magic on himself.”
“The arrow did not kill him,” Robin said, repeating Ian’s earlier words. “He has found a way to heal himself.”
“He is trying to make himself immortal,” Ian said. “He told me I would be unable to kill him.”
Robin turned around the hallway. “Where would he go to finish applying the magic to himself?”
“The tapestry,” Ian said. “He knows about the tapestry. It is the only magical item in the castle, and it is in a place he would not expect to be disturbed.” Ian’s eyes widened in panic. “Ashlin?”
Robin did not need to hear more. She ran down the hallway again, moving toward the back courtyard that separated the main castle from the old eastern tower.
The courtyard was deserted. Every soldier was at the front of the castle, engaged in combat.
However, the door to the eastern tower was wide open.
Robin ran through it, then turned sharply to the left to ascend the stairs.
She entered the room first, Ian on her heels. She was relieved to see that Ashlin was not in the room.
Gareth, however, was.
He stood in the center of the room, his hands held outward. Strings of glass beads dripped from his fingers, and broken strands lay at his feet.
Bursts of lightning shot from the beads, snapping across the small space as they sent painful-looking power into Gareth’s body. It was almost too bright to look at, the light flashing quickly and rapidly in the small space.
A single beast-man stood guarding Gareth, standing between him and the door.
The guard stepped toward them as soon as the door opened.
Robin pulled the daggers from her belt, and Ian lifted his sword at her side.
This was not going to be an easy fight.
The beast-man swung. His fist reached past Ian’s sword, slamming against Ian’s side and sending him flying across the room.
Gareth laughed. The sound rippled with energy, as though the lightning that coursed through him was bouncing up his throat.
But Gareth’s grating laugh was not loud enough to cover the sound of Ian’s body hitting the stone wall of the room with a sickening thud. He tumbled down onto a large chest that sat against the wall.
The soldier stepped toward him, moving slowly and deliberately.
Ian groaned in pain. Robin sprang into action. She raced at the massive beast-man and jumped up, throwing herself onto his back.
He reared backward at the surprise of her weight.
Good. She had his attention, giving Ian a moment to recover.
Robin squeezed her arms around the creature’s throat, but if she was cutting off his breath, he showed no sign of distress.
The beast-man reached up and pressed his large fingers around her arms. She managed to retain her grip for several moments despite his bruising squeeze. Then he backed into the wall behind him, smashing her against it.
The impact stole the breath from her lungs, and she lost control of her muscles as she struggled to breathe. She slid down the wall as the guard stepped away. He turned around to face her.
Robin looked up at him looming over her. She willed her body to roll out of the way of his incoming fist, but her muscles still refused to listen to her.
“Here!” Ian shouted.
Through the tall creature’s legs, Robin saw Ian standing against the opposite wall, his hand on the chest for support. He moved forward, stumbling slightly.
When he stepped on some of the beads on the ground, he stumbled. Lightning flashed up from the disturbed beads, bouncing off Ian’s legs.
Ian gasped.
Gareth laughed again, aware enough of what was happening around him to take delight in Ian’s pain.
The beast-man turned at the sound of Gareth’s laughter, looking toward his king.
Robin finally inhaled, her breath returning with a rush. She rolled to the side, positioning herself to dash toward Ian and pull him out of the lightning’s orbit.
But Ian had already caught his own stumble, and the face that he turned to Robin was not grimacing in pain. When he caught her eye, a small smile was on his lips. He raised his eyebrows.
Robin glanced at the floor beneath his feet, then looked back up at his brilliant face. She smiled back.
The beast-man had turned from Gareth and was moving toward Ian.
Robin crouched low, approaching him slowly with her dagger in hand.
Ian also crouched low, skirting the concentration of glass beads on the floor around Gareth and moving slowly toward Robin.
Watching them both close in on him, the beast-man stopped, waiting for one of them to make the first move.
Robin moved at the same slow pace as Ian. Wordlessly working together, they slowly created a cage around the beast-man, but they remained far enough apart from each other that he could not attack them both in one hit.
Looking back and forth between them, the beast-man took a step backward, toward Gareth.
Robin nodded, looking quickly at Ian out of the corner of her eye. He nodded back at her.
They continued their slow push forward until the beast-man decided to make a move. He swung his fist at Ian.
Ian dodged out of the way—but instead of dodging backward, he moved to the side and pushed forward so the soldier did not have a chance to advance.
It worked. The guard took another step backward. His heel made contact with a glass bead, which rolled under his foot. The guard recovered his balance easily, but the damage had been done.
Lightning shot out of the bead he had just stepped on, encasing his foot and running up his leg.
Robin dove forward across the wooden floor, nearly sliding on her stomach. Using her dagger, she reached out and grabbed several of the beads near Gareth’s feet, then flung them toward the soldier.
As the soldier reacted in pain to the lightning encasing his foot, he tried to step away from Gareth only to step down on more chaos beads. Lightning exploded around him, and he shrieked in pain.
Robin rolled back out of the way as the field of lightning expanded to include both Gareth and the beast-man.
The beast-man fell to his knees from the pain but instinctively tried to crawl away from the source of it.
That moment of distraction was all Ian needed to drive his sword into the back of the beast’s neck.
The man collapsed against the floor.
Gareth, still in some state of awareness of what was going on around him, screamed in anger.
For a moment, the lightning seemed to stop hitting his body, as if his scream had literally created a protective shield around him.
But then the lightning slowly stopped altogether, zapping out of the beads on the floor in weak gasps.
The chaos magic had been used up.
Gareth looked down at his hands, flexing them as though testing his strength.
Then he looked up at Robin and Ian.