Chapter Three
Helspira
CHAOTIC ENERGY EXPLODED. Helspira stumbled, arms out for balance.
At first she thought the sentinels stampeding for the door caused the floor to quake, but no.
Fleshless, ocher bones, still caked in dirt, pounded their way through the castle’s thick tiles, and prehistoric corpses crawled from the holes, like a horde of undead imps.
In the pandemonium, a streak of light caught her gaze.
The glow that once lit the thread around Ben’s stone flew across the room and into Catseye’s chest. Jaw agape, Helspira watched the necromancer’s silver-white hair darken to a deep, saturated black.
Vigor resumed to his enfeebled form, gone was his sallow complexion and the dark circles beneath his pale, green eyes.
Those eyes ...
Once tired, charismatic, and harmless, they sent a ripple of fear through her now.
“Sentinel!”
Helspira snapped toward Queen Saelihn’s cry as it rose above the bedlam. The screams. The clanks of armor. The undead. The growing cyclone of ghostly daggers that took shape and swirled within the room.
“The stone, the thread!” the queen commanded, a desperate finger guiding Helspira’s focus toward the rock that had fallen from Ben’s ribs. “Get them to Sikras before he—”
The deafening sound of a crumbling wall swallowed the queen’s remaining words. Sconces and chunks of debris fell to the floor when the dragon’s corpse ripped itself from its anchors and landed on all fours with a thud.
Its eyeless glare settled on Rowan. It parted its jaws, as if to unleash a war cry, but, with nothing to create sound, only an eerie silence followed the gesture.
Fueled by adrenaline and the queen’s orders, Helspira tore her focus from Rowan and pinpointed the rock, the thread.
She stumbled over upturned tile and the grasping arms of the monstrosities that crawled from the broken castle floor.
Gods, there must have been two dozen, three dozen; it was hard to tell in the turmoil of shrieking soldiers and undead minions.
This was fine. She was fine. She’d take this chaos over that of Chthonia any day of the week.
Of course, Helspira regretted that surge of confidence when the pressure of fingers clenched her ankle.
Stomach sinking, she ripped her leg free from the minion’s skeletal hand and slid to a stop near Ben’s unmoving bones to scoop up the rock and thread.
Fear tainted the room like a thick cloud, and a stab of sadness bloomed in her chest at seeing the lifeless remnants of the only soul who’d propositioned her with friendship, but she kept her heart steady.
This was nothing, nothing compared to her homeland.
Time to put all that childhood trauma to good use and soldier through.
Squinting to locate Catseye through the storm of swirling shadow blades, Helspira’s heart quickened when she spotted him.
She tightened her fingers around the stone and whispered, “Nyllmas needs a hero; Nyllmas needs a hero,” then bolted headlong into the fray, deft feet weaving between one undead beast and the next.
The dragon pinned Rowan beneath its massive claws, its face inches from his. The restrained banneret threatened it with a dagger no bigger than one of the beast’s teeth, but it yielded no results. The creature’s jaws snapped, a threatening display of promises to come.
“Sikras, please!”
If Catseye heard Queen Saelihn’s desperate plea, his face did not show it.
He loomed on a mound of broken tiles, black hair whipping around him from the winds of his spectral cyclone.
“You wanted the power of the Cat’s Eye, Rowan?
” Catseye snarled at the banneret, voice raw, unforgiving. “Here it is.”
Helspira jumped over an undead beast and regretted her tuck-and-roll when a jagged piece of tile found her shoulder.
She grunted through the pain, her stomach slithering across the uneven floor, elbow after elbow, beneath the ghostly churn of flying shadow blades.
When Catseye’s leather boots came into view, she knew she had reached the other side.
Whispering a silent plea that she would be spared from the sting of a spectral weapon, she stood, forced into uncomfortable proximity with the necromancer.
He seemed to look right through her.
“I—I brought—” Her words hitched when she locked onto his eyes. B’yehnz. It wasn’t just malice in that heated stare.
Fear lived in his eyes. Raw, genuine terror.
He was angry, yes. But more than that, he was afraid.
Gut him.
Wrestling her inner demon into submission, Helspira grabbed Catseye’s wrist and shoved stone and thread into his palm. “Here.”
Tremors quaked in Catseye’s hand as his warm fingers slowly curled around the rock. The thread. Her fingers. His sharp exhale blew across Helspira’s face, and his attention pulled from Rowan to land on her.
The tornado of shadow daggers vanished in a swirl of smoke.
Undead, prehistoric beasts halted in their tracks. They stared at Catseye in eager silence, awaiting further guidance.
The few Red Sentinels who hadn’t fled now froze, whether in hopeful trepidation or traumatized paralysis was anyone’s guess.
Aside from the dust that the carnage had raised, all was suddenly still.
Helspira swallowed when Catseye’s gaze met hers. Heart pounding, stomach swiveling, she held her ground, not only to disguise her apprehension but because the panic she saw in his eyes baffled her to a point of immobility. What could a man who wielded this kind of power possibly fear?
“Excuse me,” he whispered as he sidestepped her.
Gone was the malice in his tone. The only sound in the room was the click-click-click of his boots as he strode across the broken floor.
Catseye stopped beside Ben’s bones and knelt to set stone and thread inside the ribcage.
A blend of complex hand movements followed. “Amino os obligo.”
The words hung in the air like a cloud. Nobody moved a muscle.
Black hair shifted to a lifeless gray. Cheeks sunk, color fled from his flesh, dark circles framed his green eyes once more. Muscle tone withered again, returning him to the ghost of the man who had commanded a legion of bones and blades moments prior.
Risen bodies—dragon included—collapsed to the ground, leaving the stench of mildew and moist earth with their remains.
The thread, which Catseye had gingerly rewrapped around the stone, regained its dim glow.
Gaunt fingers quaked as he readjusted its placement inside Ben’s ribcage and uttered another phrase, a spell, in a language that Helspira did not understand.
Once-detached bones shook before fusing together at the joints.
“Benjamin?” Catseye’s voice cracked as he lay a gentle hand atop the skeleton’s humerus. “Can you hear me?”
Fingers twitched first. Then the wrist joint rotated. Both arms jerked, and eventually the limp spine straightened into a sitting position, before Ben’s skull twisted toward Catseye. “Fuck me,” the skeleton muttered, one hand holding his head. “I hate it when that happens.”
A relieved breath blew out Catseye’s mouth like a gale. He hung his head, as if he had no energy left to hold it up. “You and me both,” he whispered, patting Ben’s shoulder. “It seems some people around here have no manners. Or survival instincts.”
The quick shuffle of Queen Saelihn’s feet marred the moment. She strode toward Rowan, who grunted as he freed himself from beneath the dragon’s massive ulna bone. “Get up.” She cursed, pulling him to his feet with a force rather surprising for an elf of over two-hundred years old. “And get out.”
“You’re going to allow this?” Profanity and coughs spewed between Rowan’s words as he dusted himself off. “He could’ve killed everyone in this room.”
The queen’s gaze burned with the light of a thousand suns.
“I’ve half a mind to kill you myself after that stunt you just pulled, but Goddess Tiagon’s mercy binds my hands.
It’s nothing short of a miracle that you’ll walk out of here rather than drag the upper half of your severed torso. Now, get out of my sight, banneret.”
Rowan’s face shifted to a shade of red only seen in a field of wild poppies. Nevertheless, he bowed. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
The queen waited until Rowan vanished before rounding on Catseye, one hand over her heart. “I beg you to accept my profound apology. Rowan’s drive makes him a valuable Red Sentinel spearhead, but sometimes he’s blinded by the very ambition that makes him an asset.”
“I recall,” Catseye murmured, crossing the distance to retrieve the scythe he’d dropped in the chaos. “He always was a tyrant on the battlefield. I don’t remember that prickishness extending into situations off the war grounds, but time has a way of changing all of us, doesn’t it?”
Though his voice had steadied, Helspira detected a subtle tremor in Catseye’s hands. It seemed he was still in the throes of collecting himself.
“Benjamin”—Queen Saelihn regarded the skeleton with sincerity—“you know I’d never—”
“It’s fine, Your Majesty.” Ben exonerated her guilt with raised hands. “Sikras got to me in time. No harm done.”
“No harm? That remains to be seen. An unexpected assault rarely aids a diplomatic plea.” The queen pursed her lips as she surveyed their surroundings: a crumbling wall here, an upturned floor there, shattered glass, dirt, and more scattered corpses than a plundered cemetery.
“Perhaps we should finish this conversation elsewhere until the Grand Hall can be cleared.”
Catseye crossed his arms. “Just add the damages to my tab. I understand I have one.”