Chapter Twenty Four
The fight was chaos from the first second, and it only got worse from there.
Shadow met shadow as I tore into the nearest creature, my magic curling around its throat the same way I'd used it a dozen times before, except this time there wasn't a single one of them to kill and walk away from.
There were dozens. Maybe more. Pouring out of the treeline like the forest itself had decided to empty its stomach all at once, shapes crawling straight up out of the ground in places where I'd have sworn nothing had been standing a second earlier.
Wind ripped past me on both sides, Rowan and Cian working in a rhythm they'd apparently never actually lost despite years apart, gusts slamming into shapes that shrieked and dissolved into smears of black against the trees.
I fed dark into the throat of the thing I'd caught until it came apart between my fingers, ash scattering into the wind, and turned straight into the next one without a breath to spare.
This one got a hit in before I finished it.
Claws raked across my shoulder, deep enough that I felt it hit bone, hot blood instantly soaking through my shirt and running warm down my arm.
I didn't stop moving. Couldn't afford to.
I grabbed the thing by what passed for its skull and crushed the shadow into it until there was nothing left holding its shape together, then spun into the next without even checking how bad the wound actually was.
A third came at me low, aiming for my legs instead of my throat, and I barely got a knee up in time to catch it across the jaw, buying myself half a second to gather enough shadow to finish it properly.
My whole shoulder screamed with every movement now, blood slicking my grip, but stopping wasn't an option with this many of them still coming.
"There's too many!" Cian shouted, voice cracking through the noise, wind whipping his hair across his face as he threw another gust hard enough to snap a creature clean in half at the waist, both halves dissolving before they hit the ground.
"No shit!" I caught a second one by the throat, this one faster than the last, and it twisted in my grip enough to sink claws into my forearm before I finished it off, tearing it apart in a spray of something cold and black that hissed against my skin like acid, leaving welts that stung worse than the actual wound underneath.
Yakob's magic crackled beside us, bolts of raw light tearing through the dark, striking three creatures at once and dropping them where they stood, smoke curling off their dissolving bodies.
But even with all four of us throwing everything we had, the numbers kept climbing.
For every one we tore apart, two more slid up out of the earth to take its place, snarling, patient in a way that made my skin crawl worse than the claws did.
It felt less like a fight now and more like trying to bail out a flooding boat with our bare hands.
I caught sight of Amber out of the corner of my eye, frozen near the treeline, and felt my stomach drop straight through the ground.
"Amber, get back!" I screamed it loud enough to hurt my throat, throwing another wave of shadow toward a creature circling too close to her, cutting it down before it could get within arm's reach.
She didn't move. Didn't even look up. Her whole focus had narrowed down to the spell book clutched in both hands, fingers flying through the pages with a kind of desperate speed that told me she'd found something she thought could actually help.
A creature lunged for her from the side, and I didn't think, just reacted, shadow lashing out fast enough to intercept it a foot from her throat, tearing it apart before it could land a single hit.
My chest heaved. Blood ran hot down my arm, my shoulder screaming with every movement, and I still couldn't fully catch my breath before the next wave came at us, three more shapes peeling off the main mass and circling toward where she stood.
"Rowan!" I shouted, catching his eye across the chaos, blood spraying off my hand as I ripped another creature apart. "She's not moving! Something's wrong!"
He turned, and I watched the exact second he saw it too — Amber's hand closing around her locket, ripping it free in one sharp motion, magic surging off her in a wave visible enough to see even through the dark, the ground around her feet already starting to hum with something that had nothing to do with the fight around us.
"No," Rowan breathed, loud enough to carry even over the fighting. "Amber, stop!"
She didn't stop. Words started pouring from her mouth, faster and more forceful with every syllable, and the ground beneath her feet began to pulse with light, orange bleeding into blinding white.
I could feel it dragging at my own magic even from here, a current strong enough to tug at the shadow still curling around my hands, like it wanted to pull every last scrap of power in the clearing toward her.
I turned back to the fight because I had to, throwing everything I had left into the wall of shadow-things still pressing in from every side, but every part of me screamed to get to her instead.
A creature caught me across the ribs while I was distracted, claws sinking deep enough that I felt something crack under the impact, and I went down hard onto one knee, breath punched clean out of me, vision white for a second with the pain of it.
"Orias!" Cian's voice, sharp with panic, wind blasting the creature off me before it could finish what it started.
I forced myself back up, blood soaking through my whole side now, warm and sticky against my ribs, vision swimming at the edges every time I moved too fast. "I'm fine. Go. Help him get to her."
Cian didn't argue. He turned and fought his way toward Rowan, both of them cutting a brutal path through the last wave of creatures between them and Amber, wind and light tearing through shadow after shadow until the space around her finally started to clear enough for Rowan to close the distance.
I stayed on my feet through sheer stubbornness, tearing into whatever got close enough, ribs grinding with every twist of my body, watching the light around Amber climb brighter and hotter with every passing second, until it wasn't just glowing anymore.
It was blinding. The whole clearing lit up like the sun had fallen straight out of the sky and landed exactly where she stood, heat rolling off it in waves I could feel even from a dozen feet away, strong enough to make my eyes water.
I killed one more creature almost blind, guided entirely by instinct and the sound of its snarl, and the last thing I saw clearly before I had to throw an arm up against the light was Rowan finally breaking through, hands reaching for her through a glow so bright it looked like it might swallow both of them whole and never give either of them back.