Chapter 14 #2
Kallen burst into the corridor. The soldier whispering to the salamander was dead before I even crossed the threshold.
The faerie pinning the salamander down leapt back with a shout, dropping the knife, and the creature tried to scurry away, dripping toxic black blood, but Kallen swung his sword and severed the animal’s head.
The five remaining soldiers swarmed him. He dodged a sword, then grunted as a dagger sliced across his cheek. He retaliated by stabbing the attacker through the eye, instantly killing him, but his next blow caught metal as a soldier raised an armored forearm to deflect it.
He was fast and deadly, but there were still four of them, and their breastplates and helmets limited where he could strike. I couldn’t let him face them alone.
Caedo leapt into my hand. Heart racing, I lunged for the soldier who had been carrying the salamander, who had just unsheathed a new knife.
He spun in time to catch my blade in his gauntleted hand, and there was a clanging sound as metal hit metal.
The impact reverberated up my arm, and my fingers briefly went numb.
The faerie threw his body weight forward, knocking me into the wall.
He grabbed my wrist, slamming my right hand into the stone again and again.
Bones cracked under the onslaught, and I cried out as my fingers lost their hold on Caedo.
The dagger swirled up over my wrist, clinging to me, but I couldn’t grip it anymore.
I looked into the soldier’s hateful eyes. Distantly, I was aware of Kallen shouting as he murdered a third faerie. His face was streaked with red. He was bleeding, he was hurt, and I—
The soldier sneered at me. “They would want you to suffer.” Then he swung the butt of his knife into my cheekbone, shattering it.
I screamed at the burst of splintered pain. As he pulled his fist back again, I slammed my uninjured left hand against his armored chest, imagining shoving my magic towards his heart.
The moment my palm met his armor, my skull felt like it had been cleaved in two with an axe. There was a sucking sensation behind my ribs as something essential was torn from me, and a sudden silence fell in my head. The place where Caedo’s thoughts had brushed up against mine was empty.
I cried out, sagging from pain and disorientation. My chest had been scraped clean, left hollow as a shell. The Blood magic that was going to save me…
It was gone.
Caedo? I cried out mentally, panic swamping me. The dagger didn’t answer. The metal circling my wrist lay inert.
The soldier laughed. “Really?” He gripped my hair and dragged me back upright, then stabbed me in the gut.
Agony ripped through me, and a raw wail tore out of my throat.
“Kenna!”
Kallen’s shout broke through the ringing in my ears. My vision fuzzed at the edges as I watched him chop off the fourth faerie’s head. Blood flew off his blade, coating the painting in red spatters. Then he shook off his final assailant and leapt for the soldier who had stabbed me.
The faerie jerked the blade free and let me go. I collapsed, blood pouring from my stomach, then convulsed. It felt like I’d swallowed fire. My body was healing, but not fast enough, and there was no magic left to help it along.
My head seemed light and heavy all at once. “Caedo,” I mumbled, eyes drifting shut.
A furious, bloodcurdling yell pulled them reluctantly open again. My lashes tangled, wet with tears, and my blurred vision was slow to clear. When it did, I saw Kallen fighting the last two soldiers at once, eyes blacker than night and face carved in lines of fury.
He was trying to save me, but it was too late. My dwindling life had formed a warm pool around me. I couldn’t even move my lips to speak.
Kallen had lost his sword somewhere in the melee. He fought with a knife and his bare hand now, never pausing for a second even as a dagger sliced his bicep open.
Why wasn’t he using magic? The thought was distant, confused. Had he lost it, too? What had happened to us?
Kallen leaned to the side, foot lashing out and slamming into a faerie’s chest with shocking speed and force.
The soldier stumbled backwards, reaching out to catch himself against the wall.
Kallen turned into shadow for an instant, swirling around the other attacker’s descending blade before reappearing in front of the one he’d kicked.
He drove his dagger through the faerie’s exposed armpit, teeth bared.
The soldier collapsed, blood gushing out of him and staining his white cloak.
The last faerie—the one who had hurt me—unhooked the metal net from his belt and flung it at Kallen.
It flared out, weighted at the edges. Kallen threw himself beneath it, rolling on the ground before lunging upright.
The faerie dodged, but not quickly enough, and Kallen’s blade opened a cut at the side of his neck.
Kallen snarled, then threw his knife aside and grabbed the faerie by the throat.
His fingers dug into the cut, widening it as they burrowed through skin, and then Kallen ripped the soldier’s throat free in a gruesome spray of blood.
Then it was just him, standing with his chest heaving, surrounded by bodies.
I’d never seen anyone move like that. Never seen anyone kill like that.
My consciousness slipped, and time slipped with it. When I blinked, Kallen was kneeling beside me, pressing a hand to the wound in my stomach. “Easy,” he said, voice ragged. His face was spattered with gore. “Come on, Kenna. Heal yourself.”
My vision grew watery. I shook my head, then regretted it when the inside of my skull felt like I’d taken a hammer to it. “C-can’t.”
“You can. You must .” He brushed the hair back from my forehead, leaving a wet streak across my skin.
How much of the blood on his clothes and hands was his?
Through the tear in his sleeve, I saw a cut deep enough to show muscle, though it was slowly knitting itself back together.
“Breathe,” he urged me. “Slowly. Calm your thoughts. Let your body do what it needs to do.”
Noble Fae , I thought as I watched his injuries heal themselves. He was Noble Fae, and now I was, too. My body would heal like that—it just needed to heal itself faster than the blood could leave me.
Pain and horror were beasts that were nearly impossible to cage once they’d been released, so I focused on small things. The easing of air into my tight lungs. The feel of Kallen cradling the side of my head. The steady pressure of his other hand on my gut.
My chest had felt sickeningly empty since I’d tried to cast magic, but something unfurled around my heart at last. A hint of heat, a flicker of a magical pulse. Caedo’s whisper drifted back into my mind, faint but furious. Destroy them…
The Blood power I’d somehow lost was still weak, but it crawled through my veins until it reached my injuries, starting with my gut before moving to my cheekbone and hand.
My skin warmed as the magic added its efforts to the healing.
I felt the gruesome grind of bone slotting back into place, followed by the soothing relief of something being put right.
I closed my eyes, overwhelmed and dizzy, drunk on the agony and the relief.
When I opened them again, Void faeries filled the hallway. One was bending to throw a corpse over his shoulder, and as he stood, others moved in to start cleaning up the blood.
How much time had passed? I’d only closed my eyes for a moment, but the world had shifted entirely.
Caedo was curled around my upper arm, quivering like a frightened animal. Kill , it said.
Relief filled me. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d grown to the dagger’s low buzz in my mind until it had been taken away. They’re already dead , I thought back.
Too bad.
I called up a memory of the faerie’s throat being ripped out, and the dagger gave a nastily satisfied hum.
I still didn’t understand what had happened. One thing was clear, though: carrying Caedo had made me cocky. With a weapon like that, I’d thought all I needed to do was get close enough and victory would be mine.
Two familiar figures came running. Lara and Anya dropped to their knees on either side of me, Anya gripping my hand as Lara patted my shoulder.
“You’re all right,” Lara said. She was wearing a nightgown and looked like she’d just tumbled out of bed. “He said you were, but…” She sniffled and wiped a tear off her cheek. “I needed to see for myself.”
“I—” My voice creaked. “How did you know?”
“He shouted at the door until the house got me. Kenna, what were you even doing ?”
Anya looked down at me with wet, bloodshot eyes. She hadn’t changed into nightclothes, but her tunic was rumpled like she’d slept in it. “Kenna the Fierce,” she murmured.
My old nickname. We’d been Kenna the Fierce and Anya the Great and Terrible for a few imagination-filled years—children playing with sticks, dreaming up a world in which we could be heroes.
I’d been no hero today. The bodies had been carried away, but the scent of death was thick in the air. Blood and offal, the coppery tang of butchery—and none of it had been my doing.
I would have died tonight if Kallen hadn’t been there to save me.
I turned my head, looking for him. He was standing in the midst of the Void faeries, head bent as he listened to something a soldier was saying. My lips shaped his name.
Kallen seemed to sense my attention, because he turned. A tremor went through me as our gazes locked. His face was still painted in blood, his posture weary, but his eyes…
Oh, they burned.
A moment later he was striding towards me. Faeries fell back, scrambling to get out of his way. Then he was crouching by my side, reaching out to gently touch my face. “Kenna,” he said, voice rough.
“You killed them for me,” I whispered.
Kallen’s bloodstained fingers stroked my cheek. “I will always kill for you.”
Anya looked at him askance, edging away. I felt nothing but swelling gratitude, though. My head still ached, and my well of magic felt nearly empty again after the task of healing myself, but the relief of having survived was sweet.
“Let’s get you inside,” Lara said. She was also eyeing Kallen warily, but it wasn’t the suspicious hostility she’d exhibited even a day before. He’d come to get her, I realized. That was who had shouted at the Blood House door.
I started to sit up, but Kallen stopped me, moving his hand from my cheek to my upper chest to keep me in place. A gasp left my lips, and my heart thumped as his fingers lightly brushed my neck.
He studied his bloody hand against my skin before meeting my eyes again. “Do you trust me?”
My pulse fluttered. Did I? I didn’t know if I was capable of much trust anymore. It was a precious, delicate thing, and delicate things broke in Mistei.
But he had fought for me. He’d been hurt trying to protect me, and for some reason, he was looking down at me like I was the secret to a puzzle he was desperate to solve.
“Maybe,” I managed.
It was apparently good enough for him. “Let me carry you. You can ask the Shard to allow me into the house. Just for a short while.”
“You’re from Void,” Lara said, distrust returning to her expression.
His fingers twitched. “That’s not why I want to do this.”
Why did he want to do it, then?
“I can carry her.” Lara glanced at Anya. “We can carry her together.”
The way we’d helped Anya that first night. Anya nodded, and my mouth quivered as a tender ache bloomed in my chest.
“No,” Kallen said. “I need—” He made a frustrated sound. “I have to, Lara. She can disinvite me immediately after, but I need to carry her. Please. ”
Lara looked as shocked as I felt. Had Kallen ever said please before?
He looked messy and tortured—not the icy, controlled spymaster anymore. Tonight had rattled him badly for some reason. A fine tremor moved through his fingers where they rested against my skin.
Lara raised her brows, asking me the question.
Invite a faerie from another house in. I’d never heard of anyone doing that before.
The Shard’s voice slipped into my head. It’s been done. But you must be sure.
A Void faerie in the heart of Blood territory when Mistei was on the precipice of war…it sounded like madness. But Kallen was more than Void House, the way all of us were more than who we swore allegiance to.
He waited patiently for my verdict, never looking away.
Yes , I thought to the Shard. Let him in for a while.
And then, out loud: “Yes.”
Kallen’s breath hitched. Then his hands were sliding under me, shifting me gently into the bed of his arms. I smelled death on him, but there was something beneath that, too. Something dark, complex, and compelling—like incense, wet earth, and cold winter nights.
Kallen stood, cradling me close to his chest. Then he turned and carried me into Blood House.