Chapter 10
My sword is out of its sheath in a moment and leveled at his neck.
He stands on the floor, and I stand on my bed in my oversized nightshirt, feet wobbling on the mattress, head scraping the ceiling.
I tilt his chin up with the point of the sword to make him look at me.
My eyes have adjusted to the moonlight enough to see his expression.
It isn’t smug. The fury isn’t there either. He looks… scared?
Of me?
“What is this? How?”
“Go ahead,” he snaps. “Kill me. I dare you.” He tilts his chin up further, baring his thick, enchantment-marked neck. Like he wants me to do it.
It wouldn't even be hard. I could have my revenge.
The dragon’s wings continue beating outside the window. The witch closes his eyes, throat still stretched against my blade. But I’d be disobeying the War-Father’s commands.
Harfor told me to guard him. I’m going to do my job.
“Did you know your people were coming?”
“How would I?”
Harfor did say the witches wanted him back.
But how did our enemies even get behind our lines?
They aren’t supposed to be able to find these shores at all.
If they try, they just keep flying over an endless ocean, until they give up and turn around.
I frown and draw a deep breath, trying to keep my thoughts steady even as panic hums in my veins.
A dragon. I can’t fight a dragon without a Hellion.
My heart hammers. I can't fight a dragon at all. Don't I remember what happened last time? I should run, and hide.
I ignore the fear.
“Are you the reason they could get through the enchantments? They could somehow sense you, even behind it?”
“Why else do you think your people brought me here?”
“So that’s a no, then,” I say. They brought him here so his dragon couldn’t reach him; the alternative would make no sense. Harfor could never have expected this. The witch’s brows furrow and he narrows his eyes at me. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, then slowly shuts it.
The War-Father sent him here so he’d be safe behind our lines. Something else must have led the dragons to the Bluff. A traitor on Harfor’s ship?
Right now, it doesn’t matter. I approach the window carefully and peer outside.
The dragon is absolutely massive, nearly as big as the castle we’re in.
And I think I can see another one in the distance, its size indeterminate.
My gut goes cold as I watch the first beast descend.
I can’t make out any features in the dark, but somehow, I have a terrible feeling that it's the same dragon that burned me.
Who else would come for him, if not his own familiar?
Its wings flare wide. The room goes dark as a tomb as the glow of the moon and crystals alike are blocked by its enormous leathery wings.
With a thud the whole tower trembles. I hear the sound of glass shattering.
The Observatory windows, maybe? A rock falls past the window and crashes to the ground below, torn or shaken from the tower’s top.
I brace myself for the ceiling to fall in and kill us all.
This dragon is big enough to raze the entire castle, if it wants to. Does it bear riders?
The faint, omnipresent hum of the castle’s crystals—a sound so soft and constant I had stopped noticing it—goes suddenly, horribly quiet.
The dragon must have crushed the crystals.
Now anybody can find the Bluff, and the enchantment protecting our other islands is weaker, too.
A wave of dizziness passes over me. Harfor better be right that we’re strong enough to take out the Gray Tower, because it seems bringing the hostage here just tore a giant hole in our defenses.
I race back from the window and fumble with matches long enough to get the lantern lit again before dragging my clothes back on. The sheath goes around my waist, the naked sword in my metal hand.
“Stay with me,” I tell the prisoner.
“A comman—”
“We’re under attack,” I snap at him. His people are trying to rescue him. There’s no time for me to be nice.
He scowls and follows me to the door. Peering through, I check that the hall is dark and empty, then slip out.
The Bluff doesn’t have protection besides the spells that keep, or kept, the island safe. The Governor has soldiers, but they’re only good enough to inflate his ego and keep the other exiles in line. As a former knight I’m easily the best fighter here.
But without a Hellion, I’m no use against a dragon. And that’s not even counting that there could be riders on the dragon’s back. A creature the size of the one that landed on the tower could fly with at least a dozen witches without trouble.
Malkin’s room is halfway down the hall. I wake her first, because I trust her to be sensible. She thrashes awake and draws a stolen kitchen knife fast enough to make me proud, but not fast enough to cut me.
“It’s me,” I hiss quietly. The witch waits in the doorway where I commanded him to stay.
“Cai,” Malkin’s voice trembles. “I thought…”
“We’re under attack.”
“What?”
“I’m taking care of it,” I whisper quickly, which isn’t completely a lie, because I’m at least going to try. “Wake everyone on the floor below us.”
“But the attackers…?”
“They landed on the roof. That’s why you need to go down.”
“Alright,” she whispers. Malkin slides out of bed, already wearing a long dressing gown. She reaches for one of her clothing chests.
“There’s no time to pack,” I warn. “Keep them quiet and get everyone headed towards the Governor’s fishing boat. Don’t wait for me. And put out the lantern before you’re outside so they don’t see you.” I shove it into her hand.
The Governor’s ship is the biggest vessel we have. It should be able to hold nearly everyone, though it’ll be tight quarters.
Malkin nods, her lips pressed tight. I head to the next room on our floor and wake Trisven, another exile with a sensible head, even if she’s never liked me. I tell her to get everyone on this floor awake, quietly, and to head down to the boat with Malkin.
The dragon roars, a sound that makes the stones vibrate. If anyone was still asleep, they won’t be now. Vrisekan, another exile, pops his head out of his room, wide-eyed. I point him at Trisven and keep moving.
At the end of the hall, I hesitate, heart pounding.
The stairs coil up, toward the Governor’s rooms and the dragon, and down, toward the sea where the others will be heading.
My body remembers what it’s like to face a dragon.
It shames me that I want to go down, and hide, and avoid being burned again.
The small voice yelling that I should escort the other exiles to safety is driven by entirely selfish purposes: I want to run.
But if I don’t buy them time, they won’t escape. My metal hand clenches on my swordhilt.
The enchantment barrier is down, so whether his dragon could follow the Witch King through it or got in some other way, the dragon may be able to track him now.
“Is it your dragon?” I ask. The Witch King is silent. “Answer me.”
“Yes.” His voice is strained.
“Does it know where you are?”
“Yes,” he whispers.
“And if you move, it will know?”
“...Yes.”
I let my eyes fall shut for a moment. Above me there are unfamiliar voices, their words muffled. So the dragon did have riders, and they entered the castle from above. If I take him up, I’m leading him towards his rescuers. But if I send him down, he’ll lead the dragon straight towards Malkin.
“Follow.”
I take the stairs up two steps at a time, trusting that he’s behind me.
Above us, there’s a choked scream. It sounds like the Governor’s voice. I grit my teeth, bare sword still in hand, and run faster. It’s brighter upstairs. The red glow of torchlight spills down the stairs, lighting our way like a beacon.
I reach the fourth floor, where the Governor’s rooms are. Nearly the top of the castle; only the Observatory is above us.
There’s a hallway with a door on either side and a window at the end. And in the hall itself? Four witches.
A young man holds a bloody sword in one hand and a torch in the other, a rat on his shoulder.
His eyes harden when he sees me. Behind him are three more fighters, all wearing the leather armor the witches favor.
Two of those have bows. The door to the Governor’s room is open, like they just came from there.
Two birds flutter overhead. A woman with daggers has a thin snake wound about her throat.
These witches aren’t powerful enough to have dragons for familiars, like their king is. I wonder if they still had to sacrifice innocents to bind these smaller creatures to their will.
One of the archers, a woman with a grim look on her face, draws her bow and shoots an arrow. She’s dangerously fast. I throw my sword up and twist to the side in a block, but I’m not sure I’ll make it.
With a curse, the Witch King surges in front of me and knocks me down, away from the arrow. Gods, but he’s fast. I’m so startled I nearly run him through with the sword. Instead I tuck, roll, and jump back up to my feet. He stumbles upright, the arrow jutting from his right arm.
“Roiven!” the man with the sword shouts.
“Run,” my captive—Roiven?—answers, his voice choked. “Get out of here. Now.”
He’s Enchanted to protect me. And he’ll have to kill his own people if I tell him to. Maybe that’s why he looked afraid they were here. Not afraid at what I would do to them, but at what I would make him do to them.
It wouldn’t be a bad way to even the fight.
“He’s Enchanted,” one hisses.
“Run,” Roiven bellows at them.
I should make him kill them. But hearing the raw desperation in his voice, it feels too cruel.
“Go to the stairwell now,” I order. “Stay there until I’m done. Don’t fight. Don’t watch.”
He stumbles back.
“Please, let them go,” Roiven begs. I ignore him.
“Avreen! There’s a knight!” One of the archers yells, chin tilted up like she’s talking to someone on the floor above.
“She isn’t inside yet!” The other archer answers.
The first one—the one with the torch—gets his sword up just in time to block mine. But he isn’t good enough. My sword swings in an arc and rams through his gut.
“Please,” Roiven begs again, his voice distorted. He’s already around the corner on the stairs, because he has no choice, but he can no doubt hear what’s happening.
One of the other witches lunges at me, two daggers drawn.
I’m outnumbered. I yank my sword free from the first man and dodge the daggers.
Lights suddenly sparkle at the corners of the room, a weak attempt at illusion magic to distract me.
If this is the best they’ve got, these witches have no power at all compared to their king.
“I… I will do anything,” Roiven cries, as if I couldn’t already command him. As if it would make a difference.
I run through one of the archers.
“Window,” the other archer screams, and the two remaining witches turn to run toward it.
They’re not faster than my sword. I cut through the one holding the daggers. The last archer turns, drawing another arrow, aimed right at my heart.
I spin to the side and hack into her neck, making the death as quick as possible. And that’s all of them.
I stand in the middle of the hall, chest heaving, feeling oddly heavy even though I know they’re witches. With a sigh, I bend to check they’re really dead. The first one I gutted needs a mercy killing, so I slice his throat.
I walk back to the stairwell. The Witch King kneels on the landing, head bowed, one arm braced against the wall. His breath sounds like it’s jerking out of him, until I realize he’s sobbing quietly.
These people came to the Bluff and destroyed the enchantment. They’re my enemies—my people’s enemies—and I had no choice. I couldn’t very well let them live.
“For what little it’s worth, witch, I am sorry you had to listen.” Roiven doesn’t give any indication he’s heard me. “They came here. I had no choice.”
“You could have let them run,” he rasps. “I let your people run.”
I narrow my eyes.
“Five lived, out of over two hundred. I just killed four.”
“I should have made sure you were dead.”
I bend to inspect the arrow buried into Roiven’s arm. He tenses away as I near him, but he doesn’t stand up. Thank the gods, the shot missed the enchantment lines covering his skin, burying into uninked flesh.
The arrow isn’t deep. From the bolts I saw spilling out of the dead archer’s quiver, the arrowhead is narrow, not barbed. It’ll still be a bloody mess to dig out and I don’t know enough about field medicine to try doing it myself unless I have to. He hisses as I prod around the base of the wound.
I return to the short hallway and cut a strip of cloth from one of the archer’s long tunics.
“Can you talk to dragons?” I ask as I return.
Roiven doesn’t move. A question isn't a command, and my prior order for him to respond must have ended when my last line of questioning did.
“Answer me. Can you talk to the dragons.”
“One of them.”
“Can you kill it? The dragon? Tell me.”
A silence stretches between us so long that I wonder if he’s somehow found a way around the enchantment. I wind the cloth around his arm. He turns his head and stares at me with unbridled disgust, his face inches from mine. I can see the tracks of tears on his cheeks.
“No. I could not,” he finally says between gritted teeth, like the words are being forced from him.
“Roiven?” a woman’s voice calls from the observatory upstairs. My hands freeze halfway through tying the first knot in the makeshift bandage.
More of them. Gods, how many witches came to rescue this one man? I finish tying the knot. Roiven is silent as he rises back to his feet. Every line of his body is tense.
“Don’t do anything to…” I start to tell him.
He charges. Roiven barrels into me and wraps both arms tight around my body.
I’m so startled I don’t get my sword unsheathed again in time to run him through.
The enchantment keeps him from hurting me.
How is he doing this? But I only have a moment to be confused, because he’s towing me off the stairs, down the short hall, past the bodies and towards the window his friends tried to escape through.
As I thrash I catch a glimpse of a woman in red leather armor coming down the stairs.
Her skin is deep brown and she's carrying a naked sword in one hand. Roiven plants his foot on the sill and launches us out. He’s twice my size and built of muscle, and doesn’t even seem to register me fighting.
I was always a better fencer than wrestler.
“Let me go,” I bark.
It’s a command. He has no choice but to listen. His arms release me. Too late.
We’re falling.