Chapter 31
Because her primary instinct in a crisis was to analyze and categorize, Ryn spent the first several dozen heartbeats of the fight in a frantic study of their enemy.
Enemies, plural, was decidedly more accurate, though counting them was impossible, and it seemed more helpful simply to understand them as a swarm.
Scuttling and chitinous, with dense carapaces, clacking jaws, and far too many legs.
Neither spider nor centipede nor scorpion, but some nightmarish meld of the three.
Only about knee-high on Ryn, but broad and squat, with long, powerful bodies, eyes that glowed in the near darkness, and a relentless hunger that drove them forward… directly into Xavi’s blades.
Had it been anyone else in that labyrinth, they might well have died in the first wave, overrun by the sheer weight of the onslaught.
And while Ryn had always known—in a distant, academic sort of way—that Xavi must have been an outstanding warrior, it was an entirely different thing to witness it for herself.
Huddled against the wall, feeling helpless and exposed, with nothing to stand between her and the horde of monsters but a single man with twin blades and little armor to protect him, it might have made more sense to embrace despair.
Until Xavi finally peeled back the layers of camouflage he’d adopted to protect his true self. She’d caught glimpses, but never the full picture. Never truly grasped that while he was unmistakably akin to the night elves of Dunmaren, he was also something unimaginably more.
Beautiful. Wild. Uncontainable. With power that stole the air from her lungs as he unleashed it to smash into the oncoming horde.
The first wave was thrown back—most of it crushed into oozing heaps of dark ichor and shattered limbs—but more replaced them, only to be skewered by flashing steel.
And Ryn… Her ability to feel went numb and unreachable.
There was no fear, no urgency, no exultation.
Only words, flooding her mind as if she were recording this moment in a journal.
As if she’d spent too long absorbed in the written word and now could not truly comprehend or accept the immediacy of the violence that confronted her without telling herself the story of what was happening.
Yes. She could see it now—the epic tale of a single warrior of light facing the oncoming hordes of darkness. Every motion embodied poetry. He did not have to think—he simply was the blade, and it became a dance that held her mesmerized as she watched him somehow hold back the tide.
It should not have been possible. Not when he was already wounded. And yet, she would never have known. His eyes glowed crimson bright, and his every move was fluid, steady, and unyielding.
The bodies began to pile up around him until his skin was drenched in the creatures’ dark blood, and still Ryn could do nothing.
There was no analysis to be made. No information that would help.
No path to be forged through sheer determination.
And at length, her frustration at her own helplessness provoked an involuntary cry that momentarily drew the attention of the enemies swarming Xavi.
Two of them started towards her, scuttling so swiftly that she did not have time to cry out again, or even to flail for a weapon before they were on her, knocking her to the ground with their weight and momentum, then tugging at her clothing with prickling legs and mandibles the length of her forearm.
One fastened on her boot and she finally shrieked, kicking at it with her other foot until it let go with an almost human cry of pain.
A rush of thoughts both incongruous and bizarre flooded her mind as she kicked out and tried to roll away. Feeling the inevitability of her end, and yet unable to confront or accept it.
Would they eat her alive? Inject her with venom first so she could be partially digested?
At least that was what some spiders and scorpions did to stop their prey from struggling.
Though now that they were closer, she could see that these creatures each had twelve legs, plus grasping pincers.
Far more than any scorpion, but they did have a tail that looked as if it might be capable of stinging.
Were they fae in origin? Or a product of malevolent magic that existed nowhere but here?
And come to think of it, what would become of her body once they were done with it?
Would it languish in this labyrinth forever, or vanish when the trials were over?
Perhaps the creatures would not only consume her flesh but her bones, leaving no evidence of her existence.
It made sense that they would waste no part of whatever rare prey entered this barren place.
Her runaway thoughts came to an abrupt halt when mandibles sheared through her skirts, drawing a line of fire down her right leg just before the monster on her left seized her arm in its jaws.
She felt the warm rush of liquid—don’t think about blood, don’t think about blood—well before the pain slammed into her, wrenching a scream of anguish from her throat.
And then Xavi was there. She heard his cry of denial, then through the haze of agony, she saw his flashing blades dismember the creature gripping her leg.
A moment later, he threw the blades aside to lift the second monster and throw it against the wall with impossible strength, then dropped to the floor at her side.
Somehow, he must have defeated the remainder of the swarm. She could barely see his face for the nauseating dizziness and pain, but what she could see was barely recognizable—covered in splashes of dark blood, twisted with horror and pain.
“Ryn.”
She was lifted up. Her head rested against his shoulder as he grasped her arm in shaking hands, turning it over to see the wound. And then she heard him speak—his voice sounding strangely distant but still recognizable.
“Ryn, I swear to you, I will not let you die. She cannot have you. No matter how many I have to kill, I will not let her win. Can you hear me?”
When she did not answer, his arm tightened around her, and his voice went hoarse. “Please. Ryn, it has been a thousand years or more since I knew hope. And now, I do not know if I can keep walking through this dark world if you die.”
His pain stabbed her almost as deeply as the monster’s jaws, and yet, she could not seem to form words.
Not with the burning heat that seared through her arm until she could barely keep from crying out.
Not with the sight of her own blood wavering before her as the light kept getting farther and farther away.
I’m sorry, she tried to say, but her lips did not move and then… there was no light at all.