Chapter 15 #2
Godric looked so conflicted that he might go mad. “Everything in me tells me to stay and protect you,” he admitted, standing on the rooftop and leaning in the window like he was ready to jump back in.
I nodded. “But now I’m giving you someone new to protect.” I gestured to Maelis, who was already halfway across the roof and waiting for him. “She’s been through a lot. You need to get her to safety.”
Tears actually filled his eyes, and he blinked them back. “Send Harrow to Hades for me,” he said finally, and brushed his fingers over my cheek as if saying goodbye.
Then he was gone. The roof beyond sloped gently to a low parapet. Beyond that rose a second roof that bridged to a squat tower. A wooden ladder had been laid along the parapet, half hidden beneath a coil of canvas. Godric dragged it free and set it to span the gap.
He tested the rungs and glanced at me.
With a final nod, he took Maelis’ hand. They moved carefully, stiff at first, then with more certainty, and reached the far side of the ladder to the second roof and out of sight.
A door behind me slammed shut. I spun, sword in hand.
Shock ran through me as four soldiers rushed at me, eyes bright with the feral glow that came when wolves were finally given permission to break something. The nearest tried to use his sword to cut me down.
I raised Valkaryn and moved to meet them.
Purple light shot from her tip like arrows, one, two, three in short succession.
Three of the soldiers dropped like sacks of grain, mouths open.
The fourth stood there peering at me in shock, but then his face twisted into a snarl, and I knew it was Mind Render, not him.
‘Don’t kill him,’ I begged Val.
A burst of light, and he was down too, piled on top of the other bodies like fallen leaves in autumn. A wave of fatigue pulled at my limbs, but just as quickly as it came, it was gone.
I stepped over their fallen forms quickly, knowing they were only unconscious. I opened the door, ran down the hall, and was three steps down the staircase when the world tilted.
It felt like the tide was turning. A thought that was not mine whispered across the surface of my mind.
Stop.
It was not a voice. It was the absence of all voices. It was a quiet so deep that every impulse, every movement, felt wrong inside it.
Mind Render.
I froze with my foot searching for the next step.
‘Brynn,’ Val said, sharp and bright. ‘Hold the image of your happy place, your anchor. Hold it tight.’
An image of my little brother, Finn, rose up in my mind. He was chasing Sable around the house with his wooden sword as my mother laughed. I gripped that image with everything I had, and the quiet faltered. My foot found the next step, and I kept moving.
Stop! the thought insisted, like a parent who had lost patience.
‘He’s strong,’ Val told me. ‘But we are stronger.’
It was the confidence I needed.
‘No,’ I told the presence inside my head.
Light rose from Valkaryn and crawled over my skin like sunlight. The quiet retreated, not defeated, only waiting.
Alarms were ringing everywhere now, as if the castle had grown a thousand throats and was screaming.
The horn calls had spread to the walls. Torches flared along the hallways.
Men shouted outside. Somewhere, a gate slammed.
The low pressure of Mind Render’s insistence grew as I neared the two open doors that led to a courtyard outside.
Stop. Kneel. Drop the sword.
It ordered in the same commanding tone. Each time, Val pressed warmth through me, and each time I found a thought to hold.
My mother’s birthday. Sable’s breath against my cheek when she slept close on cold nights.
Kaelric’s voice when he had said “little human” like he wished he could swallow the words back and keep them.
‘Good,’ Val said. ‘You are full of anchors.’
I was. I realized in that moment I was so blessed to have the love of so many people to help me keep my mind my own.
“I am also full of stubbornness.” I slipped through a side door and into a stairwell that twisted upwards. I was just moving at this point, knowing eventually Harrow would find me.
‘We need to distract the civilians, or they will storm this castle and tear you limb from limb. Call Kaelric, tell him to create a distraction at the gates so Harrow sends them that way.’
I trusted her strategy and relayed it to Kaelric.
‘Finally,’ he said, as if he’d been waiting all night with his army to finally do something. ‘Be safe,’ he added.
There were guards ready for me at the top of the steps.
These wore Harrow’s personal sigil, a sun split by a black slash.
I took the first with a feint toward his sword and a cut to the wrist that made him drop it.
The second, I met blade-to-blade. He was fast and fought to kill, not contain.
He used the wall to pin me, and his knee to bruise, grinning like a man who enjoyed his work.
But I knew I was staring back at Harrow, not the innocent wolf caged inside of his own mind, who was currently being used as a puppet.
I smashed my forehead into his nose, and the grin vanished.
Blood spattered the stone. I knew Val could easily drop them if I needed her to, but I also instinctively felt that she was reserving our energy for the bigger fight ahead.
A third guard came from the side. I slid down a few steps, and when he came for me, I pinned his back to the rail, my blade between us. The tip of Valkaryn was at his throat.
His eyes went wide, then his lids lowered into a look that could only be described as evil before he sank his chin downward, forcing Val’s blade up into his skull.
“No!” I screamed, ripping the blade down and stepping backward, but it was too late. The young soldier fell, blood spraying down the steps as the weight of what had just happened hit me.
‘Harrow forced him to kill himself to show me what he’s capable of,’ I told Val in shock.
‘Yes.’ Her voice was small, full of sorrow.
‘Are all of his soldiers just innocents he controls?’
‘No. But most are. There was a small contingent of wolves who disagreed with how my husband ran things. They are loyal to Harrow.’
That bastard. I hated him more with every passing second.
The clicky-clack of wolf nails sounded above me. I peered up to see a dozen wolves with orange glowing eyes coming for me.
I hesitated at the snarling, curled lips. ‘Do I retreat?’
‘No. He’ll send everything he has to try to take you out, because he’s scared of you,’ Val told me. ‘But we will avenge my family tonight.’
I steeled myself. ‘Okay, I trust you.’
I gripped her in my fists and ran at the wolves, a growl in my throat.
Valkaryn took them down one by one with blasts of light that knocked them unconscious.
There were more soldiers. There were always more. I could not afford to be slowed. I lifted Valkaryn and let light flood the stairwell. For an instant, the very stone turned pink. When the flare faded, the men collapsed in a heap. I ran past them before they could awaken.
At the end of the hall, a door stood open, leading out to a balcony. Warm air rolled in, heavy with meat and wine, and something sour that smelled like spoiled magic.
Harrow.
‘What’s going on there? Where are you now?’ Kaelric could feel it. He always could feel when I was in danger.
‘I love you so much. I’ll never forget how you gave my family a home, a future, hope.’
‘Don’t say goodbye!’ he growled.
I smiled, a single tear slipping down my cheek. There was no guarantee I would survive this.
‘I’m not. But it’s time I see what fate has in store for me.’
‘I love you, Brynn, in a way that means I won’t survive if you don’t.’
I nodded, understanding completely. I felt the same. But also, he sounded resigned to whatever would be. There were no more options.
‘May your plate always be full,’ I told him, repeating the kindest words he’d ever said to me.
He whimpered, and I felt my heart constrict.
‘As may yours,’ he said, and then I stepped outside.