Chapter 37 My Fucking Cat
MY FUCKING CAT
ELYRIA
Cedric’s vise-like hold on her—one arm wrapped around the back of her neck, the other around her waist—was so tight Elyria could barely breathe as she angled hard toward the chaos below them.
She didn’t need to breathe, though. What she needed was to get them all out of this stars-forsaken mess.
The ground rumbled, her wild magic awakening as Elyria careened both herself and Cedric directly into a pair of cultists advancing on a still-bound Jocelyn.
They tumbled across the dirt, Cedric releasing his grip on Elyria and immediately chasing after one of the cultists with a roll that ended in a clean draw of Ashrender.
Focus, Lightbreaker, she chastised herself internally, getting to her feet. There would be time to be impressed over that move later.
“Never”—Cedric slashed at the cultist—“do that”—he dove to the side—“again.”
Elyria didn’t think it would be helpful to lie, so she said nothing. She simply flashed a toothy smile, cloaking her wings once more and brandishing her dagger to cut through Jocelyn’s restraints.
Jocelyn jolted forward as the ropes snapped, slamming her palms flat to the earth, her breathing ragged.
Elyria watched as Jocelyn’s wild magic split the ground under the feet of the second cultist, a blond man wearing a dark mask across the bottom half of his face.
The earth rose in jagged peaks, throwing him off-balance, his body falling to the ground with a savage-sounding crack.
Jocelyn was a blur as she leapt on him. Lip bloodied, cheek bruised, she was fury incarnate as she pummeled his face into a pulp.
“I think you got him, Joss.” Elyria placed a gentle hand on the guard’s shoulder, then helped her to her feet.
“Just a little tit for tat,” Jocelyn said, before proceeding to spit on the man’s twitching body.
Her tone had Elyria’s shadows rippling. “Good,” she said darkly, giving the sanguinagi a kick for good measure. Elyria passed a finger over Jocelyn’s split lip with a wisp of healing magic to stem the bleeding, but the fae waved her off.
“I’m fine,” Jocelyn insisted. “It’s Sephone who isn’t.”
Elyria’s gaze shot to where Sephone still lay on the ground, unmoving save for the labored rise and fall of her shoulders, her hands clutching her stomach.
“Fuck,” Elyria breathed, immediately running toward her.
“One of the bastards stabbed her when she resisted,” Jocelyn said, keeping pace at Elyria’s side. “It was a fucking ambush. The cowards grabbed us right out of bed.”
Two cultists stepped in their path, eyes nearly glowing red with rage. Elyria didn’t even slow down, just swung her staff with a two-fisted grip, knocking the one closest to her out of her way like she was playing a game of flipball.
Jocelyn beckoned roots from the ground, twining them around the legs of the other, and they skidded to a stop next to Sephone, dropping to their knees.
“Shit,” Elyria hissed as they gently rolled Sephone onto her back. Sparks danced across Sephone’s skin where her power fizzled and sparked, uncontrolled. That was a good sign. The only one. “Shit, shit, shit.”
She was already so pale, the ground around her stained with blood that seeped from a deep gash in her abdomen.
Elyria shoved her hands against the bloody wound, wrapping her shadows around Sephone’s torso like a dark bandage, forcing as much of her own weak healing power into the fae’s wound as she could. “We need Shep.”
Jocelyn jumped to her feet, head whipping frantically around, looking for the sylvan amongst the pandemonium. “I don’t see him!”
Elyria’s brow furrowed as she looked to where Shep was clearly standing back-to-back with Ollie, glamoured ginger hair slick with sweat, his nightshirt stained with blood.
He held what looked like a stolen short sword in his hands, brandishing it at another cultist who lurked on the other side of Ollie’s water wall.
“Joss, he’s right fucking there.”
Jocelyn spun on the spot, smacking a blood-smeared hand to her forehead. “Noctis take me to the first quarter, I forgot he wasn’t green anymore,” she called over her shoulder.
Elyria wanted to give Jocelyn shit for having forgotten about Shep’s glamour, but a nagging thought was pushing in on the edge of her mind.
Assuming the cultists had indeed left Tristan, Thibault, and Hargrave alone because they were human, or even if they’d simply brought them to a different place, why had Shep been with the other Arcanians?
How had they known he wasn’t just as human as the rest of them?
Sephone groaned, her body jerking under Elyria’s hold, tearing her focus back.
Later, Elyria told herself, pressing tighter against the wound, her hands sticky and red.
“You’re a bitch, and I don’t like you,” Elyria said through clenched teeth. “And celestials know I really don’t fucking like the fact that you work for my father. But I also really don’t want you to die. So, don’t—you hear me?”
“That’s one kind of pep talk.” Ollie’s voice was stilted, strained, when it drifted into Elyria’s ears.
She looked up to find her friend standing over her, concern on his blood-spattered face even as he still held his hands aloft, his watery barrier surrounding the small group.
“Come on, Elle. Let the maestro work his magic. Lunara knows I could use your help out here.”
“I have her, my lady.” Shep’s hand on Elyria’s shoulder was gentle as he pried her away from Sephone, immediately taking her place, his palms already glowing with green light.
Elyria stumbled back, giving the sylvan room to work, jerking her head back to the sound of fighting.
Through the rippling wall of water, she could see Thraigg running back out from the inn, his massive hammer in hand.
He charged a nearby sanguinagi, and even from across the yard Elyria could hear the satisfying crunch of bone as the dwarf loosed a string of curses.
A few yards away, Cedric battled the pepper-haired man from the bar, several slain bodies already littering the ground around him.
The sight, even through the haze of Ollie’s barrier, had a massive swell of pride sweeping through her chest, and as though he felt it too, Cedric’s gaze snapped to her.
He grinned, his scarred lip tipping to the side before he sent the man sprawling with a well-placed kick.
The thread in Elyria’s chest shimmered, and her power thrummed in her blood—renewed. Like the final lingering stain of the blood runes these bastards had cast on her had finally faded away.
Ollie grunted, and she laid a hand on his arm, taking in the veins protruding from his neck, the sheen of sweat coating his forehead.
“You’ve been maintaining that for too long,” she told him, her eyes darting back to the barrier, tracking the cultists she could still see on the other side. Perhaps a dozen left. Less. “Stop before you burn out. I have this under control.”
Ollie blinked twice, then nodded once. “On the count of three. One, two—”
Elyria grinned. “Three.”
Ollie dropped his hand.
The watery barrier collapsed in a rush—and the night exploded.
Elyria surged forward, staff spinning in one hand, darkness roaring from her. Like a wave breaking on a rocky cliff, tendrils of living night spread across the ground, snuffing out torches, knocking cultists from their feet, tearing weapons from hands.
“Stay. Away. From. My. Friends,” she said, her shadows sharpening into tiny daggers.
She punctuated each word with a throw, flinging one after another after another, embedding them in the necks of three separate sanguinagi attackers.
Two fell immediately, gurgled words of the old language trailing from their lips as they collapsed.
The third, a woman with tight blonde braids and burning black eyes, didn’t break stride. Despite the shadowdagger embedded in the side of her neck, she continued running at Elyria, using the blood leaking from the wound to conjure a long ruby spear.
Elyria braced her weight on her back leg, her staff held in front. A dark smile stretched across her face, shadow-forged armor locking into place around her. She inhaled deeply through her nose, welcoming the thrill of the fight.
Spear and staff clashed in a violent shower of sparks, spittle flying from the cultist’s mouth as she screamed, “Pixie whore! You’ve ruined everything!”
Elyria shoved her back, clucking her tongue and using a ribbon of shadow to yank the spear from the woman’s grasp. “Funny, I was about to say the same thing. Minus the ‘pixie’ part, of course. You should be so lucky.”
The woman released a feral cry as she ripped the shadowdagger from her neck, her blood pouring out thickly, the coppery scent flooding the air.
Shock had Elyria hesitating, and perhaps that was the sanguinagi’s plan, because she didn’t waste it.
Fueled by the river of blood streaming from her neck, the woman launched ten red ribbons of her own, one from each of her fingers.
They wrapped around Elyria, cinching her arms tightly against her body, binding her legs together.
Her staff was wrenched away as two ribbons wound around each hand, keeping her fingers locked together, unable to direct either of her powers.
Distantly, Elyria heard Cedric yelling her name. But she didn’t get a chance to see where he was, if he was coming for her.
Because someone else already was.
A guttural war cry came from beneath his beaded beard as Thraigg ran up beside Elyria, his massive hammer raised overhead with both hands. He brought it down, cracking the earth, a fractured path running toward the cultist and splitting the earth beneath her feet.
She stumbled.
The bloody ribbons loosened.
Elyria smiled.
Then, she splayed her hand, and the fracture became a fissure—a canyon of rock and dirt and dark.
The cultist’s scream was long as she fell, before cutting off with a thump that sounded very far away.