Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter
twenty-six
Everywhere I look, I see corpses—lying amid overturned tables, bleeding onto plush floor cushions, staring sightless at the skies from the abandoned dance floor.
Most of them are enemies, their blood-streaked skin and sliced jugulars giving them away.
But several of the fallen are clad in the blue-gray colors of Daggerpoint.
A handful of others are navy-uniformed Hylians, swords still clutched in their slackened hands.
Melité helps a battered Tethys onto a chair.
Someone has tied a makeshift tourniquet around her upper arm.
Mabon wipes blood from a gash over his eyes, Cadogan at his side.
On the grass, Harpina clutches her lovely dancing companion close against her chest. Her tears fall, an endless torrent, onto the woman’s death-stilled features.
Her wail of grief is a lance that goes straight through me.
Bretiax squats next to her fellow Paexyrian, stroking her short blond hair with breathtaking gentleness.
Fresh horrors greet my eyes wherever they land. The more I see, the thinner my sense of morality grows.
Someone should pay for this.
Someone will pay for this.
I search the sea of slaughter for an enemy to battle, my body taut with the need to exact retribution.
But there are no enemies left alive. Floral centerpieces crunch beneath my sandals as I run blindly forward, seeking familiar faces in the crowd.
Where is Farley? Where is Jac? Where are Alaric and Arwen and—
“Rhya!” Penn is suddenly there before me, cupping my cheek with one callused hand.
His other still grips his broadsword, which glows red from his battle-fury.
“Gods, you’re safe. You’re here.” He exhales roughly, not quite able to hide his panic.
“When I arrived and did not see you, I feared the worst.”
“I’m fine. I’m not harmed.” My voice wobbles. “Farley? Jac?”
“I told Farley to stay behind, but he insisted he was sober enough to help. He made for the stables to help put out the fire.” He shakes his head. “I haven’t seen Jac.”
“What happened?”
“I was not here. I did not see it happen. I heard the screams from the guest villa’s terrace and came running to find the wedding party under attack by these blood-covered mongrels. Half of them took their own lives before I had a chance to drive my sword through their guts.”
“We saw the same down in the city.” I steal a glance at Soren, who stands a few paces away. He is still. Eerily still. Like the withdrawn sea before a devastating tidal wave. Tamping down my simmering worry, I force my eyes back to Penn. “I still don’t understand where they all came from…”
“The portal.”
We all turn at the quiet boom of Vaughn’s voice. As he exits the dark garden I gape, seeing the blood sprayed across his face.
“Are you—”
“Not mine,” he says grimly, square chin jerking.
“Smashed a few heads together before they could do more damage.” His eyes shift to my side, where Soren is standing.
He wastes no time in explaining. “They came through the bathhouse. Tore out of it, a great flood of them. At least twenty, by my count. We weren’t prepared.
” His voice is blunt. “How could we be? It’s not possible. It wasn’t before, anyway…”
Something very deadly is emanating from Soren. Something so vicious, so violent, it makes my soul quiver.
Still, he says nothing.
“These men are mortal,” I interject, shaking my head as confusion crashes through me. “I thought portals only worked for high fae?”
“The blood,” Soren grits out, teeth clenched.
I blink. “What?”
“They’re covered in it, head to toe. They must’ve bathed in it just before they stepped through. A coating thick enough to mask them.”
“All twenty of them?” That must’ve taken a huge amount of blood. Barrels and barrels of it. “Wherever did they get so much?”
His jaw is set like stone. “Whoever they drained must’ve been of a very strong bloodline. Strong enough to deceive a portal. Strong enough to carry them through from Dymmeria.”
“Dymmeria?” Penn roars. Sparks fly from his fingertips, skittering across the dance floor. “Do you mean to tell me this is Efnysien’s doing?”
Vaughn does not look surprised, only grimmer and grimmer as Soren nods. “This is my stepbrother’s handiwork, of that I have no doubt. The men who set the floating market ablaze took their own lives, but they shouted something first.”
“For Shadowfall,” I whisper.
“A rallying cry for the uprising of Efnysien’s dark army.” Soren’s hands curl into fists at his sides, as though he does not trust himself to move without striking something. “A second Cull. One aimed directly at the Northlands, with the intent of eradicating fae kind once and for all.”
Penn is breathing hard.
“Just what we need. More godsforsaken blood purists.” Vaughn spits on the corpse lying a few paces away from us. “Wish there were more to kill…”
“Where is Arwen?” Soren’s eyes cut like blue blades around the carnage, seeking out his sister. “It is unlike her not to be here barking orders.”
Vaughn shrugs his massive shoulders. “I don’t know. I lost sight of her in the havoc. I’m sure she’s around somewhere.”
Soren looks to Penn, who shrugs, then swings his gaze around until it lands on the siren sisters. “Melité! Where is Arwen?”
“Can you not see Tethys is injured?” she sneers, affronted. “Why, of all your sisters, is Arwen the only one who merits your attention?”
He ignores her. A crease of displeasure appears between his brows as he returns his attention to Vaughn. “She’s likely at the stables—”
“She’s gone.”
I whip around at the fractured rasp from behind me. My heart quails at the expression on Alaric’s handsome face. He looks totally broken. A shattered shell of the man who, only hours ago, punched the sky in victory as he wed his love before the whole city.
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Soren takes two strides toward him, hand flying out to fist in his gold-embossed tunic. He shakes him lightly. “Where the fuck is she?”
Alaric does not even seem to notice he is being shaken.
His eyes are farseeing, his face a blank.
“They took her. Those blood-soaked men. Hauled her away, through the portal.” He holds up his hands; they are streaked with gore, the knuckles bruised and swollen.
“I fought them. We fought them. But there were so many, and they…” His head shakes, as though he cannot quite believe what he is saying.
As though he would do anything to wake from this nightmare he is living.
“It was clear from the first moment that she was who they were after. The rest of this—all this butchery—is gratuitous. He wanted her. He has always wanted her.” The apple of his throat bobs roughly. “And now he has her. He has my wife.”
Soren releases his grip, hands dropping woodenly to his sides. He is frozen, incapable of speech, incapable of comforting the man who is falling apart in front of him. Not while he himself is doing everything in his power to keep from doing the same.
It is Vaughn who moves close, his thick arms that wrap around Alaric’s quaking frame, his deep voice that speaks assurances I fear none of us, standing there watching, truly believe.
“We will get her back, Alaric. We will get Arwen back.”
“How?” Alaric whispers, a strangled plea. “We do not even know where they have taken her.”
Soren flinches, just once, then starts moving, his long strides carrying him across the ruined feast so fast I have to run to catch him.
I do not understand where he is going until I see the sets of bloody footprints that lead away from the dance floor, smudging the flagstones.
Signs of a struggle; signs of an unwilling captive being dragged away into the dark.
A lump of nerves turns my stomach to lead as we follow the trail down the path, deeper into the lush gardens, passing broken palm fronds and another dead enemy with a throwing star embedded in his eye socket, pausing only when we reach the narrow bridge to the bathhouse.
“You do not have to go in there,” I tell Soren quietly.
But he is beyond hearing. He steps onto the bridge, heedless of my words.
“Soren…”
Still, he does not stop. Perhaps he needs to see for himself. With no other choice, I follow after him.
Inside the bathhouse, the evidence of struggle is even more apparent.
Two more bodies, one with Alaric’s gold-hilted dagger still protruding from his gut, lie on the white floor.
Their blood seeps into the crystal, staining its luster.
There was not much furniture to wreck, but the little that was inside is in pieces—the teak footstool fractured to splinters, the mirror smashed into sharp fragments, the delicate vanity tipped over on its side, sending myriad bottles of bath oil and scented petals across the floor.
Arwen put up quite a fight.
Smears of fresh blood—hers, I think—color the base of the wall.
Not a deadly amount, but definitely enough to activate a portal.
It is no longer aglow, already dormant after their ruthless departure.
By now she could be anywhere in Anwyvn. There are no clues about where she’s been taken, no handy maps left behind by the perpetrators with locations circled in red ink.
Soren’s face is pale, almost gaunt. I want desperately to comfort him, to make him the same promise Vaughn made Alaric: that we will get his sister back. But I cannot bring myself to lie to him.
Before I can summon a single word of consolation, a gasp sounds from among the bodies across the bathhouse. One of them is still alive. In a blink, Soren is looming over him, one hand around his throat, squeezing so hard I think he will crush the man’s windpipe.
“Where is she?”
A wheeze rattles from between the man’s teeth.
“Where have they taken her?”
“Soren!” Dropping to his side, I yank his arm. It does not budge. “Soren, he cannot tell you anything if he is dead!”
His chokehold only tightens.