Chapter 38 #2
A flaming bolt rewards my hesitation. It lands between my legs and I leap forwards, rolling before it explodes and heat licks up my back.
Before I’m on my feet, trees erupt in whizzing arrows and screaming steel.
Ivor meets me as I rise, tossing a few playful swings with his sword. I duck and roll, dancing away from the gleam of the blade. His reach is impossibly long, and it takes every desperate burst of speed to keep distance between us.
“You’re doing well,” he says, as if they were training. “Glad to see you haven’t gone soft.”
The edge of his sword cleaves through the space where I just was. “Odd to compliment someone while trying to kill them.”
“A fair share of men have died for underestimating us both.” He swings again, and the trunk of a tree catches it, its dry bark bursting into smaller chunks of kindling. “I won’t make that mistake, Nisse,” he says as he rips it free.
I take the half-moment of hesitation and whip my bola around his wrist, but instead of faltering when I pull, he just lifts his arm into the air, dragging me before I have the sense to let go.
Angry tears blur my vision as I jump away from another attack.
I’ve spent my entire life fighting in one way or another.
I operated mostly in shadow, but the man before me ensured I could out fight every disposable body that made it onto our ship.
But I could never beat him.
Something about his size, or the disappointment so often in his voice, caused my fear to override the frozen calm that shepherded me through these moments.
He always seemed to know my next move before I did.
Even now, I’m left dodging and ducking behind trees, feeling the underbrush claw at my pants, hearing wood rend and scatter.
If I can just get him tired enough, I might stand a chance.
But I’m too slow, trapped on the other side of his impossibly long reach. He isn’t even trying.
When I pop up to face him after my next roll, my eyes catch beyond him to one side—to Rune, Elio, and a freed Killian exchanging ringing blows with three of the Vipers’ best. There’s a splash of red over Rune’s bare chest, but I can’t tell if he’s wounded.
Killian’s wrists are mottled with bruises, but he moves with lethal precision.
They’re all half shifted, ears finned, talons sharp, arms glittering with scales from wrist to elbow.
The image gives me an idea, but it disappears as my father steps in the way, blotting everything else out of my vision. Taking it like he’s taken everything else.
The rage starts, then, and I know it’s his.
I am his legacy. His right hand. My father’s daughter, through and through.
There isn’t a life here I wouldn’t take to make sure we live through the mess I’ve made.
I thought I wanted to be alone. At ease.
To find the kind of peace I thought was only found in isolation.
What I really wanted was rest. A break from the fear. Peace at last. And maybe, deep down, a father who would protect me from monsters, instead of turning me into one. Instead of tossing me into the deep with the call to sink or swim.
“How could you do it?” I ask, breath heaving as I skip back, trying to angle us back towards where he’d left my bola on the ground. “How could you gut your own daughter and call her a weapon?”
He spins as I circle him, then drops his broadsword to block as I swipe the dagger at his stomach. “I gave you a purpose.”
“I was a child.” I roll again, adding more to the leaves already clinging to my hair.
He points the tip of his sword at me like a finger. “You were too soft for this world. You needed to learn.”
“I needed my father!” He hesitates, so briefly I wonder if I imagined it.
“Instead I got a butcher.” I back away, gripping the hilt of my blade so hard it hurts as he lets the space between us grow.
“You stunted me. Taught me to cage my shift. Hacked away at me and then forced me to hate the only part of mother you couldn’t take away. ”
Something itches under my skin as I say the words, spurred by my anger as the chaos goes on around us. There are groups fighting on all sides, cries of fear and pain. Those from the beach had rallied and thrown themselves into the fight.
Then a beast screams, and the world slows as a kelpie crashes through the brush and into a group of Vipers in a storm of hooves and flesh-ripping teeth.
“Eithne!”
I’m not sure who shouted, but I try my best to call a warning as it angles towards Rune and Killian.
They just watch with bright eyes until the beast flies past them and Killian launches onto its back, his sword in one taloned hand.
Together, they run Garreth down, Killain wounding the man as he shifts too slow, and the kelpie rearing to trample the bird under its hooves.
“Odi!” Rune catches my eye. A thin streak of crimson runs down his neck and over the muscles of his chest. I can see him warring with the urge to go after Ivor, but I shake my head.
I can’t let my father near him, and the others need him more.
Leaves rustle and fall between us in a slow drift, and I glance up at the familiar movement in the trees, suddenly feeling the need to hide a proud grin.
“Odi . . .?” Ivor twitches as he looks between me and Rune. He says my name like he can’t place it. Like he’s pushed my mother so far out of his mind the nickname was lost to him.
My attention flies to the odd expression on his face. Something so close to pain. Every time he looks at me—really looks at me—it’s the same. I think it’s why he made me wear the cowl, to hide me. Not to conceal Nisse’s face, but to bury the reminder that she’s gone.
He’d rather forget. If it were his choice, I’d forget her too.
But it’s not, and I refuse. She’s all that stops me from being him.
The memory of her love and light and joy convinced me that life wasn’t all survival and fear.
Because of her, I knew something else existed—if she left the land for the sea, then I could return, and carry her memory back to where she belonged.
I’m his daughter. But I’m hers too.
Ivor watches me, his eyes widening as something stirs under my skin again. The sounds of the battle grow louder, the smell of blood and forest and burst shot grows stronger. Then his face pales, like he’s seen a ghost.
“Wildflower,” he breathes, stepping forward as the tip of his sword rests on the ground by his feet.
I feel the way confusion twists my face as he blinks out of whatever memory has finally broken through—and in the same moment realize the change in my body.
Spotted fur runs from my wrists and all the way over my shoulders and chest. My shirt is gone.
A weight settles on my head as my antlers finish forming.
My ears, now long and turned down, flick in reaction to the amplified sounds.
The forest sharpens. Scent nearly overwhelms me and I can feel the way my face has pulled into a slight deer-nosed snout.
I blink at the realisation—the half shift.
Ivor pulls his gaze away, like he can’t bare to look at the animal he refused to know.
Me. She is me.
“Put that beast away, Nisse,” he growls, as the tip of his giant broadsword sword leaves the ground.
“My name,” I say, raising my blade even with his, “is Odelia.”
He lunges, splitting the air with a jab, but something fast impacts the back of his head.
The shot makes him flinch, then his eyes widen as the venom pod bursts down his neck and back.
Otto grins from a branch high above, as if he hasn’t just attacked the person he should fear most in the world. I do grin this time, meeting his eyes.
My father’s rage ignites, then, his eyes wild as he charges, swinging recklessly.
Broken branches crack apart under his boots, but I hold my ground, my heart in my throat.
As he lifts for his next blow, I sweep under his arm, fast as a dartfish now, and toss my blade hand back to land a glancing blow to his ribs, the way Rune said he’d learned from his brother.
The moment I reach the other side of him, I snatch up my bola and roll forwards, expecting a blade to follow me at any moment.
Instead, I see Tavi ahead, and a man aiming a bolt at her back.
“Tavi!” I shout, tossing the bola with half a thought.
It wraps the man’s crossbow and pulls it off aim.
The shot goes wide, embedding in the leg of a Viper nearby.
Tavi turns, hands blurring as she aims a throwing knife first at him—then at me.
My stomach drops as the steel flies. Surprise keeps me still for a blink too long, but it slices by the flap of my ear, landing somewhere behind me with a wet thunk.
I turn as the body hits the ground—a Viper with the blade in his eye to the hilt—but I keep turning, because Ivor’s crashing step has me diving for the downed man’s sword.
We trade blows, my new speed evening out his strength.
Each strike sends shocks of pain up my arms, rattling the joints of my shoulders.
My instincts flare, helping me put anything I can between us, rocks, trees, brush.
Some he tears down, others he kicks away, his face that familiar shade of red.
It’s life or death now. He’s lost to rage, to grief.
And I’ve gone too far, pushed him too much.
It’ll be a loss for him, but not the kind it should be.
I twist, almost dancing away from the hits I can’t block as my arms lose strength. I wait for the fear, but it doesn’t come. The realisation emboldens me, and I risk stepping in rather than leaping away, and feel the flesh of his shoulder open under my blade.
He roars, backhanding me with his sword hand.
I’m only on the ground for a moment before I pop up, ready to leap under his next swing to get behind him—but he won’t let me get away with it twice.
He spins, too nimble for a man his size, then I feel the air shift as the blade sweeps above me, and fire blooms in the back of my ribs.
I hit the ground hard and roll onto my back, feeling briars snag on my fur.
“PUT HER AWAY,” he roars, stabbing the ground with every word.
I’m barely able to avoid them, each strike hitting closer than the last as I crab walk away.
Air saws in and out of my lungs. My body is soaked in sweat and warm blood.
My back hits a tree, and he lifts his sword high, his eyes frenzied with frustration.
Red and oozing green drips down his shoulders and to the front of his neck from where the acidic venom has gnawed through his skin.
Burned patches mar his jacket, and Otto shoots another pod that hits his back and bursts into short-lived flames.
Ivor roars and swipes his sword down. Even with my shift I’ll be too slow, but I smile at him. I’ve won in the only way that matters.
The ringing sound of steel on steel obliterates the world around us for a moment, and when I look up, Rune and Elio stand over me, their blades caught on Ivor’s own.
Together, they overpower him, shoving him back until I can gain my feet.
They work in beautiful tandem, one stepping in when the other steps back, taking turns catching the heavy strikes of his blade.
For the first time, hope blooms through my chest. They’re gaining ground. Maybe we can win this. Together.
“Otto!” Tavi screams, her voice breaking. She’s caught against two others, trying to fight her way towards the three Vipers that swarm the tree Otto is in. One shifts, a selbie, and flies up to rake at him with savage talons.
“Go!” Rune shouts to me as Elio catches a strike, but I don’t need the order.
Otto’s cries already have me moving.