Chapter 41 #2
The Wrack at the left corner of the breach was the largest I’d seen that day, the kind of creature that might have broken the wall.
It had two Obsidian fighters pinned and a mortal man on top of a half-collapsed building throwing stones at it, which was either brave or stupid but was at least keeping it from finishing the job.
Maura assessed it in the time it took me to understand she was assessing it.
She went right. She didn’t tell me to go left. She simply went right and left the other side open with the complete certainty that I would be there.
I went left.
The Wrack tracked her—she moved like something that should be tracked—and I prepared for the lunge.
Lightbringer was in my mind. “Don’t hesitate. As soon as it commits, strike deep.”
I didn’t hesitate. Then my blade was trapped in the Wreck’s neck, and it flung its head so hard that it almost whipped me away through the air, but I kept hold of the hilt.
As it whirled, it opened itself to Maura on the other side.
She buried her sword in its throat, and it finally collapsed between us.
“Not bad.” Maura looked over the monster to me. “You’re becoming useful.”
Fear landed hard a few paces ahead, wings folding as he shifted back to human mid-motion, with the seamless transition of someone who had done it ten thousand times; the dragon becoming the man effortlessly. He had a blade in hand before he could be fully identified as a man.
Maura was already there, cutting through the chaos between them with the same fluid certainty she’d always had, her blade catching the light as she dropped a fast monster that had gotten too close to his landing.
For a breath, between one crisis and the next, they registered each other’s presence unguardedly, as if they were relieved to see each other alive. Then both of their faces shuttered.
“I thought you’d be too busy winning over the kingdom to make time for us,” Maura said crisply.
A winged monster lunged between them from the left. Fear dispatched it without looking away from her. “You knew I would come.”
“I hoped.”
He stepped past her, already back to the battle. His last word—because Fear always had the last word—almost vanished into the smoke and chaos. “Always.”
The fight ended in the gradual lessening of the things that needed killing, the sounds shifting from active chaos to something quieter and more terrible as the wounded were tended and the dead collected.
For the first time, I felt the ache in my body, the slow release of adrenaline and terror, and the wounds: my raw shoulder from the cobblestones, a cut along my forearm I hadn’t felt happen.
The smoke was thicker near the breach, the smell of it mixed with the ozone-rot of the creatures and the salt of the sea and the iron of blood.
Lightbringer had gone quiet when the fight ended. The warmth was present, patient, utterly uninterested in speaking first.
I was going to have to speak first. “So you’ve been watching. Were you so moved by my incompetence you had to help?”
There was long enough of a pause that I thought she wasn’t going to answer. I listened to the sea moving beyond.
Then, “I do not want to deal with shifters again. Or their schemes. Or mortals and their causes. Your lives are short and terrible, and I am ancient and terrible, and I should not have to deal with any of you.”
“And yet…”
“And yet…” She sounded dry and sarcastic. “It is difficult. To watch you make a mess of battle from the inside and say nothing.”
“Thank you.” I did mean it. When she wasn’t trying to force me to say it.
“I am not going to intervene again.” Her rumble of a voice was fervent and unconvincing. “I saved your life. Once. That is sufficient. I do not want to participate in your rebellion and watch you watch everyone you love die and then die yourself. It is dull. The whole enterprise is dull.”
I looked at the sea and wished I could see her. Could see what she would look like when I shifted into her.
She was lying. She couldn’t help it. She’d tried not to care, but she’d failed; she knew it, and she was annoyed about it.
I understood this feeling.
“I am sorry you’ve been dragged into this world and into my head. But I’m grateful you saved my life.”
“You should be.”
Then she went silent once more, but I found I was smiling, despite my exhaustion. I made my way through the ruins of the city; the streets were full of mortals, eyes glazed with shock, as they surveyed the ruins.
The city was still standing. The eastern wall was not, but the city behind it was.
The mortal woman with the pike and the low Fae were still alive, sitting in the rubble, each tending their own wounds. I wondered if they despised each other when they had time, as I had always known of low Fae and mortals, or if they had entered the fight already knowing how to be allies.
Two Obsidian shifters were working to push a monster off their fallen friend. I stopped as they lifted their friend up between them and began to carry him away.
Obsidian could be terrible and cruel. I had seen that at the low Fae castle. They had also fought tirelessly and bravely to save these mortals. They wouldn’t have stopped fighting, no matter how many of them had fallen, one by one.
And it occurred to me, as it had not when I went with Fear to get the knife, to save my brother, that the queen had sent them to die because of us.
I would make the same decision again. But if they knew, and if they hated us…I would understand that too.
I went to find Fear.