Chapter Forty-one
THEA
T he rumble in the distance shuddered through the earth beneath Thea’s boots, rattling her bones.
She fought in the muddied fields at the northern perimeter of the castle, leading a small unit of her own through the turmoil.
Wilder was nowhere in sight, but Vernich the Bloodletter was bleeding the enemy dry at the vanguard.
He might have been a bastard through and through, but the Warsword cleaved through his opponents with a viciousness Thea had never witnessed before.
Another rumbling sound echoed across the battlefield and Thea looked up, squinting across the darkened sky and sea, trying to make out the Veil in the night. But there was nothing but inky black – and Wren was somewhere out there, trying to patch the tear in the wall of mist with Farissa.
Thea blocked a blow to her side with Wilder’s sword and gutted her attacker with her dagger. Where was her Warsword? It wasn’t like him to hang back from the thick of the fighting.
She scanned her surroundings. In the light of various fires and torches, the lawlessness of war ensued.
The air smelt of blood and vomit and shit, and men lay dying in their own filth.
Soldiers with severed limbs or their entrails hanging out sat in the mud, shaking and looking dazed as the ongoing ringing of steel sounded all around them.
Another pair of wraiths landed and Vernich surged for them.
Thea was right behind him.
He merely grunted in surprise at her presence and carried on fighting.
Every lesson she’d learnt from Wilder coursed through her and she moved as Vernich moved: like a warrior, like a Warsword. Together they drove the wraiths back from their forces.
Vernich went feral, hacking away at their limbs, even going so far as to bite the flesh from a wraith’s shoulder as it tried to clamp down on him with its talons. The older Warsword spat black blood into the dirt and kept slashing —
Until an unnatural stillness blanketed the battle.
And Thea saw why.
From the uniforms they wore, it appeared the missing Tverrian force had returned.
But they were much changed.
They were neither wraiths nor half-wraiths, but some mutilated, warped form of the two. Their bodies were twisted and leathered beneath their armour, reminding Thea of the vine blights she’d seen.
Suddenly, Wilder appeared in the stretch of land between the midrealms’ legion and the advancing unit of monsters. He raised his single sword, welcoming their impending violence, a lone figure ready to take the full force of the enemy.
‘No,’ Thea gasped, her heart lodging in her throat. She whirled around to their own units. ‘Reform the lines,’ she yelled. ‘Reform the fucking lines!’
The monsters surging for Wilder roared, and even from a distance Thea could see the spittle foaming at their mouths and the savagery in their eyes.
‘Thea!’ a familiar voice shouted. ‘Thea!’
She looked around frantically and found Kipp racing towards her. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the wall?’
‘Yes, but I saw an opportunity.’
‘Talk fast, Kipp,’ she demanded, watching the stretch of space between her Warsword and the enemy grow shorter and shorter.
‘Lure them towards us,’ he said breathlessly, motioning to a handful of horses held in place by shieldbearers on the wings of the field. ‘Then get the fuck out of the way.’
‘Kipp, I need more detail than that.’
‘Just trust me.’
‘Kipp —’
‘There’s no time. Take five men, ten at most, and lure those fucking things this way. Out into the open. Esyllt and I will do the rest.’
Thea took a deep breath, swallowing the knot of fear at the back of her throat. ‘Alright. I’ll do it.’
Kipp was already gone.
The wave of monsters descended upon Wilder.
Torj’s words from the mock battle on the Plains of Orax returned to her once more.
‘You are what stands between them and our world, so remember this: being a true Guardian of the midrealms is not about hating the evil before you, but loving the land and its people behind you. Remember that glory will not be found in failing to fall, but in rising from the chaos when you do.’
Thea kept her panic squashed in the pit of her stomach as she rallied a small group of warriors to her cause, mounting the horses Kipp had gestured to. They charged for the mangled creatures.
Guttural screeches filled the air as the monsters clapped eyes on their attack, the beasts instantly surging towards them.
But Thea rode for Wilder.
It was impossible to discern what blood was his and what belonged to the enemy. He swung himself up on her mare, sliding into the saddle behind her, his powerful frame enveloping her as it always did.
‘What’s going on?’ he rasped.
‘Kipp’s idea. Hang on,’ Thea replied, turning her horse back to the pandemonium unfolding around her unit. ‘Back!’ she yelled. ‘Pull back!’
Her horse surged beneath her and Wilder, kicking up mud and veering to the edge of the battlefield as she directed. She prayed the others were behind her.
‘Now!’ she heard Kipp’s voice echo.
She whipped her head around to see two enormous workhorses galloping on either side of the battlefield, a thick chain strung up between them. They moved at full pelt towards the enemy.
Somehow the chain went through the monsters like a hot knife through butter.
Thea recognised the results of alchemy when she saw it. The chain had been treated with something of Wren’s making, no doubt. Pride swelled in her chest at the thought of her sister’s ingenuity.
Thea startled as a volley of arrows followed, slaughtering a great many of the now cursed Tverrian unit.
‘Not fucking bad at all,’ Wilder muttered behind her.
Thea’s pride swelled higher at that. It was high praise indeed coming from a Warsword, and even in the midst of all the bloodshed, she made a mental note to tell Kipp.
But the reprieve didn’t last long.
They were hit with a powerful gust of wind, one that had Thea struggling to maintain control of her horse. Wilder reached around and grasped the reins just in time, keeping them both in the saddle as the poor beast reared up onto its hind legs.
Shadows swept across the battlefield.
Everywhere, men were on their knees, screaming.
They were facing their worst fears, the nightmares that haunted their sleeping hours, and there was no telling reality from dream.
Thea had seen it in Wilder in the ruins of Delmira.
On and on the men shrieked, some clawing at their faces, some hitting their heads against the ground in the hopes of ending the agony.
It was then that three reapers stalked forth from the swirling black mass at the centre of all the suffering.
Thea tried to direct her horse with her knees and thighs, but it wouldn’t budge – it was no Tverrian stallion. And so she leapt from its back, sprinting towards the closest reaper.
The monster was reaching for a soldier cowering before it, its talons poised to pierce armour and flesh, as another had once done to her.
She had incapacitated that beast with her magic, but she wasn’t willing to risk that now.
What if she obliterated the entire field?
Along with everyone – man and monster – on it?
Instead, she whirled Wilder’s great sword of Naarvian steel, and the reaper seemed to sense her.
Slowly, it turned to face her. Sniffing, just as its brethren had done, as though it could scent the magic coursing through her even though she wore the alchemy-treated fate stone.
‘Sniff all you want,’ she said between gritted teeth. ‘I’ll gut you just as I gutted your friend.’
A lash of darkness came for her, but she was ready.
She sliced at it as though severing a limb —
Only to have Cal and Kipp leap in front of her.
‘What the fuck?’ she shouted, shoving her two friends out of the way. ‘You don’t even have Naarvian steel.’
‘So give us yours,’ Cal said, eyes wide as the reaper stared them all down.
Kipp placed himself between her and the monster. ‘You’re a princess of Delmira, Thea. It’s our duty to protect you.’
‘I don’t need protection.’ She pivoted around her friends, just in time to block the whip of another dark coil. ‘And I’m no fucking princess.’
Thea launched herself at the reaper.
The monster sent out a blast of darkness that sent all of them sprawling across the mud.
‘Now’s not the time for this shit,’ Wilder growled, the heart of another reaper clutched in his fist. He tossed it aside and helped Thea to her feet, his hands slick with blood. ‘Cal and Kipp, a noble effort from you both, but your strengths lie elsewhere. The princess can handle herself.’
Thea could have kissed him then and there.
‘He’s right,’ Torj grunted. ‘Cal, you see to the archers. They need to regroup. See what you can do about retrieving arrows from the dead. Kipp, for fuck’s sake, go to Esyllt. He needs your head on your damn shoulders.’
If it weren’t for the reaper advancing towards them, Thea would have laughed at the sight of her friends saluting her sheepishly before scrambling back towards the castle. Their hearts were in the right place, but their concerns were misplaced.
Now, she turned to face the monster, squaring her shoulders once more. How many more hearts would she carve out before the battle was done? How many had Talemir Starling claimed before the midrealms had dubbed him the Prince of Hearts?
A whip of darkness came for her.
Thea dodged it as Torj cleaved through it with his sword and Wilder attacked the reaper itself.
For a moment, Thea’s vision blurred, and she saw the Daughter of Darkness, her one good eye piercing Thea’s, staring into her soul as though she were right there in front of her.
A wave of indescribable grief washed over Thea, almost knocking the air from her lungs.
She didn’t understand what she grieved, only that she felt it in the deepest part of her chest.
And then the Daughter of Darkness was gone, and Thea was launching herself at the reaper, half climbing up its sinewy frame like an incensed animal, ignoring the lashing of onyx power and the pain that seared her exposed skin.
She clung to the reaper’s grotesque torso, forgetting the Warswords in the heat of the skirmish as she clutched her dagger in her fist, stabbing the monster over and over in the neck, its blood spurting like a fountain.
She knew it wouldn’t kill it, but in that moment, she didn’t want to give it the gift of death.
She wanted it to suffer, to scream beneath her punishment.
Torj and Wilder cut its legs out from underneath it and she fell with the creature to the muddied earth.
She hacked at its already gory body until its chest caved beneath her hands and she tore flesh and muscle and cartilage to get to that throbbing black mass within.
She tore its heart from its body, panting.
As the adrenaline ebbed away, she hardly recognised herself.
She scanned their surroundings, spotting a wraith creeping up on Wilder, who had moved on to deal with another reaper. She snatched a spear from a nearby corpse and threw it with all her might, pinning the lesser monster to the ground before she pounced upon it and took its heart too.
She could feel the eyes of their forces on her, and she knew she must look like a feral creature, covered in blood and gore, throwing herself at monsters with wild abandon.
She didn’t care. This was what she had been born to do, and as she looked around, she realised that they were winning, at least on the northern front.
As she sliced through another wraith, a cheer rose from the battlements.
Thea looked around to see what heroics Wilder and Torj had managed, but when she met their gaze, it was her they looked at.
The cries of victory from the warriors above were for her.
Thea almost shook her head in disbelief. From a piss-poor alchemist to this…? They were calling something from the wall, but she couldn’t make out the phrase and she didn’t care. Instead, she raised her tired sword arm, and another cheer erupted from them.
Wilder reached her. ‘You’re alright?’ he asked, his silver eyes bright and alert as they roved over the much quieter battlefield.
Thea knew she’d been cut and bruised in several places, but the shock of it all was so great that she couldn’t yet feel a thing. ‘Fine. You?’
‘Fine,’ he said, gripping her by the shoulders so he could survey her critically. ‘I have to go to the southern wall —’
‘I’ll go with you.’
Wilder was already shaking his head. ‘No. You’re best utilised here – the men listen to you. We need someone defending this wall, and Torj needs to see to the archers with Cal.’
‘What about Vernich —’
‘He’s checking on the rulers.’
Thea’s chest heaved. ‘You’re sure?’
‘About Vernich or you manning the north?’
‘Both.’
‘I’m sure.’ He said it softly, but firmly, his gaze lowering to her lips.
Thea’s heart stuttered. ‘You can’t kiss me here…’ It was almost a dare.
‘I know.’
She made to return his sword to him at last, but he pushed it back to her. ‘I love you,’ he told her.
Tears burned her eyes and she wondered if the shock of everything was at last wearing off. ‘I love you, too.’
Her Warsword started for the castle, but he hesitated, half turning back to her. ‘You’re ready, you know.’
‘Ready?’
‘For the Great Rite. When you feel its call, you go. Drop everything and go. You will emerge a Warsword. The very best of us.’
Thea’s mouth fell open.
But by the time anything resembling words was on her tongue, he had gone.
Thea gathered herself, her lungs expanding to their fullest as she breathed deeply.
She felt taller somehow. Wiping the muck from her blade in the grass, she surveyed the men awaiting her command, thinking fast. It made sense to reform defensive lines around the breached perimeter, and perhaps send a handful of scouts further south if she could find any brave enough – that was what Kipp would do.
‘Someone get me a spyglass,’ she shouted.
To her surprise, a shieldbearer pressed one into her waiting hand almost instantly. But before further orders could leave her lips, an almighty crack of thunder ripped through the air and a bolt of brilliant white lightning flashed in the sky.
The Veil shuddered.
A second fork of lightning carved through it, illuminating the swarm of shadow wraiths bursting through the semi-patched tear in the wall of mist.
Thea’s knees buckled. ‘ Wren — ’
Hands shaking, she pressed the spyglass to her eye just in time to see another round of lightning light up the base of the Veil, showing a tiny boat rocking in the dark, wild waters.
The boat was empty.
Wren was gone.