Chapter 35 #2
Orion nodded and pressed a kiss to my head before he took my hand and turned to lead the way back toward the enuksha’s cottage. It felt strange to go toward the sounds of our enemies, but we needed open skies for the griffins to be able to take flight.
We had not gotten very far when I saw movement in the trees to our right.
Orion turned just in time to drop my hand and raise his sword, cleaving a Fuath in half as it leapt at us from a rocky outcropping above.
The Ktínos warriors formed a defensive triangle around me and Sofia as a wave of Fuath charged around the outcropping.
Despite being seriously outnumbered, the griffins had no problem with holding off dozens of Fuath. But I knew that it was up to me to clear a path forward to freedom.
I knelt to gather power directly from the earth into my hands, and I noticed right away that it was much less impactful when I was so far away from Riordan. I had not been so far away from him since arriving in the Vale.
Fire can be easily smothered when its air is choked.
I shook Hypatia’s words from my mind and aimed my blazing hands toward the biggest grouping of the Fuath. Not wanting to burn the forest, I was sure to weave my intentions with care through the gathering magic.
I unleashed the magic once I was ready… and it rolled right over the enemy as if they were under shields.
“What—” I blurted, looking at my hands.
“Whoever was fucking with Riordan’s power is now fucking with yours too,” Helena noted with a long sigh. “Guess we need to do this the old-fashioned way.”
I would not be discouraged. Sofia’s power was not being affected, and she was still able to steal the breath out of any Fuath who got too close to her.
I let the magic move and swell until it felt like I would burst, but still it did nothing.
I even attempted to set fire to the grass under their feet to try indirectly harming them, but the cocky monsters walked through the flames with cackling glee.
Seeing their cocky grins infuriated me so deeply I was almost tempted to delve down to a part of me I knew they could not survive. To open the gates to the Heartfire and let it consume their wards for me.
But I had no wish to risk fire madness.
Another surge of Fuath rounded the outcropping and forced me to abandon my attempts to use magic. I pulled my blades and joined the fray next to Orion, relieved for the extra lessons I had insisted on.
“They are going to overrun us here soon!” Ares called a warning to Orion who looked up at the cliff above us and then toward the clearing through the trees.
“We need to get to higher ground,” he decided, and the others nodded in agreement.
“Where the fuck did they come from?” spat Helena. She shook her head at the sheer number of the creatures as they began to crush one another between the trees.
“We are not getting through!” Ares noted with a hint of concern in his voice now, which I could feel mirrored in my bond with Orion. The Fuath had us completely surrounded, and no matter how many we killed, they had become a wall around us that was starting to crush us.
Orion seemed to realize this at the same time as he put his arms around me to protect me from the sudden surge. There wasn’t even room for the beasts to claw at us much less for us to swing a sword.
“Orion—”
“I have you. I will not let them hurt you,” he swore, his arms like a wall of his own that held them back from squeezing me. He was stronger than I’d ever imagined as he forcefully made space for me to breathe.
But for how much longer? Fuath were climbing over one another to reach us, and Helena did her best to fend off the high attacks, but I knew in my heart we could not hold out this way for much longer.
That was when the earth trembled beneath our feet as if in warning. Thunder rumbled overhead so ominously it silenced even the squalling of dying Fuath.
“Riordan?” I choked hopefully into Orion’s chest.
“No,” he answered uneasily, his head tilted up as the trees began to shiver. “This is… something else.”
An unintelligible scream erupted, and then the Fuath suddenly descended into a writhing mass again. Only this time they were trying to get away and clawed one another in their efforts to flee into the forest.
“Thank the gods,” breathed Sofia once we could all get in a breath. I turned to her in relief and saw that Ares had caged her with his arms the same way Orion caged me. Even though she was also a demigod who could have held her own in the crushing crowd.
I analyzed each of my companions, relieved that they all seemed well except for some bite marks and shallow scratches. But I froze when I saw just what had the Fuath all fleeing so desperately.
Living shadows. The whole forest had come alive with swaths of darkness that swallowed Fuath in groups and left them behind in heaps of dead.
“What in the name of the Merciful—” Helena began.
“Move!” Orion shouted when the shadows consumed the last of the Fuath and came right at us.
Except none of us could move when vines suddenly seized our legs to hold us in place.
The griffins beat their wings furiously in an effort to pull free, and I tried to burn away the foliage, but it remanifested so fast that it was no use!
The darkness continued to swirl toward us rapidly until a scream was clawing up the back of my throat.
Orion put his arms around me and braced for the impact, but the shadows imploded just before reaching us.
They flew in every direction to settle under the leaves and in hollows.
And from the explosion strode a vaguely familiar and breathtaking man with honey-blond hair, the most striking tabby eyes, and a wicked grin I knew not to trust.
“You should see your faces,” he taunted us in a lilting dialect of Sìth Gaeilge, the oldest language of the fey.
“Who the fuck are you?” snarled Ares with his sword raised at the ready despite the fact we were trapped.
“Your saviour and your doom, it seems,” the fey noted with another cruel smile. And then my stomach twisted as he seemed to take note of how Ares and I were trying to shield Sofia. “Let us make sure you all behave.”
Before anyone could object, the fey had produced a long whip, which he used like a lasso on Sofia.
It cinched around her middle to confine her wings against her back and her arms at her sides while he jerked her toward him.
The vines on her legs released her, but they kept the rest of us restrained as the fey pinned her against him with a bone blade to her throat.
Her wings flashed from their electric state to corporeal form as she tried to free them.
But the lasso around her must have been magic because it held even when her wings became immaterial.
“If you hurt her, I will gut you slowly,” Ares warned, but it only made the fey smile until Sofia suddenly ripped the air from his lungs.
He retaliated immediately with fire magic that sparked under his hands. It snapped and spit like burning cedar on her skin until she winced and relented, allowing him to draw in a ragged breath again.
“You are confusing me, little bird. Are we fighting or playing right now?” he smirked a little breathlessly.
“You are disgusting!” she snarled while Ares trembled with so much rage that I thought he might combust.
“Just be a good girl, and I swear you will not be hurt,” the fey assured Sofia, just as I pieced together the identity of this man who wielded fire and shadow.
“Wild Hunt,” I choked out, which made the others all grow suddenly still with the same dread that was coursing through my veins.
“That is very good, little witch. You did not think that you would get away with what you did to my family?” demanded the rider.
“Where is Ornella?” I asked him, and his vicious eyes turned even colder with his amusement before he raised them over my shoulder.
I turned, my heart shooting into my throat when I saw my friend standing right behind us.
“Ornella!” I cried, but my relief faded quickly when the vines around Orion began binding his wings and then yanked him away from me. “What are you doing?”
I tried to burn the vines clinging to my legs again and stepped toward my mate, but they kept lashing violently out of the earth to wrap around me.
I was just about to unleash a torrent of fire to sear the earth around me when Orion was forced to his knees in front of Ornella.
He was facing me as she dug her extended claws into his throat from behind him in a clear threat, and I stopped short.
“Hello, Amira,” she snarled at me with a cold sneer. “Stay back or the angry one loses his head.”
“Please,” I whispered, my hands trembling as I raised them to try and plead with her. “Please don’t hurt him.”
Ornella cocked her head with interest at my begging, those sharp silver-green eyes perceptive as always.
“You succumbed to the taíri bond. That is excellent! He will make such a wonderful example of how it feels to have your entire world ripped away,” she growled at me.
“Tell me,” she hissed, looking nothing like the friend that I had once known and loved, “how does it feel to stand by and watch as your mate is threatened?”
You must lose love to gain the forgiveness that will save your world.
“No!” I snarled in an instant refusal, power pulsing under my skin in response to the mere thought of being forced to lose Orion. “Please don’t do this. I did not know Sage was your mate or I never—”
“I saved your life. Provided for you and then sacrificed myself in order to protect you. And when I needed you, you just stood there and watched as he was taken.”
“I thought we were protecting you! We knew nothing of the Rot or that the Spring Court would collapse—”
“Be that as it may, millions of fey are now dead and displaced because of what you did. Such a tragedy must be answered for even if it was unintentional,” insisted her male companion behind me.
Unfortunately, I knew he was right…
“How?” I asked them with a glance over my shoulder toward the fey male.
“That is still to be determined,” he advised me.
“You have no authority to punish us,” hissed Ares.
“No?” Ornella laughed, and my heart shot up into my throat when she pressed her claws tighter around Orion’s windpipe. “This is all the authority I need,” she taunted. “The authority to rip out his throat!”
“Ornella,” I breathed, pleading to whatever gods were listening to me at that moment. “I will do anything.”
“Anything?” she verified, raising her brows.
“Anything,” I stressed, and she seemed to think about it for a long moment.
“What if all I need is for you to feel pain? What if all I ask of you is to know the crushing weight of losing what is most precious to you?” she demanded.
“Hurt me however you need to! But take it out of my flesh and not his. Please!” I pleaded with her.
“Amira—” he tried to object, but she dug her claws in again to silence him.
Do not speak. Please just trust me, I begged him down our bond that was still so new and beautiful in my mind.
Amira? Riordan spoke up. What is going on?
I realized he had sensed my turmoil, and try as I might, there was no keeping him out of my mind. I felt his rage when he saw what was happening across the City-States.
I am coming, he growled, although he need not have bothered telling me that. The earth and sky rumbled with his fury, and Ornella laughed knowingly.
“So Riordan knows. Such a shame he will be too late. But at least someone will know where to come and collect the bodies,” she added with a look at her companion.
My head whipped around in time to see the male fey throwing a ball of fire at Helena and Ares, which set their feathered wings ablaze instantly.
I did not realize I was screaming until a horrible crunch resounded through my soul and made everything seem to gutter out around me. Sound. Light. Gravity. All of it faded.
I turned around slowly, my ears ringing as I watched Orion slump over limply while Ornella allowed her vines to fall away from him.
A deep silence yawned open in my mind. I heard the distant sound of Riordan screaming down the bond before the pain hit me like an unforgiving aftershock.
And then my world shattered.
I hit the ground on my knees in a numb haze before darkness rushed in to smother me.