Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Aurelie woke to a whisper of claws along her collarbone.
Vex crouched on her chest, wings tucked tight and eyes buggish.
“Wake up,” the vesper hissed, tugging at her hair. “Right now, before we both die very stupid deaths.”
Aurelie jolted upright, gasping and swatting instinctively at the vesper, who flitted away with a furious buzz.
“What is it?” she rasped, throat raw and eyes still half-glued with sleep. “How did you get in here?”
Vex pressed one tiny hand against Aurelie’s lips, shushing her. “Through the gap under the door. Obviously. And if I can get through, so can the others. So put your boots on and let’s get out of here.”
Aurelie blinked, mind struggling to latch onto the words until the bond snapped taut, jerking her fully into focus. Panic surged from her bonded like a second heartbeat against her own.
Without another word, she was out of the bed and stumbling to the fire, dragging on her clothes. They were stiff from drying and warm against her skin. “Where’d they go?”
Vex fluttered toward the door. “We’re being hunted. Your boys decided to play hero while you were drooling into your pillow.”
“I left them alone for a few hours and they decided to go to war?” Aurelie drew out her dagger. “Can you lead me to them?”
Vex hesitated, her long ears pinning back. “In theory. But we’ll have to get through them first.”
The vesper pointed to the door, and as Aurelie listened, she heard dozens of whispers weaving together in a low hum.
The sound slipped beneath her skin like threads and she scratched at herself, trying to get the menace of Nyxaris out of her head as she cracked the door open to see them clinging to the ceiling like spiders, their grins jagged as they twisted toward her.
At the foot of the stairs stood the innkeeper, no fewer than seven vespers swarming around as though she were carrion.
Their glow bled outward, spilling over the wooden floor and up the walls until even the woman’s skin seemed lit from within.
When her head snapped up, Aurelie’s stomach turned to stone.
Her eyes were milky white.
Vex’s claws dug into the collar of Aurelie’s cloak as she slammed and bolted the door shut, shuddering.
“The window!” she suggested, but a glance outside showed that a servant boy was already waiting below, soaked to the bone and clutching a pitchfork in both hands. His eyes were vacant. White.
The same vile red glow of the Nyxaris surrounded him, and Aurelie jerked the curtains closed.
“We need another way. There are too many to—” The words cut off as she doubled over suddenly, gasping as pain tore through her ribs. Aurelie staggered, catching herself on the wall.
It felt like there were a hundred barbs piercing into her skin, tearing at her flesh.
Breath ragged, she patted at herself, searching for wounds that weren’t anywhere to be found. Wounds that did not belong to her.
Severin. Yuri.
They were injured.
Vex clung tighter to her cloak, nervous, as Aurelie’s rage boiled.
How dare those men fly off without her?
How dare someone injure them?
She forced herself upright, hands curling around Vex to move the vesper from her shoulder to atop her head. “Hold on tight, we’re getting out of here.” The moment she felt tiny hands curling around her hair, Aurelie grabbed a linen sheet off the bed and threw the door open.
There were too many vespers to fight as she sprinted down the hall, so she improvised by tossing the sheet around more than a dozen Nyxaris who couldn’t react in time.
They shrieked, trying to fall back, but Aurelie refused to give them the opportunity.
She quickly bundled up the squirming sheet, knotting it together.
The vespers inside thrashed and hissed, but it’d take them a while before they managed to escape.
Many vespers still roamed free, hissing at Aurelie as she fled down the hall. For now, she did what she could to ignore them, focused on her objective.
The innkeeper was waiting for them at the base of the stairs, her face half-lost to shadow and her hands hanging limp.
She wasn’t alone.
Several figures drifted from the common room in various states of undress, making no sound but for the scuff of bare feet across old floorboards. There was a man in a tattered nightshirt. A woman in a long chemise. A merchant whose nudity was only partially concealed by the darkness.
Dozens more vespers kept watch, their red eyes shining from the shadows. They sat on the beams, voices braiding together and pressing into Aurelie’s mind so fiercely that she struggled to hear her own thoughts.
“Dangerous,” the vespers warned, digging their hold into the minds of the other humans. “The girl is dangerous. She runs with demons. Stop her. Kill her, or she will kill you.”
“They aren’t your puppets,” Aurelie spat, but the Nyxaris only giggled as they settled in to watch the show.
“Behind you!” Vex screamed, yanking Aurelie back by her hair.
The merchant had lunged with a bottle raised, its broken edges gleaming. Vex shot toward the man’s face, throwing him off balance just enough to give Aurelie time to catch his wrist and drive him into the nearest table, hard enough to knock out teeth.
Unfortunately, there was no time to recover before the innkeeper came for her, swinging an iron pan. She ducked just in time, wincing from another burst of phantom pain in her side.
You bastards better stay alive. Yuri wouldn’t be able to hear her. Even if she did learn to communicate with him by her thoughts alone, nonverbal communication with an angel extended only short distances. Still, she hoped at least one of them could feel her fury.
The pan struck the banister with a clang as she kicked at the innkeeper’s shin, knocking the woman’s feet out from beneath her.
Overhead, the vespers shrieked.
“Kill,” they urged. “Kill, kill, kill.”
Light, their magic was so potent that even Aurelie felt dizzy.
Their whispers sharpened, needling deeper into the minds of their victims until Aurelie could feel the rage boiling behind those glassy stares. Meanwhile, the phantom pains in her body were getting worse, her adrenaline spiking.
She needed to stop fooling around and get to her bonded.
She needed Glory.
Come on, she urged herself, eyes squinting shut as she tried to focus on its power. On the gentle press of warmth she’d felt only once before.
“I don’t mean to rush you,” Vex said, “but I have a very strong feeling that we’re going to die in the next thirty seconds if you don’t do something.”
“You’re not helping,” Aurelie hissed, straining for Glory and reaching for it with everything inside her. Every time she thought herself close, it slipped from her grasp like sand.
And why shouldn’t it? She was a liar. A murderer. Aurelie had no right to be bonded to someone as pure and good as Yuriel, or to hold such power.
It was useless.
Her throat went tight, and she breathed hard through her panic, relying on every bit of training she’d been through.
Glory wasn’t an option, but surely there was something else. A way to get out of this place without injuring any of these people too severely.
She considered the weapons at her disposal—a blade, some plates, a brass serving tray, utensils, empty cups, and some liquor bottles.
She could use the alcohol to start a fire. The smoke might create enough panic to send the vespers fleeing and break their hold. But if it didn’t …
No. Aurelie couldn’t take the chance of having that many souls on her conscience. There had to be something else. Something she was missing.
On her head, Vex curled tight, trembling. Unlike the Nyxaris, the glow around her was not red, but a faint white that flickered in and out as she shook.
From that light, an idea took form.
“Vex,” she whispered. “When I give the signal, I need you to get as bright as you can.”
The vesper frowned, a deep furrow between her thin silver brows. But despite her terror, she nodded.
“How many of you are there?” Aurelie called out, turning her attention up toward the vespers as she inched closer to the tables. “Fifty? A hundred? And still you haven’t managed to beat one single girl? Light, it makes sense why everyone thinks of you more as a nuisance than a threat.”
The Nyxaris’ eyes gleamed red, their faces souring.
“I don’t like this,” Vex whimpered, curling against her as several Nyxaris hissed.
Aurelie ignored her.
“Look how much effort you’ve put in,” she said, pivoting slowly around the table as her fingers edged closer to the brass tray lying there. “And yet, all I have to do is summon a little light”—she lifted the tray, its surface gleaming—“and you all run screaming.”
The vespers swarmed down in protest.
“Now, Vex!”
A burst of pale radiance cracked through the inn like a match struck in the dark, throwing long shadows up the walls and catching the silverware in flashes. Aurelie used the tray to reflect the light, making it look larger, brighter. Like Glory.
The Nyxaris shrieked as they fell back, falling for her ploy, but it wouldn’t last long.
Aurelie clutched Vex tight, using the short distraction to burst through the inn and straight toward the exit.
“We’re running?” Vex spat. “That’s your big plan?”
“My big plan is keeping us alive.”
It was clear the Nyxaris didn’t think they’d make it to the exit, for there was only a single merchant guarding the door, an iron poker clutched in his hand. There was something hesitant in the way he moved, as though the Nyxaris’ hold on him was slipping.
Aurelie would have to use that against him.
She kicked a chair at his shins hard enough to splinter wood, and the man toppled.
His poker skittered into the dark, and rather than give him a chance to reach for it, she launched the serving tray at his face.
It struck the merchant with a clang that echoed in her teeth, and he fell once more into a heap.
This time, the man stayed still.
Vex’s wings fluttered fast, delighted. “You’re better at this than I thought!”
But Aurelie wasn’t celebrating until they were out. She burst through the front door, blood rushing, only to slam into someone mid-stride.
Her blade was halfway drawn, expecting the servant boy before she saw horns, black hair, and the plumes of heavy breath that rose ragged from Severin’s lungs.
“Thank the Light,” she gasped. “I was worried you’d—”
Severin grabbed her by the arm and shoved her behind him in one motion, his other hand clutched tightly around his flute. He raised it to his lips as the vespers poured out of the inn, and let out an angry burst of song that startled even Aurelie.
The vespers hissed, their bodies recoiling as if struck. Some clutched their ears. Others turned on one another, shrieking as they fell from the sky.
She stood behind the demon all the while, heart pounding from the chaos.
But Severin wasn’t watching the vespers. He’d already turned back to her, a muscle in his jaw flexing tight.
“Hold your thanks,” he said, taking her by the hand. “They have Yuri.”