Fury, surging forth like a rogue wave.
She ducked as a spear thrust out from beside her. Before she came back to standing, she drove Gutrender upwards, out, andthrough.Innards spilled across the dais.
She swung again, taking out the next guard. Down, she marched, Jaxon at her side as they cut through their enemies.
Four guards dropped to two in a single swipe from Gutrender.
Two guards dropped to none as Jaxon’s bird bones landed home in eyes or hearts or sliced across jugulars, draining their lifeblood.
“I’m almost out!” Jaxon yelled. “We need to go.”
He was paces away, his hands raised as he called on his Shadowblood curse, the weight of Sonara’s skirts lightening as bone by bone was removed.
Sonara let her own curse guide her, ducking when it beckoned, dodging when it tasted the sharp anticipation of a swing.
Her bare feet reached the bottom of the dais, slippers discarded in the bloodshed.She cut through a guard’s spear, wood splintering with a sound like lightning. Another spear dove towards her gut. Sonara feinted backwards, but a bird bone spiraled past her ear to land in the man’s chest. Two more followed, little white missiles, and he dropped, lifeless on the stones.
“I’m out,” Jaxon said. He was breathless, hunched over as the exhaustion from using his curse weighed him down. “We have to leave.”
The king was nowhere to be seen. The dais was empty, save for the corpses strewn about.
“He ran,” Sonara said, wiping blood from her face. “Like a child.”
Silence, followed by theplinkof fresh blood dripping onto the gold tiles.
“No ring,” Jaxon said.
“No ring,” Sonara echoed, and lifted Gutrender. “But this will do.”
Jaxon stared at the blood and the blade. “You frighten me, Lady Morgana.”
“Lady Morgana is dead. And you will be too, if you don’t drop the charade. You realize this changes things, don’t you?” She lifted the sword. “They’ll send more. Jira won’t rest until we’re placed among the other bodies in Deadwood.”
The prison camp was far worse than any fate she could imagine.
Jaxon only shrugged. “We’ve made it out of worse situations.”
A bold lie. But they turned towards the exit together anyway, ready to fight off their fate. The heavy doors groaned, ancient and tired as they heaved them open to let the Deadlands air rush in.
Jira’s castle sat perched atop a single flattened mesa that dropped hundreds of feet straight down to desert sands.At the front entrance, only a single stone road led down to the capital city of Stonegrave.
Sonara stared down that road now, the dry wind shifting from sweltering daytime heat to the sudden chill of a desert night.
Far below, she could see the red and brown rooftops of tightly crammed together homes, the sharp, knife-like Scholar’s Keep cutting above the tallest buildings. Not far from it, the rounded bell tower of Stonegrave stood proudly, flocks of colorful fowl dipping and twisting in the sky as they soared past.
Beyond it all—the endless expanse of desert that made up most of the Deadlands, as far as the eye could see.
It was eerily quiet; no carriages waiting, no steeds lined up at the gates. The ladies and their guards had abandoned the castle, likely hidden deep within the city streets by now, far away from the two Shadowbloods that had poisoned the throne room with their presence.
“Strange,” Jaxon said.
Sonara felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. “There should be more guards,” she said. “There arealwaysmore.”
Just as she said it, the bell tower began to ring.
A solid resounding clang, it echoed across the city. A warning to all.
Danger has come to Stonegrave.
