“Shit!” She stumbled back, legs locking against the ground that seemed to heave beneath her.
It lunged, abandoning all others, limbs snapping wide like broken spears, every line of its misshapen body angled toward her.
Jakobav intercepted in a blur of steel, his blade flashing across its side. “It can’t see!” he barked, shoulders braced against the impact. “A Veil Leach senses power and feeds on it! I’ve never seen one hone in like that—what did you do?”
“I—I tried to access my power…I don’t know!” she shouted, and with no other weapon left, she hurled her knife.
The blade flew true, spinning end over end, but when it struck the split in its skull, it vanished as if it had never existed, swallowed whole into that endless wound like a drop into a bottomless well.
The Leach reared back, towering higher, its limbs stretching unnaturally wide, then drove forward again with enough force to crack the ground.
Maeren was faster. She vaulted into its path, blades flashing in an X that raked across its chest, the sound like steel scraping glass. The strike landed, but the creature’s counter-blow was brutal. The force hurled her backward, her body slamming into the dirt with a crack that made Ella’s stomach lurch.
“Maeren!” Thane roared, tearing toward her, but the creature was already descending, its too-long arms bending at wrong angles as it prepared to finish her with a blow that would cleave her in half.
And then, movement so swift Ella almost missed it. Soren emerged from the treeline as if the shadows themselves had spit him out, his knives already in motion. One blade sliced clean across the Leach’s shoulder, while the other buried itself deep into the sinew of its hind limb.
Ella’s eyes widened, and she stumbled backward.
The creature screamed again.
Savina struck, erupting from behind Jakobav with the ferocity of a storm breaking its banks, her blade gleaming brutal in the firelight as she drove it deep into the creature’s chest. The steel sank straight through the pulsing split in its skull, biting into the core that seemed to shudder in recognition.
The Veil Leach seized, its limbs locking in place, then it exploded, flesh and blackness spraying out. The clearing convulsed as a shockwave burst from its core, not wind but something visible and tangible, bending the fabric of the world around them.
The Veil between realms buckled like glass under a hammer. The blast threw everyone to the ground except Jakobav.
He staggered back, head snapping to the side as a spray of the creature’s dark ichor splashed across his mouth.
“No!” Ella’s voice tore free, panic raw.
What if a Veil Leach’s blood is poisonous?
His body locked, spine arched. His eyes rolled white, then burned black, veins threading with silver light that flickered like molten rivers beneath his skin.
And then he moved, and he was not Jakobav at all.
His movements cut through the clearing with the same unnerving jerking as the Leach, each step too stiff, too fast. And then his gaze snapped to her. Black fire burned in his eyes, silver veins flaring under his skin as though they would tear him apart from the inside.
The sight rooted her where she stood, terror climbing up her spine.
What if he’d just been devoured and remade right in front of her? What if he didn’t come back? The thought hit like a blow to her chest, raw and unrelenting.
She shouldn’t care this much about him, the Dravaryn warlord who had forced her to come here, yet devastation rose, fierce and choking, a desperate urge to drag him back from whatever that demonic creature’s tainted blood had done to him.
But then, slowly, the silver bled away. His body sagged, color rushing back into his skin. Jakobav collapsed to one knee, dragging in ragged breaths as the remains of the Leach dissolved into smoke around him, its ichor hissing into nothing on the ground.
A scream cracked the air. Definitely human this time.
Maeren.
She was down, her leg twisted at a wrong angle that made Ella’s stomach pitch. Blood slicked the earth beneath her where she had landed, her face pale but her grip still locked tight around her blades as if she would rise and fight again by sheer will alone.
Savina staggered a few feet away, one hand pressed hard against her side where the creature’s thrashing limb had cut deep on its way down. Blood seeped between her fingers, but she stayed on her feet, teeth bared, eyes flashing like she dared the world to try and put her down.
Ella had found herself among a group of people whose stubbornness rivaled her own.
Thane was bleeding too, a fresh gash running down his arm where one of the Leach’s claws had raked him in the chaos. He swore under his breath, flexing his fingers around the haft of his axe.
