“Fuck.”
“Basten!” Someone calls my name from the opposite side of the square. I catch sight of a few figures who have taken refuge on one of the few intact rooftops, a guildhall with a water tank on its roof. Lady Suri waves her arms, her face pinched and bruised. Ferra is beside her, clinging to a narrow iron spire, her silk dress in tatters. Folke guards the stairs with a broken spire as a makeshift spear, shoving it at any of the walking dead who attempt to climb the precariously balanced ladder.
I smack Rian, jerking my head toward the others.
We jog across the square, smashing moving corpses in our wake, until we reach the bottom of the guildhall.
“The castle is overrun by the dead,” Suri calls down, clutching her shoulder like it’s dislocated. “Folke got us out. We were fleeing toward the southern gate, but the dead were too many.”
“Stay there!” I shout.
And then I turn around. Look over the chaos. Once, none of this would have been my responsibility. I would have happily swiped a gin bottle from a burning pub and strolled out into a forest, worried about nobody’s hide but my own.
Everything’s different now.
People rely on me.
Dammit—I rely on them, too.
Tòrr rears up in the center of the Glassmarket, shrieking toward the sky. He catches a beam of sunlight in his horn and sends its blasting across the square, where it shatters a nearby church spire. More screams sound as rubble falls.
But then—a different scream.
“Sabine!” I cry.
I turn just in time to see a blast of grave-black fey crackle over her; she tumbles off Tòrr’s back and slams hard onto the broken stones.
I whip around.Motherfucker.
It’s that bastard, Immortal Woudix.
He strides out of a throng of his undead corpses, moving with sickening calmness as they snap their jaws at everything that moves—except him.
Their god.
Sabine shoves herself upright, bracing on blood-slicked hands. Silver pours from a gash on her temple, trailing down her jaw—but she doesn’t falter. Her teeth bare in a feral snarl as she throws one hand into the air.
Power ignites at her fingertips.
Her fey crackles—hot, wild, electric—and the ground beneath Woudix shudders. With a roar, roots explode upward, thick and gnarled, lashing like serpents to ensnare him.
But Woudix barely lifts his chin. One whispered word, no louder than breath—and the roots wither midair, shriveling black, collapsing to ash before they can strike.
Sabine’s fingers twist sharply again, undaunted.
This time, wind whips in a rising spiral, faster and faster, until a razor-edged cyclone forms in the heart of the Glassmarket, made of dust, debris, and shards of shattered glass.
The whirlwind tears through his armor. Shards of glass slash his leather and draw blood—but Woudix doesn’t flinch. He leans into the wind like it’s no more than a breeze, his eyes locked on Sabine.
Then he raises his hand.
And the dead answer.
A wall of his undead soldiers lurches forward in formation, groaning with hunger.
I start to charge, sword already high—but Rian grips my arm.
“Don’t,” he hisses. “They can’t hurt her—she’s immortal. But they can killyou.”
