Lincatheron spun with the fluid grace of a predator, taking in the tableau in one quick glance. His glaive found the would-be killer’s throat before the man could recover from his surprise, opening him from ear to ear in one devastating cut.
Blood sprayed across my face, hot and copper-sweet.
“You magnificent, reckless idiot,” Lincatheron breathed, but there was something fierce and grateful burning across his face as he offered me his hand.
I took it, letting him haul me to my feet, moonsilver daggers humming with the memory of that impact. “Someone has to watch your back, Commander.”
“Wildfire.”Kaelen’s mental roar crashed through my skull.“Move.”
I looked up just in time to see a shadow dragon diving straight at us, claws extended and maw gaping wide enough to swallow us both whole.
The shadow dragon’s dive became a screaming plummet as Kaelen slammed into it mid-air, emerald and obsidian scales tangling in a storm of fury and violence. They hit the ground twenty feet away in an explosion of dirt and roars that shook the earth beneath my boots.
But there was no time to watch, three more Nyxarian soldiers had spotted us, their black armour gleaming with malevolent purpose as they closed in.
The first soldier came at me with an overhead strike meant to cleave me in half.
The black fire erupted from me like a geyser of pure destruction, but it came too wild, too hungry. Instead of the controlled streams I needed, it burst outward in writhing tentacles of shadow that lashed at everything within reach. I cursed and yanked it back, the effort leaving me gasping.
The daggers sang in my palms. A harmony that resonated in my bones as the moonsilver awakened to the taste of my blood and fury. I could feel them learning me, adapting to the rhythm of my heartbeat, the cadence of my breathing, the particular brand of violence that lived in my soul.
As they struck again—a slash aimed at my ribs—I sidestepped and let the dagger in my right hand rise to meet his descending blade, deflecting it just enough to slip inside his guard. The moonsilver found the gap between his gorget and helm, sliding home with a whisper that sounded almost like satisfaction.
He dropped like a stone.
The second soldier was faster, smarter. He came in low and vicious, trying to gut me before I could recover from the first kill. Golden flames lit at his fingers, but my daggers were already moving, already singing their lethal song as they wove through the air. Left hand parried, right hand struck, and suddenly his weapon was spinning away through the smoke while his lifeblood painted the ground crimson.
The third hesitated, just for a heartbeat, just long enough to register that her companions were dead. That hesitation killed her. By the time she hit the ground, she’d been opened in four different places.
I moved like water, like death given form, the daggers flowing through patterns I’d carved countless times.
The daggers hummed in my hands, warm and eager and satisfied.
“Behind you.”Kaelen’s warning sliced through my mind just as I spun to face a new threat.
But Lincatheron was already there.
His glaive slashed through the air with deadly grace as he brought it around in a devastating arc. But it wasn’t just steel that met the Nyxarian soldier’s charge—the very air around Lincatheron rippled like the surface of deep water disturbed by something vast moving beneath.
The scent of brine and crushing depths flooded my senses.
The soldier’s eyes went wide as water began pouring from nowhere. It flooded from the air itself, from the ground, from the spaces between spaces. It rose around his ankles, then his knees, then his chest with impossible speed as it held its shape in a perfect column around his thrashing form.
He tried to scream and choked instead, salt water flooding his lungs even as he stood on solid ground. His weapon fell from nerveless fingers as he clawed desperately at liquid that had no surface to break, no edge to escape.
Lincatheron’s glaive took his head while he drowned standing up.
The water vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving only a corpse and the lingering taste of deep ocean on the wind.
“Fucking hells,” I breathed, staring at Lincatheron with new respect. “Remind me never to piss you off near a bathtub.”
“The ocean doesn’t forget,” he said, silver spray trailing from his blade like seafoam. “And neither do I.”
The daggers purred in my grip, eager for more blood, more death, more of the beautiful violence they’d been forged to deliver. And gods help me, I was eager to give it to them.
But through the chaos, I sawher.
The woman before me was a striking vision, utterly out of place on the battlefield. She strode through the chaos with the ease of a morning walk, an unsettling confidence radiating fromher every step. Her gown—a flowing, blood-red silk—fluttered behind her, the fabric cut daringly low across her shoulders. It was an absurd choice for a battlefield, and yet she moved through the carnage untouched.
