The ollphéist lofted its head and screamed at the sky, its tail thrashing wildly. I tried to swing myself back up onto the crest of its spine but had no leverage. I squinted up at where my sweaty palm was beginning to slip from my dagger. And realized I’d been going about this the wrong way.
The blade had lodged between two scales, in the tender flesh below. Fresh adrenaline pulsed into my flagging muscles. I didn’t need to destroy the armor—I simply had to find the chinks. Hoisting myself upward, I reached with the other dagger, aiming for the nearest gap between two glistening scales. The blade sank into flesh. Again, the monster howled and shuddered beneath me, wheeling as it tried to shake me off.
I grinned, even as sweat sheened on my skin and my legs swung wildly beneath me.
Tonight was finally getting interesting.
I climbed the monster like a wall, slamming my daggers into its flesh and kicking up for my next hold. It wasn’t easy going—I’d never climbed a wall this angry. But although I had succeeded in diverting the wyrm’s attention, I wasn’t sure it was much help to Irian. He was badly injured. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him try to climb to his feet, but the leg the monster had struck hung limp, and he crumpled back to the ground. His entire left side was stained with silvery blood. More of the liquid pooled on the ground beneath him.
He was bleeding out. If I still wanted to ferret out his secrets, then murder him myself… I was running out of time.
Panting, I hauled myself onto the ollphéist’s skull. It reared up and whipped its head back and forth, but I braced myself with my daggers. Then I swung, aiming for the monster’s only visible weakness—its glowing yellow eyes.
My dagger burst the outer membrane like a bubble. Heavy, burning ooze gushed out. The wyrm’s iris rolled wild and excruciatingly close as it howled havoc at the sky. I tried to shove the dagger deeper—I had to pierce its brain to kill it—but the fluid was too thick. The monster clawed at its face, leaving purple score marks on its own scales and narrowly missing me.
“Colleen!”
Somehow, Irian had made it to his feet. In the fog, his eyes glowed like twin moons. He held up his ichor-striped blade.
“Catch.”
He flung the Sky-Sword. It sliced through the mist, dark as the wing of a great black bird. And I—painfully aware I was risking a finger, if not a whole hand—reached up to catch it.
The hilt of the Treasure struck my palm. Power sizzled through my whole body, scalding in its intensity. It was nothing like the creeping, bristling sensation of my Greenmark. This—this was like being struck by lightning. Energy sizzled along my bones. A high wind buffeted my hair. Pure, unfetteredmagicsang along my skin, nearly overwhelming me. My eyes fluttered shut.
Images flashed behind my eyelids—black cliffs, silver skies, bones of metal holding a dying world together at the seams…
I snapped my eyes open, clinging to the shreds of my resolve. I raised the blade high. And sliced it down into the monster’s staring eye.
Chapter Twenty
The black metal sliced through vitreous liquid, pierced bone, and drove deep into the creature’s brain. I didn’t so much hear the monster’s death-scream asfeelit, reverberating upward through my arm until my whole body resounded with it. The ollphéist swayed, bucked its head. For a breathless moment, I hung weightless in the air. Then the wyrm collapsed beneath me, and I fell with it.
I grasped for the sword, my dagger,anythingto hold on to. But my hands were slippery with ichor. I dropped, slammed hard against armored scales, and bounced off. My training curled me into a loose ball before I hit the ground, but the impact still jarred me to my bones. I tumbled over the pebbled strand, rolled to a stop. My vision blurred.
I forced myself to my feet.
The ollphéist coiled in its death throes, the Sky-Sword like a shard of night piercing its eye. Irian was also struggling, clearly racked with pain as he collapsed back onto the ground. The earth and air—the very shadows—rumbled. Wind howled, and pebbles bounced ominously on the beach. I threw myself down beside him, skidding on shale.
“Stop moving.” Morrigan, there was so muchblood—if that was even what you called the bright liquid pumping out of his wounds. I jerked my new mantle over my head—sorry, Corra—and balled it up against Irian’s back. It did little to stanch the flow—within moments, the russet cloth was bathed in silver.
Irian looked moments from death. His marble skin was gray as the fog, and the black tattoos climbing over his arms and chest looked like they might strangle him.
My hands stilled as the thought once more caressed me: Would it be so awful to just… step back?
I hadn’t wanted to watch him mangled to death by a monster. But this? This would be easy. I wouldn’t have to slit his throat or plunge a blade into his heart. His eyes would close. His body would still. And I could take the Sky-Sword and Eala and Rogan andrun. Back to Fódla. Back—
Beneath me, the earth grumbled another warning. The trees at the edge of the forest shook. A flare of memory seared me—another night on this same beach, when I’d saved Chandi from drowning. Water falling upward, stones flying sharp as arrows, roots ripping free from the earth.
Sudden dread crept close. If Irian died… what happened tothisplace?
“I am… fine.” Irian’s voice was barely audible. His head lolled onto his shoulder. He cracked one silver eye open. “Need to… fort.”
“You don’t look fine.” I quirked an eyebrow at him. “And if you need to get to the fort, can’t you just—”
I wiggled my fingers. When he looked at me blankly, I mimed putting my hands on my knees and vomiting into the grass. Astonishingly, this seemed to amuse him. It was the first time I’d seen him smile fully—his lush lips parted to reveal straight, gleaming teeth. The expression turned my heart to glass and threatened to shatter it. Even moments from death, he was so obnoxiouslybeautiful.
“Too weak.”
