Bard and Ash kept close to each other, both Rifters, they snapped thighs and shins, breastbones and cracked ribs in two. Tova perched on one of the stairwells firing arrows into the chaos with Junius and Lynx.
My mother and father rarely raised blades anymore. Two formidable forces careened into the center of battles, slaughtering side by side. Most folk feared death. Daj could grant it to them. My mother seemed unassuming, but the slightest brush of her fingertips across an opponent and they tumbled forward, uncertain how to walk, how to lift a sword. Dead before they reached the ground when another knife from another hand would finish the bloody work.
The elven palace was lost in beautiful madness.
Skadi struck at a Ljosalfar warrior, dodging his blows. She parried, he jabbed.
On the first step to go to her aid, and I was met with my own battle. A burly warrior with a gold ring dangling from each ear and blood on his gleaming tunic.
“Hello, there.” I rolled my sword in my grip.
The warrior cried out as he leveled a sturdy strike toward my middle. I spun away and crashed the edge of my sword down on his. I kicked at the man’s knee, bending it awkwardly. He cursed me and stepped back to reset his position.
“You should leave with your restitution, alver prince.” The guard backed up, but tightened his hold on his own weapon. “Prince, it is in your best interests to give the queen to her own people.”
He made a sloppy strike for my neck.
I dodged and shouted loud enough my voice rose over the clang of steel against steel. “Fire! I have a question.”
“Now?” Skadi managed to catch her warrior’s shoulder.
“As good a time as any.”
I could practically hear her exasperation.
“What is the”—she grunted and spun out of a blade lock with the guard—“question?”
“Why”—I struck, my warrior dodged— “does this sod call you queen already?”
Skadi sliced and cut her daggers, ripping open the side of her warrior’s face with a deep strike. She kicked out one of his feet, knocking him to the ground.
When she pressed her boot over his chest, she paused to look back at me. “Eldirard crowned me.”
I ducked another feckless strike. My opponent seemed to be weary. I could use it. My strikes quickened. They kept to his weaker side, until he was panting and a glimmer of fear took hold of his gaze.
“Where is the deceitful king?”
Skadi cried out when she rammed her dagger into the chest of her warrior. She ripped the blade free and spun around. “Dead.”
When the elven standing against me stumbled, I palmed his face, forcing the most horrific ways he would die into his mind—torture, severed tongues, plucked bones—until he screamed and the nightmares started to rot his mind.
I cut my sword over his throat.
With the back of my hand, I wiped sweat off my brow in time for another warrior to take the fight with me.
“And . . .” My sword crashed with the elven. He moved swifter than the first, seemed thirstier for blood. “How are we feeling about the death?”
“Conflicted.” Skadi shoved a new man off the point of her dagger she had rammed in his belly.
“Understood.”
“I’m glad you do.”
“Your happiness is always my desire.”
“As it should be.”
“Agreed.” I threw a small knife, lodging it into the back of a fleeing guard.
