The guards moved forward, not stopped even by Zephryn’s rumbling growl.
Idiots.
I lifted a hand, telling the big dragon to back the fuck off.
I’d been dying for payback against Gravelock, ever since I carried my broken sister down a thousand steps. Ever since I saw what the Butcher did to Kaden.
Ever since I’d realized evil existed in this world and it was my job to stamp it out, one preening dickwad at a time.
But we had to get through these guards first.
My blade sang through the air as I parried a strike wreathed in crackling lightning, the impact sending blue sparks cascading across the ice-slicked rocks, a shock of pain down my arm.
Behind me, Ryland rolled beneath a plume of flame that hissed through the falling snow, deflecting another fiery blast that would have pierced his throat.
The five Fae guards moved with inhuman grace across the treacherous shore, elemental magic swirling around them like living shields—fire and ice, lightning and wind. While we were distracted, Gravelock crept closer to the gates, and Tristan launched off the ramparts, landing in front of them, neck weaving link a snake’s, hissing softly.
Ryland battled two Fae—wind and fire—his bladeflashing upward, severing the wind Fae's wrist and sending his entire hand spinning into the ice. I was already moving, anticipating the fire wielder’s attack, my boots fighting for purchase on the slick stone. I swept the legs from beneath the fire wielder, rolled over his falling form, and came up over him, stabbing my sword down through his breastplate, his chest, into the rocks beneath him.
Ryland sent one of the soldier’s weapons spinning away, then ended him with a perfectly executed blow to his throat, the last foe circling us both, rivers of lightning streaming from his fingers, melting the snow around him into sludge.
“He hits either of us with that, and we’re dead,” Ryland warned.
“Yeah, no shit. I have eyes.”
With a roar that sounded more like impatience than might, Zephryn belched out a mouthful of blue fire and incinerated the soldier where he stood, his ashes crumbling onto the muddy shore with a final sizzle of pathetic electric sparks, snow slowly swirling around us.
The two remaining soldiers closed ranks around Gravelock, his aura of shadowy magic snapping around him, before combining with his guards own deadly powers.
Shadow and lightning and…more shadows.
A shield of writhing black surrounded the trio, shot through with white bolts of energy, saturating the air with electricity and the stench of brimstone, too heavy for even the winds to clear out.
“Fuck.” Ryland cursed, pacing from side to side, gripping his weapon. “We’ll never reach him now, not protected by that much magic.”
But I was more worried about that sadistic glint in the Butcher’s eyes. The same anticipatory gleam he’d had rightbefore he’d made Kaden bleed. I sensed that cruel power reaching for us, even before the blood in my veins froze.
Before I could shout a warning, agony erupted through my body, Ryland groaning out another curse beside me. My knees hit the ground, sword falling from my stiff fingers as gashes opened up all over my body, blood dripping out my nose, down over my lips.
“I’m doneplaying.Now, you’re the ones who will die in the mud,” Gravelock glared at Ryland. “Then we’ll walk across your ruined bodies and I willtake what I am due.”
A wall of pain swamped me, pain so intense I couldn’t make a sound—not even a whimper—as I collapsed, just before the castle’s double doors blew wide open.
53
LYRAE
Imust be dead.
Because that can’t possibly be real.
Rooke strode toward us, magic billowing around him like smoke from a raging fire, a long gold-and-silver staff gripped in one hand.
On his head, gleaming like a wreath of molten fire, was the Crown.
His head was bent forward, as if he were still adjusting to its weight—or the weight of his new authority—the Crown’s bloodstone tips pulsing with power. Power that seemed to gild Rooke’s entire body in veins of rippling, golden light.
As if bonding with the Triune had turned Rooke himself into therealFae weapon, dangerous in ways I could barely comprehend, given it looked like he’d stepped out of some ancient legend.
