Bradley only hesitated a moment, just long enough for Morkai to slightly lift his cane. On trembling legs, he strode eight paces forward.
Toward the waiting wraiths.
Only a dozen or so feet stood between Bradley and the apparitions.
The guard bearing Cora’s weapons handed her the bow and quiver. She took them with a wary expression that echoed the dread Teryn felt inside. Arming Cora felt too good to be true. She kept her eyes trained on the duke as she slung her bow over her shoulder, creating an odd contrast with her elegant gown. “What is this about?”
Morkai gestured at Bradley. “He will face my wraiths while you, Aveline, defend him. If he still lives after one minute, both he and his father go free.”
Teryn glanced from Cora to the wraiths, then the two prisoners.
Before anyone could argue, Morkai’s voice bellowed across the field. “Attack!”
The wraiths surged forward at a run. Their moves were neither silent nor loud but something in between. Something hollow and wrong and unsettling. Cora bit back a cry of alarm and nocked an arrow. She sent it flying into the heart of one of the first wraiths. The wraith disappeared in a puff of mist. Teryn watched as her arrow shot through the ones behind it as well, carving a line through the oncoming hoard. For a moment, Teryn thought the duke’s plan had backfired, but just as Cora shot another arrow, clearing yet another line through the translucent bodies, wisps of mist filled the previous gap, and the bodies reformed. They stumbled, paused, but soon the reanimated specters were running again. Cora shot another. Another. But there were too many. No sooner did she obliterate one did another take its place. They couldn’t be killed. They could hardly be slowed.
Too soon, they surrounded the handcuffed man, their ghostly weapons slicing through his flesh as if they were made of steel. Cora continued to shoot, tears streaming down her cheeks as her efforts proved more fruitless with every arrow.
Until there was nothing left to defend.
“Stop.” Morkai’s voice no longer bellowed but caressed the night, a whisper against the not-quite-soundless slaughter on the field. The wraiths stopped at once and retreated to their previous positions, leaving the body crumpled and alone.
The older man cried out, wailing for his son.
Cora angled herself toward Morkai, but a guard was already at her side, wrenching the bow from her hands. He made no move to take her quiver, however. The prisoner continued to weep for his son as Morkai strode over to the body. Stopping just before the corpse, the duke lifted his hands, palms level with his waist. Teryn could hardly breathe, hardly blink, as he watched Morkai’s strange posture. Then something began to move over Bradley’s body. It started as a strange undulating motion, like snakes sliding over the dead man’s skin.
It was blood.
Teryn’s throat went dry as he watched a ruby pool gather in the hollow of the man’s collarbone, then—against all impossibility—began to rise into the air. Crimson tendrils lifted from the body to the duke’s hand, forming an orb. The ball of blood remained suspended midair, following Morkai’s palm as he rotated it upward.
The duke turned away from the corpse and approached the weeping prisoner. “I’m sorry Princess Aveline failed you and your son.”
Cora made a strangled sound.
The duke kept his attention on the man, still sprawled on his knees, cuffed hands clasped together as if in prayer. He muttered something too quiet to be heard. “What did you say?” Morkai said gently.
The man lifted his head, his wounded temple still seeping. There was not grief but defiance in his eyes. “I said, I pray the seven devils drag you to hell.”
Morkai looked down his nose at him. “They can try.” Then, with the orb of blood still hovering over one palm, he raised the other toward the man. A thin tendril of blood lifted from the man’s open wound, then snaked through the air and wove between the duke’s fingers. The first orb of blood stretched out until it too resembled thread. The two sources of blood began to connect, swirling around one another, bending, twisting, weaving, until they merged as one.
The prisoner made a choking sound.
Morkai fluttered his fingertips, and the tapestry became solid. Then, with a snap of his fingers, the blood-weaving disappeared.
The man dropped at the same moment, sprawled limp on his side.
Lifeless.
Sightless.
Dead.
Teryn’s gaze shot to Morkai. “You’re a…” His words were trapped in his throat. It seemed an insult to call him a witch. Cora was a witch. Witches used magic. The duke, on the other hand…
This was something else. Darkness. Sorcery.
“I prefer the term blood mage,” he said, “but someday you will call me your king.”
38
