“What?” Galen gawked at him in disbelief. “That is more than half your fortune.”
“I can make it back three-fold with her Celestial.”
Lucenna paused. Cassiel held his breath, and the audience fell quiet to hear her reply. At the end of the market, Azure Guards shoved their way through the crowd. She noticed them as well.
Lucenna held out the chains of her Celestial. “Deal.”
Draven snatched them, and a victorious grin split his scarred face.
Cassiel did his best not to react. He had his freedom!
Lucenna snapped her fingers and her two slaves came forward. The shortest of them took Cassiel’s chains, and the other took the key from a dwarf to unchain him. He readily held out his shackled wrists. The key snicked in the keyhole and the chains clanged heavily at his feet. They unlocked the shackles around his ankles, then the short slave took his arm. Dyna raised her head slightly enough to reveal a smile under the shadow of the hood.
Galen glowered at Lucenna as he thrust a large sack of gold at her.
“Thank you.” She snapped her fingers again, and her hooded slaves led Cassiel down the ramp.
He noticed Elric’s tall, green form in the crowd, and they locked eyes. The orc made his way to the stage, gripping his hammer in his enormous fists. Cassiel shook his head, signaling that he didn’t need help now. Dyna peeked at Elric from beneath her hood, and he halted when he recognized her.
“It was a pleasure doing business with you,” Draven called after them.
Lucenna continued ahead to the waiting horse without looking back.
Rawn quickly unlocked the cage strapped to Fair and leaped inside. He motioned for Cassiel and Dyna to hurry in as Lucenna mounted Fair’s saddle. But Cassiel stopped. The golden Celestial left on the stage, watched them leave. They couldn’t leave him there. He was going to say so, but the Celestial met his stare and grinned.
The dwarves plucked a handful of his golden feathers, only for them to disintegrate in their hands. The Celestial’s image distorted and faded away until it was Zev left standing. He laughed at Draven’s gaping expression.
Galen’s head snapped in Cassiel’s direction. A gust of wind hit them at that moment, blowing off Dyna’s hood.
“Draven, they swindled us!” Galen shouted.
Zev quickly shifted into a wolf and snapped his teeth at the poachers, making them jump back. He leaped off the stage into the crowd.
Draven shoved his men. “Stop them!”
The sky darkened as shadows swept over cobblestone streets, and a wave of gasps and frightened cries rolled through the market. Cassiel looked up, and his breath caught. A flock of female Celestials in golden scale mail armor soared through the sky in a flutter of colorful wings. The sigil of a tree in a mountain peak embossed their breastplates.
The Valkyrie of Hermon Ridge.
Yelrakel flew in the center, a stream of scarlet hair flaring around her shoulders. Her fierce gaze flickered from Cassiel to the poachers, and he saw the rage enter her face. At their leader’s war cry, the Valkyrie whipped out their weapons as one. The sky blazed with white fire, but her sword burned with vivid cerulean flames.
Yelrakel dived and landed on the stage with a burst of wind. Her gray wings snapped open, and she whipped around, hurtling Draven’s dwarves back. One poacher left standing in front of her froze with a vial of divine blood in his shaking hand. She looked at him with dark eyes. Her seraph sword swept through the air and slashed clean through him. There was no cry. One moment he was there, the next he burst into a cloud of embers and ash. Nothing left of him but the vial shattering at her feet. Red dripped off the edge of the stage.
A breath shuddered out of Cassiel. She killed a human. Without hesitation. Without mercy.
Yet her Seraph fire, given only to the Celestials blessed byElyon,remained.
Yelrakel faced the stunned crowd, and her cold voice carried over the silence, chilling Cassiel to his bones. “You have defiled our prince with your filthy greed. Now this city willburn.”
The Valkyrie blotted the sun as they descended upon them. The market erupted in chaos. People screamed and scrambled in every direction.
“No!” Cassiel shouted, but his order went ignored.
Blades flashed in steel and fire as they cut down anyone who held a piece of him. He couldn’t look away from the massacre. Blood rained, and begging cries filled his ears. Bodies became pyres of flame, smoke choking the air as ash scattered through the wind like black snow.
Death arrived in Azure, and there was no stopping it.
A Valkyrie swiped at Lucenna. The sorceress cast out a wall of water and threw back the female. Fair reared with a wild neigh, racing away with her and only Rawn in the cage.
