My heart gave a painful lurch, overflowing with a feeling so immense it left no room for fear. “Rise or fall.”
He cupped my face, and his mouth crashed down on mine. This kiss was different. Fierce but certain. One that sealed the pact we’d made and branded itself on my soul.
When he pulled away, the warrior king stepped back into place. He grabbed his sword off the ground, and his gaze met mine.
I pulled my blades and gave him a curt nod.
We rushed side by side down the ridge toward Silverstream. The chittering of the Skathes grew from a hum to a deafening roar. The stench of rot filled the air. They were an ocean of death, nearly unstoppable. I’d never felt smaller. Or braver.
Because this man was by my side.
Gavelle wheeled overhead, his cry slicing through the din. A flash of teal and silver zipped past my ear as Pherin darted up to join the cinderhawk.
Stay back,I sent to her.Please stay safe.I couldn’t bear for her to be hurt.
I choose my own fate,she replied.
Lexie joined me on my left, her blades glinting, her face full of fury. A glance up showed Levar soaring above her in dragon form, his twilight scales glinting in the murky light.
“Stay close,” Derren shouted from her other side, mounted on Dare, his molten bull. The beast’s horns slashed out, and I could tell Dare was eager to impale some Skathes. Kerralyn rode her flying serpent above us, Keek’s black eyes surveying the mass churning ahead.
Even Maddox joined us, his war axe held in a white-knuckled grip, his expression full of grim determination. He rode Treane, his mountain cat-dire wolf hybrid. Slowing the beast nearby, he gave me a quick nod.
We were an army. A family. And we were rushing headlong into oblivion.
As we cleared the last of the slope and hit the flat plain, the Skathes reached the edge of the village, nightmares in flesh. Five feet of compact muscle and feral hunger, each one moving with twitching, unnatural speed, their clawed hands flexing. Their ashen skin stretched across their frames, their veins blue rivers pulsing with stolen magic. Hollow sockets glared where eyes should’ve been, pits that drank in the light. Jagged horns curved back from their skulls, and a tail lashed behind each of them, tipped with a spike. Their mouths gaped wide as they roared, their fangs ready to sink deep and suck away life.
That was all they wanted. To feed. Driven by instinct, they usually attacked alone. Today, they were guided by the one person we truly needed to kill, or they’d keep coming until they sucked us all dry.
Arrows flew from our archers, taking out the first few rows of creatures, but the ones behind lumbered over the fallen, surging toward us.
We hit the first line of Skathes. Trew had turned into a black-clad whirlwind of death at my side, his sword a blur of silver light that ended in sprays of fine, black ash. Skathes lunged for him, and he spun, his blade separating heads from necks. The bodies dissolved with a soft whoosh before they hit the ground.
This was no training exercise, with blunted blades or woodendummies. This was teeth and claws and death, and if I faltered, I’d fall here today.
Adrenaline surged through me, sharpening my senses. I met the first creature’s charge, ducking under its grasping claws and driving one of my new blades up and under its jaw. It took all my strength to sever its spine. It shrieked as it disintegrated into nothing.
The world devolved into a whirlwind of violence. Dragons swooped low, their jaws snapping Skathes in half before they unleashed flames that turned a swath of the horde into a pyre. Levar tore through the enemy ranks, Lexie now on his back, her blades singing out death.
It was even more visceral on the ground. Derren’s sword carved paths through the enemy, while Dare gored and stomped. Maddox’s wolf-cat was a streak of muscle and snapping jaws, a predator in her element, fighting with a ferocity that matched her bonded.
Screams echoed around me. Rage. Pain. Dying. A warrior I recognized from the training hall that first day went down, his throat torn out, his companion hawk shrieking as it was swarmed and pulled from the air. There was no time to mourn. Or think. Only to fight.
I spun, my blades flashing, and removed the head from another Skathe. My muscles screamed, my lungs burned, but I fought. All I could think of was the people I was willing to die for.
Another Skathe came at me from the side, its claws swiping for my throat. I leaped, tumbling through the air, severing its head from its neck with a blade. Its ashes washed over me, and I gasped for air, my eyes stinging.
Another slammed into me, knocking me down. Claws dug into my shoulders, and its face swept in close to mine. The putrid stench of rot and decay filled my lungs, gagging me. Its mouth gaped wide, and its fangs descended. Even with a burst of magic, it was all I could do to keep it away from my throat.
My vision swam, my blades slipping in my grasp.
I was going to die here. Crushed and consumed on a bloody field, my last sight a monster’s empty gaze.
Trew.
A furious peep cut through the battle.
Pherin darted between me and the Skathe, a tiny, impossible shield. Power surged through the air, and light exploded from her small form as she…shifted.
