“We’ll get there in time, Sam,” Tiernan assures him with a pat on the knee. The boy is one of the many powerless inhabitants of Letum, but he needs no magic to carve apart the Strayed. He’s younger than Sam and me, stolen from Willa’s world long after I’d escaped Somnya and sailed away.
Though I don’t know the details of what happened to him, I can guess well enough by the pleasure he derives from each drop of their blood he spills.
Sam nods, still staring out the window into the glowing depths of the forest. “Adira is more than capable of protecting herself,” he says. His gaze drifts to me. “But at what cost?”
Neither Tiernan nor I have an answer for that. At least, not a soothing one. So instead, I give him a promise. “I’ll tear Dawson apart before he ever has a chance to get near her.”
Sam shoots me a grateful look, but I don’t need his thanks. Just as Adira is Sam’s heart, he is mine. Him, Tiernan, Marina—they are the reasons I haven’t given myself over to death and darkness. My reminders of why the sacrifices and the pain will always be worth it.
As the acrid smell of smoke permeates the carriage, the ease between us slips away.
“Fuck,” I mutter, dread slicing through me like a scythe as the tree-city comes into view.
The Grove is wreathed in smoke and chaos. The curtain of moss and vines usually shielding the city from the outside world is aflame, oranges and yellows licking up the foliage and flaring into the canopy above. Fire races from branch to branch, eating through buildings and sending rope bridges careening to the ground. Grove-dwellers race between trees, dragging scorched bodies from buildings, dousing flame where they’re able and fleeing when they can’t.
The wheels have barely stopped rolling when Sam charges out of the carriage and out into the noxious air. Heat buffets against us like a boiling wall, as Tiernan and I duck out behind him. My vision blurs, as I struggle to get my bearings in the thick smoke, blinking back tears to determine where the attack is originating.
It seems to beeverywhere.
Strayed scale trunks; they dart between branch and flame alike, sowing chaos and reigning terror wherever they land. Their clothes burn and their bodies bleed, and still, their eerie laughter ricochets through the shadows, intertwining with the harrowing screams of the Grove Dwellers.
There’s no sign of Adira or Dawson, nor any of the Silva Lucai. My death spirals out ahead of us, searching for the unmistakable feel of the Strayed. Colder even than death and far emptier, it doesn’t take long to understand where Dawson has led the majority of his forces: the Nyawa.
Rage flares through me, icing over the decayed remains of my heart and crackling down to my fingertips. If the tree of souls burns, so will Adira’s people.
“The Nyawa!” I shout to Tiernan. He only nods, pulling two axes from the belt at his hip. Without preamble, he sends oneflying toward a nearby Strayed. It hits with a sickeningthump,and the boy tumbles face-first into the dirt. Tiernan yanks the weapon back out matter-of-factly, not sparing the boy more than a glance, before he races after Sam.
Tiernan grew up with the oldest of the Strayed. He knows better than anyone the toiling depravity that lives in the spaces their magic should be. The evil that grows in place of their humanity.
I hurtle after him, hearing the battle long before I see it, the clamor unmistakable even over the roar of fire. Metal clashing against metal. Sounds of rage and gore filtering through thick, black smoke.
The Strayed have the Nyawa surrounded. Some carry flaming torches, feeding the billowing fires with wild peals of laughter. Others are armed with swords and bows, axes and spiked clubs. Their eerie cackles and whooping cries of delight send an icy chill sluicing down my spine. The faces of children and teenagers, twisted in such depraved malice, never fails to affect me.
But tonight, it’s more than their youthful faces. More than their evil.
It’s the organized way they move.
Like an infantry.
They advance in unison, rough-crafted shields raised against the Silva Lucai’s barrage of arrows. And at the back, watching with wild fervor, is my brother. I don’t need to draw closer to see the unhinged madness lining his smile, nor the calculating determination in his eyes—eyes the color mine used to be, before I’d anchored myself to the island. A deep, clear blue.
My death spirals out from me, and the black sludge of rot and violence in my veins turns to acid. Pain lances through me as it races from my heart to my fingertips, and I let out a wild snarl as I push it outward to where my ribbons dance wildly in the air.
I’ll decompose his organs one by one, flay his rotted skin from his body.
My death spears for the nearest Strayed, impaling three of them through the chest. Their bloated corpses fall at my feet as pain shoots through my nerves, sizzles over my skin. I breathe it in just as I breathe in their death, moving slowly forward toward where Sam has disappeared into the fray.
It’s easy enough to track his path as bodies crumple unconscious wherever he steps. Together, him and Tiernan fight their way toward the Nyawa where Adira and the Silva Lucai have set up their boundary. My head pounds, and my death steals two more lives, as the Strayed rush Sam and Tiernan, blades flashing in the air.
Tiernan cuts one at the knees, another through the belly. Wounds that would kill in any other world, but only temporarily delays them in this one. Under different circumstances, I’d be following his lead, using the sword at my hip to maim rather than kill. But it’s far too late to shield myself from the pain of their deaths. Far too late for anything but ruthless brutality.
Sam barrels through the wall of bodies, sword drawn, power seeping from him in wave after wave. I feel his terror for Adira in each of his movements, the princess buried somewhere in the midst of the fighting. Tiernan covers his back, and I follow behind, slowly moving toward the tree of souls. The Strayed begin shouting, the warning like a chill in the air.
Decay. Rot.
Carrion.
My breath ricochets in my lungs as my death spirals outward, cutting down anyone who comes too close to Sam and Tiernan. I grunt, burrowing deeply into the rotted corpse of my heart; pulling from the depths of my death; working to push the horror outward.
