Svenn has summoned another two beasts from Hel to merge with Wendy. His jaw unhinges, revealing teeth in rows. He breathes out and frost forms despite the burning heat.
This is what he hides. What he fears becoming. The thing that lives at the bottom of his consciousness, waiting.
He towers above me now, a creature of nightmare and hunger.
For a moment, his eyes find mine and I see the question and the fear. Not fear of the fae. Fear of himself and what he might do in this form.
"I trust you," I tell him.
His eyes close. When they open again, the fear is gone. Only purpose remains.
Without warning, he launches himself skyward.
The leap shouldn't be possible. Dark tendrils spread from his transformed body, writhing and coiling as they reach toward thesky. The shadows move with purpose and intelligence. They are extensions of his will made manifest.
He moves through the air as if it were solid ground. A rider spots him and pulls up sharply, shouting warning to his wingmates. Too late. Svenn is already there, materializing beside the wyvern. His claws flash once and the wyvern's head separates from its body. Rider and corpse fall together.
Svenn doesn't wait to watch them fall. He's already moving, already hunting the next target. Darkness carries him from one wyvern to the next with impossible grace.
I watch, transfixed, as he lands on the back of a diving wyvern. The beast shrieks in terror as shadow-tendrils wrap around its wings, forcing it into a spiraling descent. Its rider tries to turn his bow on Svenn, but those terrible claws rake across his chest, sending him tumbling toward the ash-covered earth below.
Another wyvern comes at him from the side, its rider's spear aimed for his heart. Svenn simply dissolves into shadow, letting the weapon pass harmlessly through him before reforming behind the attacker. His horned skull connects with the fae warrior's spine with a sickening crack.
The screaming as they fall is terrible.
I clasp my hand to my mouth anxiously as three wyverns converge on him, their mageriders casting fire. The green flames hit Svenn and simply... disappear. Absorbed into the darkness that is him.
Svenn laughs—if that sound can be called laughter.
Watching him tear through the sky, I'm reminded that I married Arescaine Darian Andras, the Vampire Prince of Morsyvenn.
A formation of five riders tries a coordinated strike, diving at him from different angles. It would work on anything else. But not my husband.
Shadows explode outward in a dozen directions at once. Three riders are impaled before they can react. The fourth loses his mount, the wyvern cleaved in half by living darkness. Their fifth manages to pull up in time, only to find Svenn already behind him, jaws closing around rider and wyvern both.
The crunch of bones is audible even from here.
A battle cry erupts from Svenn's throat. The sound isn't from this world. It's something primal and hungry that makes the surviving wyverns flinch in terror. But Svenn pursues them relentlessly.
No one escapes. The ones who flee, he catches. The ones who fight, he kills. The ones who try to hide in the smoke, the shadows find them anyway.
In just a few moments, half of the fae riders and their wyverns are dead or dying. The rest are scattering, formations broken, and fleeing in every direction. But then I notice something else happening in the sky.
Some of the Night Herons are attacking each other.
22
Chapter 21 Rhianelle
A rider in black armor suddenly turns his wyvern and breathes fire at his own wingman. The flames catch the other wyvern's wing and both beast and rider spiral down shrieking. Another fae pulls a blade mid-flight and drives it into the back of the warrior flying beside him.
It makes no sense. They're turning on each other in the middle of their attack on my kingdom.
"What is going on?" I breathe, unable to comprehend what I'm seeing.
Through the chaos of wings and fire, I see her.
A figure levitates without wyvern or wings, held aloft by pure power. Long golden hair streams behind her like a banner. The witch is laughing as she watches the unfolding chaos.
