One of the terrestrials behind me vomited.
“Ancestors help us,” Lyrena breathed from over my shoulder.
“The Ancestors deserted Baylaur weeks ago,” Gwen said from my other side.
She wasn’t wrong.
I tallied the dead—succubus and fae—storing away the ratios for future battle scenarios. But the numbers told a story, and begged a terrifying question. “How have you survived this long?”
From the periphery of my vision, I watched Gwen work her jaw. “Fire slows them. So does beheading. They cannot heal. If you chop them up into small enough pieces, then eventually you can incapacitate them.”
A scream echoed behind us—from one of the offshoot corridors, rather than where Veyka waited at the rift. But the reminder was effective. Our time was dwindling.
“The suite is at the bottom of those stairs,” Gwen said as she strode the length of the courtyard. She did not try to sidestep the gore. “There’s one connecting hallway.”
Two weaknesses to guard. Two possible egresses.
I dispatched three amorite-armed terrestrials to each and led the rest down the stairs into the bowels of the goldstone palace. The walls were thicker here, masking the wails of death.On another day the foot-thick goldstone walls might have felt protective. But all I could feel was their inward press, tighter and tighter. This is what the war would come to—limited amorite weapons deployed strategically. Others left helplessly without it to face the succubus in any way they could, fire or flay. With little more than prayers to the Ancestors who’d left us in this mess.
There was the door, just ahead. Thick, encrusted with diamonds and aquamarines in a jagged pattern of sharp points. Like ice.
Memory flashed through me. These had been Roksana’s quarters. Once, Veyka and I had dined here, eating rich cream-drenched pasta and rolls of spiced, stuffed meat. Another life. Another male.
No time for reflection.
Gwen pounded out a pattern on the door. Three swift strikes with the ball of her fist, followed by two rhythmic slaps with the flat of her hand. A code that promised safety.
For several long heartbeats, there was no response. The door was too thick to hear anything from the other side. Gwen had mentioned children. Male children as well as female, presumably. How long, how old, before a succubus could slip into the mind of an unsuspecting male? When did they become vulnerable?
Lyrena inhaled sharply, but before I could glance to the side to see if her face mirrored the horror I kept staunched within me, the door began to move.
A face I recognized appeared on the other side.
Elora stood in the center of her mother’s repurposed apartments with the graceful menace I’d come to expect from the female Arthur had appointed to lead the elemental fighting forces. Behind her, two dozen palace guards stood between us and the survivors of the elemental court. Ancestors, was that all that remained of the elemental army?
Before I could ask, we were ushered in, the thick door closing protectively behind us.
Elora and her guards—all female—eyed the terrestrials, especially the males, with heavy gazes. They did not shift their protective array an inch.
“All of the males here are protected. They cannot turn to succubus—be taken by the darkness,” I corrected. Darkness, nightwalkers, succubus. We’d been away so long, had learned much, but missed more. Fuck. We’d need a month to sort it all out, once we got back to the safety of Eilean Gayl. A month we did not have.
Elora’s force dispersed, taking up positions near the doors, the balcony, and otherwise strategically throughout the apartments. As they did, the plight of the surviving elementals became even more clear.
At least they were alive.
Little more could be said about their state. The scent of unwashed bodies, overused facilities… and fear. That was the sharpest tang in the air. It hung there, permeating every female, child, piece of furniture, even the walls of the goldstone palace itself.
The healer who had once tended Veyka’s broken bones after she’d come crashing through the void presided over what looked to be a makeshift infirmary through the adjacent archway. A half-dozen children huddled close to their mothers, an abandoned game of ball and hoop in the middle of the balcony. The most vulnerable among us where always the ones with hope. The adults? There was precious little in their eyes. Not after all these weeks of constant attack.
Like the rest of the goldstone palace, there were no doors to separate the balcony from the interior of the apartments. But this one faced out into the valley, rather than into one of the inner palace courtyards which would have made themvulnerable to the succubus swarming the goldstone palace. Elora and Gwen had selected their refuge well.
A white-winged female came to stand beside Elora, arms crossed over her chest and thick braid neat despite the conditions. I would have recognized her even without the streaks of copper nestled amongst the gray of her braid. Cyara’s mother wore a face nearly identical to her daughter’s.
“Have you come to liberate the city or rescue us?” the elemental female said sharply. Sharp, because she knew we could only do one.
“We are getting you out,” I said, then louder— “Take only what you can carry, and only then if it will not slow you. Speed is our greatest ally in escaping the succubus.”
The maternal female’s eyes widened slightly, but she did not argue. She exchanged a look with Gwen, then Elora. An alliance had been forged in mine and Veyka’s absence. These three were the de facto leaders of the elemental court… what remained of it. They’d kept everyone here alive. I would not argue with them now.
