‘Defend the queen,’ Asher cried, and a circle of guards surrounded me.
Closing my eyes, I reached inside and the sky exploded with the screeching of birds. They wrenched the sky apart, slicing into the guards spinning in wild circles, their swords cleaving blindly. Blood splattered and, with my heart lurching, I watched a sleekcormorant split in two. I sent my rage into the birds, warning them to defend each other.Eyes, I told them.Attack their eyes.
I wiped a trickle of dark blood as it oozed down my chin, felt the familiar curling slither as my other gift awakened. I gasped. I couldn’t let it free yet. I’d no idea how to control it and couldn’t risk carving a path through our own guards. Heaving in a great breath, I tamped it down, sensing the urgency to devour, to possess.
The metallic stench of spilled blood and death rattles overpowered my senses. My body juddered as the two gifts fought against each other, each demanding dominance, neither prepared to share, to balance. I fell, my knees sinking into the still-soaked sand, gripping my head, to force my skull to stay whole.
Hands, warm hands, gripped mine; a voice called my name. The pain abated and, opening my eyes, Glesni was there, her dark eyes glittering.
‘You command the gift, Sorrow, not the other way. Control it.’
I shook my head, suddenly aware the confused birds had returned to the skies.
‘You do not flinch before Death, Sorrow. Not when you command her.’
Tears poured a track down my sandy face, the sounds of battle deafening. The image of my mother, glassy eyes rolling, mouth hanging open, claws scraping down Enfys’s terrified face flashed before me.
‘No,’ I whimpered.
Glesni’s lips thinned.
‘Save him,’ she cried, hauling me up, dragging me forward.
Two guards battled Matthias. He parried, smashing the side of his sword into the back of a guard’s knee. The fallen guardstabbed out blindly, in the last throes of desperation, before Matthias sliced through his comrade and the pair tumbled away.
Violet threads coiled, ready to spring as they watched Matthias duck another sword aimed at his head. I tamped them down, calling my other gift, and a flock of sand sparrows darted out.
Matthias’s attacker fell, quickly replaced by another desperate for the honour of taking the traitor king’s head.
Glesni raised her quivering hand, lifting the guards from the ground. She groaned, the muscles in her face trembling as she raised them in the air, higher, higher. We gasped as Glesni cried out and still the guards, limbs flailing, rose higher till they were no more than blurs against the stony sky.
‘Best. Deviant. Ever,’ she grunted before sweeping her hand down, the guards plummeting into the sand with a force so great, the whole beach shook.
Figures twitched as limbs stuck out at unnatural angles, and I swallowed down the gift thrashing within.
My name rent the air and I stared up, through the falling Drufaeran guard.
‘Enfys!’
Lifting up my skirts, I tore over the dunes, Pablo and Matthias at my side.
CHAPTER 43
As I pen my final line, in what will be the third and, most likely, final edition of my book, I feel impelled to end with this. Mortal, Anomaly, Deviant. Each of you is blessed with the most wondrous gift. Love. Fight for it. Defend it. Never, ever fear it.
— FOREWORD FOR MRS GLESNI GRACE’S ADVICE FOR MENTORS: THIRDEDITION
At the summit, I halted, my breath catching at the sight of the scarlet beach, littered with what remained of Romero’s forces.
‘I get why my father was so keen to keep on Glesni’s good side,’ Matthias said. ‘Are you hurt?’
His chest heaved, blood and gore splattered across him. I shook my head, and he nodded as what remained of his forces fell into line behind him. Matthias pointed out to sea, and Asher groaned.
‘What…what is it?’ I asked, my heart sinking.
‘Boats…ships…lots of ships.’ Apathy coated Matthias’s tone, and my heart stuttered at how lost he sounded.
‘Then I get Enfys,’ I said, gripping his blood-soaked fingers. ‘We retreat. Rethink.’
