The wound stings, but it’s not deep enough for me to drop my sword. She’s moving behind me now. I spin to face her, bringing my sword down. She blocks it with the basket of her hilt, but my point slashes her chest as she tries to jump out of the way.
I go in for another thrust, but she parries it hard to the side, sending me off balance. I parry her next cut from the ground, just stopping her sword from taking half of my arm with it.
I spring up and forward while she’s recovering, putting distance between us and getting back on guard.
Then she feints to the left.
I see it coming. I know what’s coming next. Her right thrust, quick and aimed at my heart.
I parry it with the strong part of my sword, finally avoiding her trap. There’s a chance here. I can go for a riposte. One quick thrust into her neck, and she’s dead.
I lunge forward—
“Enough!” yells Larus. It is enough. Enough to throw me off my balance. Enough to make Adria turn her head. Just enough for my thrust to miss the mark. “Adria, let’s go. They’re coming.”
There are boots in the hallway beyond. The main doors burst open with a rush of magic.
I lower my sword as Larus runs over, healed by Ronan. He takes Adria by the arm, and with one last, regretful look in my direction, he runs with her into the antechamber as the guards close in.
We’re running through the courtyard. Taran, Ronan, and I. Ronan is still weak, but he refuses to wait while his kingdom is falling around him.
Stella is gone. Stella, who never wanted to be a guard. Stella, who never failed to help me, to help Ronan. She’s gone.
The healers are with Quinn. The best nature-born and the last of the loyal alchemists. Ronan healed her head wound, but she took the worst of the poison, and she still hasn’t woken. I say a silent prayer to Vayla to save her as we run.
The streets are filled with blood and death and chaos. We move to the sound of fighting, the sound of steel, the smell of smoke. It takes us a moment to find our rhythm, to learn how to work together. How to help each other with blade and magic.
This isn’t like the fight where Ronan, dressed as Soren, defeated Marcella’s guards nearly single-handedly. As weak as he is, he fights like a normal man. He can take one, maybe two people at a time. He can’t cut his way through a dozen in moments.
That’s where Taran and I come in. Taran flings not water, but ice at our enemies. Sometimes, it stops them in their tracks. Other times, it cuts through them like a knife through butter. I’ve never seen a water-born fight like this. It’s a terrifying thing.
I don’t think about anything that has happened between us. I throw my shadows out to defend him when he needs it, just as he uses his ice to defend me. None of it matters now. We’re a team.
The fights are quick and bloody. We take no time to ensure the defeated are fallen. I take no time to grieve for my fallen compatriots. Not even when I recognize them, as I do from time to time.
They made their choice.
And I have made mine.
It feels like hours, but it’s over before dawn. The guards are in the streets with us. The fighting thins until we go minutes hearing nothing. This isn’t the main battle. This is only a distraction from the real war that wages in the harbor. That marches in across the desert beyond the city walls, in companies of green soldiers my brother is leading.
This is a distraction that lets Adria escape. They pursue her, but she loses them. Larus shifts the earth to let them get away.
Larus chooses her. Larus saves her.
I can’t think about it now.
I’m bleeding from where she cut me. I’m bleeding from a lucky stab with a dagger. Ronan heals me, and then I’m bleeding again moments later. My clothes are burnt. My leathers are destroyed.
I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally. I’m terrified of what’s to come.
But I’m alive. And Ronan is alive.
Side by side, we take on the fight my family started.
Side by side, we’ll finish it.
Chapter Forty-Three
