His fingers twitch for the blade at his side. He shifts his weight, blocking more of me from sight.
“Don’t think I don’t know you have another shadow-born back there. It’s a nice little trick that she has, but it won’t work on me.”
She’s right. Against another shadow-born, the only weapons I have are my blades. And we both know how good I am with those.
Well, those and the uncapped elixir I’m still holding.
“Lift your shadow,” Soren mutters to me, and I understand why he asks.
It’ll weaken his light.
“I’m sorry it went this way, Marcella,” he says, and the quiet scene turns violent all at once.
Soren raises his hand and fires off a tiny burst of magic which only misses Marcella because a guard rushes up in front of her, falling to the ground before he can even pull his sword. Marcella plunges the area around her into darkness, causing another guard to stumble and trip over the first one as he falls. She flings a knife, which narrowly misses Soren and clatters somewhere within the warehouse as he takes my hand and flings us back behind the barrels. The guards from the street race down the deck, and I drop a shadow over them just before they reach us. They stumble forward, and Soren impales one with his dagger while I shove the elixir into the other one’s face.
The guard collapses to the deck, and I take the dagger from her hand and throw it into the fray on the staircase, almost striking another advancing guard but just missing to the left.
The guard who had been carrying the crate makes a dash for the dock and leaps from it, swimming after the rapidly escaping sailboat. Marcella ducks behind a pile of crates.
Soren takes out the guard I’d missed, who had nearly made it to the top of the steps in the darkness, with a bolt of magic.
It’s as precise as Adria’s tiny burst of flame, hitting him in the side of the head and dropping him instantly.
“Come on.” Soren grabs my hand and pulls me towards the deck that leads to the street.
“What about Marcella?”
“The guards can deal with her. There are too many of them left. We’ve got to go.”
We round the corner into the street, but there’s movement to our right, near the alley where we entered the warehouse. Some of the guards from the dock have come around.
There are so many of them. Six, at least. I drop the shadows around us to give us cover.
“Run, Sylvie,” says Soren.
My real name.
My heart stops.
He said my real name.
The guards stumble forward out of Marcella’s shadow and begin to charge, flinging flame and lightning at us as Marcella retreats towards the alley. Soren fires off a bolt of light at her and misses, but he doesn’t run after her.
He stays at my side, preparing for the incoming assault.
Run, Sylvie,he said. I wonder if he even realizes he said it.
I don’t run, though. I draw my sword, keeping the vial of elixir in my other hand, covering it with my thumb to keep it from spilling.
I lift my shadows as the first three guards reach us. Soren lunges forward, his sword flashing through the air to cut down the first guard in a single, fluid motion as a flame dies in his hand. The second doesn't even have time to raise her blade before Soren releases a bolt of crackling light, striking her square in the chest and sending her sprawling backward. As the third guard swings his sword at me, I meet his attack with a swift parry, the clang of metal ringing in my ears. Before I can counter, Soren spins around and dispatches the last guard with a clean strike.
“Good gods,” I say, looking at him. He was definitely holding back when he fought me. He turns and takes out another advancing guard with another bolt of light.
There’s a delay between the bolts, and it seems he can only send one bolt at a time. So it works similarly to Adria’s fire magic, then.
“Don’t follow her,” he says, as he sees me eying the corner Marcella retreated to.
But who else will be able to track her? It’s not like he needs my help here.
