More attackers pour into the alley. The trap wasn’t designed for one witch—it was designed for whoever came to rescue her. They anticipated Izan. Planned for him.
They didn’t plan for us.
Fightingbeside Izan is like nothing I’ve experienced.
His flames carve paths through the attackers, burning away blood-oaths before the soldiers can coordinate. My magic follows instinctively, reaching for the newly-vulnerable enemies and severing whatever bindings still cling to them. Those who survive the combination collapse—not dead, but freed, their enslaved wills crashing back into bodies that don’t know how to function without commands.
We move without speaking. Without planning.
I sense an attacker coming at his back and my ash magic lashes out before I consciously decide to act, wrapping around the blood-oath that drives him and ripping it free. He stumbles. Izan’s claws—fully extended now, obsidian-black and razor-sharp—finish him.
A blade arcs toward my throat. Izan’s hand intercepts it, closing around the steel with fingers half-covered in scales,crushing it to shards. His other hand shoves me behind him, and for an instant, his body becomes a wall of rippling obsidian between me and danger.
“Stay close.” The command vibrates through me.
I don’t argue. Staying close to him is the only strategy that makes sense when his fire is the only thing keeping the endless wave of attackers from overwhelming us.
We fall into formation without discussing it. Back-to-back in the narrow space, my knife work covering angles his fire can’t reach, his claws and flames annihilating everything that gets past my guard. The synchronization should be impossible—we’ve never trained as a pair, never fought side by side, never done anything except argue and want and burn.
But it works.
It worksperfectly.
My magic finds the blood-oaths. His fire destroys the bodies they’re bound to. When one attacker gets too close, I feel his rage spike—a surge of violent intent that resonates through me like a struck bell. When another comes at him from behind, my ash magic lashes out to protect him.
The Ash Cardinal tries to rally his forces. Shouted commands in a language I don’t recognize, gestures that should strengthen the dampening field. Izan’s fire finds him mid-word. The Cardinal’s body becomes a torch, then a pillar of ash, then nothing at all.
Without leadership, the attack collapses. The remaining soldiers scatter into the maze of Lower Pyraeth’s alleyways, fleeing the killing ground we’ve created. Within minutes, we’re alone.
Alone in a charnel house.
Bodies and ash cover the alley floor. The walls are scorched black from Izan’s fire. The air tastes of copper and smoke and the residue of broken magic. My muscles scream from exertionI’m only now registering. My hands shake around the knife I don’t remember raising.
Izan turns to face me.
His scales are receding. Slowly. The red fading from his eyes like embers cooling to amber. But his hands shake when he reaches for me, and his grip when he finds my arm is desperate, too tight, the hold of a man who almost lost what matters most.
“Are you hurt?”
The question emerges rough. Strained.
I take stock. Bruises forming. A shallow cut across my cheekbone where a blade came too close. And?—
Pain flares across my ribs as I shift. Sharp. Wrong.
I glance down. Blood seeps through a tear in my shirt, darkening the fabric in a line that extends from my hip to just below my breast. A blade must have caught me during the chaos. I didn’t feel it then. I feel it now.
Izan sees the blood before I can hide it.
His whole body goes rigid.
“It’s not deep.” I keep my voice calm. “Surface wound. I’ve had worse.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me. His eyes have fixed on the spreading bloodstain with an intensity that makes the air grow warmer. His teeth grind audibly.
“Izan—”
“They hurt you.” His voice has dropped below anything human, scraping through a throat that’s still half-shifted. “Theyhurtyou.”
