I swallow hard as a wave of cold crashes over my head. “Does that mean...?” I can’t finish. I can’t go through this again. Meredy steadies me with a hand on my shoulder, and after a moment, I find my voice again.
“There’s no body. How can we be sure she’sdeadif there’s no body?”
“Breathe,” Meredy urges, squeezing my shoulder.
“Where’s her sword, if she’s really dead? She wouldn’t have gone looking for the Shade-baiter if she didn’t have her sword and her—”
“She’s dead, I assure you. She made a nice meal for my hungry Shades,” a harsh voice says, causing us to whirl toward the sound. “As will you both. Very soon.”
XXVI
Even with his tall form hidden beneath a handsome cobalt cloak, his face obscured and his eyes shadowed by a painted silver mask, I’d recognize him anywhere thanks to his gravelly voice. Vane, the powerful rogue necromancer, strides briskly down the shore toward us.
I draw my sword and step in front of Meredy and her grizzly, the necromancer’s words cutting into me like a dagger to the stomach, laying my insides open. Cymbre’s dead. And all her stories, her hopes, her loves, her wisdom have died with her.
Lysander growls, low and menacing.
Several more cloaked figures form a half-circle around us, creeping closer by the moment. If we want to flee, we’ll have to go through them. Or swim out into the lake, which is as good as a death sentence.
Vane holds a broadsword at his side. It’s so much larger than mine, I don’t know that I have a hope of matching him in strength. But I might be quicker. And perhaps smarter, too.
It isn’t until I spot the five Shades waiting in the distance, in the field at the necromancers’ backs, that my heart seizes and I don’t know how we’re going to make it out of here alive. But we have to try.
I raise my sword.
“Vane,” another of the cloaked Shade-baiters—if that’s what they are—mutters worriedly. “Don’t forget to collect the Sparrow’s pin as proof of her death.” She locks eyes with me. “He could stiff us if we don’t follow orders exactly as he gave them...”
“Who’she?” I glance briefly at the woman, whose dark curly hair spills out from her hood. “Tell me, and maybe I’ll bring you to the dungeons instead of killing you.”
“Silence!” Vane raises his free hand at the female Shade-baiter like he’s about to strike her. Then he turns toward me, no doubt sensing where I’m standing. “You all kill the others. I want the satisfaction of slaying this one myself!”
He charges toward me, swinging his blade. I stop him mid-strike with mine, metal screeching against metal as I try to push him back, my shoulders burning with the effort.
“Don’t worry about the others,” Meredy says tersely from somewhere behind me. “Lysander and I will keep them busy.”
Lysander darts past me, his eyes glowing green again, charging up the beach and making the other necromancers scatter as he tries to eviscerate them with his claws.
Someone screams. A sword drops onto the sand, accompanied by a spray of blood, and I have a feeling someone’s just learned not to point a blade at a bear.
“You’re lucky he let you live this long,” Vane growls.
Something tumbles from his cloak pocket as he slashes at me. I dance away from his blade, and as my mind makes sense of the tiny object on the sand, my heart lurches. Vane might as well have stabbed me when he dropped it.
Master Cymbre’s ancient book of poems.
The one with my sticky jam fingerprints on the front page and a few of my tears in the middle. There’s a page still carefully held by the braided silk bookmark I gave Cymbre on her birthday last year.
She’s really gone.
She’s gone, and I still need her. Just like Evander.
Vane lashes out again and again, never even breaking a sweat. Without his vision, his other senses are heightened, making him more than a match for me. My forehead grows slick, my mouth cotton-dry as I jump and dodge to stay a hairsbreadth away from his blade. Each time our swords clash, my body screams with the staggering force of his blows. I can’t keep this up much longer—the realization that Master Cymbre’s gone forever has made my blocks and jabs as clumsy as a beginner’s.
There are Shades waiting beyond the shore, their skeletal bodies restless with the need to hunt, and I’m sure the only reason they aren’t charging toward us is because they’re waiting for Vane’s order. It could come at any moment.
I barely deflect his next blow, which knocks the breath out of me and shatters the vials of honey and blood on my belt. I try toscoop some of the honey into my hand, but it oozes through my fingers, and tiny shards of glass slice my skin.
“Oh, did you need those?” Vane snarls as the vials crunch.
