The pendant pulsed so hard against my chest that I could barely breathe around it.
When I thought it couldn’t get worse, every light in the compound went out at once.
Darkness swallowed the hills, but the battle sounds below continued.
The moon disappeared behind clouds, and for one long heartbeat, everything held perfectly still.
No wolves.
No screams.
No magic.
Only silence.
The kind that crawled beneath your skin, but before I could blink again, blue fire ignited in the highest tower window.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
The light spilled outward across the stone walls below, pale and cold and wrong in a way I could feel deep in my bones.
A figure stepped into view behind the glass.
Tall.
Still.
Watching us.
The Priestess.
Chapter Twenty
My daughter wasn’t by her side. That was the very first thing I noticed, but before I even had a moment to take that in, the skies darkened with something so thick and ominous that I could taste it.
Clouds rolled over the compound in heavy waves, swallowing the moon until the blue fire burning through the tower windows became the only light left across the hills. The shadows below deepened immediately, stretching long across the courtyards and broken stone paths while the wind picked up hard enough to jerk at cloaks and broomsticks alike.
The compound responded to her.
I could feel it beneath us.
Cracks in the walls glowed faintly for a moment before dimming again.
Twobble’s grip tightened around my waist. “I don’t like this place.”
Neither did I.
The sound of battle rolled across the grounds below us as witches descended lower through the air. Bursts of magic illuminated sections of the compound in flashes of silver, blue,and gold while wolves tore through the lower courtyards and orcs pushed steadily through the western ridge.
The Priestess had expected resistance.
I just wasn’t sure she’d expected this many people willing to bring the fight directly to her doorstep.
A scream echoed from somewhere beneath the northern wing, sharp enough that every hair along my arms rose instantly.
Human.
