Her head began to throb as she pushed with everything she had, ramming her magic against the wards over and over again, each time screaming louder,“SHATTER!”
And then, finally, they did, causing a harsh ripping sound to tear through her mind and make her partially black out, her magic no longer contained by any wards and instead streaming beyond the cathedral and into the necropolis. In her half-lucid state, she was somehow able to sense what it sensed, aware of thescores of people waiting outside in the moonlight, Nox and hunters alike, none of whom realized the wards had come down. She had to find a way to tell them they could now enter the cathedral, buthow—
Her magic suddenly jerked in another direction, flowing toward someone hiding with a smaller group in the shadows of a tomb—someone her magic was being pulled toward, like a moth to a flame.“Mine, mine, mine,”it whispered, but unlike when Viri had been attacked by the obelisk during her Impartation attempt, this voice wasn’t dark and menacing—it was soft, affectionate, loving.
And it was talking about Reeve.
His magic—there must be something in it that called to her own, like power attracting power. She didn’t understand enough about ellixen to guess beyond that, just continued trusting her instincts and brushed her magic against his like she’d done with the wrist bonds, saying,“Reeve, if you can hear me, the wards are down. Please hur—”
Her magic was wrenched backward as full lucidity returned to her, leaving her nauseatingly dizzy as her power was contained once more. Her ears rang, not from being hurtled back into her own consciousness, but from Jessalyn’s screams—
Because the Reaper Lord had raised his dagger high above her, his chanting beginning to slow, the blade pointed directly at her heart.
Viri didn’t know if Reeve had heard her, didn’t care that she was light-headed and weak after destroying the wards, because she wasn’t waiting another second to save Jessalyn. Even knowing the Reaper Lord could swat her away, she scrambled to her feet and sprinted forward, hurdling over crumbled statues and brokenpews, swerving around white coffins and fallen pillars, leaping past twisted vines and flickering candles. The Reaper Lord didn’t seem to notice her mad dash, not even with the racket of glass crunching under her boots, as if he were stuck in a trance while chanting in the moonlight. His reaper underlings saw her coming, though, and a group of them lunged forward to intercepther.
At any other time, Viri might have been flattered that they thought ten of them were needed to bring her down, but right now, she had no defense against evenoneof them. She had no fillium or weapons to counter their heightened strength and speed, her only option being the scarlet powder that could nullify their inhuman abilities. She wished she could wait to hit more of them at once—including the Reaper Lord—but she didn’t have a choice if she wanted to survive beyond the next few seconds.
Thumbing the vial from her cloak as she ran, she waited until the reapers were mere steps away before screeching to a halt and hurling it at their feet, the glass smashing and the powder rising like a red cloud. Viri was careful to stay out of its explosive radius, not wanting to risk nullifying the newly discovered magic within her, and she watched in awe as the reapers stumbled clumsily upon losing access to their stolen ellixen.
Unsure how long the effects would last, Viri leapt forward again, grateful for all the hours Meera had spent training her in unarmed combat as she aimed her fist at the nearest reaper, who crumpled to the ground with a satisfying thud.
The rest didn’t succumb as easily, with them quickly adjusting to their dulled senses and coming at her together, blades drawn. Stinging cuts tore her skin open, blood smearing across her fleshand seeping into her clothes, but she was nimble enough on her feet to avoid any major wounds, ducking and dodging their attacks while kicking and striking in return. Nine against one were challenging odds—even without their enhanced strength and speed—but they couldn’t all assault her at once without harming each other, and she used that to her benefit. She brought one woman down with an elbow to her temple, brought another down with a kick to her nose, shattering the bone. She managed to steal a dagger from a man and stab him with it, using the same blade to fell two more, leaving just four of the original ten remaining.
Four—plus the dozens still standing between her and the dais, none of whom had been touched by Wynter’s nullifying powder.
But Viri refused to think about that, focusing only on the battle at hand, and struck forward with the blade once more—or she would have, if it hadn’t flown from her fingers.
By magic.
Viri whirled toward the Reaper Lord, who was no longer chanting, but looking straight at her. Goosebumps prickled her flesh, from fear but also from the wave of ellixen she felt rushing in her direction—a wave she was certain would send her crashing to the ground, unconscious. If that happened, Jessalyn would die. Viri was sure of it.
Dread enveloped her, but so did determination, both making her react instinctively by throwing her hand out to meet the power surging her way, bracing herself to push back against it. Wards by definition were barriers, and she had ward magic within her, which meant—
The Reaper Lord’s ellixen slammed against her invisible shield,the force of it so strong that Viri stumbled a step, but that was all it did. She was still standing, still conscious.
As stunned as she was that it had worked, she didn’t let on, only stared right back at him, reveling in his shock.
And his fury.
But then he snapped his gloved fingers and the rest of his reapers sprang forward, a veritable army lunging Viri’s way.
Only, it wasn’t just his army that was rushing toward her, because with a loudboom, the doors to the cathedral burst open, unleashing a river of black-uniformed Nox and red-cloaked hunters into the vaulted hall.
Viri’s heart leapt with hope, and she swore she heard the Reaper Lord cry out an enraged,“No!”before she became fully preoccupied by the reapers, who were now swarming all around her. She quickly brought down the four remaining ones whose strength had been nullified, then spun just in time to meet the attack of an ellixen-heightened man, the speed of his movements alarming, the power behind his slashing sword enough to carve her in two.
He didn’t get a chance, because Reeve was suddenly there, his black blade slaying the reaper in three effortless moves.
Viri was so relieved to see him that she could have jumped into his arms and kissed him—and might have, if they hadn’t been surrounded by death. Instead, she ducked when a knife soared past her head, then demanded, somewhat irrationally, “What the hell took you so long?”
“Walnut was hungry,” he answered, tossing her two daggers and executing an impressive sideways kick that sent an approaching reaper flying backward. “We had to stop for snacks.”
Snacks?Viri’s brain almost exploded, but then she saw theteasing glint in his silver eyes and rolled her own, stabbing forward with her blades when a male reaper lunged for her. As soon as he fell, a woman took his place, followed by two more who pushed Viri closer to where Reeve was battling three reapers at once, his black sword reflecting both moonlight and fire.
Beyond him, Viri spotted Braedan fighting beside Sage and Ardin, the three of them moving in sync, a perfect, deadly team. But it was the two people battling a few feet away from the trio that stole Viri’s breath, because Wynter and Jonas were also here, not using swords and daggers but instead tossing vials left and right, an assortment of liquids and powders, some of which Viri had seen before and others she most definitely had not. The impedidust was familiar, immobilizing any reapers it touched and allowing the Nox and hunters to swoop in and take them out with ease, but there were other things that left Viri cringing, like the orange potion that ignited on contact, burning a reaper to ash, and the brown sludge that made another’s skin melt away like dripping wax, his screams audible even over the sounds of clashing steel echoing throughout the cathedral.
But it was a different scream that captured Viri’s attention, one younger and much more familiar—a warning scream that caused her to spin toward the Reaper Lord just in time to see him wave his hand outward, not to attack her personally, but to make the hall comealive.
There was nothing she could do to ward against his ellixen as the cathedral itself became a weapon. Vines coiled around the legs of the Nox, sending them crashing to their knees. Pillars cracked and crumbled, dropping lethal chunks onto the heads of anyone standing too near. The ground fractured into deadly fissures, with hunters vanishing into blackness. Coffins openedfor victims to stumble into, then closed again, trapping them inside. And perhaps worst of all, the candles erupted, creating a firestorm that burned without fuel, like a wall of flames bearing down on them all.
