“We’re needed here, Blaise,” Sariah says with a nod toward the destruction, before jumping onto a ledge and climbing up a rooftop licked by flames. Her pale locks whip in the heat storm as she fights a creature on the ledge, driving her dagger up its jaw and into its skull. The head falls first into the blaze below, followed by the body that splatters on the ground. She vanishes for mere moments, reemerging with two small children tucked under her arms.
I duck as a heavy sword swings my way, embedded in the wall behind me. I slice the Fae soldier’s tendons, and he crumples to the ground, wailing.My blade squelches as it finds the crack between his armored plates, cutting through his chest, and his eyes remain open in terror. To my right, Mattya staggers as an onpyr slashes him open, the wound gaping from hip to ribs. He stumbles against a marble column, gripping his side, before he throws himself at the creature with a battle cry. He grips the onpyr’s arms, wrenching them sideways before he tears them free in a gush of viscera. His brother comes to his aid, ripping the monster’s head with his bare hands and throwing it into the fire. The body collapses into a twitching heap at their feet.
Above us, K’haram breathes an emerald flame in a curved arch, melting enemy flesh from bone. He flies above the city once, twice, leveling out the onpyrs, before he flies toward the castle.
I spot Sariah running across the square toward an upturned carriage circled by onpyrs. My heart breaks for the small girl caught under the massive wheel, her hands clawing at the cobblestones slick with blood. My pixie warrior throws herself into their midst, slashing throats in all directions, silver embers crackling from her fingertips as she fries the creatures from the insides, before she bends down, bracing the weight of the carriage with one hand, allowing the little girl to scramble free.
“Sariah!” I shout, seeing from my vantage point the creature poised to attack her. She turns, a frown etched into her skin, too slow to leap out of the way before the onpyr slams into her. I run toward her, pushing through bodies, breaking bones, desperate to reach her.
They hit the ground hard, a tangle of pale limbs and bloodied claws rolling through ash and embers. The creature snarls, strings of foul saliva stretching from rotten teeth. An iron axe comes barreling down toward Sariah’s chest, and I scream at the top of my lungs, fists smashing through armor and flesh.
But I’m too slow, held back by multiple grafters.
The axe slices through the night with a resounding whoosh that freezes the blood in my veins.
She can’t die like this.
A silver streak of lightning collides with the creature, throwing it off Sariah and tumbling a few feet away. Long nails push against skin until they burst through the top of its head in a spray of gore.
I’m at Sariah’s side in a blink, helping her off the ground, and we run toward the figure under the slumped onpyr. With a booted kick, I roll the cadaver away, revealing Ereshkygall underneath, battle axe cleaved deeply into her chest.
“No, no, no,” Sariah whispers in horror, dropping to her knees, hands gripped on the haft.
A gurgle of blood bubbles from Ereshkygall’s chest, spilling over her white leathers and onto the cobblestones. A cavernous laceration exposes her splintered ribs and torn heart, the organ struggling to beat a while longer.
“Hang on, please,” I say, searching frantically for a way to move her to safety. Knowing it’s futile.
“You forget I…” Her voice falters as blood seeps from her parted mouth. “I know the future. Even my death.”
“No, no, no,” Sariah keeps repeating in a daze, hand pressing against the gaping wound as if willing it to close back up by touch alone.
“It’s fine, my child. Alektriona is waiting for me. I’ve gained my place in Eimiryia.”
She heaves a wet cough, her breath slowing as her heart staggers.
“It was worth saving you,” she says, her pale fingers grasping Sariah’s clasped hands on her chest.
“It’s been the honor of my life to finally meet you both,” Ereshkygall says, coughing up more blood that stains red her skin. “To fight alongside you. I’ve waited for this moment far too long.”
I frown at her strange words. Shouldn’t we be the ones saying that to her? But there’s no time to dwell on her parting lines, as she exhales one last, heaving breath, and her eyes turn glassy, body rigid.
Sariah weeps, holding in her arms the dead body of her idol, the symbol of her order.
One of the hardest things in war is witnessing the death of a legend.
A Goddess in her true right, if not by nature, by her actions.
Chapter 35
Aimee
Mythighsburninprotest as I run the streets of Drovillan, shadows pouring out of me and slamming into every onpyr in my path. The entrance to the tunnels looms just ahead, swarmed by creatures lurking in the dark like graves that refuse to stay silent. Too many rotten sockets turn my way, jaws snapping, flesh gliding off bones, leaving patches of soot-covered tissue.
All the onpyrs I’ve encountered before, their bodies were still intact, even if their minds were lost to my sister. But these abominations, they’re something else entirely. Decaying skeletons animated, pulsing with nothing but delirium. As if her corrupted will has eaten up their flesh from the inside out. Mouths deformed, they screech in her voice.
“You deplorable excuse of a soul. You’re just proof that the wrong things can slip through the cracks of creation. Useless. Unworthy. Foul.”
“Coward!” I scream at the mindless beasts, addressing their master. “Hiding behind your vile creations. You’re the pathetic one. All this wreckage for a male who was never yours. How does it feel to know that no matter what flesh he’s in, he will alwaysbe mine?”
