I scramble to throw up my mental defenses, the steel wall inside my mind that will protect me from sensic magic.
I’m seconds too slow.
Fear—excruciating, consuming—slams into me. It claws at my mind, trying to swallow every sane thought, driving me to panic. Leon’s still tossing beside me, trapped in his own mind prison. I’m outnumbered. I’m going to die.
Focus while you still can,I shout to myself, even as the last of my reason drains away.
Before the fear completely paralyzes me, I concentrate on my magic. It’s there, waiting, but the terror rushing through me prevents me from taking aim with it. My hands shake as I wildly throw the power outward.
A burning beam of sunlight shoots from my palms, arcing across the room and hitting the door. It burns a hole straight through it. There’s a scream of pain, and for just a moment, the chamber is illuminated, letting me glimpse the three strangers in our room.
They’re fae, and one of them is injured. He’s on his knees, gripping his side.
The fear flooding through my mind falters, the terror retreating. I take my chance to pull my mental defenses fully into place. My sun beam must’ve clipped the fae responsible for the sensic attack. With my mind now clear, I scream across the mooring, sending Leon a wave of desperation.
“Leon! Come back to me. I need you.”
With a shout, the Nightmare Prince wakes from his dreams.
It takes three seconds for Leon to take in the scene around him. Then his sword is in his hand and he’s leaping across the bed to tackle the nearest attacker. I send out a sun beam at the other uninjured fae, keeping her at bay as I scramble for my own sword. She dodges the blast, which hits the wall behind her.
As my hands close around the sword I’d left propped on a chair beside the bed, a strange vibration fills the air. Leon slides his blade out of the fae he’s fighting, letting them drop to the floor, and turns to the one facing me. Her eyes are narrowed in concentration as the humming reaches a crescendo.
“Get down!”Leon shouts as the three large windows behind me shatter into a thousand pieces.
A storm of shards rains down upon me. I throw myself behind the bed, trying to protect my face. I want nothing more in this moment than to avoid being cut to ribbons, and my orbital magic responds.
It manages to spin the worst of the glass away from me, and I glance up through my fingers to see Leon sparring with the injured fae. His side is oozing from a nasty burn, but he swings a sword at Leon with surprising force. The aesteri who shattered the glass is coming toward me, a knife glinting in her hand.
Unluckily for her, she’s just given me a whole load of sharp objects too.
She barely has time to mutter an oath as the swarm of glass comes swirling toward her. She hits the floor, impaled by a hundred shards.
Leon’s opponent falls just a few seconds later.
There’s movement and noise out in the corridor now, screams of pain through the smoke and the fizz of magic. Through the huge hole I burned in the door, I can see more intruders—fae dressed in the same all-black clothes—fighting Leon’s soldiers and the others.
I glance at Leon, checking he’s alright, and he gives me a nod.
“Let’s go.”
We sprint through the bedroom door, into chaos. An arrow flies past, exploding in a shower of splinters as it hits a fae in the back. I follow it to see Tira crouched in a doorway with her bow. Hyllus is wrestling with a fae almost as large as himself as Phaia fights an attacker who seems to be mostly holding her sensic magic at bay, though tears are streaming down his face.
Duke Ribold is beside her in a bed robe, spinning a ball of water into the face of an intruder with impressive precision as shadows shift unnaturally across the hall—I assume with Corrin inside them, taking out some surprised fae. Mal reaches out to touch his attacker on the arm. The fae goes pale as a sudden fever comes over him. But as hard as everyone is fighting, the advantage is with the attackers. There must be more than twenty of them, and the dark-clad intruders are fighting as if they’re possessed.
They’re not the only ones. Damia spins past us, engaged in a ferocious fight with a man with the same brown-toned skin as her. Their blows are so heavy the sound of their clashing swords rises above all the other noise. Damia’s face is contorted with rage, and as she lifts a boot to kick her opponent in the chest, slamming him into the nearest wall, something about it tells me this fight is personal to her. My mind goes to the woman in our bedroom muttering an oath before she died. I can guess who these people are.
I sense Leon studying the scene, wondering where best to dive in and help. Before he can decide, something goes wrong with Damia. Her opponent says something as she charges at him. I don’t hear what it is, but it throws her, her footsteps faltering for a fraction of a second. It gives the other fae time to move as Damia’s blade drives into the section of wall he’d just been standing against. She struggles to pull her sword free, and something bursts out of the wall beside it—a snaking tendril of wood, wrapping itself around her and squeezing her tight. It reminds me of the tree roots in the Miravow.
“Help her,”I say to Leon, even as he’s already moving, falling in beside his friend to hack her free.
At the same time, the brown-skinned fae who attacked Damia narrows his eyes, a determined look crossing his face as he lifts his blade once more and takes a step toward Leon.
No.It happens in a second—the wild spike of horror as I imagine Leon lying dead on the ground. I’m not letting him get hurt again; I’m not lettinganyof my friends get hurt. Not when I can save them just like I did Alastor.
I can end all of this now.
My anger finds the dark space inside me, pouring into it, mingling with the blackness. I reach out toward Damia’s opponent, finding the flame flickering within him. My darkness surges toward it.
