Shae really wants to trust him.
He bites his lip, sinking his hands in the grave dirt again, and finishes uncovering the coffin. There’s a crash, and he can’t help glancing up to see the beast pouncing forward, then lunging back as Arthur meets it with his sword. The paladin moves faster than Shae would have expected for a man that large, fast enough that the vaidkos can’t take him by surprise.
In the open grave, the worn wooden coffin is now uncovered. Where is the ghost? Shae can call it back into the body even if he hasn’t seen it, but that doesn’t change the fact that he should have seen it. He’s disturbing its body. The ghost should have tried to stop him.
A snarl reverberates through the graveyard, and Arthur yells as he drives the beast back again.
Holding his coat, Shae swings his legs around and lowers himself into the grave, still careful despite the chaos surrounding him. It’s a four-foot drop from surface to coffin, and even with his careful landing, the wood creaks and splinters under his feet, barely holding his weight. He can’t see the fight above anymore, but he can hear it.
“You all right down there?” Arthur calls to him. He barely sounds out of breath.
“Worry about your own skin,” Shae calls back, kneeling gingerly on the coffin lid, trying to distribute his weight evenly. He wraps his coat around his right hand, mutters another apology in Lyrisenian, and punches the wood, aiming high and to the side. Wincing as the impact shocks through his arm, he has to punch down three more times before a hole breaks in the lid. He yanks the plank up and back, until he has an open window above the skeletal face.
The body belonged to a woman, judging by the long-braided hair and the jeweled necklace slipping between her sunken ribs. What’s left of her skin clings dry to her bones.
“Hello,” Shae says faintly. His stomach churns. He’s never going to be used to this. “Sorry to bother you, I just need to get you back to… you.” He bites his lip, yanks off his left glove, and presses his palm to the dead woman’s forehead. He calls on his necromancy and whispers in his birth tongue, “Come home, friend. It’s time to rest.”
It’s as much a plea as a spell. The shadow-magic in him arcs out, sinking into the body, then bursts forth again, sweeping from the grave, seeking, seeking. Not the bright white paladin sunlight—the spirit shouldn’t be far—
Shae gasps, eyes wide and unseeing, as his power slams against a blood-red torch of magic. The vaidkos. He tries to yank away, skirt around, but the spell-plea-longing dives right back. He feels it then. An ice-cold heart beating weakly in the belly of the beast.
He yanks back his hand, breaking the spell, gasping for breath. The vaidkos has eaten the woman’s spirit, and it will take all the power Shae can spare to drag her back out. But if the vaidkos dies too soon, he won’t be able to save the ghost.
Shae gathers enough breath to yell out, “Don’t kill it yet!”
There’s another crash above, splintering wood, the thunder of hooves. Something sliding through dirt, and Arthur grunts before shouting back, “Are you fucking crazy?”
“Just hold it off,” Shae yells. “I’ll tell you when you can kill it!” It’s a lot to ask. Maybe too much. It would be easier, safer, to let this soul go. But he can’t give up, not yet.
Arthur’s sword swings through the air. There’s a thud. But he shouts back, “Fine, but hurry it up!”
All Shae can do is trust that Arthur will do his part. He unsheathes his knife again and digs the cut in his arm a little deeper, spilling more blood down his arm. He barely feels the pain. He needs the extra power. The blood feels hot trickling down his arm as he lays his hand on the skull again, until he breathes, “Come home,” and reaches out.
His blood evaporates into shadow. His eyes are open, but he can’t see anything except the flow of energy surrounding him. His own darkness, Arthur’s sunlight, the vaidkos’s blood-red fire. The faintest hint of silver. Shae reaches for it, pouring his own life force into the magic. More and more, until all that’s left is the last core of his soul, the part he’s sealed safe away from the necromancy, and the gold and shadow wall he’s woven around it. Everything else, he turns into a shadow blade to pierce the vaidkos’s soul.
There’s a collision of gold and blood flames. The vaidkos has to defend itself against Vara’s Radiance. Shae’s power darts forward, and he seizes the remnants of the spirit. He drags it screaming from the beast’s jaws.
“Now!” Shae yells. His voice sounds thin and distant, but it tears through his throat.
He doesn’t know what Arthur does. All his attention is on the remnant flying towards him, guided by his power and his blood. The spirit sinks down andthroughhim, shivering down his veins. Shae’s vision crystallizes to see his hand glow bright silver before the ghost sinks back into her body, again at rest.
Leaving Shae caught in the veil between life and death.
He can’t feel the cold anymore. He can’t feel Arthur’s aura. He only feels the buzz of power beneath his skin, the exhilaration of piercing the veil. He could be a god, like this, feeding off the spirits of the dead, just like the vaidkos. Greater than the vaidkos. If he just dropped the last protective wall surrounding his soul. If he turned himself fully over to Izen’s gift, he wouldn’t feel cold anymore.
“No,” he whispers to himself. Grabs his arm and claws at the wound, heedless of the dirt under his nails. He needs the pain to keep himself human. “No.”
He drags himself from the veil, and releases the power.
The vaidkos. Arthur. Everything’s quiet above, and Shae can’t tell who’s alive or dead. He’s socold. He scrambles to his feet, but the movement is too much. Dizziness swims through him. He falls against the dirt wall of the grave, then slides back to his knees. Collapses completely in an ice-cold faint.
?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Arthur
Arthur’s blade blazes light as he sinks it into the vaidkos’s chest. The creature screams at him, gray-red spittle flying from its jaws, and its six red eyes bulge out before going dark. Its legs buckle, and Arthur yanks out his sword in a spray of brackish blood before the creature collapses to the earth. As soon as the body falls limp, it begins to wither away in plumes of dark smoke, until all that’s left is ash settling into the dirt.
