Shae rips off his glove and pulls out his knife. There’s no time for careful, deliberate cuts. He slices the blade down his palm and slams his hand to the ground, willing the blood out into the dirt. They’re a day out from the nearest town, and there are no graveyards nearby. There’s just the forest, the constant turnover of life and dead. The lingering, ambient echoes of mortality. If he reaches for it, spends enough of his strength, maybe—
Black smoke billows before him with a crack of thunder. Shae falls backwards with the sudden displacement of air. The impact is jarring, and his bloodied palm scrapes against the hard dirt road. He thinks for a second that his magic has gone wrong, except he hasn’t even started yet. The spell fizzles out, unspent.
The smoke coalesces into a shadow standing above him, and a pair of rotted leather boots before his eyes. Mouth gone dry, Shae looks up into blood-red eyes in a dead white face.
The man’s skin is warped and sagging. Like it spent a week in the river, then a week out of it. His hair is little more than tangles of mud and leaves, dried and flaking. The red eyes are the only part of him that looks alive, glittering as they fix on Shae.
“Little Shaesarenna,” Izen rasps through the dead man’s lips. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Shae’s skin crawls at the almost-familiar voice. He lunges for his knife, expecting a blow of magic at any moment, hoping his jewelry can protect him long enough to let him fight back. But Izen doesn’t strike. He stands utterly still, surrounded by wisps of red and black smoke, as Shae scrambles to his feet.
“If you aren’t here for me, then why are you here?” he asks, his voice high with nerves.
Izen tilts his head, and the dead man’s face doesn’t move, but Shae canseethe way the demon’s true face would smirk, eyebrows raised. “You’ve always thought everything was about you, Shaesarenna. Do you think I’ve been pining in my tower for you all these years?” His laugh is grating, broken. “I’m here for breakfast, of course.”
Shae follows his gaze down the road, where Arthur faces off against the vaidkos in a clash of steel and sunlight. Arthur, with his divine aura and brilliant soul. Fear spikes through Shae’s lungs, and his hand tightens around his knife hilt.
All he wants to do is run, but he’s not letting Izen hurt Arthur. He’s not.
“I’m impressed to see you this deep into Charain,” he says, steadier now. “Do you need souls to break the array? It would be easier just to ask me, wouldn’t it?”
Izen jerks the dead man’s body around again, and his red stare sweeps up and down Shae’s body. The warped face is difficult to read, but Shae thinks he sees something like interest.
“Bold as ever, my precocious little student,” Izen says. “Or have you just grown tired of the cold? You had your chance to work with me before.”
“That was then.” Shae raises his hand to his side and drops the knife. He forces himself to look at Izen and only Izen as he walks closer. It’s a bad gamble, but Izen doesn’t stop him. Doesn’t move aside as Shae spreads his bare, bloody palm against the dead man’s chest. The smell of death and the dust and blood are enough to choke on. Shae takes a deep breath. “This is now.”
And with all the strength he has, he pulls the dark power from the corpse. By the time Izen realizes what he’s doing, it’s too late. All the power rushes into Shae, an ice-cold torrent of dark magic, until there’s nothing left for the demon to hold onto. The red light winks out of the dead man’s eyes, and the body shakes apart beneath Shae’s hand, cracking and crumbling into ash. A plume of smoke arcs away into the sky.
Izen’s escaping, but Shae can only think about Arthur. Dizzy with magic, every nerve in his body buzzing, he channels the power and sends it forth.
?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Arthur
Arthur’s sword rips through one vaidkos’s throat in a spray of light and blood. Moments later, the corpse bursts into ash. Arthur darts back, circling with the other three, trying to focus on all of them at once. Sweat stings at the corners of his eyes. So far, they’ve only scratched him, and he’s got a hell of a bruise forming on his left shoulder, but the math is simple. There’s one of him, and three left of them. He’s not liking his odds.
Smoke and thunder clash down the road. Arthur takes advantage of the distraction to lunge for the nearest vaidkos, but it dodges his blade just in time. He pulls back and chances a glance beyond the malformed heads.
As the smoke clears, an unfamiliar figure stands with Shae.
Before Arthur can do anything about that, two vaidkos leap at him together, and he whirls around them only to collide with the third. His magic flares, blunting the razor-sharp claws. He is the Radiant’s sword, and the Radiant is his shield. The vaidkos chokes on his blade, green-black blood bubbling from his jaws, and falls to its death throes in the clouds of dust.
Only two remain, but Arthur only has a few more moments of full power left.
“Sacred Vara,” he says between gasps, “your servant prays for brightest light.”
His answer comes not in light, but in a scream and an explosion of darkness. Ribbons of shadow burst from the ground, whipping through the battlefield. Arthur yells, trying to dodge, trying to keep his sword clear—
But the shadows arc around him and pierce through the vaidkos instead. Their screams tear the sky as the shadows rend their flesh asunder, scales and fur and feathers flying. Bone cracks through skin and withers away, until everything is ash and silence.
The shadow ribbons vanish in the sunlight, as if they never were.
Arthur turns around, sword arm aching and heart still pounding, to see Shae staggering to his feet with Duchess a good twenty paces behind him. Shae’s too far away for Arthur to make out his expression, and then he’s moving too fast. The slim figure sprints towards him.
Every bone in Arthur’s body wants to run towards him too, but he’s still too stunned. All he can do is stand there while Shae crashes into him, grabbing his shoulders, touching his arms. His hands come away bloody. “You’re all right,” Shae says, and Arthur can’t tell which one of them he’s trying to reassure. “Are you all right? You’re alive. Fuck, I thought. Fuck.”
