The last three all have the same purpose. Silver bands set with ruby and onyx and jade, all enchanted to hide his soul from scrying. Shae tears them from his fingers and flings them aside. Remnants of magic shiver over his skin.
“Izen,” he says, with calm he doesn’t feel. The name feels far more dangerous without his rings to hide him. “We need to talk.”
The air crackles around them, invisible energy snapping through the clearing. The sky above and the flowers below seem to dim. Shae looks south. The distant spiraling shadow stops, then turns towards them.
“Arthur?” Shae says, no longer calm. He’s still mad at Arthur. Or at least, he wants to be mad. But he isn’t. Arthur came back to him, when he didn’t have to. For a selfish moment, he regrets drawing Izen away from Lanwatch. He’d rather save Arthur instead of anyone else.
Arthur glances over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
Neither of them have a chance to say anything else before red-black light flashes around them, and a figure appears at the edge of the ward. Then another.
And another.
Three. Five. A dozen shambling corpses, all with dull, dead eyes and bloody weapons in their hands. Swords, axes, shovels. Men and women who should have slept in the earth, dragged up and twisted into a demon’s puppets.
Shae falls to his knees. He pours the vial of Arthur’s blood into his palm and begins drawing the array.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Arthur
The corpses can’t enter the ward. No, it’s more than just a ward spell. It’s a full shield protecting them, and Arthur’s never cast such a powerful spell before. He feels giddy with the power coursing through him, even as he keeps a close eye on the corpses. They throw themselves against the shield over and over, their gray, rotting limbs slapping against the divine magic. Smoke hisses from them where the dark magic animating them reacts to the holy power.
They’re loud. Constant growls and moans and single words, coughed-out syllables. A flash of blue catches Arthur’s attention, and his stomach twists. On the other side of the barrier waits the mercenary captain, Georgia Oakven. Sword in hand, she stands behind the other corpses as if supervising their movements. She looks nearly alive, except for her death-pale skin and the gaping hole in her chest. Like something punched through her heart and left nothing there.
“Radiance,” Arthur breathes.
She prowls in a circle, moving more gracefully than the other corpses. Every once in a while she touches the barrier, then retracts her hand. Her slow, studied movements are far more frightening than the other corpses’ frantic flailing. She’s the real threat right now.
Arthur adjusts his grip on his sword and circles with her.
She lunges forward suddenly, sword out and streaming with dark energy. The shield rings like a bell when she hits. It holds, but Arthurfeelsthe impact in his bones, and he knows this is a waiting game. One of them will tire first, and it’s unlikely to be the undead mercenary.
That’s fine. He just needs to hold out until Shae’s done chanting behind him.
The sun darkens above them, and Arthur looks up to see the great shadow-cloaked serpent coiling above. As it plunges towards them, Arthur prays that Shae can finish this quickly.
The shield reverberates with the impact, but holds. The shadow lands in a plume of dust, crushing several of the corpses beneath it. Smoke and shadow billows away, leaving a tall, dark-cloaked figure. He very clearly isn’t human. He’s far too tall, at least a foot taller than Arthur, and his skin is pewter gray. Horns curl back from his temple into sharp onyx points.
Behind Arthur, there’s a sudden thunder of hooves. Duchess flees in the opposite direction, breaking past the corpses and heading for the treeline. Arthur’s heart sinks in ice. Nothing’s ever scared her that badly—but he’s also desperately glad she’s gone.
The demon’s blood-red gaze cuts right past Arthur, fixated on Shae kneeling at the center of the shield.
“How kind of you, Shaesarenna.” His lips hardly seem to move, yet his raspy voice echoes all around them. “You’ve brought such a bright soul for me to eat.”
Behind Arthur, Shae’s words briefly falter.
“You can go ahead and try,” Arthur says, stepping more directly between them.
Izen smiles. His teeth are sharp. “He’s not even halfway done with the spell,” he tells Arthur. “You won’t survive to the end of it.”
He lifts his hand, and Georgia flings herself at the barrier again. Other corpses fling themselves against it too. The shield flares with light and power, and Arthur knows he can’t maintain such a large spell structure for long, even with the new strength he’s gained since leaving the order.
There’s an easy solution to that. Arthur takes a deep breath, adjusts his grip on his sword, and makes the shield smaller. It shrinks until it spans just ten feet around Shae.
Leaving Arthur outside of it. He hears Shae’s spellcasting falter again, in the brief instant before the hum of the barrier drowns it out.
