Three armed corpses lunge toward him, rotting teeth bared. Arthur mutters a prayer, and light flashes around him. The radiance forces them back, their dead skin smoking. Arthur can barely spare any attention for them. He brings up his sword and pivots to meet Georgia’s. Her hair is matted with dirt and blood, and her eyes are pitch black, without sclera.
She presses in viciously, and it’s all Arthur can do to keep her from the barrier while still watching Izen. Her undead strength is greater than it should be, but there’s a clumsiness to her movements that he doubts she had in life. That clumsiness gives Arthur the edge he needs to save his own skin.
All the while, Izen is still just standing there.
“You like to make others do your dirty work, don’t you?” Arthur shouts out to Izen. “Can’t take me yourself?”
Cold laughter echoes around the landscape. “Quiet, paladin. I’m speaking to my necromancer.”
Fear shivers through Arthur’s veins. He doesn’t know whether Izen’s bullshitting or whether he’s actually telepathically harassing Shae, but nothing the demon’s doing can be anything good. He parries another blow of Georgia’s. “He’s not yours, and he won’t listen to you.”
Izen gives an exaggerated sigh. There’s a shimmer of dark magic in the air, and a shadowy sword appears in his hand. Tendrils of black and red smoke waft from its blade. “Alas, you’re right. I was bargaining for your life, but it appears he’s unwilling to compromise.”
Suddenly, Georgia disengages, backing away with her death-pale face turned towards the demon.
The wind picks up, stinging Arthur with specks of dirt and blood and magic.Radiance,he prays, and light flares around him, but it’s not enough. He can’t hold the barrier and protect himself at the same time.
As Izen looms forward, shadow blade raised high, Arthur chooses to hold the barrier.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Shae
Izen’s words creep into Shae’s mind. It’s nearly impossible to continue chanting the banishing spell with the demon’s threats and promises dancing through his heart.
Take your place by my side. Be obedient, and I’ll let your pretty paladin live.
Shae doesn’t trust the promises, but he trusts the threats. He keeps chanting, with his hands in the center of the circle drawn in Arthur’s blood. Power courses through him. Not necromancy, but simple witchcraft, the sort he was born with, the sort he used to summon Izen in the first place. The earth is wet and real against his palms, but he doesn’t feel grounded. He’s unmoored and scared.
Izen must be scared too, if he’s trying to bargain. Shae just has to finish the spell, and everything will be fine.
So stubborn,Izen sighs in his mind.That’s all right. I like you that way.There’s a whistling, rushing sound. Shae glances up and sees the wind swirling around the shield barrier. Arthur’s figure staggers through the golden light and the windswept dirt, and a dark blade suddenly appears in Izen’s hand. Fear spikes through Shae’s heart as Izen drawls,And his soul will taste so, so sweet.
The demon lunges forward in a blur of shadow. Light flares, and Arthur’s sword flies from his hand. Arthur’s on his knees, then on his back, and Izen’s sword is coming down, and Shae still has three lines of the spell left to recite. There isn’t enough time.
He doesn’t even think before breaking off the spell. He screams a single word, both a spell and a prayer: Arthur’s name.
It rips from his throat with all the force and magic he possesses. He flings out his hand, and power pours into his grasp. Different magics all combining—the coldness inside him. The dark obedience in the nearest corpses. The blood in the earth. The radiance of Arthur’s god. The barrier dissolves around Shae, spiraling through the darkness he holds, strengthening and sharpening it.
He flings the spear of power towards Izen’s heart and feels the impact in his own chest. The moment hangs. The sword vanishes from Izen’s hand, and he arches in a rictus of pain. A scream pours from his throat and roars hell-bound through the air, as great an impact as Shae’s bolt of power. He freezes into the scream, cracks of red and black appearing in his gray skin.
His sword vanishes. The rest of him turns to ash and crumbles away.
Ears ringing, Shae scrambles to his knees, then his feet. Falls back to his knees. Finds his feet again and staggers forward, past fallen, twitching corpses, to where Arthur lies.
Shae collapses at his side, so dizzy he can barely see anything besides the blood. He reaches for a pulse—and Arthur grabs his hands.
The grip is tight and warm, and relief blooms through Shae’s chest. He takes a rough, painful breath. “Are you all right? You’re hurt, I thought you were—”
“I’m fine,” Arthur says roughly, his voice clearing Shae’s head. His eyes are open.
“You don’t look fine, you’re covered in blood.” Shae pulls his hands from Arthur’s grasp and starts touching him, feeling his living warmth, cataloguing every cut and scrape he can find. There aren’t as many or as bad as he feared, but he’s still in a heightened state of fear. He’s afraid to believe that Arthur’s okay. “Let me look at you.”
“I said I’m fine,” Arthur says, almost laughing, and sits up, heedless of Shae’s fluttering. He grabs Shae, both hands on his face to hold him still. The heat of his touch pierces through Shae’s heart. “We’re both fine,” he says, and kisses him.
Only when Arthur’s lips cover his, sharing breath and warmth and love, does Shae believe him.
