Page 165

Kit finally looked down.

“Oh,” she said.

And then Tenny was screaming for aid as Kit fell to her knees, one hand loosely pressed to the gaping hole in her side.

And Kit wasn’t sure if it was the blood loss or the strain of the battle or simply the lunacy of all the day had already held—it was still morning for fucking celestial’s sake—but as darkness crept into the edges of her vision, all she could think was what a shame it would be if she never did get that chance to yell at Tenebris Nox.

52

THE NIGHT IS DARKEST

ELYRIA

It was endless. A hundred human cultists throwing themselves upon swords and spears was one thing. That same number returning from the grave as these abominable beasts? It was another thing entirely.

Elyria swore loudly as another one of the horrifying creatures, now bedecked in some kind of slick sanguinagi armor, swooped down on a pair of fighting soldiers. She and Cedric descended upon the monster together, her swinging her shadow-spiked staff at its horned head, him slashing Ashrender at its knees.

The beast came apart in three pieces.

But there were still so many more. And Elyria could barely see anyone else with the swarms of monsters continually coming at her and Cedric, drawn to the blazing power of the Sunfyre Heir. She certainly couldn’t get to Malakar like this, and the creeping dread that kept prickling the back of her neck was only getting stronger.

Whatever the dark sorcerer was doing, he was getting closer to accomplishing it—Elyria knew this with nauseating certainty. And as she was forced to engage with yet another snarling, slashing creature, she also knew that she would not be able to stop him.

The thought was almost enough to bring her to her knees and make her give up right then and there.

Almost.

But, of course, she was not the only person on the battlefield today.

To her left and to her right, groups of battle-weary soldiers fought on, defending against monsters that they had only ever imagined in their darkest nightmares. And maybe not even then.

They had recovered from the initial panic, the fear that had scattered their forces across the field, and those remaining now fought bravely, proudly, hacking away at tearing claws and goring horns. For each man felled, another two swung in to take his place.

But they were growing so tired and had already lost so many friends, and these creatures outmatched them so vastly in strength and size and power.

They kept fighting, though.

And somewhere else on this field, so did the rest of Elyria’s friends—Kit, Tristan, Ollie, Jocelyn, Thraigg and his dwarven brothers. Even Tenebris Nox had returned to help defend against Malakar’s madness.

Elyria would never stop fighting.

These monsters had already shed too much blood, taken too many lives. She would not give her own up so easily. And she absolutely, indisputably, unequivocally would not let them take her king’s.

Cedric fought with the kind of glorious skill that would make its way into storybooks, into legend. His veins were lit golden beneath his skin as Ashrender cleaved through wings and tails and shredded limbs. Bursts of sunfyre flew from his hands, setting the wicked creatures ablaze.

Elyria dipped the tip of her shadow-laced staff into the white-gold flames still burning through one of the monsters on the ground. It wrapped around the shaft, twining with her own ribbons of darkness—a braided rope of shadow and sun. She swung her staff overhead like a giant baton, and the rope lashed out, catching several of the surrounding beasts in its path. They hissed and screamed as pieces of their flesh were torn away by the daynight whip, their attention diverting from the soldiers they’d been hunting.

Elyria grinned and, with a flap of her wings, she was back in the air, ready and waiting to take more of these vicious creatures down. Except . . . Her eyes darted away from the nearest monster for the briefest of seconds, that prickle at the back of her neck driving her to search for the mana spring, to look for the dark sorcerer there.

He was—as were his other red-robed followers. They still stood in a perfect circle around the mana spring, that canister in the center catching the light of the winter sun and the aurora both. And each one of them, Malakar included, had their hands lifted to the sky.

The distraction cost her.

Cedric bellowed Elyria’s name—in her mind, in her ears—as a spindly, claw-tipped hand grabbed hold of her boot and yanked her back to the ground with a vicious pull.

Elyria slammed into the frozen earth, her staff skittering away. The monster was already on top of her. She withdrew the dagger at her thigh in an instant, thrusting it up into the beast’s throat, then tearing it down to its clavicle. Black blood spilled from the wound, spraying across Elyria’s face, dripping onto her shadowy armor. She drew up her legs beneath her and kicked, sending the half-dead abomination sprawling through the air.

She didn’t realize that there were three soldiers fighting another beast directly behind when she did. Soldiers who now stood in the direct path of the monster as it spun in the air.