26. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

H olt’s ability to summon items returned not long before they made their way above ground. A brin fruit, of all things, from Jilah’s orchard in the botanical gardens. He’d handed it to Zylah, a soft smile on his face that had her heart soaring. A smile that was pure elation that he’d found a little piece of himself, despite everything.

Zylah had kept to herself that her ability to evanesce had returned to her, unwilling to take away from his moment of joy. But it also confirmed her suspicion: their healing was tied to each other’s.

Two scouts accompanied them through the tunnels, along with Nye and a host of her soldiers, Zack, and a small handful of Black Veil among them clutching orblights. On the other side of the palace district, two more scouts accompanied Arlan and his soldiers. Rin and Kej joined him, along with Daizin and another group of Black Veil fighters, all making their way to the second location they’d agreed upon.

Zylah had been relieved to hear they’d all coated their weapons in baylock and infused their drinking water with the plant. It might only buy them seconds against a vampire attack, but those few seconds might just afford them their lives.

Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword at her hip as they moved, apprehension coiling tight in her gut. Nothing about this plan was easy. For every vampire out there, they’d need at least two Fae to take them down, not even counting thralls, and Zylah only hoped they had enough soldiers on their side. She should have spent the night trying to spread the threads of her magic beyond the tunnels, to reach for whoever and whatever occupied the streets above them, but she worried that the thinner she stretched her abilities, the slower Holt’s healing was likely to be.

She glanced up at him beside her, allowing herself a moment to grieve the silent conversation they’d have been having had things been different, the reassurance that they’d find each other at the end of whatever they were walking into. She made her silent vow anyway, careful not to push it into that space they’d once shared for fear of hurting him or betraying his trust. Holt’s eyes slid to the cloth over her eyes, her nose, her mouth, and lingered as if maybe he’d heard her anyway. Zylah held her breath, an apology on the tip of her tongue.

“I feel honoured to be walking into this beside the Fae responsible for slaying a water serpent,” he murmured quietly as they pressed on amongst the group, their boots splashing in shallow puddles.

Zylah laughed under her breath. She’d put money on it that Kej had told him that. “Jumping ahead in the story again, are we? Rule number four, if I recall correctly, was no cheating.”

The smallest hint of a smile pulled at the corner of Holt’s mouth, there and then gone. “I wouldn’t dare.” The back of his hand brushed against hers, a featherlight touch she thought she might have imagined. “But I’m grateful you’ll be at my side out there. For all of it.”

“Always,” Zylah managed. But she knew what he was saying. Why he was saying it, in the very real likelihood that they wouldn’t walk out of this. It was a fear she wasn’t willing to face. Not today.

They approached their exit: a rotten cellar door leading to a butcher’s at the edge of the palace district, and without thinking, Zylah reached out for whatever lay beyond, her magic passing over cured meats and hanging carcasses, the cellar undiscovered or simply unreachable by the Black Veil during the time they’d sought refuge in the tunnels. Nothing moved in the shop above them, her magic detecting nothing in the street beyond.

One of the scouts reappeared up ahead of the group, confirming what Zylah could feel. “Clear,” he told Nye, the general’s shadows unfurling from her to work the lock on the cellar door. Something felt off, but Zylah put it down to her all-consuming apprehension as the door creaked open on rusty hinges, the frigid cellar air washing over them. She’d thought she’d feel relief to be getting out of the tunnels at last, the labyrinth of passages far too similar to Ranon’s maze, but too much could go wrong above ground.

Nye led the first of her soldiers into the cellar, Zack and the humans following them. Holt, Zylah, and the remaining Fae soldiers took up the rear. They had to keep the humans covered at all times, and that meant they’d need to keep a tight formation as they made their way to the palace, with the humans nestled between the two groups of Fae. It was the same for Arlan’s group on the opposite end of the palace district; whoever got there first would go in and retrieve the prisoners, communicating through whatever strange bond Nye and Daizin shared.

Up a tired, old staircase and into the butcher’s in single file; the shop was dark, the only sounds the soldiers’ quiet breaths and the humans’ footsteps. The space had been raided, not a single scrap of meat left behind, salt strewn across the floor from tipped over tins. Directly opposite the door sat the blood-stained butcher’s block, the wood dipping at one end from years of use.

Zylah’s magic spread farther out into the street ahead of Nye and her soldiers, threads unravelling through the cracks under doors and around corners and beneath discarded carts. There was no sign of life everywhere it touched, the city unnervingly quiet as a few rays of winter sun fell upon them and a chill gust of wind swept by. She’d half expected to see the streets littered with corpses, to see vampires feasting on humans and Fae alike. But there were none, and the only sound was a few creaking doors moving with the wind and an old sign wavering above what Zylah remembered to be a dressmaker’s.

But the quiet barely lasted a minute. A small cluster of thralls descended upon the group up front, their decaying appearance as unsettling as ever. Nye and her soldiers dispatched them with fast, efficient movements. The humans, to their credit, kept formation, though their unease was palpable as they approached one of the market squares, abandoned stall canvases flapping and providing too many hiding places for Zylah’s liking.

A tremor in her magic had her moving at the same time Holt did, his sword swinging to strike at the nearest of the three thralls that approached their group from behind. Zylah drew her blade, swiping at another thrall as a horde of the half-dead things attacked.

A male charged at her, part of his jawbone exposed, muscle and sinew stretched up over his gaping cheek to the socket of his wide lidless eye. Thralls were the vampires’ pawns, and though they had none of their masters’ strength and speed, they were savage, ruthless fighters, moving as if they had no regard for their lives, for their strange existence.

“Something is cloaking them.” Zylah pivoted, striking her blade into the monster’s rib cage and kicking it away with a huff.

“A vampire,” Holt grunted, moving behind her and bringing his sword down into another thrall’s shoulder. He shoved it away, moving onto the next without hesitation. Where there were thralls there were undoubtedly vampires controlling them, but whatever had cloaked the thralls must have been cloaking the vampires too, because Zylah couldn’t feel them, couldn’t see them with her new sight. A witch perhaps, but she didn’t linger on the thought. The market square was overrun with creatures, their shrieks cutting over the sound of clashing weapons, Zylah’s teeth clenching at the memories the sounds brought with them.

For every thrall they cut down, more came, until even the humans had no choice but to fight. Holt and Zylah moved together, cutting and slashing their way through so many creatures Zylah lost count. They were meant to be emptying Virian of as many creatures as possible, and the vampires had merely sent in the thralls to do their dirty work whilst they likely sat back and laughed.

“Where are they?” She’d barely finished the question when cries broke out up ahead: Nye and her soldiers fighting a handful of vampires and their thralls.

“Keep formation!” Holt commanded as a Fae beside him began to cut his way towards the general. “You know your orders.”

The Fae hesitated for a second, but Zylah didn’t have time to watch his response. More thralls closed in on their group, more than Zylah, Holt and the Fae soldiers could take on, but as two vampires approached them, the thralls were forgotten by her brother and the humans of the Black Veil.

Zack had trained for years to gain his position as King Arnir’s Blade. But he was human. Breakable. Zylah had to shove the thoughts aside and trust he could hold his own as she kept moving.

“They’ve been watching us.” Holt parried a blow from a thrall at Zylah’s back, a few precise movements cutting the thing in two. “They’re trying to break us apart.”

The same thought had occurred to Zylah, and she summoned a dead Fae’s dagger to her palm before a thrall could snatch it up. As one of the vampires cut through the Fae towards Zack, she evanesced the space between them, dagger pressed to its throat and slicing through flesh as its surprised eyes took her in.

“Get the humans out of here,” she snapped at her brother, shoving the corpse away from her with a grunt.

“Daizin’s group have made it to the palace,” he told her as another thrall came at them.

That was something, at least, but they couldn’t retreat. There was nowhere to retreat to , no way out of this but through. More vampires moved among them, some with the impossible speed Zylah was familiar with, the kind of preternatural movement that put the monsters at an advantage.

She stood with her back close to her brother’s, Holt filling in the gap on her right as vampires picked off any who strayed too far from the safety of the group, using the centre of the market square to contain them.

“They’re rounding us up.” Zylah had lost sight of Nye, but there was no doubting the monsters were driving them into an ever-tighter group, both Fae and human corpses strewn around them. Only one scout still lived, and he was the one up front with Nye’s group, leaving everyone on this side of the humans with no escape route. Zylah weighed her options: evanescing anything more than a few feet was likely to drain her, to drain Holt, and she didn’t know how many soldiers she could take at once, how many she could reach.

But then a feeling skittered along her skin like a hum, familiar and uncomfortable all at once. Holt tensed beside her. Vanquicite.

“Where is it?” she asked him, fighting off another thrall.

Something slumped beside her, Holt yanking his blade free of a thrall Zylah hadn’t noticed approaching. “Their weapons,” he said, his voice devoid of any trace of emotion, though he had every reason to feel it.

The fight stalled around them almost at once, the remaining humans and Fae standing side by side in the ruined square, as if it might make any difference at all to their chances of self-preservation. The soldiers parted and a group of vampires approached, Nye and the remaining fighters from the front held captive, vanquicite blades pressed against flesh.

The one holding Nye dragged his nose along the column of her throat, her shadows attempting to coil around him in response and failing with the proximity to the vanquicite. “ Tsk tsk tsk ,” the vampire cooed. “Call off your shadows, or we’ll slaughter every one of you.”

Nye’s shadows snuffed out at once, her gaze flicking between Holt and Zylah in what Zylah could only interpret as a don’t you fucking dare scowl. Holt might not remember her, but Zylah knew Holt, knew he’d be weighing up his odds, not to get away, but to save his friend. The soldiers. All of them. Knew he’d have been working his way through options, discarding ideas one by one as every avenue for getting out of there safely was taken from them.

Zylah knew he might loathe her for the option she’d settled on, but she wasn’t losing him again.

The vampire flicked his chin at Holt, his vanquicite blade never leaving Nye’s throat. “Ranon is waiting for you.” Then he grinned, revealing those sharp canines and sank them into Nye’s throat.