Chapter 43

43

Arwen

Snow fell, blanketing the raucous tumult of war in a veil of serene white. The Fae and mortal soldiers had razed at least half of the Shadow Woods between Lazarus's encampment and the stone walls of Shadowhold.

The late afternoon had bled into a violent sunset. The cries of our people growing louder, the chants and roars of the would-be victors growing more sure. I swung my sword, threw out my lighte, protected those I could but—

All I beheld now as I darted for the keep were smoking branches sizzling in the gray snow and crumbled dens of animals that would be seeking a new shelter, if they'd even made it out. And where was Lazarus while all his men fought and died for him? Hiding. Staying out of the fray now that he'd lost his precious witch. Repugnant.

Our sentries—those sturdy towers that specked the woods, the first line of defense for the stronghold—had been toppled. Onyx banners defiled, glass panes shattered, bodies of soldiers who had not been able to escape ravaged.

And those front lines I raced for…so rabid with violence I could hardly tell friend from foe.

It was a massacre.

One I did not allow myself to turn away from. To cringe, or heave at the awfulness. I'd never seen a battlefield. I'd been wholly unaware of the sheer brutality—of how it felt to sprint with all I had in me, freezing air funneling in and out of my lungs, and fall to the ground, ice ripping at my palms, only to realize what I'd tripped over was a human head. The flesh still warm against my exposed ankle.

Don't retch. Don't retch.

I stood and kept running.

Kane was way ahead of me. He ran with supernatural speed, his legs and arms elongating and darkening, scales spanning across him as he shifted. His vast, horned wings flared violently, taking out soldiers left and right until he leapt from the ground into the air, soaring over the clashing of steel and arcs of lighte with a deafening roar.

He landed atop the tower of soldiers that had piled high before the gates of Shadowhold. They were climbing the walls and wrought iron like ants, stepping on top of one another, swarming and blurring together.

Kane swooped down, ripping soldiers from their grasp of the pointed gates, tossing them recklessly—sometimes in two halves—into the forest.

But by then the mercenaries were upon him.

Harpies and snarling, winged wolves, ripping into Kane's haunches as he fought to keep them from soaring over the gates and into the keep. His bellows, the flame that split from between his razor-sharp teeth, doing hardly anything at all to deter their feathers and claws and earsplitting screeches.

And they were here as well. On the front lines. Lashing through the men and women all around me, beaks slicing beside my face. I spun, witnessing in muted horror as Onyx armor was sheared apart like torn bread. I shouldn't look away but—I could hardly watch. Could hardly witness the faces I knew, had seen trickle through the halls of my home, gurgle out their final breaths. For our kingdom. For my kingdom.

And I wanted to unleash all my power as I'd done so long ago at Siren's Bay. I could feel it, that vigorous lighte rippling in my veins, charged and furious—fueled by horror and grief and loss and rage—but I had more power now than I'd had then. If I let it consume me, I'd destroy everyone. The Onyx soldiers, Shadowhold—

And even if I didn't, as evidenced by the weeks after the battle that I'd spent starved of lighte, I'd have nothing left for Lazarus.

The smell of burnt flesh brought a hideous memory to my mind.

I spun, interrupted by a fist careening into my jaw. Had barely caught my breath before another blow sent me to the ground. My sword slashed up, cutting through the Amber man's leg. He howled in agony.

When I stood, I made his death quick.

But by then the salamanders were well within my sight.

I wasn't the only one who had stopped midbattle to appraise the lizard-like creatures. Onyx, Amber, and Fae warriors alike had all halted around me, if only briefly, to witness the sheer power of the prowling, fire-breathing beasts from Garnet.

I'd never seen anything like it. Even that night in Peridot, they had attacked from so far away, and it had been the dead of night, and there had only been a few…

At least fifteen of the beasts laid siege to our walls now. Scales as large as the face of an axe and just as sharp. Split, slithering tongues. Cold reptilian eyes. Frying the men who held their ground. Burning the walls, crumbling the brick.

Enough to demolish all of Shadowhold. To reduce the keep to embers.

Kane took a wretched blow of that caustic, blistering salamander flame to one beautiful outstretched wing and plummeted into half the men who had claimed the wall beneath him.

NO—

A scream ripped through my throat at the sight.

I surged for him, thighs burning, racing toward my husband, my partner, my king—

Kane's ravaged roar as the fire crawled up his sleek scales shredded my heart. Smoke and flame curling as he fell.

I watched in desperate dread as his enormous body took down half a dozen soldiers of all creeds that were halfway up the walls. And their armor, their flesh, the very snow coating their helmets lit, too, with that wicked orange and scarlet like a funeral pyre—

A whip of watery lighte wrapped around my braid and yanked me backward. I went down, the notches of my spine bruising against the icy roots of a sprawling tree. Kane's pained roars echoing through the trees…

A soldier in that vicious red glass visor filled my vision as I gulped frantic air back into my lungs. He kicked me down to the ground with the sole of his boot and held me there, slamming his sword into the blade of some Onyx boy—just a boy —fighting to reach me. Calling my name. Calling me his queen .

The Fae's violent, watery lighte shot down from his hands toward my neck like a razor-sharp guillotine. I didn't have time to think as bright rays of my own power met his liquid strike and evaporated the blow into winter air. My wrists and arms burned with the impact.

Our eyes met, equally shocked.

Before I could recover—make any sense of what my lighte had just done—the soldier snarled and brought down another surge of water, sharp as a meat cleaver.

This time I deflected the blow with that sunfire and allowed the lighte to crawl past his offense and up his arms until the fire turned his armor molten-hot.

He shuffled back, barking at the pain, screaming as he fought to rip his breastplate off, allowing me to scramble up and run.

Kane, Kane—

Past the still body of the Onyx boy who'd tried so valiantly to save me. That boy…his freckles. He'd been the soldier I'd stitched up. The one who'd wanted to fight for his home, and his people.

Dead.

I doubled back and shot my sunfire at the Fae who'd murdered him. Allowed my righteous, twisting flames to crawl up his calves and legs and groin and boil him inside his own suit of punishing reptilian armor. His screams were soil to my stems. Briefly, I languished in them.

Then I raced for Kane.

My arm flew out again and again, my steel an extension of me, my lighte an extension of that weapon, winding and dodging, bracing for the ache in my back and shoulders every time I swung, every time my sword connected.

But more and more and more soldiers came. From the trees, from their steeds—

And those salamanders—right at the keep's walls. Hurling balls of fire at the gates. Their creaking like thunder, shaking the forest floor. That wall of silver men, crawling higher and higher.

I could only watch as Onyx soldiers dove from their positions on the gates to avoid being burned alive with their castle. And some were not so lucky, blaring out their suffering—

And I could barely appreciate the reprieve as I sought out Kane now where he'd fallen, charred and bruised and back in his human form, handling himself between the blades of too many Fae soldiers. I had no idea where Griffin was. Hadn't seen Mari's red hair or clouds of ferocious magic in too long. Far too long.

And wherever I set my ropes of white fire to one soldier, two more found me. Where I ducked from one blade, another cut through my flesh. Where I deflected, each next blow connected. Too many of them, closing in. Too much smoke, too much tumult, to see or hear if the gates that separated this concentrated, bloody mangling of bodies had broken through to the innocents still housed inside the keep. Leigh and Ryder—

And the animalistic sobs, the cries, the agony …

"Stand down," I screamed at them all. "We have to stand down!"

Nobody altered a single movement.

I opened my mouth to bellow the words. To beg our army to surrender. Beg them to save the women and children who filled the keep behind us as those monstrous creatures lit the forest and iron ablaze.

Opened my mouth to beg for this just to be over —

Until movement broke through the tree line.

I snapped my head back at the rustling branches and falling snow. More monsters, more creatures, surely…

But the sound—

Not hooves or claws or wings.

Just feet.

The heavy footfalls of thousands—

Helmets turned all around me. Silver and jet-black and gold and rust—

Swords fell from midair in confusion. Even the salamanders halted, turning their heads toward the shuddering ground. Tongues lashing at the air to scent the newcomers.

And then I saw it—

The sea of glowing red dots. Pairs of two.

The eyes of the Hemolichs.

So fast—

So much faster than I thought any raven could fly.

And so many of them. Rows and rows and rows. Bedecked in simple, mismatched armor. Some bare-chested altogether despite the cold. Some with blunt weapons. Some with none.

And at the helm: Aleksander.

Eyes steadfast and conquering and wholly savage as he stalked to the front of his legions. Long white hair rippling in the winter wind.

Aleksander, who offered his men only one singular nod before they took off, thousands of them hurtling and roaring in unison. Tears burned in my eyes as the very ground beneath me shook with their weight. A riotous tidal wave of Blood Fae, prepared to pull Lazarus and his armies asunder.

And I thought I might have laughed—thought I might have actually barked out an incomprehensible cackle as I finally witnessed fear in the eyes of the soulless Fae soldiers who surrounded me.

Fear as our allies rolled in like an avalanche unleashed across a mountainside. Surging, snarling, roaring their determination. Fear as red-eyed Fae, as agile as they were lethal, tore through Amber and Garnet men with their bare, unarmed fists. Unleashing wild, ruthless lighte, cutting down silver-clad men, every Fae spear and wheel spoke shattering easily under their carnage-heightened power . Every drop of blood only making them stronger.

Our salvation descended on the battlefield as furious as a swarm of hornets and as powerful as the quaking of the earth.

Kane's gaze, one eye bloodred and face half-burned as it was, found mine through the fray. And it shone pitch-black with victory.

The Hemolichs had come. Aleksander had come.

Triumph sounded in my ears and jolted through my bones. Triumph, and hope. I blinked away the wet relief that clouded my vision and wrapped my hands more tightly around my blade.

If we were very lucky, and very, very smart, maybe—just maybe—this might be a fair fight.