Chapter Four

Thea was restless, but she didn't take her eyes off the towering monolith casting long shadows across the desolate landscape. Day and night were barely discernible; it was the guard change that marked the passage of time, and Thea was more than ready to spring into action. They had waited and watched long enough. Somewhere in there, Wilder was suffering, and she wouldn't stand for it a moment more.

‘You ready?' Talemir asked, shadows dancing in his palms.

‘I was born ready,' Thea replied, faint sparks of lightning crackling at her fingertips in kind.

‘You need to be careful with how much magic you use…' the older warrior warned.

Thea nodded. ‘I'll only use a little,' she reassured him. ‘It knows him, so will be able to scope out where he is and alert him that I'm coming.'

Talemir frowned, gauging the distance between their hiding spot and the gates of the tower for the hundredth time. ‘If they discover who you're after, they'll know it was you. No doubt Artos already suspects your loyalty lies elsewhere. And if you use too much storm magic, any remaining cover you have will be blown. They'll know that the heir of Delmira and Althea Zoltaire are one and the same. The world will know exactly who you are, and who's important to you.'

Thea centred herself, letting her Furies-given strength interlock with her power, fuelling her from within.

Strong of mind, strong of body, strong of heart,she reminded herself.

‘Then the world will know that if they hurt him, I'll burn them all to the ground.'

Talemir nodded. ‘So be it.'

Wrapped in his shadows, they passed through the gates, past the trio of wraith guards undetected. Talemir's power was born of this place, and like recognised like amid the darkness.

But his disguise couldn't cloak lightning, and so when the pair reached the drawbridge that lay across the moat to the tower, Talemir turned to her.

‘Don't get yourself killed,' he told her, his wings flaring at his back.

‘Likewise.'

With that, the shadows vanished, and Talemir Starling launched himself skyward, the ultimate distraction for the wraiths circling the peak of the tower.

Thea had never seen anything like it – a shadow-touched Warsword battling monsters inmidair. He was cloaked in midnight, his membranous wings unfurling with each mighty beat, carrying him effortlessly through the swarm of wraiths. He brandished twin blades of Naarvian steel, twirling them amid the shadows, cleaving like a comet through the night. Talemir's movements in the sky were a symphony of precision and predatory prowess that she recognised in her own style. With a roar, he spun, bringing both blades together, and a series of wraith heads and hearts fell from above, splattering to a bloody pulp on the stone.

The chaos overhead brought many wraiths from the tower, each one shooting into the sky with a screech, their shadows surging for Talemir.

But the older Warsword didn't fight with steel alone.

His own shadows lashed out at the enemy. He became a whirlwind of onyx power and deadly blades, his dual wielding mastery blurring the lines between sword and shadow.

As another wave of wraiths stalked from the tower, their attention latching onto the pandemonium that ensued above, the diversion offered Thea a window of opportunity. She slipped across the drawbridge, over the moat's murky waters. Ripples marred the surface below and she felt the same strange luring sensation from the bog: another enchantment, another illusion to pull her off course and to her demise.

Shadows roiled overhead as Talemir kept his battle airborne, but Thea's focus was singular: get Wilder out.

When she reached the end of the drawbridge and approached the entrance to the tower itself, she faced three howlers with a sinister smile of her own. For the first attack, she didn't bother to unsheathe her Furies-gifted blade. Instead, she marvelled at her newfound abilities, finally able to test their limits.

There were none. Not yet, anyway. It had never been so easy to move like a warrior, to inflict damage. With her fist clenched, she punched through the rotten flesh of a monster's throat and ripped its spine out of its front in a shower of blood. Gore dripped from the vertebrae dangling in her hand before she cast it aside.

For a moment, she stared. This was strength. This was power. This was… disgusting. Grimacing, she wiped her hands on her already filthy pants, deciding she very much preferred using her sword.

From there, Thea relished the song of her Naarvian steel as she unsheathed it from its scabbard and palmed Malik's dagger in her other hand.

She took a step towards the howlers, savouring the tremor of fear in their gaits after witnessing the decimation of their kin. Then, she swung her blade. Every movement was a testament to the skills she had honed, a flurry of silver as she struck, sparks flying as her steel clashed with the howlers' inferior weapons. She gave herself over to the dance of precision and power she knew so well now, carving through cursed flesh and bone with her newfound strength that made every motion as easy as a hot blade through butter.

It was over in mere moments, in a handful of swift and lethal blows. She dispatched them one after the other without so much as breaking a sweat, finding the gaps in their piss-poor defences with deadly accuracy, ignoring their garbled shrieks of pain. She was almost disappointed they hadn't put up more of a fight; she could have ended them with or without her Furies-given gifts. But time was of the essence. She glanced up to see Talemir still airborne, his great membranous wings beating in the pale moonlight, wielding his swords against a swarm of wraiths. He had it handled.

Thea made for the entrance, only for the pungent scent of burnt hair to fill her nostrils. She found herself face to face not with a howler or wraith, but a rheguld reaper.

Heart pounding, she twirled her blade in invitation, sizing it up as it stalked towards her. Thea knew the reapers had once been men, but this monster… It was a corrupted vessel of nightmares, consumed by the very essence of evil long ago. Its sinewy form stretched grotesquely, towering over her at nearly ten feet tall. Horns curled from its head, leaking shadow, and its clouded blue eyes latched onto her hungrily.

It struck first, with a swipe of its wicked talons.

Thea's blades became an extension of her, and she blocked the blow, delivering one of her own with unnatural speed. Steel met flesh, black blood pouring from the laceration instantly.

As the creature staggered, Thea squared her shoulders and attacked, her blade and dagger slashing through the air with strong, calculated strikes. The reaper's flesh was tough, but it was no match for her Warsword blade. She spun and dodged, slicing the reaper apart cut by cut until it was roaring in pain, claws slashing down at her, obsidian power lashing for her like whips.

‘Is that all you've got?' she taunted, blades gleaming black with its blood now.

Darkness billowed around them. It charged her with its antler-like horns and cords of shadows, a harbinger of doom, reaching for her in the hopes of wrapping its talons around her heart and bringing her nightmares down around her.

Thea leapt, dragging her sword across its throat and plunging her dagger into its chest as she landed on top of it, already carving through its flesh and bone. The monster thrashed, its shriek nearly deafening as it collapsed beneath her.

There, she reached into its vile chest cavity and wrenched out its heart.

The only sound that followed was that of its bloody organ hitting the stone floor with a wet thud.

Leaping once more to her feet, Thea didn't hesitate. She entered the Scarlet Tower, blades at the ready, and headed straight for a winding iron staircase at the end of the antechamber. The stairs spiralled both up and down. The air tasted sour with blood and fear.

Sheathing her dagger, Thea cupped her hand in front of her, conjuring the first whisper of power to life at her fingertips.

Fine bolts of brilliant white light sparked there, and with a single command, she sent a quiet pulse outward, to search. She watched as it forked off, disappearing to explore the paths both up and down the tower.

Moments later, it sang to her, and she made for the staircase.

Realising that the true entrance to the Scarlet Tower was below, yawning like the maw of a great beast, Thea started down the steps, blade in hand, trailing the whisper of lightning she'd sent into the dark.

She was ready to shed blood. Ready to take back what was hers.