Chapter Forty-two

The following day, Thea and Wilder dressed for war. Donning their armour and their weapons, they met the others outside the Singing Hare, ready to fight. Thea could feel the lightning at her fingertips, vying for her attention, demanding to be unleashed upon their enemies.

Soon, she told herself. Soon she'd light up the sky with her storms. She could almost taste the vengeance on her lips. They'd taken the only home she'd ever known and turned it into a cesspit for the vilest of monsters. They'd taken her sister from her and changed her against her will. No matter what happened on that battleground, she'd make sure they paid dearly for it.

For the first time in her brief experience of battle, there was no waiting. The time for strategy and plans was long past, and the song of violence beckoned.

With their company assembled, it was Drue who addressed them, clad in armour of Naarvian colours.

‘Dratos, Talemir and Anya spent the morning moving our forces from Aveum to the outer borders of Thezmarr. They're ready to fight,' she told them, her blue eyes fierce, her red-streaked hair braided down the side, just like Thea's. In fact…

Thea looked at all of them: Drue, Adrienne, Wren, Farissa… They all wore their hair in a side braid, just as she did – a nod to the women warriors beyond the Veil, and a nod to her, the woman Warsword among them. The gesture made her throat ache. She had dreamt of something like this, long ago.

‘The braids look good,' she ventured.

‘I had less to work with,' Anya said at her side, running a hand over her closely shaved scalp. ‘Maybe I'll grow it out after this.'

‘Don't,' Thea replied. ‘It suits you.'

Anya gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I always thought so… Are you ready?' she asked.

‘As I'll ever be,' Thea admitted. ‘Are you?'

Anya scanned the snow-covered woodlands beyond the tavern and breathed in the crisp air. ‘I've been ready for a long time.' Her wings materialised at her back, her shadows unfurling from her. ‘Shall I take you and Wren?'

Thea nodded, motioning for her sister to link hands with them.

‘To Thezmarr?' Anya said.

‘To Thezmarr,' Thea echoed.

The sisters landed close to the coast, just beyond the reach of the Bloodwoods, the briny sea air enveloping them, chasing away the remnants of Anya's shadows. In the distance, Thea could just make out the harsh lines of the fortress stretching into the grey sky.

‘I've wanted to come back here for so long,' Anya murmured, her eyes locked on the spires. ‘I never thought it would be like this…'

Thea didn't say anything, only moved a little closer to their eldest sister. She would never know the pain of being ripped away from family as Anya did, of never having a sense of home, but that didn't stop the sadness blooming in her chest. For Anya and all that she'd lost and suffered, and for the three of them, having been robbed of each other for so long. The Furies had a poor sense of humour, to unite them as the midrealms fell to pieces.

‘Come. We should saddle up,' Anya said, already moving towards the treeline. There hadn't been enough shadow-touched left to move proper cavalry units from Aveum, but the frontlines, at least, had horses.

Quickly and quietly, their modest force gathered as dusk fell around the Bloodwoods. It was a fitting spot to prepare for war, surrounded by gnarled trees that bled the blood of warriors long dead, and whispered secrets with the rustle of their leaves.

‘If the Warswords have a moment…?' Wren's request was quiet but firm.

Thea motioned to Wilder, who brought Torj, Vernich and Talemir to them beneath the low branches of a dying willow.

‘I didn't have enough supplies to make these for everyone, but after what Wilder told us about the Scarlet Tower, I thought we'd best take precautions…'

Wren handed each of them a strange-looking pellet the size of a thimble. Thea held it between her thumb and forefinger, studying it.

‘Should you be captured,' Wren told them, ‘bite down on it. It will release a lethal dose of Naarvian nightshade… The enemy will not have the opportunity to add you to their ranks.'

Thea stared at her sister, unsure whether to be impressed or terrified by her cool and calculated instructions.

‘I suggest tucking it into the neck or shoulder piece of your armour. Warsword armour in particular has a specific place for such a thing.' Wren pointed it out on Talemir. ‘If your hands are bound, you'll be able to free it from the patch with your mouth and still access it.' She turned to Thea. ‘I know your armour isn't the same, so I made this…'

It was a patch of leather, which, with quick fingers, Wren loosely sewed into place where Thea could reach it with her teeth if need be.

As Thea slipped the poison pellet inside, she wondered if this would be how she left this world – by her own hand.

With the means to end their lives tucked away safely, the Warswords were the first to mount their horses, taking the lead and starting the march through the main Bloodwoods. They were to ride the Mourner's Trail for the last time, drawing the reapers' attention outwards, so that Kipp might utilise the lesser-known entrances to the fortress from within.

But as the trees closed in around them, Thea saw just how much poison had seeped into her former home. As they drew nearer, they saw vine blights strangling the ancient trees. The sight alone triggered a deep lance of pain in Thea's wrist. Her breath whistled between her teeth as she winced, the agony following the line of her scar.

Wilder's horse came up alongside hers. ‘You alright?' he murmured, low enough for only her to hear.

Rubbing her wrist, she nodded. ‘We've got bigger things to worry about.'

As they rode deeper into the Bloodwoods, the monsters' scent became pungent enough to make Thea gag, the smell of fresh earth long gone. The forest was a far cry from the one she remembered. The dark glades had been beautiful and mysterious once, the canopy lush, the leaf litter damp and sliding beneath her boots. But like everything else in the midrealms, the Bloodwoods were dying. No leaves peppered the trees' branches; no birds called from above. It was silent in a way it had never been before: the intake of breath before the last exhale.

It wasn't long before they came upon the Mourner's Trail – the only true way in and out of the fortress, the trees either side reaching over the road and joining in the middle, creating what was once a leafy tunnel, now just an archway of skeletal branches. There were no shadows, not yet, leaving the route clear for them to approach – a trap, or a tactic to cause unease and suspicion. But they had no choice, not with Kipp relying on them to draw the enemy's focus away from the fortress, and certainly not with the weight of the few catapults they'd managed to transport from Aveum.

The narrow, rocky path seemed smaller to Thea somehow. Two years ago she had followed the trail out of Thezmarr with Wilder at her side, heading for Delmira. She had never imagined returning here with an armed force at her back. She had fought to become a Warsword for so long, only to come to this point – to use her Furies-given abilities against the fortress that had raised her.

Now, the trail seemed to hum in Thea's presence, welcoming her home.

But it didn't feel or smell like home, not anymore.

The wind rustled the brittle branches of the trail, sweeping up any debris in its path and pulling them towards Thezmarr. Thea shifted in her saddle, glancing back at the force behind her.

Two hundred.

Two hundred men and women, a combination of shadow-touched, Guardians and common folk, all marched along the Mourner's Trail in her wake, and Thea knew without a doubt that soon enough, they would come to understand the road's name intimately.

As the fortress walls came into sight, Esyllt signalled for the catapults to be taken off-road. His expression was all hard lines and determination. ‘They'll cause significant damage,' he said to Thea as he directed two soldiers and their cargo into the woods. ‘But I'd sooner see it in ruins than in the talons of those monsters. Thezmarr has stood against them from the start.'

‘We'll raze it to the ground before they can hold it another day, sir,' Thea told him.

The weapons master sat up straighter in his saddle. ‘I always liked you, Zoltaire. Fucking terrible at cleaning armour, though,' he added as he found his place in the ranks once more.

The laugh that formed on Thea's lips died as a rider appeared ahead.

A lone figure atop a black mare – the leader of Harenth's royal guard, Captain Barker. Thea had only dealt with him once before, in Aveum, where he'd ushered Princess Jasira to safety after their trouble on the road. He drew the reins up short a few yards ahead, scanning those who stood before him.

‘Some familiar faces,' he said, his eyes tracking across Thea, Cal, Kipp, Wilder, Torj and Vernich, widening as they landed on Talemir. Thea saw a flicker of fear in the captain's gaze before he gathered himself and spoke again, loudly enough for the back lines to hear. ‘It does not have to end this way. You do not have to die today. Join me, and there is no need for you to perish at the foot of those walls. Join me and the ones you love need not be swallowed by the shadows.'

Thea urged her mare forward a few steps. ‘And who are you to offer such clemency? We have your king in chains. Do you expect us to believe that you hold any sway over the monsters inside Thezmarr's gates?'

‘I have influence —'

‘We're done with people who have influence,' Talemir cut him off, giving Thea a subtle nod.

In a flurry of movement, she was at the captain's side, her blade a blur of silver sweeping through the air before it sliced through flesh, tendon and bone.

Captain Barker's head hit the road and rolled from the Mourner's Trail.

‘One less monster to deal with,' Wilder commented, with a note of satisfaction.

Thea let her ruthless smile show as she pushed the man's still-twitching body from the saddle, watching it fall to the side and hit the ground with a thud. ‘Looks like we've got another horse. Who needs one?'

With one enemy leader now dead, they marched across the final stretch of the Mourner's Trail until the thick stone walls and fortress gates were in full view. Tattered banners clung desperately to the towers, bearing the insignia of a guild that once protected the midrealms from darkness, now gripped in its shadows. All around the parapets, shadow wraiths were poised like watchful statues. The air was thick with their choking scent.

Somewhere behind Thea, she heard the battering ram being prepared, but no volley of enemy arrows came for them, no lashes of onyx power… Whoever was leading the defence from within Thezmarr's walls was allowing them this attack.

The battering ram collided with the gates, the impact shuddering through the ramparts and the ground below.

The long, heavy pole swung back and forth again, striking for a second time.

Stomach churning with unease, Thea looked down the frontlines, waiting for someone to speak, to rally the courage or foolhardy recklessness of those who were already doomed —

‘Now's your chance, Princess,' Wilder murmured at her side. ‘Told you that you might make a speech of your own one day…'

With the battering ram as her war drum, Thea surveyed their ranks. Sure enough, the eyes of the allied forces did not fall to Talemir Starling, nor to Anya, the Daughter of Darkness, and not to Wilder Hawthorne either. They looked to her.

A former child of Thezmarr, a girl turned warrior, Althea Nine Lives, the Shadow of Death, the wraith slayer. The storm-wielding Warsword. Althea Embervale.

Thea took a deep breath and lifted her chin, urging her mare forward so she could address the final fighting souls of the midrealms.

Unsheathing her sword, she projected her voice across their ranks. ‘Today, we face a reckoning,' she called. ‘I do not need to tell you that we are outnumbered, that our forces are outmatched, and that the shadows of annihilation loom large.'

The battering ram collided with the gates again, shaking the very foundations of the fortress.

‘With the odds stacked against us in every way, this battle will test the very heart of us. But it is in these moments of dire peril that legends are born. It is battles like these that forge warriors with blood and steel. I stand before you now not as a Warsword, nor an heir of a kingdom, but as a sister of the sword. You may not know me well. You may not know me at all… But I know you.'

Thea braced herself.

‘You are the true warriors of the midrealms – those who have been knocked down time and time again, only to rise up stronger than before. What those bastards behind these walls fail to comprehend, what they can never grasp, is the indomitable spirit that resides within each and every one of you. Together, we are a tempest that will rage. A storm that gathers must break, and by the Furies will we break upon them.'

The battering ram broke through the gates, splintering the iron-bound timber. It caved in with a roar.

Thea raised her blade and shouted her final words for all the world to hear. ‘If this is to be our final stand, let us make it worthy of legend!'