by Bec McMaster
Banes prowl the ruins on leashes, and goblins strain to hold them back as they watch us with hungry eyes and slavering jowls.
And there, with a shock of white hair and black robes stands Isem, Angharad’s pet sorcerer.
“Erlking’s cock,” Finn breathes. “Where the fuck were they hiding?”
“To me,” Thiago barks, the steel of his sword ringing as it clears his sheathe.
I stagger back against him, my dagger clenched in nerveless fingers. There are dozens of banes. And at least fifty swarthy goblins clad in leather and steel and feathers. No matter which way I turn, the Hallow is surrounded and there’s no escape.
“Blow your fucking horn,” Baylor snaps at Finn. “The others can’t have gone far.”
Finn lifts his golden horn to his lips, it’s clear notes ringing through the sky.
I can’t help thinking of Edain’s sneer. Of Andraste’s stony features.
Will they even help?
One last drop of blood hits the snow, and the Hallow comes alive beneath my feet.
Isem snaps his fingers, his eerie colorless gaze locking upon me. Upon that drop of blood. “Bring me the princess. Alive, preferably.”
“And the others?” growls a goblin, with a black tattoo obliterating the right side of its face.
Isem smiles. “You did say we were running short of meat for the banes.”
31
The snap of chains landing on the ground is terrifying, as the goblins release the banes. The slavering beasts launch toward us, and I can’t draw my star-forged sword quick enough. My mind is calculating odds, even as I fall into a defensive stance.
We’re overwhelmed by numbers and trapped within the Hallow.
There’s no way we can survive.
“Blow the horn again!” Thiago yells.
Finn does, but my heart is racing.
They didn’t come.
My sister would have heard that horn from miles away.
Eris draws the two swords strapped to her back, her dark braids swinging. “Stay behind me.”
Gladly.
I’m good with a sword, but I can feel my hands trembling with excitement and nerves. Master Hammond prepared me for every possible foe, but it’s one thing to face a challenge in a training ring, and quite another to be staring into the maw of bloody ruin.
Steel rings and Eris throws herself forward, both swords flashing. A bane’s head hits the ground, blood gushing from its decapitated body, but she’s rolling under it, steel lashing out to hamstring two others.
I have half a second to gape at her prowess and then I’m facing my own threat.
Two goblins fan out, swinging the chains they used to bind the banes. They tower over me. They even make Thiago seem short, which means they must be nearly seven feet tall, and their arms and shoulders bulge with thick muscle. A motley assortment of leather adorns them, though the one on the right has a chest-piece made of bones laid over the top. Neither of them bears tattoos on their cheeks, which mean they’re of the Clanless, the outcasts that were exiled from the mountain halls.
It also means they obey no rules or laws of their people.
Golden, cat-slit eyes lock on me and one grins, revealing teeth he’s sharpened into points.“Alive,” he yells to the other, and I realize they’re not planning to kill me.
They’re planning to deliver me to Isem in chains, which is an entirely worse fate.
When the sun sinks into darkness….
One chain lashes toward me, and I use the sword to deflect it. A blur comes at my head from the other direction, the second goblin using the first to distract me. Ducking beneath its chain, I feel cold iron brush against my cheek with a stinging kiss, and then I throw myself into a roll across the slate of the Hallow’s floor.
A swordsman who sits still is a dead swordsman, Master Hammond’s words ring in my ears.
It’s like my body has a will of its own. I scramble to my feet, leaping over the top of the whiplash of the first chain. Another dive and roll, and then I’m right within the goblin’s reach, driving the sword straight up beneath its sternum.
Its breath hisses from it in shock, but it manages to bring its bony forehead down into mine with a crunch.
Mother of Night.
The shock of it flings me off my feet, my ears ringing. Pain floods through me, and when I blink, I’m flat on my back, struggling to breathe. Another blur comes at me, and I roll in terror, but it’s merely a head tumbling past me.
“Get up.” Eris is there, hauling me to my feet, her eyes locked on the fight.
Disorientation makes me stagger. Both goblins are down. One with my sword through its chest, and the other in a crumpled heap. Or… two crumpled heaps.
One significantly shorter than the other.
“Move,” Eris says, as another chain swings toward us.
I duck below it, grabbing the hilt of my sword and wrenching it from the goblin’s chest.
Eris snatches the end of the chain and hauls her opponent toward her. The bastard staggers forward, where she smashes the hilt of her sword into his filed teeth. Blood sprays and he screams, and then she’s driving her boot up into his face.
The goblin hits the ground, and Eris barely glances at him as she stabs him through the throat, then wraps the chain around her fist and punches a bane in the face with it.
“Are you laughing?” I gasp, as I scramble to keep up with her.
Blood flecks her face and her eyes are wild and triumphant. “That prick shit his pants when he saw me. You should have seen his face, before I removed his head. Here.” She pushes me into Thiago’s arms. “Look after your wife while I clean up this mess.”
And then she’s gone, howling with glee as she wades back into battle.
I was wrong. Eris does know how to smile, and it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
“Are you all right?” Each breath I take ravages my lungs, but he’s covered in blood.
Thiago grins. “Not mine. Here. Watch my back.”
He sets his back to mine and we face the oncoming onslaught of more banes.
There’s nothing but the fight ringing in my ears, as blood splashes across the floor of the Hallow. I feel Thiago’s back against mine, and it gives me a confidence I’ve never known. I’m not a princess, protected by her guards. I am Death, and every blow I strike, every spray of arterial blood that drenches my tunic, only makes the blood in my veins pump harder. There’s something exhilarating about this dance of steel. It’s so very simple. You move and you live. You stop and you die. You focus only on the next move, the next foe.
I’ve never felt so alive.
Back to back we fight, with Baylor covering the left and Finn to our right. Eris is out there somewhere, a one-woman killing spree with a maniacal laugh. For a moment, I think we’re going to survive.
And then Finn staggers, going to one knee as an arrow protrudes from his thigh. It’s a critical breach in our defenses.
“Get up!” Thiago snaps.
Finn pushes to his feet and snaps the arrow in half with a wince, but it’s clear he can’t balance.
“Eris!” Thiago bellows.
“Coming!”
I’m crushed between fur and flesh, the stink of a bane’s raw breath hissing in my face as it slams me back into Thiago. It’s all I can do to drive my knee up into vulnerable flesh to gain some space. My sword is trapped between us and the second it winces, I slash back the other way, right across its abdomen. My sword is so heavy my arm aches, and the blow is sloppy.
As it falls away, it grabs my wrist.
Kicking it in the face, I try to hang on, but the fight is taking its toll. I can’t feel my fingers.
“Vi!” Thiago yells, and I turn just in time to see a fist driving toward my face.
It’s like being hit by a runaway horse. My sword is gone, my ears ringing, and then I’m bundled into someone’s arms.
“Got her!” grunts the goblin that hit me.
He slings
me over his shoulder, and the world jolts around me.
“Vi!” Thiago yells, and then he’s leaping over a pair of fallen banes, his cloak seeming to grow larger, to spread into amorphous wings.
A dozen goblins intercept him as though they were waiting for this moment. I catch a single glimpse of his eyes as our gazes meet, and then he’s buried beneath monstrous flesh.
Hitting and kicking, I try to free myself, but the goblin is immovable.
I bite its throat, and it tastes utterly fucking wretched, but all that earns me is a slap across my ears.
“Be still, little fae. Or I’ll break your fingers.”
“Thiago!” I scream.
Shadows writhe and the goblins that tackled Thiago start thrashing on the floor. Something flings them through the air—a punch of raw power, perhaps—and then the prince is climbing to his feet, his eyes gleaming pure black and merciless.
But it’s too late.
Goblins close ranks around us, and as the one carrying me dumps me onto my feet, another grabs my wrist to slap chains on me.
It’s too much.
I turn into a spitting, hissing ball of rage and manage to tear free for three precious seconds.
“Catch her!”
I duck beneath a meaty arm, and jump backwards as a dagger swipes through the air, narrowly avoiding my abdomen. Someone grabs at my hand and I wrench it free, yelping as my hand rips through a metal gauntlet.
Then I’m back through the stones, clutching my bleeding hand to my chest.
A pulse whispers through my veins. The Hallow is alive, its power stroking against my senses. Use me, it seems to suggest.
Travelling via a Hallow is dangerous at the best of times. But this one…. Is it even working? Angharad may have resurrected the sentinel stones, but the very alignment of them must be perfect, their angle connecting to the sentinel stones of other Hallows, for it to have any chance at working.
Finn goes down beneath a ferocious wolf-like creature with teeth as long as my fingers. Eris appears, covering Baylor as they keep a pair of goblins off Thiago’s back. All four of them are within the Hallow’s circumference. Good enough for me.
Torn apart by the Hallow’s portal, or torn apart by banes. Which one offers the best chance of survival?
I thrust my bloodied hand against the rune that refers to the Isle of Sorrow.
And then the world implodes in upon us, and Mistmere vanishes.
I slam back into being on a bed of moss that cushions my fall.
Every inch of me feels like it was taken apart and put back together again by amateurs. Mother of Night. I hurt from the tip of my toes to the roots of my hair.
But we’re not the only ones the Hallow transported.
Crawling to my hands and knees, I watch as Baylor smoothly decapitates a pair of goblins. Part of a bane twitches at my feet. It was only halfway inside the Hallow’s stones when I activated it.
My sword is gone, but there’s no need for it.
Thiago clambers to his feet from beneath a pile of slaughtered goblins, and Finn is kneeling by Eris’s side, wincing as he claps a hand to the arrowhead in his thigh. The rest of our enemies are dead—without reinforcements, Thiago and Baylor swiftly took care of them.
Thiago strides toward me, his face hard. He snatches at my bloodied palm. “You’re not hurt?”
“Nothing but scratches.” I wince, rubbing my tongue over tender teeth. “And a few bruises.”
“Here.” He cups my face in his palms, heat spreading through me.
I want to curl into it, especially when the pain evaporates, but I can’t quite look at his face.
All I can remember is what it looked like during that fight. Those black eyes. Those swirling tattoos. In that moment, I saw him as our enemies did.
He’s not seelie.
I’ve never been so sure of that in my life, though what he is remains uncertain. There were definitely wings.
“You didn’t unleash your Darkness.”
Thiago hesitates. “I can’t always control it.”
And in such close quarters, there was no telling whether it would fell friend or foe.
“What happened? I was just about to throw my fucking dagger at Isem’s throat when the world disappeared.” Eris pushes to her feet, dripping gore, her eyes wild as she looks around. “Where are we?”
“The Isle of Sorrows,” I croak. “It was the only rune I could reach.”
Thiago slides a sidelong look toward me. “You activated the Hallow?”
“It was the only thing I could think of.”
His thumb strokes across the bloodied cuts on my fingers. “You took a risk.”
“A calculated risk. Would you prefer to be in the belly of a bane?”
“If Angharad hadn’t consecrated the ground again, and tied the power of the leyline to the stones, then we would have been pulverized into a thousand particles when the Hallow imploded. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“The Hallow was awake.”
His thumb pauses. “How did you know that?”
The same way I knew the Hallow at Stormhaven wasn’t right.
It never occurred to me that others might not be able to feel the Hallow’s vibrations.
“I just… did.”
Everyone’s watching me.
“Well, I, for one, am cursed glad you did,” Finn says, slinging an arm around Eris’s shoulders. “Eris, my love, can you help me to that log? I need to sit down before I fall down.”
“Since when did I become your crutch?”
“Since you’re far prettier than Baylor,” Finn replies promptly.
“That’s debatable,” she replies.
“Yes, but he has curves in all the wrong places.”
“You touch my curves and I’ll break your fingers.”
“But I do my best work with my fingers,” Finn protests.
Baylor helps him sit down. “Do you never shut up?”
“Only when I’ve got my mouth full.” Sweat beads on his temples, but Finn’s still smiling, and he’s speaking faster than usual. I know bravado when I see it.
And so do the others.
“Here.” Eris whips one of the leather armguards from her wrist and shoves it between his teeth. “Bite down on this.”
“Is it going to hurk?” he manages to grind out around it.
“Oh, it won’t hurt me at all,” she replies with a grin. “I just want you to stop talking.”
The tension dissolves as Eris squats in front of Finn, slicing the gaping hole in his trousers wider, so she can examine the arrowhead embedded in his thigh.
But I know the prince is still watching me, a faint frown embedded between his brows.
This line of questioning isn’t over.
And I don’t know that I have the answers he clearly wants.
Somehow, I can feel the Hallows when no one else can.
Just like the Old Ones can.
32
“It’s later.”
The words are soft with danger. But it’s the kind of danger that comes wrapped around a warrior male with a promise in his eyes. Thiago rests his shoulder against the doorjamb to my bedchamber in Ceres, his eyes sleepy and insolent, but I know he’s not here to discuss the Hallow, or Angharad.
One day he gave me. One day to rest and recover.
One day to hide in my rooms as I tried to process everything that had happened at Mistmere.
But he’s never been one to hide from me. Not for long.
“It is.” I close the book I’m reading with a snap. “One day closer to the moment my mother takes your head. Perhaps she’ll parade it on a pike. Or hang it above her throne.”
His eyes narrow as if to say, oh-so-that’s-the-way-it’s-going-to-be.
“One day closer to the day you choose me.”
“Is your sense of confidence usually so conflated? Or are you just so insufferably smug that you can’t see the risk?” My voice roughens. Curse it. I’ve been dwelling on this all d
ay, and I wanted to sound logical and calm. “You made a deal that will cost you your life, and I will be the catalyst of your death! And you didn’t think to tell me?”
I want to fling the book at him.
Thiago slides onto the bed, taking the book from me as if he can read my mind. “You don’t love me. Not yet. I wanted to give you the chance to fall for me, without you feeling that you must.”
“I don’t….” I don’t know what to feel. Confused, mostly. I grind the palms of my hands against my eyes. “I trust you.” It’s a whisper. “And you’re charming and dangerous and… you’re like some sort of storm that’s swept into my life and blown me so far off course, I cannot see the shore anymore. Everything has changed. Everything feels like some sort of horribly wonderful dream I’ve found myself trapped in.” I draw my knees up to my chest, resting my chin on the top of them. “And then there’s you. Both the catalyst for this upheaval, and my one safe haven in the storm. And I honestly don’t know what I feel.”
“You can’t keep your eyes off me. That’s a start.”
I lower my palms. He’s smiling.
“You’re the one that keeps parading in front of me in various forms of skin-tight leather,” I accuse. “Was I not meant to look?”
“Oh, no,” he purrs. “You were definitely meant to notice.”
Leaning forward, he brushes his lips against my cheek. He’s so close, that I could turn and press my mouth to his, and turn this into something else.
I want to.
But there are still words to be said.
“Curse you,” I whisper, turning my face just so, my lips brushing against his. “I’m trying to be angry with you.”
“You owe me nothing, Vi. Not your feelings, not yourself, not if you don’t want me.” His lashes flutter against my skin. “I love you. I will always love you. But this kind of love does not demand anything from you, this kind of love is not a cage. If you cannot bring yourself to give your heart to me, then know this: You hold no blame for any of this. I loved you. And I made a dangerous, foolish bargain with your mother, because I was so certain of our destiny, that I could not see the trap around me. Your heart is a gift but if you cannot give it to me, it will never change how I feel about you. You bear no responsibility for any of this.”