by K. A. Linde
Cyrene would never have guessed that he would put himself in a position where he had to actually fight.
“Who are you?” Cyrene shouted into the dark. “Show yourself!”
Then, figures moved from the shadows and toward the light. Armed to the teeth, a woman entered the clearing. A woman Cyrene recognized.
“Guild,” she muttered like a curse.
“Did you think we would let you walk out of our city without paying for your transgressions?” the woman asked.
“Honorary!” the crowd cheered as one.
“So, you’re the Honorary,” Cyrene said, sizing her up.
She’d thought that the group of leaders at the Guild shared power or that they were the face for the true leader. No one had named her as such.
“Yes, of course I am the Honorary, leader of the Guild. And you are here to die.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Ahlvie said with a laugh.
“You’re a long way from your pack, dog,” she bit out.
Matilde moved, as if she were about to strike the Honorary down, but the Honorary held up a finger and wagged it back and forth.
“Uh-uh, I wouldn’t do that. Your magic might be fast, but our arrows are faster.”
“I doubt it,” Vera said boldly.
The Honorary waved her hand, and suddenly, all of their shields were gone. Cyrene startled and reached to replace hers. Once again, it disappeared.
“We can play this game all day,” the Honorary said. “You’re outmatched. Drop your weapons and come quietly. This will all be over soon.”
Her friends scoffed. As if they were going to turn themselves in to these monsters.
“How did you even know where we were going?” Cyrene asked.
“The commander told us, of course.”
Cyrene froze. No. He wouldn’t have done that. He couldn’t have.
The Honorary laughed. “Did you believe he cared for you? That he was on your side?”
Yes. No. Maybe she’d thought that. Despite all of his warnings that he would betray her, she still hadn’t believed that he would do it.
It hurt worse than she wanted to admit. He was right. It was much worse to be double-crossed after making your enemy a friend. She hoped that he had done it for a good reason, but right now, she couldn’t think of a single one. She just felt sad that, once again, her judgment was off.
She should have listened to Avoca. The commander had used her and set her up to be betrayed. He’d wanted knowledge about their magic, and after he had gotten it, he didn’t care.
Her heart constricted. Could it be that simple? Or was he protecting his people, his friends? Did he think she’d already be gone? Was she too hopeful that he wasn’t the villain he’d painted himself as?
“Don’t look so surprised. The commander is an excellent actor. Gaining your trust and then plotting against you once he got what he wanted from you. Truly inspired.”
“I don’t believe you,” Cyrene said.
Avoca groaned behind her. “Just kill the bastards.”
“Your choice,” the Honorary said with cold, dead eyes.
Cyrene didn’t think twice. She launched her energy toward the Honorary, but Matilde beat her to it. She blasted through the defenses the Honorary was holding up. Whatever magic the Honorary was capable of clearly outmatched what the commander had been trained in. Matilde effortlessly weaved the elements together, taking on the Honorary with skill and precision honed over thousands of years.
But Cyrene didn’t have time to watch her skill. They were soon engaged on all sides. More than a dozen Guild members threw themselves at them. These were the dazed and confused lot that had been training the day they met the Honorary. These were their top-notch assassins. The ones that gave the Guild their treasured name.
Ahlvie vaulted off his horse and exploded into fur and claws and fangs. He shredded through the first assassin with ease but was quickly crowded with fighters as he worked to keep people away from Avoca. Cyrene was doing the same thing. Avoca was wielding small amounts of magic, but Cyrene could practically feel the intense pain that she was in. They needed to get that arrow out of her shoulder and quick.
A Guild member threw himself at Cyrene. She reached for the fire sword that she had used all those months ago on Kael. She might not be a master swordsman by any means, but a flaming sword was its own trick. She had killed a Braj out of sheer force of will. She could hope to best this assassin.
She parried with her sword, but the assassin came at her with a whole other tactic. It was clear that she was out of her depth. But she drew on her wealth of magic and pushed back with air, blocked with water, slammed into him with earth, and lit him on fire as often as she could.
She was holding her own but lagging. And more kept coming. When she slew one, another one took its place. The battle became a song, a rhythm, a heartbeat. The tempo rose and fell, hit a crescendo, moved to a feverish pitch, and then settled into a dance.
Her mind and heart and soul all fell into perfect synchronization, and suddenly, she was free. Set sails and open skies and summer days and true love’s kiss. She was soaring in motion. Alight with energy and pulsing with the feel of it all.
It was terrifying and horrible. Blood and blood and blood. Destruction and torment and finite.
Yet she felt more alive than she ever had in her life. More alive than the first time she’d ever found her magic. This spoke to her in a way she’d never experienced. As if she were one with herself. Drinking in the energy all around her—Doma, elemental, blood—all of it crashing into her, using her as a vessel.
As she reveled in her own perfect equilibrium, she knew she was powerful enough to control it all. Strong enough to carve her own path. New path.
She had long wondered if she was the light or dark.
The good or the bad.
Perhaps to win this battle, to end this war, she needed to be both. To be more than separate halves and instead be whole.
Blood coated Cyrene’s hands and was splattered all over her clothing. She had lost track of time and her friends and everything in the heat of the battle. But they were winning. She could feel the tides turning, the edge slipping away.
Her flaming blade slid through the chest of her last opponent, and she yanked back, letting the figure fall down dead. Death was everywhere. She turned to face her friends, ready to help where she was needed, but then she felt the energy crackle in the air around them.
Her eyes rounded with horror as the air sizzled, and then everything shrank to that one moment. She reached out with her magic to test the energy and gasped.
“No!” she screamed.
She launched herself toward Avoca, knocking both of them off their horses and landing with a crunch onto the blood-soaked earth. Avoca cried out from the impact to her shoulder. But they had barely touched the earth when a lightning bolt smashed into the ground exactly where Avoca had been only a split second earlier.
The blast rocked the ground all around them, shaking and rattling it from the heavens. Cyrene covered her eyes as the light seared them. She was seeing stars when she tried to orient herself.
Lightning.
Someone had controlled the lightning.
Not possible.
Her mind felt fuzzy. Cyrene knew that she was one of the few capable of it. But she had felt the energy in the air. Tasted the tinge of magic directing the blaze to that exact spot. It was pinpoint accuracy. Beyond anything Cyrene had ever mastered. Whoever had controlled it was well beyond her, which was even more terrifying.
“Cyrene,” Vera called, rushing to her side.
“What…what was that?”
Vera shook her head. “We need to get out of here. Get Avoca back on her horse, and we’ll retreat.”
Cyrene wanted to argue, but the look on Vera’s face stilled her. Cyrene hauled Avoca up. She was panting and delirious. The arrow through her shoulder had shifted when Cyrene landed on her and was bleeding again. Cyrene put a protective shi
eld around her and then went for Avoca’s horse.
The mayhem around her was suddenly shockingly clear. Bodies littered the ground. Ahlvie and Orden had a group of Guild members engaged. Matilde was still fighting with the Honorary. Vera was interjecting where she was needed and holding people off so that they could get away.
Cyrene darted for the horse and dragged it back toward Avoca. Her eyes were glazed.
“I’m going to need your help,” Cyrene told her, shifting Avoca’s weight onto her.
“I…can’t,” Avoca muttered. “Leave me.”
“You know I won’t do that.”
Cyrene had her halfway into the saddle before Avoca slid back down and landed in the snow. Cyrene snarled in frustration.
Just as she was attempting to find an easier way of doing it, she felt the energy sizzle again. Cyrene cursed and then threw herself on top of Avoca. Her energy shield activated, and she prayed to the Creator that it would be enough.
When the lightning hit her shield, it was like being cleaved in two. She gritted her teeth, glad that she was full to the brim with magic, and held on for dear life. The hit only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity.
Cyrene was left trembling and shaky. She released her battered shield and collapsed forward over Avoca.
“Creator,” she whispered.
She was preparing herself to take on another hit, when the energy around her morphed once more. But, instead of sizzling with intensity and the electrical zap of power, the air seemed to expand outward. Then, with a pop, the darkness shifted, and a figure was standing in their midst.
Cyrene rose to her feet, watching the darkness diminish and the figure step into the light.
The Nokkin had found them.
“Hello, pet,” the Nokkin said.
“I am not your pet,” she snapped at it.
“Are you ready to meet my master? It is long past time.”
“I know what you are now,” Cyrene said, controlling the shudder that ran through her at its presence.
“Clever,” the thing said in a bored tone. “But my master is impatient. Though you were so delicious last time. May I have another taste?” he asked the question and then jolted toward her.
She focused on her magic and blasted him backward with her energy. Whatever had brought the two halves of her being together had opened up a world inside her. She was truly new. And, for the first time, she felt utterly connected to herself. She was not lost. She was not fighting herself. She was ready.
The Nokkin blocked her assault, not giving an inch. She honed her energy, throwing a fireball at the creature. It batted it away, as if it was no more concerning than raindrops falling from the sky.
It reached for her, and she shifted. Magic hit her, but she stayed on her feet.
“Tell your master, whoever he is, to leave me alone,” she said, blasting through its defenses and landing a hit.
The Nokkin stumbled backward a few feet. “She.”
“What?” Cyrene asked with furrowed brows.
“My master is a she—a goddess in fact. Great and all powerful. She will peel your skin from your bones and eat them like candy. Roast you like a pig on a spit. Pick apart your brain until nothing remains.”
“Not really giving me incentive to meet her,” Cyrene countered, releasing another blast of energy.
The Nokkin evaded that hit and sent one of its own at her. Cyrene pivoted but still caught a hit to the hip. She grunted and doubled over on impact.
“You need incentive?” the creature spat at her.
Then, it shifted, disappearing into a blend of shadows and darkness. Cyrene whirled around in a circle, trying to figure out where the thing had gone. Then, she heard a piercing scream that chilled her bones. She whipped around and saw the Nokkin holding Avoca aloft by the arrow in her shoulder.
“Let her go!” Cyrene shouted, throwing everything she had at the Nokkin.
But he disappeared and reappeared a few feet away. He was still holding Avoca in one hand.
Cyrene was trembling now with fury. Not just fear. Fear was weakness. An emotion that could be forged into something more powerful, into something unstoppable. If she could just overcome it.
Fear wasn’t the Nokkin. She could take on the Nokkin.
Fear was losing Avoca forever, and she could not live in that world.
Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides as her blood boiled in her veins. She was drawing on it all. Every ounce. Every drop. Every last piece of magic. She was a siren’s call, and she would be destruction.
The Nokkin held Avoca up to Cyrene, and its filthy mouth said, “Incentive?”
Then, with slow, agonizing purpose, the Nokkin lifted its hand and placed it over Avoca’s mouth, draining the magic and life force from Cyrene’s best friend.
Something cracked inside her.
Shattering at the sight of Avoca dangling from an arrow at the hand of a Nokkin.
No.
The answer was no.
She would not let this happen.
Not again.
She was in control.
She could stop it this time.
Cyrene shut out the madness all around her and centered on that one feeling of being whole. All her magical energy was bottled up inside her. She was the master of her fate.
With a battle cry, Cyrene slammed her fist down into the earth and released all her energy in one powerful arc. The mountains rattled as she blasted through them. The ground under her feet was unsteady. Everything stilled completely as everyone realized what she had done. Even the Nokkin had dropped Avoca, leaving her body crumpled on the ground.
“You will not hurt her,” Cyrene said, her voice as cold as ice.
“What are you—”
Cyrene slammed her mind into the ruin of this thing that once had been Doma. It was beast more than man, but she went to work, ripping it apart, shattering it beyond the horrors it had already seen.
It shrieked. An unholy thing.
Then, it lashed out, reaching for her own mind. Trying to grab for her, to drain her power and stop. But it couldn’t reach her. She stepped up until she was almost within arm’s reach and forced the Nokkin down on its knees before her.
“Your reign is over. It’s my turn.”
Then, she poured the rest of the power that connected her to this world, that tethered her to Avoca, into her flaming blade. She felt something click. A connection within herself. As her soul opened up and she was one with herself. She thrust up through the empty place where its face should have been and then blasted outward, nearly knocking herself off her feet.
The Nokkin collapsed into a pile of shadows and then blew off into the wind. Whatever she had done finally ended its miserable existence. She didn’t know which part of it had been enough.
But she now knew that she was enough.
She had always been enough.
“Uh, Cyrene,” Basille Selby said, addressing her without a title, which was strange enough, “we need to run.”
“What?” she asked, dazed.
“Run!” he said.
Then, Cyrene saw what had him looking so terrified.
“Creator!” she cried. “Avalanche.”
And there, barreling down toward them, was a wall of snow, picking up speed and threatening to destroy them all.
The Guild members must have already realized what was happening, and however many of them that were still alive were racing back out of the Pass. But her friends hadn’t moved. They hadn’t abandoned her.
Orden hoisted Avoca’s broken body up onto the nearest horse, but most of the other horses had already scattered. They didn’t have another choice. Her powers had set off this chain reaction, and she didn’t think that she could stop this, like she had been able to stop the hurricane. She had used up most of her magic, and stopping it could kill her.
With the limited horses, they swung up, one or two to a mount, and raced down the side of the mountain. Cyrene kept checking behi
nd her, anxious to see how far away the snow was. They had barely made it a quarter of the way down when she knew for certain that there was no way she could outrun this. None of them could.
She pulled up her horse and jumped off its back. Then, she smacked its rump and sent it down after her friends. Planting her feet in the snow, she built up a shield with what remained of her powers, desperate and clinging to life.
There was no blood magic to replenish her now. There was only her Doma energy and whatever she had left in reserves. There was only the here and now.
Casting a wide net, she threw a wall up across the path to her friends. They could get out. They could survive this. She just needed to buy them time.
The first impact was like a sprinkle spitting against her shield. The second hit, with the full force of the avalanche, was like a downpour.
She grunted and dug in deeper. She could do this. She could hold back tons of snow from crushing everyone and everything.
The snow kept coming. The weight on her shoulders grew heavier. It was as if her arms and back and shoulders were physically holding up the snow as it climbed ever higher. Then, it pushed over her shield, and she had to adjust it upward.
Her knees buckled, and she went down hard. Part of her shield disintegrated and then another section on the other side. Snow was sliding past her now, heading down toward Alba.
Then, out of nowhere, both sides were reinforced. Matilde and Vera grasped her hands and pushed back on the snow with her. When they helped her hold off the coming snow and ice, it was like taking a breath.
“We need to divert it,” Vera said through her teeth.
“Left,” Matilde said.
Then, they swung as one, shoving the snow off the main path. It went cascading down the side of the mountain and through the trees, shredding everything in its way and creating a whole new path in its wake.
By the time the snow settled, Cyrene was shaking. She felt as if she could barely catch her breath. But, when she looked up at the thirty-foot wall they had created, she was amazed that the three of them had been able to do it.
“We…we did it,” Cyrene gasped. “We did it.”