“Princess, thank God you’re here,” he said. “I’ve got two dozen of my best soldiers out there, but the hunters have already managed to bring down the first two layers of the shield.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I swallowed back my terror. “Two gone already? How long have they been here?”
“Only ten minutes at most,” he said. “What do you want us to do?”
My entire body shook with tension. The hunters had brought down two of our five shields in just ten minutes? It had taken us months to build those shields. At this rate, they would break through in a matter of minutes.
I couldn’t let that happen. The entire population of the Southern Kingdom lived inside this dome. If the hunters broke through, it would be a catastrophe.
I tried not to think of Jackson’s drawings. The rivers of blood running through these streets. I knew his visions always came true, but I also knew how often we had misinterpreted them.
If I believed that was our fate, there would be no reason to fight. No hope of survival. And no matter what, we could not lose hope.
I looked up at the sky, now covered with soldiers and hunters locked in combat above.
“How many are there?” I asked. “I didn’t think there were so many hunters in the entire kingdom. It looks like a hundred or more. How can that be?”
Gregory shook his head. “I don’t know, Your Highness. We need a plan.”
As he stared at me, I suddenly realized he was waiting for me to take control. He expected me to come up with a plan that would save us all.
I closed my eyes and forced back the fears that threatened to overwhelm me. In the months since my father died, I’d never been challenged as a leader here in the Southern Kingdom. Other than settling a few disputes here and there and working to fortify the shields and barriers, the domed city had pretty much run itself.
Angela and I shared the duties, neither of us ready to step into our father’s shoes.
I sure as hell wasn’t ready for this. How could I possibly save us all? What could I do?
But there was no time for self-doubt and worry. They were waiting for me to give commands, and we were running out of time.
I opened my eyes and took a deep breath.
“We need to get the children to safety,” I said. “Send five guards door to door. Have them gather the children and anyone else who is unable to defend themselves. Take them down to the castle’s training rooms and have them barricade the doors.”
Gregory chose five of the nearest guards and passed on my orders. I turned and studied the streets of the town. Many of the citizens had come out of their houses and were just standing there, staring at the chaos above, complete and total terror locking them in place.
“I need you to send another two guards out into the city to round up anyone who is able to fight,” I said. “We may only have ten or twenty minutes at best before the hunters break through the dome. When they come through, I want everyone who can carry a weapon or cast magic to be assembled here on the castle steps and inside the throne room. Have some of the guards fortify the balconies and other entrances to the castle. Do whatever it takes to make sure the only way inside is through this main door.”
“What about the guards up there with the hunters? Should we send more through?”
I looked at the group assembled on the steps of the castle. Was it better to send them out to try and take the hunters down? Or protect the castle and the children?
All I could do was go with my gut instinct, which told me to send them out to fight. If we could turn the tide and take a few of the hunters down, maybe it would slow their progress in taking down the magical barriers that protected the rest of the city.
“Send half of the guards who are left out to fight with the rest,” I said. “The other half stays here on the steps as the first wave of defense. Place the villagers behind them in rows leading up to the castle.”
As he gave the command, my friends from Peachville ran across the garden to join me on the steps. Jackson, Aerden, Mary Anne, Essex, Lea, Courtney, and Zara. Nearly everyone and everything in the world that mattered to me was now protected by a thin, invisible barrier that could fall in less than half an hour.
Jackson grabbed my hand. “What can we do? What’s the plan?”
“The guards are getting the children to safety,” I said. “Mary Anne and Courtney, since you can’t cast human magic here inside the dome, I need you to go help them round up the children and the elderly or disabled and take them into the castle. Try to help keep them calm. And Courtney?”
She turned toward me, pushing her dark blonde hair behind her ears. Her eyes were wide and filled with such fear, it broke my heart.
“When you get downstairs, I need you to meditate and save your strength. If the hunters break through, I may send for you. Your ability to recharge magic could save us all.”
She nodded quickly and then lowered her gaze to the ground. She was such a sweet soul. So shy and reserved, but so incredibly powerful. When a witch had spent all her power and was beyond exhaustion, Courtney could completely refill her energy in a matter of minutes.
It was a rare gift, and one that we may desperately need before the night was over.
Mary Anne and Essex held each other for a long moment, and then separated. The two girls disappeared through the crowd of citizens gathering near the castle steps.
“We need to get out there,” I said. “They’ve already gotten through two of our shields, and the rest won’t hold much longer. If we can’t reduce their numbers, it’s going to be a bloodbath once they break through. There’s just too many of them.”
“I’ve never seen so many hunters,” Lea said. “The Order must have been creating new ones. There’s no way this many existed last time we were here in the Shadow World.”
“We should have been patrolling the land more,” I said. “Maybe we would have seen what was going on.”
“You can’t worry about that now,” Jackson said.
Lea pushed past me. “I’m going out there,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for a good chance to kick some hunter ass.”
She shifted to black smoke. Aerden followed her, the two of them disappearing into the crowd of citizens gathered in the square outside the castle’s entrance.
“Jackson, I need you and Essex to get up there and see if you can figure out how they’re getting through the shields. Last time they used some kind of liquid, but I don’t see anything like that this time.”
I looked around until I saw a young guard standing on the stairs. I called him over. “Marcus, right?”
He nodded, swallowing hard and straightening his shoulders. “Yes, Princess.”
“Follow these two demons into battle overhead. Stay by their side, and if they figure out what the hunters are using to get through our shields, come down here immediately and let me know.”
He sucked in a breath and gave me a salute.
My stomach turned and tightened. How had my life come to this? Was I really someone guards saluted? I didn’t feel at all ready for this kind of responsibility. I needed my sister here.
“Zara,” I said. “Can you go back through the portal and get Angela for me? Call her first and make sure she’s home and then get her over here as fast as possible.”
Zara looked up at the explosions still crashing above our heads and nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said. She started to go, but looked up once more and paused. She turned back toward Jackson. “There’s something weird about those clusters of hunters closest to the dome. I can’t put my finger on it, but they don’t look right.”
He nodded and looked up. “We need to get out there and get a closer look.”
My eyes threatened to fill with hot tears, the sides stinging. I blinked several times and waited for Jackson’s eyes to meet mine. I hated being separated from him. I hated staying down here while he went up to battle, but it was my duty to stay with my people. They needed me here, where I cou
ld direct the rest of the army.
But I knew the moment he left the safety of the dome, it would be too dark and too chaotic above to track him and know that he was okay.
“Be careful,” I said. I threw my arms around him and held him to me. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said. He glanced at Essex and the two of them shifted and flew through the streets toward the only exit out of the dome.
Gregory appeared at my side again. “I’ve just had a report from one of my men. The third shield has gone down, Your Highness.”
I looked up at the dome again, horrified by the number of bodies that now littered the curve of the domed surface. It was hard to see from here, but it didn’t look as if the hunters’ numbers had been thinned at all. I counted at least six of my guards now limp and unmoving against the barrier.
“I need you to find the demon girl who created our shields,” I said. “Willow. She should be inside, heading toward the dungeons, possibly. Have her brought back up and see if she can do something to help fortify the primary shield.”
“Yes, Princess,” he said with a crisp salute. He turned to two guards at his side and sent them flying into the castle to find Willow.
I looked around. Everyone hurried to get inside the castle or to line up on the castle steps, weapons in hand. The fight raged above, our defenses growing weaker by the second.
I stood in the middle of the action, feeling totally helpless. I longed to be outside in the fight, making a difference. Was Jackson okay? Had any of the hunters been killed?
I could barely make out what was happening through all the smoke and darkness above.
I climbed the steps of the castle, deciding to move closer to the top of the dome so I could get a better view of the battlefield above us. Impatient, I shifted into white smoke and flew over the steps, through the throne room, and out onto the small balcony that overlooked the city.
I leaned against the white stone railing and let my eyes sweep across the top of the dome.
A small group of guards were clustered around a hunter just above where I stood, but even though they were fighting with every weapon and skill available to them, they didn’t seem to be doing any damage to the hunters. In fact, the hunters weren’t fighting back at all. Spells seemed to bounce off them, as if my guards were nothing more than an annoyance.
I watched as two guards threw spears made of ice directly toward the hunter’s heart. My mouth fell open as the ice disintegrated into nothing a few seconds before they made contact with her. She hadn’t even lifted a hand against their spells, so how had she managed to deflect their magic?
It was almost as if the hunter had been cloaked in a shield of her own. Something impenetrable to the magic of the guards.
My stomach knotted in fear. There was no hope of defending ourselves against an invincible foe. What were we missing?
I shifted again and flew back down to the bottom steps of the castle’s entrance. Gregory met me there, Willow at his side.
The young demon curtsied and lowered her head. “Princess.”
I placed my palm beneath her chin and raised her eyes to mine. “Willow, is there anything you can do to keep the primary shield up if the secondary one goes down?”
“I can try,” she said. “But the most I can do against this many attacks coming through all at once is buy us a few minutes.”
A loud boom echoed through the streets of the dome and everyone around me ducked, our eyes lifting toward the sky to see what could have caused such a noise. A deep blue light shimmered across the surface of the dome and then disappeared.
“Oh my God,” Willow whispered beside me.
“What?” I asked, panic gripping my heart. “What was that?”
Her face grew pale and she stared at me with wide, green eyes. “The secondary shield just went down."
Bring It
Hunters were everywhere.
I had never seen a group of them so organized and so damned hard to kill. I took my demon form and flew high into the trees on the north side of the domed city, settling on a limb before I retook solid form. I stayed out of sight, knowing my best advantage in this fight was my skill with the bow. From here, I could take out a dozen of these things before they even knew what hit them.
I nocked a mystical arrow and took aim. I closed one eye and steadied myself, choosing a target low on the field of battle. Before I let the arrow fly, though, I surveyed the area around her, picking out half a dozen, studying their exact locations and calculating their positions. If I acted fast, I could take all six out in a matter of seconds.
I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, I let the first arrow fly. I didn’t pause to see if my arrow had met its mark. Instead, I moved to the next target, conjuring a second arrow. In seconds, I had sent six arrows soaring through the air. One by one, they each hit their marks.
Or did they?
The hunters seemed completely unaffected, even though I knew my aim had been true. I prepared another arrow, watching more closely this time as I took aim and sent it soaring toward its mark.
As I suspected, a tiny shimmer of light pulsed around the hunter’s body as the arrow disintegrated on contact.
They were shielded.
I narrowed my gaze and pressed my lips into a tight smile. Let’s see if they can shield against these.
I focused my energy on conjuring a special type of arrow I’d been working on. Man, I’d been dying to see what these babies could do in a real battle. My pulse pounded in my ears as I nocked the first of my shield-piercing arrows. It took more of my mental focus and physical energy to create these, but if this worked, it was worth it.
I watched as each of my new arrows flew through the air, sinking deep into all six of the hunters’ hearts in rapid succession.
I expected them to clutch their hearts and collapse onto the domed shield beneath them. Instead, they disintegrated into a puff of dust that fell on the shield and slid down to nothingness. I straightened my shoulders and widened my eyes.
Something was not right about this. Dust was not how hunters died. Their physical forms might be rotted and decaying, but they didn’t simply turn to dust.
I’d watched many hunters die, and it usually involved a grotesque display of black blood and oozing decayed flesh. I looked across the battlefield, searching for the next closest group of targets. They sent spell after exploding spell toward the shield below them, paying no attention to the armed soldiers rushing toward them.
I steadied myself against the thick support of the tree and nocked another of my piercing arrows. Locating my next six targets, I unleashed another storm of arrows. Again, they met their marks and the hunters turned to dust.
I let my bow fall to my side and waited, watching the battlefield, trying to make sense of what was really going on down there. Shielded hunters made of dust? It didn’t make sense.
A nearby shriek caught my attention, and my head snapped toward the sound. A hunter floated in the air about twenty feet above the rest, her head turned in my direction. Her glowing red eyes sought me out, and when she located me in the trees, she opened her mouth again and let out a loud scream that sent the group of soldiers around her flying backward through the air as if she’d physically hit them with the sound.
In an instant, more than two dozen smaller hunters below stopped their barrage of attacks on the dome and turned to me instead. They moved in complete unison, like some eerie chorus of death-dealers.
With a flick of her hand, the hunter above sent the smaller minions toward me. In that instant, it all clicked. The hunters closer to the dome were not actually hunters at all. They were shades—conjured minions bespelled to look and act like hunters, but not nearly as powerful. They’d been shielded to make them seem unstoppable, but once those shields were down, they would be easier to kill than flies.
I smiled and raised an eyebrow as I lifted my bow and conjured three arrows at once.
I’d never practiced fighting two dozen
targets at once, but there was no time like the present. And I had some serious aggression to work out. I glanced at the hunter hovering above the others, meeting her eye without fear.
Bring it, I thought as I drew back my bow and let the first set of triple arrows fly.
Broken
I couldn’t find her.
I had followed Lea through the gate of the dome, but she’d disappeared into the darkness of the forest surrounding the city. I frantically searched the area for any sign of her, but there was no way to know exactly where she’d gone, and I couldn’t afford to waste time while everyone else was fighting.
Dammit, why had she gone off on her own like that?
Knowing Lea, she’d wanted to get a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield. She’d probably set herself up in the trees somewhere so she could assassinate as many of these things as possible without being seen.
It was a good strategy, but it nearly drove me out of my mind. How could I protect her if I couldn’t even find her? I had to hope that meant none of the hunters could find her, either.
“Aerden, let’s go,” Jackson called as he flew by, Essex at his side. His hands were already covered in an icy-blue glow as he shifted to his solid form and landed near the closest group of hunters.
Jackson touched his palms to the surface of the dome, sending a path of solid ice straight toward the group. When it reached them, the ice encircled their entire group of six and shot straight into the air, encasing them in a thick wall.
From inside their bluish prison, the hunters beat against the walls with their fists and cast fire spells to try to burn their way out. The ice had already begun to melt.
I knew I needed to join the fight, but something deep inside me protested. I pushed against it, raising my hands and preparing to cast magic for the first time since I’d been freed from my slavery.
But I couldn’t call up my magic.
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