“Run,” he hissed at her between strikes.
But that wasn’t how Gandrett had been trained. Fight until the end. That was ingrained in her. Also, too many against one. Even if he was Fae. Gandrett wouldn’t take any risks.
“I can’t leave you alone in here,” she responded, her own swords ready for the first guard who made it past Nehelon.
The Fae warrior whirled and cut down one more man with an efficient strike. “You can, and you will,” he ground out as he lifted his sword for another blow, seven-hundred years of training and experience showing as he took out one guard after the other until—
“Gandrett!” Brax’s shout of warning reached her just in time to see Raynar, who had been sitting on his throne a second earlier, appear beside her, his hands wrapping around her elbows, squeezing hard enough for her to drop her blades.
A gasp of pain escaped her as she yanked her arms forward, feeling Raynar’s fingers cutting like bands of iron around them, and he hauled her sideways, out of Brax’s and Nehelon’s reach—who were both reeling around as she protested loudly and violently for the Dragon King to take Joshua’s hands off her.
But neither Nehelon nor Brax could do anything as the Dragon King towed her further and further away, his grip not only cutting off the blood flow to her forearms but also icily cold. Guards kept coming at both of them, keeping them busy, and all Gandrett could do was watch them try to free themselves of the guards, who seemed determined not to let them get a chance at freeing Gandrett as the last Dragon King dragged her through the room.
Chapter Forty-One
Armand was about to dart into the great hall. He could hardly keep himself in place. His future king was in there, possessed by the last Dragon King, and he was attacking Gandrett, Nehelon, and Brax. But the way he had spoken about Addie—Adrienne—was what had triggered him to want to run his blade through the bastard’s throat.
He knew it was a bad idea. Even if he managed to kill the Dragon King, Joshua’s body would be destroyed, and they would never find out if there was anything of the prince left in there.
So he stayed where he was.
Until Gandrett’s screaming and cursing filled the icy air and Taghi nodded that he was ready, scythe in hand.
But the screaming stopped, and a roar of fury filled the hallways. The chancellor’s roar, followed by a shudder of the ground that reminded Armand a lot of how the caverns under Eedwood Castle had felt right before Gandrett had split the ground with her magic, almost killing them all in the process.
Taghi grabbed his sleeve, and Armand stepped away from the wall just in time to watch a crack run up behind where he had stood a moment earlier. They were fighting with their magic in there. And if they weren’t careful, they might very well bring down the whole palace.
“Take her to the tower,” Joshua’s voice—the Dragon King’s voice sounded over the noise of steel and grumbling of cracking stone.
The tower. Armand wondered which of the many spires of the palace could be the tower the Dragon King meant. There were four of them, each one higher than the other, like spears, reaching into the cloudless night.
He gestured for Taghi to follow as he ducked past the great hall, risking all of one glimpse of what was going on in there as he darted through the dead guards before the open doors and down the hallway to the nearest stairwell that would take them to one of the towers.
Another guard was coming at Nehelon as he watched Gandrett sag in Raynar’s grasp, limp and blue-lipped from the cold, her neck angled in a way that told Nehelon she wasn’t faking her blackout.
With a roar, he drove his sword into the man Raynar had commanded before he could even lift his sword, and whirled aside to get next to Brax, who was already one opponent away from the Dragon King.
Raynar smirked at them, emerald eyes sparking with vicious delight. “I remember you being stronger, Nehelon,” he mocked. “A couple of guards … even my enhanced ones were never a problem for a pure-bred Fae like you.”
Nehelon ignored Brax’s gasp beside him as he did with the laugh that followed from Raynar’s mouth—Joshua’s mouth.
“I knew there was something off about you,” Brax hissed as he parried the blow of the guard who was attacking from the side.
The young Brenheran boy wasn’t as bad a fighter as Nehelon had always believed … but it didn’t matter now. It was time to unleash the Fae-warrior inside of him. It wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone in this room by now. Not after Raynar had already called it.
He fought mechanically, fending off one after the other of those guards who kept coming at them, without a doubt, fueled by something more than the blood in their veins. For everyone he had killed, another one seemed to appear—bloodied and blank-eyed. Then, he realized that they weren’t new men but those same he had already cut down. They were like puppets whose strings he cut, and Raynar kept picking them up, sending them at the two of them again.
Nehelon reached deep into his reserves, as deep as he hadn’t done in years, and pulled up his power. He let it crawl through the room, where the guards were relentlessly rising as from the dead, and searched for what magic it was that Raynar wielded in these halls.
Another man stood before him, another face he had known for over ten years, he had trained, fought side by side with … and yet, he speared him with the tip of his sword, hoping that this time he would stay down so he could leap across the room to where Raynar was dragging Gandrett forward as if she was a frozen doll. The heart he had schooled into emotionless stone, over centuries of fighting and searching, crumbled just the tiniest bit as he realized that this time, no matter how great her skills, how powerful her magic, Gandrett wouldn’t be able to save herself. She needed him—
And he … well, he was occupied cutting down undead men like stalks of wheat.
Over his shoulder, he checked if Brax was still on his feet and found the youngest Brenheran son ducking under a falling blade, and Nehelon raised his palm and let his magic tear a crack into the ground where Brax’s opponent stood while his other hand, fast around his sword, kept the man who was coming at him in check.
Both men fell with a scream. One into the narrow canyon he had opened before Brax’s feet—the boy staring in horror and awe—and the other as Nehelon’s sword bit into his guts with an efficient strike.
From the other end of the room, a snarl echoed through the air, and Nehelon’s head snapped up to where Raynar had set down Gandrett on the makeshift throne and had bent over her, Gandrett’s tunic in one hand, the other clutching the knife that had killed the Lord of Ackwood.
No.
He sent his power through the room again, ready to strike down Raynar, and Nehelon no longer cared if he tore apart Raynar’s new body in the process. His magic flexed and bit into the icy air, winding through it as though through pudding, not making the progress he had hoped for.
“Don’t bother trying,” Raynar commented, not letting go of Gandrett’s tunic as the tip of the knife bit into the fabric at the collar. “I put wards around my throne.” He laughed. A wicked and glacial sound that didn’t match that gentle face of Joshua Brenheran. “I weaved wards through the entire palace, Nehelon.” He straightened a bit, turning to face Nehelon, and the guards all halted as if at a silent command.
But Brax was beside him in an instant, sword dripping with blood, his face paler than usual, black waves disheveled from the fight. “We need to get out of here,” he whispered.
And Nehelon knew the boy was right.
But not without Gandrett. All his muscles tightened as he tried to figure out how he was going to free her before the Dragon King could make use of her in any horrible way he could think up. He knew Raynar Leyon. He knew the vile acts he had committed during his reign of terror. Gandrett was not going to become his victim. He wouldn’t allow it. He flexed his power again and gritted his teeth at the slow progress it made through the tightly woven wards Raynar had installed.
“Your dear brother and you caught me b
y surprise once,” Raynar mused and glanced down at the girl in the throne, legs sprawled over one armrest, head lolling off the other armrest, one hand on the marble floor. She was utterly defenseless up there, even if she woke up now, with both her weapons gone and her magic not nearly matured enough to just draw it up and smite the Dragon King—
As if Raynar could sense the terror that spread in Nehelon’s chest, he bent over the girl again and lowered the knife into Gandrett’s tunic, and this time, it cut clean through the fabric as if it was nothing more than thin paper. And with a glance at Nehelon that promised endless pain, Raynar grabbed the two edges of the tear and folded them to the sides, exposing Gandrett’s chest and stomach.
“What a vessel,” he sang with raw excitement as his eyes roved over Gandrett’s bare skin. “Shygon will be pleased.”
On the way to the spires, the hallways had been as empty as when Armand had made his way down to the great hall. As had the first two spires they had checked. No sign of life that anyone had been up there recently. Most certainly not Addie.
Armand ground his teeth and pushed himself to keep his calm. Panicking wouldn’t keep Addie alive—if she was still alive.
“This is probably the worst guarded palace I have ever seen,” Taghi noted with a sort of dark humor that made Armand’s lips twitch—more with desperation than amusement.
They turned the next corner, finding nothing but torch-lit, dark-floored corridors as with the last turns they had taken.
“I wonder where they all went,” Armand whispered. “The men in the great hall were definitely not enough to be the entire palace guard.”
Taghi nodded, regarding the prince, oddly cooperative for not being part of this court and for the face he’d made at the solstice celebrations at Joshua’s announcement.
They sprinted down to the next turn, always on the lookout for any movement or shadows, for any sound that wasn’t the crackling fire or their own, muffled footsteps.
There was none.
“There.” Taghi pointed at a stairwell that led away from the corridor, climbing in a narrow spiral until it wound out of sight from the dim hallway.
Armand took the lead as they raced up the steep steps, the ascent longer than the ones before. By the time they made it to the level where they would have reached the top of the other spires, they were not even halfway up, and Armand cursed under his ragged breath when the steps finally became wider and flatter, and moonlight mingled with the low light of the last torch they had passed two windings below.
Heart hammering in his throat, Armand threw out a hand to stop Taghi, and together they pressed against the wall, taking a moment to catch their breaths.
The stone behind him was unusually cold for the mild summer night, and beside him, Taghi seemed to have the same observation, for he brought his scythe in front of his chest with one hand and gestured with the other for Armand to stay where he was—
Not because of the cold, Armand understood a moment later, but because of the low voices that were coming from the room that must be just around the next winding, judging by the sound of it.
The muscles in Armand’s arms played and twitched as he tightened the grip on his sword, and with a nod at Taghi, the two men set in motion.
Armand wasn’t sure what he had been expecting but certainly not what he found when he stepped into the circular chamber atop the highest spire in the northeast of Ackwood palace. His feet didn’t make a sound on the rough stone floor as he skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs where the windings opened into an icy space that had his breath fog before his mouth. Taghi at his heels, his scythe at the ready, placed a hand on Armand’s shoulder in warning as he slithered around the edge to hide in the shadows of the moonlit room.
By the arched window, two female forms were in animated discussion about something Armand couldn’t understand, the language familiar in its sound but impossible to decipher. They didn’t notice the two young men as they inched their way forward along the wall, too absorbed and absurdly loud for the whisper it had been before Armand and Taghi had entered the room. Almost as if a magic ward was cutting the sound in this chamber off from the rest of the world.
Lapidanian. That was the language. But a dialect that he had never heard before.
Armand shivered as an icy wind moved through the room, his thin tunic not nearly enough protection against the cold that surrounded them. This was like the caverns under Eedwood Castle. His gaze fell on the chalk-drawn symbols that spread all over on the floor, wet and smeared in places. He couldn’t tell what the liquid was in the half-light of the pale moon that peeked in the only window, but his intuition told him it wasn’t water.
Taghi jerked his chin at the wet spots, and Armand followed the prince’s gaze to find a trail of wet that led all the way to where the women were still discussing—
It was a clenching in his stomach that he felt at first, uncomfortable and a bit irritating, as he noticed the cot in the darkest area of the room just beside the women, and it spread like a numbness all through his body.
A familiar shape lay sprawled on her stomach, lifeless, raven hair spilling over her good shoulder, covering her face, liquid trickling down her arm that hung limply to the floor.
Addie.
Hadn’t Taghi grabbed his forearm, rooting him in place, Armand would have darted over without regard for the women who were surely part of the Shygon cult, or they would be the ones bleeding out on a cot.
Armand had seen Addie lifeless like this once in the temple of Shygon under Eedwood palace, and back then, it had been Gandrett who had rescued them all. Today, Taghi was the only help he would get. But his help wouldn’t count much. Neither of them had magic the way Gandrett had. He didn’t even want to think about what could happen if the two women across the room had assumed the god of dragon’s power.
But whatever chances they had of getting Addie out of here—if she was still alive—were now, before Raynar returned to the tower. The marks and blood on the floor and Addie’s presence told enough that this was where the Dragon King had put on the Prince of Sives’s skin.
So Armand nodded at Taghi, who, judging by the fierce expression on his face, was determined to see this through.
Armand was about to set his next step along the wall, fighting the urge to simply run to the cot and kneel down beside Addie in desperate hope that she was still breathing, when the room turned suddenly very quiet.
And when he turned his gaze back toward the window where the two women had been talking, only one of them was left, and she was eyeing him with a gaze he had seen so many times at Eedwood palace.
Shit.
“Had I known you’d come hunting after her like hounds, I would have tossed her out the window after the ritual,” Lady Isylte Aphapia of Ilaton said with a sneer and stepped into the field of brightness where the moonlight hit the blood-smeared floor.
Armand searched for words. Isylte had been Linniue’s friend, visiting Eedwood occasionally, but never would he have thought—
Linniue hadn’t been alone in her endeavors. Obviously, for all the attacks all over Sives showed that the cult was spreading—had been spreading even before Linniue had brought Addie to Eedwood Castle. All the sacrifices before her, and the prison in the north where Addie had witnessed the worships and prayers of the cult, they had all been for this. Not for gaining power themselves but to bring back the single most dangerous individual in the history of Neredyn: Raynar Leyon, the last Dragon King.
And Addie and Joshua had been the last missing pieces.
Chapter Forty-Two
Armand stepped away from the wall, sword raised, mirrored by Taghi with his scythe. Now that they had been discovered, they needed to get away from any obstacle that might hinder them when they wielded their weapons.
“Addie!” he shouted her name with hope and fear at the same time.
A twitch of her hand was the only response. Weak. She was too weak for him to grab her and run. They needed to make sure the
two women didn’t get in their way, first … and then carry Addie out, get the carriage ready, and have it take her far away from this palace. Somewhere she could get back to strength and where the Dragon King wouldn’t find her.
He would have to think of a hiding place for her later.
But first, he needed to find a way to get to her without getting himself killed.
Who knew what magic Lady Isylte had, what Shygon had bestowed on his loyal servant. The Dragon King would most certainly not leave Addie here if he didn’t believe the two women weren’t enough to guard the girl.
“Come get her—if you can,” she provoked, her honeyed voice not at all matching her hateful grin. This was the woman who had walked in and out of Eedwood Castle as a guest at court, his aunt’s friend … and after Linniue’s failure, she had to have somehow managed to continue what Linniue had started. The Dragon King—
Armand shook his head at how blind he had been. That he had never wasted a thought on what had brought his aunt and the lady so close. But now, he could see it clear as day as she stared him down from across the room, her skirts billowing as if on a phantom wind.
“You helped him.” Armand stared right back, realizing just how big a part in all of this she must have played if she was the one Raynar Leyon trusted into his inner circle.
“It was time for His Majesty to return,” she simply said, a wicked smile gracing her tan face. “And when I got the invitation from Linniue’s son, I knew you would be here and you would bring her.” She gestured behind her at the cot where Addie was still motionless, the only sign she was still alive the slow rising and falling of her bare back. Armand loosed a breath. She was still breathing. Thank the gods.
“What did you do to her?” It was Taghi who asked, Armand still too caught in his private moment of relief.
Isylte answered with a chuckle and took a step toward Addie, sending Armand’s system on red alert. “I finished what Linniue couldn’t. I bound the Dragon King into Joshua’s body. I gave the master a new life.”
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