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As if it had been swallowed by alf steel, never to be seen again.
Wingbeats faltered in surprised on the edge of my sight, someone cried out in confusion, and Creon broke through their ranks before they regained their composure. We slammed against the deck with so much force it was a miracle the wood didn’t crack beneath us. In a flash, I was back on my feet, two fresh shells in my left hand. Steel gleamed in the corner of my eyes, and I knew Creon had already drawn his knives as he whirled around to shield my back.
The loud gurgle behind me was clear enough evidence he’d found his first victim.
No time to think about that, about the fight that was going on behind me. A bulky fae female plunged from the sky with a drawn blade in each hand, and my mind stuttered in a surge of panic. Red – I should use red – except she’d collapse right on top of me if I killed her, or drop right next to me and restrict my movements when I needed my agility most of all …
I grabbed the hem of my velvet dress and blasted a mindless thought of movement at her.
The magic hit her right below the midriff like an invisible giant’s fist. She doubled over with an audibleoomphas she slammed ten feet back, her flailing arms and knives colliding with two comrades’ wings before she clattered gracelessly to the deck. One of the males she’d hit went down, too, landing wing-first into another’s sword as he lost control over his flight for just a moment too long.
Not bad at all. I spun away to avoid a sword swinging towards me, a physical reflex so deeply established by Tared’s training sessions it required no more thinking than walking, and fired some habitual red at every throat within reach. Two attacks bit back at me, and again I jumped aside, avoiding one while meeting the other with a flash of iridescent magic. Too strong – the flare of red burst apart into a thousand scarlet sparks.
Then again …
Those pinpricks of destruction didn’t hit me this time. I’d caught the attack close to the fae male who’d fired it, and he and his neighbours were the ones crying out in shock as their own power rained down on them. What if I could streamline that effect a little – would that take more force than I’d used this time or less of it?
Without warning, Creon’s arm locked around my waist and whirled me aside, out of the way of a fae warrior crashing in from behind me. He released me before I could blink, driving a blade into my attacker’s guts and flinging the twitching body into another female’s arms to slow down her frantic approach.
I got a breathless, mindless laugh over my lips as I found my balance again and realigned with my own circle of attackers. Red lit up the edge of my sight. In an instinctive experiment, I blocked the attack with as much iridescent magic as I could pull out of a single shell, and a spray of sparks burst forth, spreading wide enough for the strongest of them to reach my hands and face. They tickled rather than hurt. Not what I was aiming for – the force of the magic got watered down too much this way.
Less power, then.
My next attempt was weaker, just a fraction more than the magic I used to nullify their attacks entirely. It intercepted a ray of bright red in mid-air and deflected the colour the way a mirror would deflect a flash of light, changing its direction and sending the magic two foot past me instead.
The cry behind me betrayed that someone had not been prepared for an attack from that side.
I risked the quickest glance over my shoulder and found a bald fae male furiously wiping blood from his eyes as it gushed from a deep cut in his forehead. Creon was already lunging forward to finish him. As I averted my eyes and jumped away to avoid another attack, the confused cries of the bleeding fae male abruptly stilled behind me.
More and more motionless bodies sprawled over the deck around us as we fought; pools of blood turned the wood slippery and bright red. I nearly stumbled over a snapped leg with the next burst of magic I deflected. The iridescence still did what it had to do, though, and the flash of crimson flung itself back into the left eye of the fae female who’d fired it, taking her out without as much as a squeak.
If I very carefully controlled the strength of my blocks, I learned with my next few attempts, I could even determine at what angle I redirected the magic – could wield the attacks of others as weapons of my own, taking down fae from the direction they expected it least. Five, ten more of our opponents went down as I scattered their red around me like a particularly deadly mirror. Behind me, Creon’s knives tore wing after wing from the sky with uncanny efficiency, piling twitching bodies at his feet.
There were some fifteen of them left when they started shouting about retreating.
We managed to bring down a handful more as the last survivors fled. In the end, seven battered members of the ship’s crew found their way to safety and soared in the direction of the next fae ship, bleeding and shouting frenzied warnings at each other. Creon and I were left behind on a blood-streaked deck, filthy and out of breath, surrounded by dropped weapons and handfuls of oddly dull shells.
One ship down. Gods knew how many more of them to go.
I drew in my first deep breath in what felt like hours, feeling the swaying of the ship for the first time, hearing the deep roll of the sea that my senses had stubbornly blocked from my perception as long as I had better things to worry about. Next to me, Creon was coldly and systematically checking bodies, slitting throats whenever our victims did not look dead enough for his taste.
My stomach rolled. Repulsion – another unwelcome guest I had managed to ignore in the mayhem of the past few minutes. They’d have done the same to the nymphs, I reminded myself, and to any human isle too if they’d been given the order … but that reminder didn’t do anything to erase the memory of Zera’s bag, of every individual’s desperate struggle to stay alive in the cruel games of the Crimson Court.
And this was how they ended up. Graceless bags of meat in pools of blood.
Creon must have noticed the twinge of my heart, because he looked over his shoulder as he rose from the body of a female with snapped wings and a half-severed head. His eyes – rock-hard with focus during the fight – had softened. Easily avoiding the limbs and weapons, he made his way towards me, wiping his fingers on his dark trousers.
‘I’m fine,’ I whispered. My throat was squeezing shut. ‘Don’t worry. Just a little unease about—’
Without waiting for me to finish that sentence, he slipped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into a fierce, breathless hug.
He smelled of blood, of safety. I instinctively clutched my arms around him, burying my face in the firm warmth of his chest; his free hand cradled the back of my head and pressed me even tighter into his embrace. A whisper of velvet told me he’d wrapped his wings around me, too, creating the perfect shelter, a little cocoon in which no one was desperately and fruitlessly hanging on to their last heartbeats.
‘I’m fine,’ I breathed again, not sure who I was trying to convince, ‘I’m fine, I’m …’
Creon’s hands didn’t falter. I gave up on whispering lies into his shirt and squeezed my eyes shut, wishing that simple gesture would be enough to stop seeing.
His fingers played through my hair, slow and gentle. An eternity seemed to pass before he finally let go of me, stepped half a step back, and signed,No need to lie, cactus. You shouldn’t be.
