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He froze mid-jump.
A single gargled groan and he slid to the ground, eyes rolling up in their sockets. The female next to him went down an instant later, and thenherneighbour, a knife jutting from the back of his neck as he rolled over. I sprinted forward before I fully understood what was happening, bursting through the hole in their ranks before they could turn around and realise who was flinging daggers at them …
Creon.
Creon.
He wasn’t sitting up – not quite. But he’d hauled himself far enough off the ground to throw those three knives, a fourth already in his hand, and his eyes shone with a feral satisfaction that couldn’t be dulled even by the arrows sticking from his thigh and waist. I hurled my last four steps towards him, all but throwing myself on top of him to shield him with my body.Alive, alive, alive, my blood sang, and at the same time …
There didn’t seem to be an inch of him that wasn’t bleeding. Deep gashes in his neck and arms showed that his opponents had aimed to kill and made good progress on their way to his face and heart. A gushing wound just beneath his hairline sent a cascade of blood running down his nose and forehead. The arrows in his thighs and side had lodged themselves firmly in his flesh. A deep slashing cut ran from shoulder to midriff, an angry jagged line that wept scarlet at an alarming rate, and his wings …
My stomach turned as he sat up a fraction straighter and revealed a gaping, tattered tear, large enough to send a flying male plummeting to the ground.
‘Fuck.’ The world was lighting up in fiery ruby red again, fae eclipsing the sunlight as they swarmed over us. I crawled over him as well as I could without touching the arrows, sword still in my right hand, keeping my left foot pressed against the mother-of-pearl paving – how long until I drained the surface? ‘Fuck, Creon—’
‘So sorry about this,’ he groaned as he pressed his bleeding face into the hollow of my shoulder. ‘And I’m fine, cactus – I’m fine. Don’t let them see I’m talking. She’ll know you found the bindings.’
That last point was enough to wipe my intended responses to the first two from my mind – that he should hardly be apologising for getting surrounded on a battlefield and that he was arguably farther from fine than I’d ever seen him since I’d dragged him out of the Mother’s bone hall with chains through his wings. But his voice … The bindings. Ofcoursehe was still scheming, even on the brink of death – had I expected anything else?
‘Fuck,’ I said again.
A throaty laugh rose from his battered body. ‘Could be worse. We could be dead.’
‘We mightstillbe dead, you bloody idiot.’ As heartfelt as the exasperation was, I was overcome by an absurd urge to laugh at the same time – the sound of his voice alone lighting that reckless, ridiculous sense of invincibility in my heart again. At least we were together. If I were to die here, it would at least be in his arms. ‘So unless you have any brilliant plans for getting us out of here …’
‘We’ll probably need an alf,’ he muttered, and somehow he managed to sound disgruntled about it, even with half of his body’s blood content on the wrong side of his skin. ‘How close did Tared get?’
‘He was about a dozen feet behind me.’ I didn’t dare to look over my shoulder – didn’t dare to turn even a fraction away from Creon’s face, just in case my iridescent shield would abruptly decide it no longer cared to cover him from the red magic raining down upon us from all sides. Around us, the ranks of fae seemed to be hesitating, doubtful whether they dared to come closer and finish us with blades and daggers or whether they would ratherwait until my magic shield mysteriously gave in. ‘But I doubt they’ll happily let him through. Are you able to attack, or—’
He shook his head without looking up. ‘Bindings causing trouble.’
‘Fuck,’ I said again, even though I’d suspected it from the moment I’d seen Doralis struggle with her own healing. ‘Alright. I can take some red from your blood, I suppose?’
He was quiet for a moment in my arms – odd, how his silence had already started sounding wrong to me. I could fill in his thoughts all the same. Even if I had a sword, even if I used every last drop of red until he was bleeding white and grey, I still wouldn’t be able to target more than one or two fae at once; they’d fill the breaches in their ranks before we could move anywhere.
And sooner or later, some of them would decide our blades would never kill them all and take the risk of coming closer.
‘You deflected their magic at Tolya,’ he said, so quietly I barely heard him.
I stiffened.
‘Can you do it again? Instead of absorbing it?’ He spoke so fast I had trouble following through the screams and shouts around us. ‘If you somehow turn it into a … a mirror of sorts …’
I had already squeezed my eyes shut.
Amirror. I tried to see that pearly shield again, shimmering over my arms and legs, turning all magic that touched it to dust. Would I need more or less power to make it bounce back attacks instead? More iridescence had sent magic erupting in sparks at Tolya, and that seemed to be exactly what we needed today …
I glanced at the large stone tile below my bare left feet. Under the steady shower of red lighting up the world around me, I had used enough of the magic to render it nearly entirely dull.
All or nothing, then.
I drew every last drop of magic I could find from that surface, working by nothing but intuition and desperate hope now, driven by nothing but the weight of the bleeding body in my arms and the burning need to make him survive. Damn the tempered, moderate defences. If they wanted me dead for my powers, they wouldgetthe bloody powers – not a defence now but a weapon as deadly as the blade in my hand …
Shrill cries erupted around me.
When I jerked up my head, fae were staggering back and fluttering down wherever I looked, grasping for wounded faces and clutching torn wings. Crimson sparks still crackled through the air around us, a destructive halo of magic. Even the alves had stopped fighting on the edges of the courtyard, bloodied blades sagging in their hands – every single one of them gaping at me like I’d risen from the grave, my footprints sizzling with hellfire.
Tared was sprinting towards us, shouting something.
