He nods once, the motion sharp, but there is no time for gratitude, no time for anything but survival.
“They havemurderedyour Lord!” Nyraxes shrieks, voice unhinged in its grief. “Kill them! Kill themall!”
The courtyard erupts.
The warriors of House Mor’Thravar descend like a tide of death, but before the first sword is drawn, the demon lifts his hands again, stretching them wide as if parting a curtain of reality itself. The portal behind him groans, widening, pulsing like a wound torn into the sky. Screams echo from its depths, high and thin, followed by the pounding of hooves and the screech of wings. A dark swarm surges forward, creatures of nightmare and smoke, twisted things with too many limbs and eyes that burn white.
They come and when they burst from the void, when they flood the courtyard like a dam broken loose, the demon merely watches. He does not fight. He does not command. Heinvites. His arms are outstretched like a prophet baptizing the world in horror, and his children—hismonsters—gladly answer the call.
Steel clashes. Claws tear. Screams rise and fall in a symphony of pain and fury as blood and rain turn the stones into a river of crimson. The air tastes of steel and ash, of endings.
And in the center of it all, the demon turns his gaze on me.
He smiles, I think, and speaks with a voice made of a thousand others, layered like a chorus of blight and shadow.
“You,” he says. “At last. The master will get his taste.”
“No, Emranth!” Daed roars, voice breaking against the storm. “Never!”
Death Singer arcs through the air, fast and furious, singing a deadly hymn of steel and fury, but the demon catches it in one clawed, leather-bound hand, like it’s nothing more than a toy sword carved from wood.
“Favored one,” Emranth breathes, voice curling. “Welcome back to the darkness.”
Daed snarls, his grip tightening on the hilt with both hands, muscles straining as he tries to wrench the blade free, but it doesn’t move, not even an inch. It’s as if the steel itself has bent to the will of the void.
Above, the sky becomes a writhing mass of wings and fangs, the winged horrors screeching down in relentless waves, crashing into the Fae with talons bared. On the ground, monsters thunder through the gates, shadows on all fours, jaws unhinged, tearing through warriors like parchment.
Daed turns to me. Not just to me. To Ronin, too. I see him fighting. I see that promise in his eyes that somehow, somehow, he will hold the darkness at bay.
“Free them,” he growls. “Keep them safe.”
And then he throws himself at Emranth, slamming the void-born creature back with the full force of his body. They crash onto the stone in a blur of shadows.
I don’t waste a second.
With a grunt, I scramble across the courtyard, legs aching, blood roaring in my ears. I reach Solena first, and with a flicker of flame that dances from my fingertips like a serpent’s tongue, I sear through the ropes binding her wrists. She gasps as they fall away, and I’m already moving.
Then Reon. His bonds hiss into ash.
Orios next, breath ragged, eyes wide with disbelief as the fire licks away his restraints.
Then Zyphoro.
She rises to her full height, shoulders squared, eyes of the storm blazing. With a flick of her wrists, smoke coils around her fingers, and twin daggers shimmer into being, forged from shadow and wrath.
“Go now, Amara,” she commands. “Take your child and get to the castle.”
“I will not hide!” I shout, fury blooming hot in my chest.
She whirls on me, eyes flashing. “You stay, and you’ll die and then she will have no one. Is that what you want?”
The words catch on the edge of my tongue like thorns. I don’t want to flee. I want to burn. I want to carve my rage into the bones of every creature that dares to threaten what is mine. But I want her to see the Grove more. I want her to run barefoot through its mossy trails, to laugh beneath the ancient trees. I want her to know green things, not this ruin of blood and nightmare and shadow.
“No,” I whisper, voice catching as Ronin places my daughter into my arms. “No. That isn’t what I want.”
Zyphoro bares her teeth at me, something feral and desperate in the sound. “Then go. Now.”
I don’t wait. My grip tightens around my child, and I run, legs aching, lungs burning, as I press her small, warm body to my chest and barrel toward the castle in the distance.
