Bitey takes a dagger to the wing and chomps at it with his yellow eagle beak, tossing it aside and stalking towards his next victim.
“Quinn, take off,” yells Ronan. “We can’t risk Bitey.”
“Godsdammit, I knew you came after her. Is Octavia there too?”
Octavia starts to speak, but Ronan stops her. “Yes, now go.”
Quinn nudges Bitey with her leg, and he crouches down to jump into the air. But just before he does, a dagger comes sailing from behind a rock, striking Quinn in the neck.
“Quinn!” At least four people yell it, several of us running out into the courtyard to help her as Bitey panics, taking off with her slumping over the side.
I grab onto her with my shadows, and Ronan reaches out with light tendrils, healing her wound as I pull out the knife. She takes off into the sky, Bitey screeching as they go.
I sense movement out of the corner of my eye. “Ronan,” I say as I pull him down with me between a bench and a bush.
Then the torches go out.
“Sylvie? Taran?” says Seth. The darkness in the courtyard isn’t just the dark of a torchless night. It’s magical darkness, shadow-born darkness.
I can still see clearly, and so can Ronan, but the others are blind.
“Stay together. Back-to-back. There are shadow-born here.”
My mother’s shadow-born. This is her tactic,thetactic Taran thought was being used when I accidentally put out the torches myself. She’s here with her people, lurking somewhere in the darkness, ready to strike.
“Find her,” I breathe into Ronan’s ear, and he stalks off into the cloisters, knowing exactly who I mean.
Everyone goes quiet. Even the smallest movement could give them away…
“Mother?” calls Adria.
I smirk, crawling in her direction. So much for stealth. “She abandoned you. She left you out here with us, knowing you’d be blind.” Adria throws a dagger my way and backs away from the pillar where she was hiding, her arms stumbling for something else to duck behind.
I catch movement to my right. A woman in black robes crouching near a fountain throws a blade at me, which I catch with my shadows and send back to her, cutting her neck.
Her gagging sounds fill the yard.
“Is this what you wanted?” I call out to Adria. “You’re the God-Queen, but is there anything that you control? Or is it all her?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Adria steps back into a shadow-born, nearly gutting them with her sword as she turns, but they dodge out of the way.
From a distance, I swipe the shadow-born’s weapon from his hands and stab it into his heart. He hits the ground with a thud, and several people move at once.
One of them is Seth, his feelings some of the only ones I recognize. He’s coming to help me. “Adria, you can stop this.”
A pair of shadow-born move at the same time. One of them comes for me, keeping low as they streak across the yard, while the other goes for Seth. I go for them both, but I’m too late to stop the dagger from going into Seth’s back. He yells as he falls, and Taran runs to his voice.
The shadow-born turns towards Taran, but I beat him to it, taking her weapon and ending her life.
“Seth, hold on, I’m coming,” I say, but there’s another one behind me. I reach out to pull him from me with my shadows, but he lunges with his sword and slashes me deep in my side.
I cry out involuntarily, trying to focus on my power through the pain, trying to pull myself out of the way before he can strike again. And all the while, trying to get to Seth, to save him…
Ronan’s light tendrils wrap around me. They settle into my wound like a caress, knitting my skin painlessly back together.
Thanks, darling.
But the light has given away my position. At least three people move towards me, one of them Ronan, using his shadows to keep them from me as I press on towards Seth.
