She didn’t respond.
“They’re okay,” I tried again. “They’re not in any pain. They’re just…sleeping.”
She came to an abrupt halt when she reached the end of the room, her back to the stairs leading up and out of the hidden cavern. A tremor raced over her body. Releasing my mother’s hand, I took a few careful steps toward Kaori. The rest of the group waited, uncertain how to proceed. Only Calem joined me. Worry lanced his gaze, and he quickened his pace to reach her.
“Hey,” he said, stopping inches away from her.
She flinched before jerking her gaze toward him. Fury contorted her face into something disastrous. “This… This is their work. It has to be.”
I glanced at Calem, but he didn’t acknowledge me. He only focused on Kaori.
“We don’t know that.” Gently, he closed his hands around hers. But not before I could glimpse the growing network of mercury veins crawling up her arm. “Try to breathe. Think about—”
“I don’t want to breathe!” she shrieked, yanking her hand away. Every vein in her body lit up like they’d been struck by lightning, and the dark hue of her irises bled outward, obscuring the whites of her eyes.
Her transition was just as sudden as Calem’s, but instead of racing scales and bloodcurdling howls, the air around her shimmered with a crystalline glow. In an instant she was there, and the next there stood a creature both beautiful and terrifying. Her long, winding body took up the majority of the cavern. It curled and moved with the fluidity of water as she steadied herself on six legs. Glossy, mercury-tinted fur covered her entirely, and a mane of lavender hair traveled from the base of her skull all the way down to the tip of her tail. As she shook her wolflike head, her twin horns threatened to skewer the ceiling above us.
“Kaori…” Calem’s hands went slack. He stared at her with unrestricted awe, as if this was the first time he’d ever glimpsed her beast.
She snapped her head toward him, let out one rumbling groan, and then took off. Her clawed feet gouged the earth, and she barreled through the tunnel toward the exit. All I could do was stare. I’d certainly reacted with similar anger when I’d first traveled here with Kost, but I’d never expected such a reaction from Kaori.
Kost rushed to Calem’s side. “Go after her. Now!”
Calem didn’t need any additional prompting. Summoning shadows to quicken his steps, he took off. Seeing him bolt spurred me into action, and I rushed toward the stairwell, Kost and the rest of the group on my heels. We ascended as fast as we could, but we hadn’t even reached the exit before we heard the first startled scream, followed by a gurgled moan. When we emerged at the base of that lone tree, the surrounding tile was smeared in blood. A handful of soldiers had already fallen to Kaori’s beast, and Calem was close by, volleying blade after blade into the Lendrian attackers.
“Gods,” Emelia said on an exhale as she took in the scene.
I didn’t have a chance to answer her. A Sentinel had appeared, and he’d evaporated Calem’s shadow blades with the force of his blinding, white magic. Arcing his sword high, the Sentinel brought it down heavy against Kaori’s shoulder.
Her bone-rattling howl shook the leaves above us, and she jerked her head around to try to tear him off. He darted away before she could reach him, but hadn’t thought to look behind him.
I think it was the sound of Kaori’s cry that triggered Calem, because suddenly his gaze was pure mercury, and scales rippled over the length of his arms. With one clawed hand, he sliced clean through the Sentinel’s armor and pierced his heart.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
I didn’t recognize his gravelly, foreboding voice. And then he shifted, his beast taking over right before our eyes until he was standing tall beside Kaori. He rammed his skull gently into her neck—the most tender thing I’d ever seen him do in that form—and she answered with a soft call of her own. Then, they pushed forward together.
“For fuck’s sake,” Kost said, allowing a rare curse to color his words. He slipped one hand beneath his glasses and pinched his nose. “So much for stealth.”
“Come on.” I raced after them, ignoring the bloody puddles, and forged a straight path across the tile. I paused only for a moment when I reached the large archway leading out to a brightly lit corridor. Smeared tracks indicated they’d hooked a left, and once the rest of the group caught up with me, we took the same path. Our thudding, hurried steps ricocheted off the polished stone walls, and the ornate chandeliers shook overhead with every bestial call from Kaori and Calem.
The corridor spilled into a large, open room and I came to a screeching halt. We were in the throne room. An ocean-blue runner trimmed in gold ran right up to the stairs of a raised dais, complete with a golden throne adorned with glinting leaves. Mosaic windows lined the far back wall, and massive, circular skylights took up most of the ceiling. Heavy sunlight poured through the glass, illuminating the subtle veining in the polished marble floor.
Calem and Kaori had paused near the throne, the hackles on the backs of their necks raised high. From across the room, the double doors had been thrown open and a stream of Sentinels and soldiers were swarming into the room.
Joel blanched. “That has to be the majority of the force that was left behind.”
“Great,” Kost muttered, shadows already gathering near his fingertips. “Our whole objective was to bypass them, not summon them.” Emelia and Iov conjured weapons of their own, along with the other assassins who’d joined us, and Joel reached for the broadsword strapped to his hip.
The clattering of armored feet echoed off the walls, and Calem pinned his ears flat to his head. A low, warning howl slipped from his maw. His gaze snapped from soldier to soldier, as if he were calculating his attack instead of lunging headfirst without thought. But the enemy’s numbers were too great for him and Kaori to tackle alone.
Thrusting my hand outward, I channeled everything I had into my emblem and wrenched open the beast realm door. Most of my creatures were waiting with bated breath at the threshold. They knew what I was facing, what we all were facing, and they were eager to help. But for now, I only needed one of them.
Lola, my Laharock, burst through the realm and landed on the floor before Calem and Kaori. Her bloodred scales glimmered in the sun, and she stretched her long neck tall to look down upon the impeding forces. Her pupil-less white eyes held nothing but fury as she glared at the entrance.
“Now, Lola!” I shouted. She responded with a war cry that shook the very room, and heat blasted from her in a deadly radius. Calem and Kaori retreated several paces, safely out of her range, but the Lendrian soldiers weren’t as lucky. Earsplitting screams carried throughout the room as they tried to scramble backward, but they were blocked by their own men. They’d crammed too many bodies through the entrance, making their withdrawal clumsy and slow. The scent of burnt metal and flesh cooked the air, and I cringed.
A handful of Sentinels and soldiers opted to cling to the walls of the room, just barely out of Lola’s range, and they rushed toward us with abandon. Emelia’s halberd parried the first sword that came swinging through the air, but it only held for a fraction of a second. Soon, blinding light from the Sentinels erupted around us, and the very shadows my assassins wielded disappeared from existence. Emelia rolled to the side, dodging the attack, and yanked two silver blades from sheaths on her boots.
