Page 64 of A Thief Among Fae

The assassin cackles. Fire vortexes around her as she builds an inferno that will roast me alive in seconds.

I’ve beheaded draugr. I once helped Dad poach a bear.

Yet terror crawls up my spine as limbs overhead smoke and burn, as heat wavers through the air. I run and trip over a root, falling hip-first to the ground. Pain shoots through my body, and my leg locks beneath me.

I’m doomed.

I swivel to face the fire-wielder. I want to scream, but my throat clenches too tightly with a primal, instinctive panic. The blood rushing in my ears is almost as loud as the fire-wielder’s mocking laughter.

She steps closer, malice carved in the glints of her pale eyes.

I throw the sword at her, too desperate to think of a better plan. She dodges with ease. Fire crawls toward my feet, then licks my boots until the soles burn. I gasp, crawling backward. She’s toying with me, and my magic is useless against her. If only I had been born with Evie’s Gift like my parents wanted!

Rage cuts through my fear, dark and merciless. It consumes me, flaring hotter than the spitting flames.

The emotion isn’t my own.

Desmond’s sword plunges through the assassin’s body from behind. She gasps. The flames snuff out as the blade twists, carving a gash beneath her ribs. Her hands clutch her wound, but fail to stop the silver blood that pours out. Then she falls to her knees.

Behind her, Desmond’s eyes are wide. His chest heaves and his lip is curled. The blood drips from his blade, runny and lustrous like quicksilver.

I realize he’s staring at me. Maybe he can feel the relief flooding my body, the tears pricking my eyes as I realize he just saved my life.

His hands tremble.

“Behind you!” I scream.

Gashil’s iron sword cleaves into Desmond’s shoulder. I fling Gashil’s throwing knife, but he knocks it aside with his bracer and parries Desmond’s unsteady thrust.

Desmond hisses as he staggers, but he stays between Gashil and me. I have to do something. I have to help him!

I untether Gashil’s mask above his brows, blinding him. Desmond grabs Gashil’s upper arm and squeezes with all his might.

The assassin hisses, thrashing to get away, but Desmond doesn’t let him. He grabs Gashil’s mask and throws it off, revealing cascades of waist-length white hair with a widow’s peak, long pointed ears, and pale lavender skin. A snarl twists his sharp, elegant face.

Gashil headbutts Desmond, but he doesn’t let go. A strange, purple light flickers through Gashil’s arm, lighting up his veins. “Any last words?” Desmond asks, his voice dropping into a dangerous calm.

My vision blackens, and then a battlefield appears before me, black ribbons of smoke unfurling into the hazy night sky. Two moons stare down at me, one large and silver that consumes the north, and another smaller and golden. There’s too much acrid smoke to see the stars, but I have no doubt that I’m far from home.

From my viewpoint atop a vast hill, I watch as hair-raising screams echo and plumes of fire blast through the small human enclave before me. Timber homes collapse, but soldiers are throwing their dead into the burning rubble.

At the heart of the blazing village is a stone arch even taller than Mythos’s city wall. A strange, shimmering green thrums across it like a bubble stretched from pillar to pillar. Humans shout as they drag carts of gleaming diamonds and ore toward it, each vanishing as they pass through. Then the bubble hums and stretches, and dozens of armed Avedoran guards pour out of it. They run to join the garrison that hefts iron pikes in a barricade around the village.

Fae clad in steel rush toward them, swords drawn and hands out to summon magic.

I gasp, my gut churning at the sea of bodies stretching from the foot of the hill to the arch. Many are human, but most are fae.

“We need to fall back,” a familiar voice says behind me, pain throttling every word.

I whirl around. Desmond and Auri stand together before a small troop, smears of ash and blood on their skin. She clenches her bow as it trembles, rage in every tense line of her body. Then she breathes in, stills, and shoots. The arrow pierces the throat of a human soldier below. He drops.

“We failed to retake it. Just like the war,” she continues bitterly. A tear rolls down her cheek and along her tight jaw.

To their right, a line of ten fae archers fire, most hitting their marks. Still, they’re vastly overwhelmed.

Desmond draws his sword from the sheath at his hip. “It never ended,” he says, watching the sight below with grief etched in every pinched line of his face. Then he looks at the troop behind him, the anguish replaced by a sharp, commanding frown. “Isolde, Conan, Adder, and Saoirse, you’re with me.”

Four of the fae step forward, their expressions grim, but they look at him with reverence, like they’d run to the end of the world if he asked. Then Desmond runs down the hill.