Page 33 of Orc’s Hex

He hasn’t looked for her. He doesn’t need to—she appears where she’s needed, has since the first day, and he’s done examining what that means and started relying on it. She’s coming down the walkway stairs with her kit open at her hip and her eyes already on the courtyard below.

She hits the floor and moves into the center without a word to anyone else.

“Positions.” Not looking at him. “Four seconds each.”

He hits Keth with the heel of his palm—Blood Law impact, disruption, not damage—and Keth staggers. One. Two. Three. Four.

Ziva’s hands are dark.

Not covered—dark, the way her eyes go dark when she’s consuming curse magic. She moves her right hand in a pattern that has no name in any vocabulary he uses and the shadow thread connecting Keth’s spine to whatever the curse runs through goes taut⁠—

And snaps.

Keth collapses. Not forward, not sideways—straight down, the controlled descent of strings being cut, and he hits the courtyard stones in a heap that is breathing and unconscious and himself again.

Drazhul is already on the second warrior.

Same sequence—four seconds, Blood Law impact, wait. The second warrior drops.

The third breaks the pattern.

It’s watching her.

The thing in the third warrior has been watching since she came down the stairs, and it’s made a decision—the witch is the threat, the witch severs the threads, the witch goes first—and it drives the third warrior directly at her at a speed that isn’t quite Keth’s but close enough.

Drazhul moves.

He puts himself between the third warrior and Ziva before he’s decided to. His body makes that call—has been making it since she walked into his Great Hall six days ago—and he takes the impact on his left side and drives the third warrior into the ground and pins it.

The curse detonates. He holds the pin through it. His body is doing its job and he is going to let it do its job.

“Still,” Ziva says. From behind him. Close.

He doesn’t respond. He holds the warrior down and holds the hallucination at arm’s length and waits while she works.

He knows where she is—just behind his left shoulder, not moved toward him, not moved away, all her focus on the shadow thread at the third warrior’s spine. The doubling in his vision tries to show him otherwise. He doesn’t look.

The last thread snaps.

The third warrior goes limp under him. Breathing. Alive.

He stays where he is for three extra seconds—pinning a man who no longer needs to be pinned—until the hallucination has fully receded and he’s certain he can get up. He looks at his hands on the warrior’s back. He looks at the courtyard stone. He breathes.

Then he releases the man, gets up, and turns.

Ziva is three feet away. Her hands are returning to their normal color.

He’s starting to think that’s the most dangerous thing about her.

“Three threads,” she says. “All routed the same way—through the oath channels in the floor stone. Whoever is doing this knows the architecture.”

“They always know the architecture.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “This isn’t the sigil running passively. This is active direction. Someone told the possession where to anchor and how to sustain it. Someone was running it in real time.”

Garrok reappears at the secondary gate. He takes in the three men on the courtyard floor, the state of Drazhul’s ribs, Ziva standing in the middle of it all.

He makes a sound low in his chest.