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“Are you sure you can shadow travel both of us?” she demanded.
When I hesitated, remembering how drained I’d been by the magical surge, she said, “That’s what I thought.”
I was trying to save Pedra’s life, but she was still a smartass, apparently.
“Go,” I said, afraid to leave until I saw she could, in fact, escape.
She glanced out the window, and her already eerily white face paled. “I’ll hide,” she corrected herself. “And once they’ve gone, I’ll blend in with all the other Scourge.”
I wanted to know why she wasn’t lost, helpless, under Kessily’s control like the rest of the Scourge.
That whisper in the back of my mind again:Of course I’m going to protect your new bestie.
She ran to the wardrobe and flung the carved black doors open, before hiding behind Zehr’s tunics and cloaks. I’d only ever seen the man wear black and that cursed bone crown, but he still had a lot of clothes.
“I’ll stop Kessily,” I whispered to her as the doors banged close.
Banging sounds resounded from the hallway, growing even closer. It sounded as if the Scourge were tearing apart Zehr’s castle.
I tried to focus on shadow traveling, but when I reached for the shadows, my body felt heavy. My magic felt scattered, helpless.
I let Zehr fall back on the bed and drew my knife, ready to face Kessily.
The doors slammed open, flying into the wall. Scourge poured into the room, dozens of them swarming. If Kessily was in the chaos, I didn’t see her.
Zehr was in my ear.“You can put them to sleep. It takes power… but you don’t have to kill them.”
He sounded so close, so warm and real, that for a second, I turned, thinking he had risen from the bed and stood beside me. But he still lay there, his face slack, his eyes bruised purple as he withered under the curse.
“I need my power to get us out of here!”I called back to him.
“Take my power.”His voice was amused.“You already have begun…”
I thought the dying man wouldn’t have any power. But a sudden cold, steely sense of power coursed through my veins.
“I used to be their power and they were mine,”he said quietly.“And you can take it from them.”
One second, the Scourge leapt toward me, hissing and growling, fangs bared, rotten flesh hanging from their faces.
The next second, the Scourge were crumpling to their knees. Their fury faded. Most of them huddled together, still hissing and growling, as if I had only bought us moments.
But one of them pressed the heels of his hands to his empty eye sockets. “Where am I,” he asked, his voice coming out a sob.
As afraid as I was, my heart broke for the Scourge. They were monsters…but they were unwilling monsters.
I needed to find a way to save them all.
Kessily stared at me from beyond as the first wave crumbled to the floor. She’d put several rows of wrathful Scourge between herself and Zehr and me. Her eyes glinted with malice.
“Kessily, let’s talk this through,” I called to her. “Call them off.”
I wasn’t sure how she’d managed to have any control of them at all.
“Take my power back from her,”Zehr muttered in my ear.“The little traitor. I gave her and Tor some of my power to help me lead the Scourge… now his magic has returned to me. It’s her turn to bow.”
“Zehr. Can you really stand to kill the person who had been by your side for the past hundred years?”
“She will kill you if she can. This is no time for mercy.”
