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Fight!I reached for his wrist, my vision beginning to go spotty, the number of Vacants funneling through the familiar Inkwell alley increasing. But then he smiled — a sinister, foreboding smile. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t a normal Vacant, and he was seconds from killing me–
His head hit the cobblestones, Miles’ sword sailing through the Vacant’s flesh like butter.
Chapter 51
Miles was covered in blood, panting in all his battleborn glory. “You alright?” he asked, instantly moving.
I trailed behind him. “Yes. Thank you.”
“I’m getting you to that fucking castle. This has to end.”
The alley spit us out onto the waterfront, cannonballs sailing overhead, Inkwell burning behind me while every inch of it crawled with Vacants. And still they flooded all the space around us, running from the direction of the castle to Inkwell.
“How the fuck are there so many of them?!” I screamed to Miles. He shook his head, moving again, cutting through as many as he could as we ran parallel to the water. The castle towered above, and I could almost feel Castemont’s eyes on me.I’m coming for you.
I spun in place to bring my sword down across a charging Vacant’s back. “Impressive,” Miles shouted, his own sword sailing through the air to end another Vacant’s life. “Who trained you?”
“Shut the fuck up, Miles!” I yelled. Motherfucker wanted to make jokes now?
“Get down!” He tackled me to the ground just in time for a cannonball to crash behind us.
I didn’t have time to thank him before we’d scrambled to our feet and were moving again. There were so many Vacants, I had no time to take a breath between kills. Noros was here, and he was showing us the full span of his power. This was not going to end well.
My eyes caught on the harbor then as the deep blue waters began to churn unnaturally, tossing Castemont’s ships side to side as if they were nothing but wooden toys in a puddle. The chaos of battle continued in spite of what was happening at the water’s edge, even as the sky darkened and thunder cracked out of nowhere. The waves grew larger, some ships threatening to capsize.
It was like they materialized from nothing, a herd of wild horses emerging from the water just beyond the harbor, their hooves carrying them over the angry waves.
I blinked hard. I was hallucinating. I’d hit my head when I’d fallen from my mount and my mind was playing a twisted trick on me as it grappled with the death it was soon to meet. But Miles’ steps had also faltered, his swings growing uncoordinated as his eyes saw the same thing mine did.
The herd charged on, closer and closer to the ships that bobbed in the harbor, lightning branching through the sky as thunder split the air. Stallions of saltwater and salvation.
Kelpies.
My feet moved of their own volition as I found a building with a staircase, Miles following close behind. My legs pumped faster than I’d ever known them to as I climbed the steps, desperate for a better view. The harbor was its own battlefield.
The screams that surrounded us morphed into something different then — they were no longer screams of pain and war and death. They were screams ofterror. Fissures suddenly forked across the ground, cobblestones falling into chasms that split and widened. Soldiers and Vacants alike jumped back, scrambling away from the growing rifts. Just as quickly as the kelpies had emerged, so came the women made of stone and rock with strings of cobwebs for hair, their mouths falling open to let out ear-piercing screams.
Soulhags.
They clambered for the Vacants, their fingers of stone tearing through flesh as easily as a blade as they dismembered Vacant after Vacant. Ships in the harbor began to tip, their hulls splitting apart, thecrackresounding through the city as the kelpies surrounded them, Vacants falling into the harbor like sand in an hourglass.
Miles stammered on the step below me. “Did you…How?”
“I…” Words escaped me as I watched. Hope spread through me then as I realized we may actually have a fucking chance.
But for every soulhag and kelpie there were ten Vacants, just as bloodthirsty and twice as feral. The energy that rippled from Miles began to turn as we watched my soldiers fall, wiped out by the dozen.
My eyes caught him from where I stood at the top of the staircase — Cal,my Calomyr, face slick with the blood of all he’d slain, his stare fixed on me from atop his horse on the waterfront, the battle raging all around him like wildfire.
His brow had been split, but his mouth turned up in a close-lipped smile. It was a smile of truth, a smile of acceptance. He nodded, reality slamming into me as if a cannonball struck me where I stood, cracking every one of my ribs to pieces.
Becauseit wasn’t enough. The army, the kelpies, the soulhags. They weren’t enough. The path from here to the castle was somehow a torrent of Vacants that I’d never get through. I’d built myself up so much in my head, acted like I knew what I was doing, that I thought maybe I had a chance. But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. I was going to die here today, and Castemont would reign on.
I nodded at Cal, and he was gone — once again swallowed by the battle.
“Daughter of Katia!” someone screamed from the ground level. “Daughter of Katia, please!” My eyes caught on a woman, her hands clutched to her stomach, blood pouring from around her grip as she stared, wide-eyed and frantic. “Please, heal me!”
My blood went cold as a Vacant swiped across her throat. I flinched, fighting the bile back as the blood spilled from her neck to the cobblestones.
