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“Looks to me like I am winning.”
“I don’t need weak fae to win this,” Davorin said. “Not when I have her.”
His body collapsed, almost like a splatter of shadows, and soaked into the roots and blades of grass.
“Saga! Go, now!” I shouted.
She beat her wings and sped toward Calista and Stefan. Dark, inky pools chased toward them.
I dropped to my knees, speaking to the bleeding soil. “I know we aren’t acquainted entirely yet, but keep him out. Do not let him take you.”
I rammed the point of the sword into the soil, like I was signaling the magic of the isles that I had the sword it had hidden away for the one who’d fight to the death to protect it’s true queen. I didn’t know if it mattered, but there was a connection to the blade, to me, and this land.
Saga folded into her fae form before her feet hit the ground. Calista had already stripped the oversized tunic over her head and handed it to Saga. The girl did the same with the baggy trousers. Beneath, she was dressed in more fitting clothes, but she’d double dressed all to carry the thick, woolen clothing for Saga to shield her skin with something after her shift.
I didn’t like that neither of them was armored, but there’d been no question Davorin would try to put his hands on my wife. He would’ve known and her shift was the swiftest way for her to break free of him. Saga needed to be able to tear free of her clothing swiftly if needed.
Don’t let him take you, I tried again, hand to the hilt of my blade. There was a bite of heat in the metal, then a shudder in the soil. A cry of pain struck my senses before I opened my eyes to see Davorin’s misty form pool across the soil until he was on his knees, gasping and bleeding from his nose.
I ripped the blade from the soil and shouted to the air, a wild sort of glee. His army rejected his poison, now the isles would reject him. We’d hindered him in a new way.
Strike the flesh.
Saga spoke of a Western seer telling her the same thing, then Calista, now Riot.
I let out a long breath and took the sword in hand. This blade had magic from the blood of my mother. A fury blade. One, if the memory of her revealing the sword to Riot was true, would steal Davorin of his strength and fester until his own blood poisoned.
A little taste of his own corruption. He was a dead man.
He wasted no time bemoaning the isle spitting him out. Davorin took his sword and sprinted for Calista and Saga.
With a swift look my way, Saga took Calista’s hand, and they fled toward the edges of the Court of Stars where it met the sea. My heart sank to my belly when Davorin’s wild fae emerged from the trees.
With the skill of a warrior, Saga blocked a strike with the dagger on her grip. Calista had two knives pulled from her boots. She rammed a point through the ear of one fae, then the ribs of another.
From the back of the royal house, Gorm and Cuyler rushed for Saga. Stefan ran for his sister. I winced when three Borough guards stepped in front of me. Their eyes had turned a sickly kind of gray, the inky veins cracked from the corners of their lashes, utterly lost to Davorin’s power.
When the first guard swung, I was there to meet the strike. My mind whirled with a hundred thoughts. I handled one guard by blade, while I stomped one foot, connecting the blood feather to the isles. Jagged stones spiked through the damp grass, piercing the underfoot of another guard.
He cried out and toppled over. The third cried out, swatting over his head, as I imagined a cloud of locusts swirled around his head. Locusts no one else could see, of course. The connection to two different magicks was overwhelming at first. But with each move, each strike and block, the hold on my new abilities strengthened.
Saga’s voice drew me to her. She screamed in the face of a man as she slammed her blade through the bottom of his chin.
She’d hate this, killing her own folk, but there was a delicious ferociousness about the way she moved. Like a damn warrior queen.
Gorm and Cuyler reached the women, and the added blades were welcome. The wild fae impervious to the antidote were falling back, or simply falling. As though their minds no longer had the instinct to stay alive, they fought like thrashing beasts.
I ended the last Borough guard in front of me with a deep jab of my blade to his gut, but my attention was on the dark head carving through the fight, aimed at Saga and Calista. With everyone engaged in a fight, Davorin seemed to weave through it.
Not here. We needed to get him away.
I quickened my steps, angrily fighting fae when they appeared from what seemed to be nowhere. He’d taken hold of many courts, many fae folk. Niklas could only make so much of an antidote with the time we had. Gods, they were like a disease.
Stefan ended one of the fae in front of him. His eyes narrowed at the sight of Davorin, and he rushed for the battle lord. With a mad strike, Stefan nearly took Davorin by surprise, but the creature had his sword overhead, blocking Stefan’s strike.
“Stef!” Calista screamed. “Don’t do it.”
I was twenty paces away when a thick, bulky forest fae with blood-stained lips jumped in my way. He swung his blade. I struck back.
