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Looking pale, Thea unsheathed her blade.
Wilder bit back further words of warning, forced down the instinct to reach for the dagger and do the deed himself.
Thea examined the blight’s tendrils. ‘I don’t think I can get a clean thrust to the heart,’ she murmured.
Wilder hated his next words. ‘Then cut the creature out of the blight’s grip.’
She raised a brow. ‘Cut it out, then kill it?’
‘Yes.’
Brow furrowed, she went to work, slicing at the vines around the half-wraith, the blight making a high-pitched wailing sound as she did.
Wincing against the noise, Wilder watched her as she kept carving through the first monster to get to the second, careful not to brush against the vine, using her swords to manoeuvre it off the half-wraith.
There was a blur of movement. And a cry of surprise escaped Thea as not a vine, but a whip of shadow suddenly lashed out from the rock, the wraith creature tumbling free from the blight’s grip.
His heart in his throat, Wilder lunged for her as the tendril of shadow wrapped around Thea’s neck.
Her blades clattered to the ground, her hands shooting to where the obsidian power threatened to crush her windpipe.
Wilder was there in an instant, but more coils of darkness shot from the half-wraith, who moaned on the ground, sounding more human than monster.
Thea rasped as she was lifted into the air before his eyes.
Wilder yelled.
He’d seen the same thing happen to Malik. He’d seen almost the same thing happen to Talemir. And it had only been three weeks ago that another creature of the darkness had threatened to take Thea from him.
Incensed, he slashed at the tendrils of shadow magic, severing them like limbs from a body. They poured from the monster Thea had freed, as though they knew no master, as though they sought to wreak as much pain and havoc on the realms as they could before they left them.
Wilder sliced and hacked, Thea’s legs kicking in mid-air in his peripheral vision.
No – he wouldn’t let another person he loved be harmed on his watch. He wouldn’t allow it. Because he wouldn’t survive it.
Breaking free of the lashing whips of power, Wilder staggered towards the half-wraith and plunged his sword into the human-like chest.
His steel aimed true.
Thea dropped to the ground instantly, her eyes streaming, a ring of red around her throat. She dry-retched on all fours, coughing and spluttering.
Wilder was on his knees beside her, a hand on her back. ‘Are you alright? Gods, Thea, talk to me.’
His heart was about to pound straight through his chest. Every moment where he’d ever lost this battle flashed before his eyes, clutching his heart in an unforgiving fist. Too many had been hurt on his watch. If she was —
But at last, Thea sat back, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, blinking back more tears. ‘I’m alright,’ she rasped, ‘I’m alright,’ as though trying to convince herself.
Wilder nearly collapsed with relief. It was all he could do not to throw his arms around her and hold her close. If he did that, he’d never let her go.
Blood leaked from the half-wraith corpse, spilling onto the cliff, running in rivers between their boots.
Thea stood, staring curiously at the red dripping from Wilder’s blade, brow furrowed. ‘Why isn’t it black?’
Gods, Wilder would have to report this to Dratos. The blight’s prey had been one of his for sure. But there had been no way to save the half-wraith within. He had been too far gone, his mind already infected.
‘Hawthorne?’ Thea pressed.
A knot formed in his stomach at the use of his surname. He missed those few occasions where she had murmured his given name against his lips, had said it with a smile…
