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The soldier twisted away from me to backhand her, metal gauntlet meeting her cheek with aclank, ripping a pained cry from her.
My stomach clenched. “Mother!”
She stumbled back. Her upper body swayed. Her knees buckled. The last thing I saw was how she lost her balance before the soldier once more built himself up in front of me.
He reached for me, but his hand never landed.
Instead, tendrils of darkness snaked out from the shadows, wrapping around him in a deadly embrace. The soldier convulsed, his scream swallowed by the black cocoon that constricted him tighter and tighter until his armor creaked under the force. Crimson oozed from within, glistening under the sheen of the rising moon.
My gaze shot to the Raven woman approaching from the right, one side of her long hair shorn, her black robe shifting with shadows. A deathweaver.
She gave me a curt nod.Malyr’s marks.She must have recognized them on my face.
The same luck didn’t extend itself to Lady Brisden. The Raven’s shadows did, however, sprout black fingerlings that snaked toward her, over the ground, around pieces of wood, through a puddle of… blood?
“Not her! You will spare her!” I stepped in front of the Raven, then quickly reached my hand toward hers, my fingers splayed wide. “Can you help me shift? This is how you do it, is it not?”
Her attention lingered on Lady Brisden behind me for another moment, then she intertwined her fingers with mine, giving me the focus of her stare. “Staying on the ground too long gets a bird killed, so you best hurry, white Raven!”
Yes, I had to hurry!
Closing my eyes, I dug deep into the recesses of my mind, searching for that bright energy. Where was it? Where— Ah! There, it brimmed, right at my core, flickering in sparks of white.Please make me shift,I pleaded with it. Please, make—
“Hurry!”
I jumped at the Raven’s shout, my muscles trembling from how I tensed, as if it might get them to reshape into my wings. “I’m trying, but…”
Nothing happened.
“Find your primal where it sits in your heart,” she said. “See how it spreads its wings, ready to be fr—ugh!”
The jerk of her hand pulled me forward before our fingers parted. My eyes snapped open, finding the woman twitching on the ground with an arrow protruding from the base of her skull.Phhwt!Another arrow embedded itself in her back.
Against every single tendon in my body stringing tight, I whipped around, taking in the hell that had descended all around me. Oh gods…
Archers lined the battlements, firing their deadly rains of arrows into the teeming unkindness of Ravens that shadowed the moon. Where arrows met their mark, birds fell from the skies, each hitting the ground with a heavythudthat echoed before being swallowed by the cacophony of screams and clashes. Ravens retaliated with gleaming black swords and even blacker shadows, their figures dancing between the piles of fallen soldiers and rubble.
“Galantia!”
I looked back at Lady Brisden, only for my blood to drain from my cheeks at the sight.No. Please, no…
That crimson puddle I’d spotted earlier? My eyes wandered to the bloody source: a gushing wound surrounded by tainted shreds of green silk, a large wooden splinter protruding from its center where it had stabbed through Lady Brisden’s thigh during her fall.
“Gods, no…” I knelt by her side, warm blood soaking my dress and dampening my knees. “We need to get you off this thing.”
“Leave me,” Lady Brisden hissed through gritted teeth, her hand pressing on the wound. “You must flee. Now!”
“No, I can’t leave you.” My hands shook as they hovered over the splinter, the reality of what she suggested crashing down on me. “I… I have to—”
“Leave!” Her stern glare, the same one she’d given me a hundred times, locked onto mine. “Do not make me watch you die… My heart can’t survive it a fourteenth time.” With a sudden surge of strength, she pushed my chest, shoving me backward. “Go!”
I inched back toward the chapel, my entire chest a strangling knot of emotions. My gaze lingered on her until her outline blurred behind the rise of tears. Then I tore away, turned for the chapel, and hurried inside. It was dangerous, shifting in this chaos, but being found by Lord Brisden would be far worse.
I turned left, toward the tower’s staircase, each footfall overwhelmed by the moan of wood, the rumble of rock, the clang of metal against metal. Stone dust grated under my boots, dislodged by the trembling flagstones beneath. Up I went, taking two steps at a time, then three. The scent of old wood filled my nostrils, mixing with the staleness of dust and debris. Fast! Faster!
My legs burned from the effort, each new step a piercing bite into my muscles. The world spun around me, a whirling dervish of stone and debris. The only constant was the continuous upward spiral of the stairs, a lifeline I clung to with desperation.
The ground beneath me shifted.
