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To my left, Sebian moved with lethal grace, nocking a shadowy arrow onto his bowstring. His eyes, reduced to focused green slits, locked onto the archer perched upon the parapet. The bowstring thrummed. The dark missile flew true, stabbing through the archer’s eye socket. He stayed upright for a moment, frozen. Then, slowly, he dropped to his knees before the weight of his lifeless head sent him tumbling forward to land on another corpse.
I raised a brow at Sebian. “Well aimed.”
“Shut up, Malyr,” Sebian grumbled, but he couldn’t hide that twitch of a smirk. Whatever differences he and I had over Galantia, in battle, we were inseparable; and while maybe not friends, but always allies. “You better pick up speed so we can make it to the damn dungeons and get Galantia out of this chaos.”
A low vibration thrummed through the ground beneath my feet, the sudden shift in equilibrium snatching my attention. Somewhere, muffled by the cacophony of battle, stone crumbled with the rumble of a distant thunderstorm. My eyes flitted to the horizon, where one of the looming catapult towers teetered precariously, a cloud of dust mushrooming around its base before it collapsed, though only partially.What in the skies…?
Cold dread seeped into my gut, replacing the prior excitement with a sudden, jarring concern that had me exchange a look with Sebian. It was too early, too soon for the ballistas to bring down these darned catapults. What had happened?
More arrows whistled.
Thrusting my hand out, I released a blast of shadows so forceful, it rippled through the air, striking the battlement like a physical force. Archers stumbled backward, their screams echoing as they flung over the wall.
“Fucking bastards,” Sebian shouted, sending shadowy arrows through the faces of whichever archers had remained upright.
A gnawing, debilitating pain seized my hand. I looked down at it, my skin going pitch-black, as if devoured by a malevolent rot. My fingers gnarled and locked up, pain shooting up my arm like tendrils of liquid fire. My wielding hand needed time to recover.
“We need to get rid of those archers.” A shift and a handful of wingbeats thrust me forward several feet before I commanded through the unkindness,Clear the battlements with me!
That was where I reshaped, drawing my blackaerymelsword from its sheath. I swung the blade at the soldiers up there, just like Father and Asker had taught me during countless hours spent in the courtyard of Valtaris, each violent strike buying my hand time to recover. Bodies fell all around me, their screams piercing the tumultuous noise that rose from the inner bailey, bodies crumpling onto the blood-soaked wood.
Something caught my eye.
Nothing but an innocent gesture down in the inner bailey near an iron portcullis: an arrogant toss of the head. A head shrouded with brown hair, its longer strands in the back curling against the richly embroidered pale green cape that clothed the man.
I’d seen it before.
Too many times.
And if the man turned around to face me now, he would stare at me from hazel eyes that still haunted my dreams.
Lord Brisden.
“That him, huh?” Sebian walked up beside me with his bow in his hand, narrowing his eyes in the direction of my gaze. “Fighting our way over there will take time… more than we have.”
“Not if you give me cover from up here.”
“Any moment now, it’ll be a tomb down there,” he said. “It can’t be much longer until the ballistas take down the towers. You’ll have to fly across the bailey and pray to the goddess that not a single arrow finds its way into your ravens.”
Each scar on my body began to throb—every lashing, every humiliation, every depravity forced into me in the lightless depths of his dungeons resonating in a furious symphony. Oh, how long I’d waited for this…
A wicked grin spread across my face, the pure, unadulterated anticipation of what was to come making my skin prickle. I would kill him… but not here, not now. A laugh rumbled in my chest. Goddess, no, not anytime soon.
But I would capture him.
Revenge like this ought to be—
The ground beneath me shuddered violently, a shockwave of tremors rippling through the stone battlements.
My gaze snapped toward the catapult tower that had partially collapsed earlier, the rest of it now surrendering to gravity. It crumbled, stone blocks shearing off before they burst in a rain of death and destruction. The groaning cacophony of splintering timber and grinding stone filled the air, a discordant tune of impending disaster. The airborne debris slammed into the walls, tearing through the battlements like battering rams.
One particularly massive piece made impact with the base of the chapel tower. An ear-splittingcrackechoed across the bailey, the entire structure swaying ominously before it fell. The bells tolled through the chaos.
Just as well.
I looked at Sebian. “We see this through?”
A curt nod. “Til’ the end.”
