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38
ZORANDER
Isaw Anaria go down.
Saw her disappear beneath a voracious horde of clawed hands and razor-sharp teeth and I was already moving, Raziel’s wrist gripped in my hand. We were already armed.
Ready to protect her.
Ready to die for her, if need be.
The moment I landed us in the center of the host, Raz swung his blade in a deadly arc, slicing off soldier’s hands and arms with ease while I scooped Anaria from where she lay, silvery hair coated in gore. I never stopped moving, trapping her firmly against me, my other hand catching Raziel’s upper arm mid spin, and I completed my turn before the Reapers even knew I was there.
Then we were gone.
We landed miles from the cursed, dying army, in the middle of nowhere, empty wasteland stretching out in all directions, everything a blur of brown. Even the air didn’t smell of death and rot, just the faintest hint of smoke.
My heart stopped when I saw how much blood leaked from her battered head, her mouth, soaking the front of her shredded dress. There were so many wounds on her body, bile rose in my throat.
How a Reaper hadn’t taken her over…I turned my head and retched into the dirt.
I stumbled away from Raziel with Anaria clutched in my arms, cradling her head as I lifted her eyelid, taking a shaky breath when I found them still a pale green.Thank all the gods.
“She’s still her.” I pushed back her damp hair and examined her wound.Wounds. The top of her nose had a chunk out of it and her cheek looked like someone had taken a rasp to her face. Claw marks raked her torso, her chest, her arms.
Raz lay his palm over her heart and closed his eyes, pushing healing magic into her. “She’s just unconscious.” Her cheeks flushed pink as his magic began to work, the wounds disappearing beneath new, smooth skin.
“I can’t believe you let her do this.” Raz glared up at me, seething with a rage that I’d seen a few times, but had never been directed at me before, not as long as I’d known him.
“Her bullshite plan could have gotten her killed.”
“I didn’tletAnaria do anything,” I snapped. “And we both tried to talk her out of this, and we both failed. This wasn’t abullshiteplan; it was adangerousplan. If you or I possessed this magic, one of us would have been at the center of that army, not her.”
Raz’s glower became a wicked smile. “Idohave that kind of magic, or did you forget?”
“How the fuck could I?” I glanced pointedly at the collar I’d welded on him. The one act I regretted more than anything else, every fucking day for the past hundred years.
Yet some petty part of me sniped, “Not right now, you don’t.”
“True enough.” Some of his temper faded away. “Still a bullshite plan, because thatwasAnaria, alone, in the middle of ten thousand soldiers.”
“I know.” I pushed the hair out of her beautiful face, wiping away as much of the blood as I could manage. “Don’t you think I fucking know?” She was completely unconscious, pale as a ghost, tiny, fragile hands curled up. But she was breathing evenly, her temperature normal, and behind her eyelids, her eyes moved like she was sleeping.
“She’s exhausted. Two days expending all her magic…She can’t do that again. If she drew too much…” Raz snapped his lips together.
“Maybe the wild magic doesn’t have the same limits our magic does,” I said carefully. “But you’re right. She’s drained, and we have to get her somewhere safe to recover.”
“Take me back there.” Raz stared at the stain of black in the middle of the great plain, a few Reaper-infested soldiers milling around as if they’d lost their sense of purpose. “I’ll finish them off.” He hefted the sword.
“Not worth the risk.” I didn’t give a good godsdamn if there were any left. “There’s only a handful of soldiers left with—”
The ground heaved beneath us, and what had been solid earth became a wave-tossed sea where we were about to be swallowed up. I was already kneeling beside Anaria, but Raz went down hard, barking out a curse when he realized how close he’d come to falling on the pointy end of his sword.
“What was that”—Raz climbed to his feet—“an earthquake?”
I got up, cradling Anaria carefully in my arms. My instincts prickled as I studied the wide, open plain, the white capped mountains towering around us. Everything was quiet, not a sound breaking the echoing silence. And in my experience, that was never a good thing.
“That wasn’t like any earthquake I’ve ever—”
