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Tenah felt the sharp pierce of that blade in her soul.
Only, her father smiled. Little rivulets of black magic seeped from his wound, snaking up his arm still holding the king. They crawled into the king’s eyes. Burrowed into his ears. His curses stopped. Then his useless flailing.
The King of Vozar became nothing more than black dust, absorbed into her father’s body.
The clang of talons against steel jerked her around. Renton stood between her and a feingrot. She’d been too disturbed by the horrific scene playing out in front of her to detect the beast creeping up behind her.
“Get out of here!” Renton ordered.
He didn’t understand. She couldn’t run. The depth of that guilt would crush her. She needed to fight back. Dredging the bottom of her fire source, she called forth a dragon made from red flames. It spiraled up from her palms, expanding into a massive thing of heat and smoke and fury.
Tenah drew both hands down in command. Her fiery manifestation dove, jaws wide, teeth blazing. She let her eyes drop to her father, bracing for the shattering of her entire world.
His demonic smile was the last thing she saw as a ribbon of his dark magic struck her in the heart. The library exploded into a dizzying array of black and white light.
And then death embraced her.
Chapter5
Renton
Heat warped the night. Through the disgusting, undulating waves of it, Renton watched plumes of black smoke climb the sky to blot out the stars.
Blood pumped thick and heavy through his veins. Smoke dried out his throat. His shoulder ached where rubble had collapsed on him when Tenah had brought the library toppling down with a staggering demonstration of fire magic.
Unnatural. That girl… She was nothing more than a ruby-eyed fiend with fire for blood.
Renton swiped a hand across his brow. His skin burned, coated in sweat, ash, and dried feingrot blood. Resting his blade against his shoulder plate, he glanced down from a pile of smoldering debris at the corpses of beasts he’d slain.
Gods, what a hellscape.The night tugged at jagged memories of his first hunt in the Quasi Desert. Though nothing could be worse than that failure.
Sobs drew him toward a splintered column pinning a Vozarian woman. He rushed over, sheathing his blade. He jammed his fingers under the smoldering wood and heaved it up with a grunt. Embers melted the skin on his fingers as muscles in his arms nearly tore from the effort.
As soon as the woman crawled out, he dropped the column, throwing up an arm when hot ash puffed out. The woman remained on the ground. Shoving down his irritation at this entire fucked-up situation, he knelt beside her.
“Can you stand?” he asked roughly.
Her sooty hand wrapped around his forearm, her eyes wide in fright. Jaw clenching, he glared down at where she touched him. She must have mistaken his question as concern. He was only doing his job.
Upon closer examination, the woman bore no signs of Corruption. There were no markings or physical mutations from Lord Kherathi’s magical outburst.
Renton exhaled a long breath. He’d cut through too many of them already. Shadows mutated and rendered incapable of rational thought thanks to dark magic called Chaos. Left alive, they would become Corrupt and wreak havoc, just as Kherathi had this evening.
“I’ll take that as a no.” Renton scooped her up and eased her over his uninjured shoulder. He let out a soft whistle for his winged mount. His eyes never left the ruins, keen senses cast out for threats. His body screamed for relief as it rapidly approached overload.
Just a little bit more.
He needed to track his prey. He’d screwed up everything by letting one of the Delemors go.
He stepped back as his mount—a scaled welkin he’d stolen from a slave trade in Firesteep—smashed down into the ruins. Its pearlescent wings fluttered out wide in show, the membranes glowing red in the firelight.
“A little more finesse would be appreciated.” He brushed off embers that landed on his dark leather armor like pesky insects. “Don’t forget, I freed you.”
The welkin snorted and shook its horned head. Renton tossed it a murderous look before correcting himself. The beasthadferried loads of shadows north to safety.
He hoisted the injured Vozarian woman onto the welkin’s back. The arms that received her belonged to a Firesteep soldier, who quickly soothed her nerves.
Perplexing. The instant bond formed between the two survivors. There was something to be said about how tragedy united souls. Renton had experienced the same connection with the other shadow children in Mire’s hunting camps. While learning about the depressing state of the isles, he’d questioned then too how the elementals or gods or whoever the fuck ran this show permitted such calamity. Why should shadows worship any of them when they took such pleasure in destruction?
