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Ancestors, I would have given anything to be able to sense the child the way I could Arran, in his beast form shredding apart nightwalkers on the other side of the clearing.
Up, the sound was coming from above my head. The trees.
She’d tried to scale a tree. Of course, she had. That’s what Arran had told her to do when we’d first found the burning village. But she wasn’t far up, not far enough to—
Her whimpers turned to sobs.
I sprinted—she was in a tree. Less than a third of the way up, just above my head. But there was a cluster of nightwalkers at the bottom. They were too uncoordinated to climb up after her, but they could leap. One of them had her by the leg, was dragging her down.
The feet between me and Maisri felt infinite. I knew I was moving fast, but I’d never felt slower.
Too slow—Cyara got there first. She was a blur of wings, flapping behind her as she half ran, half flew through the clearing. Then she flying, snatching Maisri out of the tree and going up, up, up, depositing her high above our heads where no one, nightwalker or beast, would be able to reach her.
Relief coursed through me as she soared back down in a flash of wings.
Relief that turned to horror.
It wasn’t Cyara that dropped into the clearing.
It was a beast of wings and claws. Terrible and beautiful.
Talons sprouted from her fingertips, her wings turned a deep coppery brown—the same color as her hair, wild and tangled, ripping from its plait as she thrashed. There was nothing of my friend in the monster I’d only read about in fairytales.
A harpy.
I’d always supposed there was a terrestrial fae ancestor tucked away in her family tree. Not this—never this.
But Ancestors be damned, it was impressive.
And lethal.
She tore out three throats before my next breath, severing heads from bodies with a swipe of her vicious claws. A flap of her powerful wing, and then her eyes were on me. The sparkling turquoise eyes—Cyara’s eyes.
But there was no recognition in them.
Ancestors, please.
I wouldn’t be able to kill her. Even if she attacked me, even if my death meant Annwyn’s doom.
A roar ripped from her chest—high pitched. Not a roar but a screech. She dove for the next wave of nightwalkers. Not for me.
I decided to leave her to it and focus on my own attackers.
Time ceased to matter. Only the next kill, the nightwalker in front of me.
Excalibur was still warm in my hand, even as the temperature in the clearing dropped. Colder and colder. So cold—a cold I recognized. From that realm of death I’d seen when I fell through the rifts for the first time. Understanding began to solidify, somewhere in the back of my mind. But I couldn’t spare it any more attention than that—I had to keep myself alive for the next second, the next minute.
I killed another one. Black bile coated Excalibur’s gleaming blade.
The swirled, Avalon made blades held true—they killed the nightwalkers when the other blades did not. Severing their heads also seemed to kill them. Lyrena’s fire could beat them back, but not for long. Soon, they’d rise again, this time flaming omens of death.
I couldn’t see Percival or Osheen. I hoped they were still alive.
Occasionally I heard Cyara’s screech—if that harpy and Cyara truly were one, the way that Arran and his beast were.
Another nightwalker.Twenty-four.
Where did they come from?
