AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Where’s Ione?” he growled.
“Putting on the show of her life,” Owen replied. “The sea is ravaging the halls—has been for almost half the hour now, but I’ve yet to see a single drowned Fader.”
The Astralite’s fists clenched at his sides, his chest puffing rapidly as he tried not to look so furious. His nostrils still flared, and it was clear exactly what kind of accusation he was making. Kalen shook his head beside me in disbelief.
“No,” he grunted. “No, she wouldn’t give up Aegedonia like this. Not for her sister, not for anyone.”
“Wouldn’t she?” Abdiel asked, and the men met each other’s gaze. Abdiel was speaking to Kalen, privately with his own truth, and the blood rushed to my ears when they both looked at me.
“What?” I barked at the two men.
“Ione is with her,” Kalen finally admitted, and I almost smiled. It had taken weeks since we’d performed the enchantment with Ayona in Grovsney, yes, but he had finally come to his senses. Kalen gave me a look that checked my satisfaction. “Gwyn, we have to leave now.”
My heart skittered to a stop in my chest. Kalen’s mouth turned downward, but I got the impression it wasn’t from the pain in his leg, but the guilt of what he was telling me. This was it. This was the day I would meet the Shadows. We were leaving, Kalen was injured, and there were no Guards to seize this moment with me. Death had come with little warning, much like it always did. Kalen’s eyes searched mine, filled with regret, pain, and many other feelings we didn’t have time to sort out.
Abdiel moved swiftly across the room, picking up my dagger from the nightstand, and tossing my only weapon into my free hand. “I can only get us to the edge of the glamour around the palace, then we have to run.”
A portal sliced open behind him, spilling the cosmos into our room. Nodding at the Astralite, I adjusted my grip on Kalen as Owen stepped to his other side to help. I looked at Kalen one last time.
“Now we fight.”
With a sharp tug, the four of us projected through time and space, hitting the sand in a jarring quickness. Everything was so bright. The sun reflected off the sand, momentarily blinding me as I took my first step from complete darkness. My eyes demanded a few seconds to adjust, and when they finally did, I had to steady myself to keep from falling at the sight before me.
The beach was marred with people—Shadowfaders, Astralites, Merlords, Aegedonians, and the like. Bodies buzzed around frantically, some fighting and some fleeing for mercy. Blood leached through the sand in chaotic, random splotches, as if someone had whacked a paintbrush against a dulling canvas. Some of it reached the sea, mixed with the waters, and returned in a frothy red stain.
Weeks ago, I had seen this. Blood spilled on this very shore, on a map, in a living room that smelled like incense and fresh bread. I shook my head to clear it of the memory. We needed to get tothe boat.
Looking around, I realized that Owen had been telling the truth. Ione had called the sea forward, literally. A moat had formed around the castle, thrashing waves into the stone. Spouts of water rose stories high and then funneled into the doorways and windows of the castle, roaring down upon whatever targets lay inside and then crashing back toward the beach. The sand we stood on was riddled with rock and shell and flopping sea creatures who, much like Kalen and I, had been wrenched from their peaceful morning.
Abdiel pushed us forward, a translucent dome the color of violet absorbing the space around us. The ship was moored off the bank of the sandbar, hundreds of paces from us. It was a three-mast caravel made of black painted teakwood, the metal rungs of cannon holes coated in sparkling obsidian. The sails were still puffed from the Shadowfader’s journey inland, and like Shadows themselves were grey. In the middle, they were printed with a giant circular crest.
A blood-red eclipse.
As I surveyed the transport, my vision grew dark, slowly fading and I worried I may be fainting. That the shock of this entire morning was finally catching up to me. Suddenly, the beach went dark, but I was still conscious as a cacophony of shrieks filled the air. To my left, I heard Abdiel swear. Suddenly I felt his broad hand at my back and his mouth at my ear.
“Go!” He shouted, “Get Kalen to the boat and go now!”
Before I could reply, I felt the sand brace my bare calves as he pivoted the other way and ran. I stalled, turning my head to the sky, and cursed in return.
A host of winged beasts burst through the clouds above us, blocking out the sun in quick shutters as they flew directly toward the palace. Their wings were as wide as the length of a stallion made from stiff quills that raised upward on quick shiftsof the wind. On their backs stood legions of Faders, howling and crying and rallying for ruination. Some had already landed, and I watched in slow-moving horror as Abdiel pulled his sword from his back and charged into a crowd of demons in what was surely going to be a rescue attempt for the other Astralites. Owen watched him leave without any need for explanation or order.
It was clear, even to me. Abdiel was going to fight this faction out of battle, and Owen would take us north to Sythe.
“Come on, Gwyn!” Owen yelled. He and Kalen were already a hundred paces ahead of me.
Kalen was limp as Owen dragged him through the shallow water off the beach and to the ship. With the roll of my shoulders, I pushed on keeping my focus on the ground in front of me, counting my breaths and trying to will the blood leaking from Kalen to stop.My gaze caught the dying mackerel I’d spotted a few minutes ago, now frigid with death only a few paces away.
Ahead, Kalen and Owen were knee-deep in the sea as it began to recede again, pushing our boat even farther away from the beach. Kalen took another step forward, his bad leg going limp and sweeping out from under him. Owen cursed, dipping down into the water to adjust his grip on Kalen, whose cry was swallowed by the sound of the wind that whipped as the sea reeled back. My heart sank.
We were never going to make it.
“Gwyn,” Owen yelled, and I sprinted harder to catch up to them, but the Astralite put his free hand out, pointed in the direction of the sandbar opposite of us, and shouted, “Gwyn,look!”
I turned around, where the sea had become a wall of rushing water, up and up and up. I gaped, watching it fall, trickle really, down the giant underbelly of a serpent. Ione’s serpent, the living emblem of Aegedonia.
I lived in aworld with gods and faeries and witches and men. Even before that, I’d been confined to one that made living things out of ornaments in the sky, but as the serpent rose to tower over the mast of our ship, its long spine curved in a sinuous arch, snout raised as it snuffed, tongue slithering over a hundred gleaming teeth, I finally believed in monsters.
The beast threw its head back, the sun glaring off its shell white scales, flashing across the horizon as it loosed an ear-splitting screech across the whole of Aegedonia. Slowly its neck careened down towards the beach where the three of us lay and stilled. I stifled a scream and swallowed it down against my dry, aching throat.
