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Chapter 7
The world cleared aroundme with a flood of sunlight, the taste of briny island air, the smell of freshly spilled blood. Smooth stone beneath my bare feet. Familiar sandstone walls around me. The unmistakable clamour of clashing swords and agonised voices just around the corner, echoing down the empty halls.
The Golden Court.
If not for Beyla’s hand on my shoulders, I might have tumbled over.
‘What’shappening?’ My mind was desperately trying to catch up. There wasn’tsupposedto be a battle at the Golden Court at all, was there? All Agenor’s plans had centred around that point – get every one of his people out of there before any blood couldflow, because we simply did not have the numbers to justify a battle that would kill half of his forces and win us nothing.
And yet …
The ferocious cries mere walls away from me did not give the impression of a swift and peaceful evacuation.
‘Things escalated,’ Beyla bit out, dragging me along by my shoulder as she strode down the deserted corridor. The floor was painfully cold beneath my bare soles. ‘Don’t ask me how. Tared asked me to get you to— Doralis!’
Only then did I notice the cowering figure of Agenor’s right hand behind a square pillar, frantically flinging blue magic at a gaping wound in her leg. There had to be plenty of colour left in her pale purple wings, and yet the power seemed to come erratically at best – faint, useless flickers of blue sparking from her fingertips, doing absolutely nothing to slow the bleeding.
I was already running.
My red dress was useless, as were my bare arms and legs – but there was at leastsomeblue in the brown of my hair, and I drew it without caring much about the unhealthy shade of orange that would be left. The wound grew shut at once, leaving only the pool of blood on the floor and a pale rash that covered most of Doralis’ muscular thigh.
She slumped against the wall with a gasp of relief, breathing heavily. ‘Oh, good gods,thankyou. My magic—’
‘I saw it,’ I interrupted, too curt and too shrill. A crawling unease told me I knew exactly what the problem with her magic had been, but I shoved it aside for now – I would much rather be wrong, and either way, I had more urgent problems to worry about. ‘And will someone tell me what for fuck’s sake is going on?’
‘Have they managed to reach him yet?’ Beyla added sharply behind me.
‘Reach who?’ I snapped as Doralis shook her head – and then I saw the look in Beyla’s pale blue eyes, and I knew.
I’ll go take a look at the Golden Court, he’d said.
And then …
No.
No.
Damn my bare feet. Damn my flimsy dress. I spun around and ran towards the noise like a woman possessed, down the sun-streaked hallway, to the high gate opening up on my left. Its carved wooden doors had been blasted from the hinges. The frame was marred by cracks and gashes – from swords or red magic, I didn’t know.
Didn’t care, either.
Not when I saw what was happening beyond that gate.
The courtyard of the Golden Court had turned into an arena of war, wings and writhing bodies wherever I looked. Hordes of fae soared over the castle, dressed in black, eclipsing the sunlight like swarms of insects bringing hunger and disease. A few dozen feet away, Tared and a handful of other alves were making desperate attempts to hold their own against that onslaught, fading back and forth, blood-stained blades circling without pause as they bit into wing after wing after wing.
And at the centre of the courtyard, separated from every single one of our allies by rows and rows of fae …
Creon.
Dying.
My heart stood still.
He’d been thrown onto his back on the rough stone paving, surrounded by two, three, four dozen fae attackers – all of them hovering well out of reach of the knife in his hand, circling him like impatient vultures as they showered him in red magic he tried to dodge in vain. His left arm lay bent in an unnatural direction. An arrow jutted from his thigh, another from his side.The stone tiles beneath him were stained with blood, and even if some of it was coming from the dozen dead bodies strewn around him rather than from his own veins …
There was too much of it.
Far,fartoo much of it.
