Page 120 of Of Sword & Silver

I don’t answer. He doesn’t deserve it.

Instead, I scoop Kyrie up from where she’s crumpled on the floor, her shallow breaths breaking my heart.

Caedia chants under her breath, and Lara joins hands with her. Magic swells.

“Oh gods, you can just leave out the front door, you don’t have to do that—” Alaric begins, but a look from me silences him.

The wall of the treasury explodes outward, revealing a snow-covered lawn.

Behind us, Alaric sighs. “Are you going to take your bodies with you?”

I wave a hand, and the corpses fall to the ground, the necromantic magic sustaining them withdrawn.

“Of course not,” he mutters.

“Shut down the flesh trade and brothels or you’ll find those corpses haunting you,” I roar at him. The nearly full moon overhead shines silver on the snow, cold and sharp as a dagger’s edge.

Caedia laughs, her hands fluttering over Kyrie’s head. “Tricking him was fun. More fun than I thought it would be.” The warmth of a spring day surges as she forces what little power she has left into Kyrie. “I think I’ll let those vines hold him a little longer,” she continues.

“We’re running out of time,” Lara says.

“I cannot change that,” I tell her.

“I know.” The pleading way she looks at me tells me differently, though.

Kyrie stirs in my arms and Caedia slumps, clearly spent.

Green eyes look into mine, and my heart skips a beat.

“What did I miss?” her words are slurred and slow, but she’s awake. She’s speaking.

She’s alive.

43

KYRIE

My entire body hurts.

We’ve set up camp in Nivor Forest, or more accurately, everyone else set up camp while I sat on the ground, aching.

And coughing.

It’s worse now. I hold the green cloak Lara gave me all those weeks ago over my mouth, coughing so hard I retch. At least the green will hide any… unfortunate excretions.

My pretty white velvet cloak was lost at Alaric’s stupid palace, and I scowl at the thought that that asshole has something else of mine that I liked. Even though the green is much more sensible, I wouldn’t mind having something frivolous and soft like that.

The others filled me in on what happened after the guard knocked me out.

“I still can’t believe you just impaled a guy,” I call out to the Sword.

“I was angry.” He jams a tent pole into the ground.

A loud mew echoes from the massive trees around us. I try to look left, but only manage to make my headache worse.

“Fil?” I say into the night.

Sure enough, the huge direcat wanders into camp, purring loud enough to elicit looks of surprise from everyone.

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