Page 54 of An Empress of Fire & Steel

She heard metal scratching against a case and knew Torin had withdrawn fighting knives.

Oh Gods, something was out there.

Could he hear or see something that she couldn’t?

In that moment, a crashing realisation sunk into her bones. However powerful witches were, they didn’t have the same instincts and senses as the hunters. Warriors of Thorin were born to detect danger, and even if witches could feel something bad in their gut, hunters could detect the danger quicker.

Magin dismounted too.

Another sound of boots hitting the ground came from behind her, letting it be known that Artem had dismounted his horse.

Deep in her gut, she knew this wasn’t good.

Her pulse quickened. Her magic tingled.

A branch snapped to her left, causing her head to swing in the same direction. Ledi shifted underneath her, trotting to the side and she pulled on the reins to calm him, still trying to pat between his ears.

“Do you still have that dagger strapped to your thigh?” Torin asked, his stance changing. She knew the stance well. It had been one of the first things she had learned in combat.

“Yes,” she answered him. Pulling aside her cloak, Emara ran a hand over the fastening. The lethal blade was cool on her fingertips as she unstrapped it from where it clung to her combat leggings. The blade glinted under the moonlight, and she gripped the thickness of the hilt.

Out of nowhere, a rush of movement came from the trees. Ledi jolted to one side, and she had to clutch onto his mane to stay mounted. Torin jumped into action, hurling a knife through the air and landing it between two crimson eyes. Emara’s full body shuddered as she watched the black blood pour down the creature’s face. As the animal crumpled and died, the smell of sulphur hit the back of her throat.

It wasn’t an animal.

It was a demon. They were being attacked by demons.

Fear was a strange thing. You could either let it take over, paralysing everything from your mind down to your toes, or you could let it build into adrenaline, channelling it into every movement, every decision, every breath you took. Fear could become bravery.

Emara decided on the latter.

She wasn’t going to let fear ruin her life, not when the people who surrounded her fought so valiantly to protect her.

It happened so fast, after Torin threw the first knife.

Blood-red eyes broke from the trees and darkness, caging them in. Her guards burst into action. Magin unsheathed a double-edged spear, similar to the one she had trained with before, and began stabbing through flesh. Artem had jumped out in front, a knife in one hand and an axe in the other. And, of course, Torin had pulled his double swords from his back after running out of throwing knives.

He was unfalteringly violent as he halved through torsos, leaving them like dead leaves on the forest floor. He spun with grace from one slaughter to the next, ensuring their utter demise.

The demons were different from what she had witnessed before. They were not like the one that had been in her home the night her grandmother was killed—a high demon—nor were they like the winged beasts that had attacked the Uplift, trained for battle.

They were smaller, looking more like feral hounds walking on their hind legs, but with faces that looked like burned, human skin. They had rows and rows of teeth, and they looked rabid with the desire to taste and feed.

But their awful crimson eyes were the same.

Magin let out a roar that caught Emara’s attention. One had climbed onto his back and had sunk teeth into his shoulder. Before she could think anything through, she flung herself off the horse. What felt like tiny needles pierced up through the pads of her feet, reminding her of how human she truly was as shooting pains jolted up her ankles to her shins.

She was a witch, though, not a human, and she had learned some basic training. It was time to put it to the test. Powering momentum into a sprint, she gripped her fighting knife hard. As she approached Magin, he was still struggling, one demon on his back, another in the clutches of one hand. She pulled her arm back and drove her dagger forward, straight into a spine of rotten flesh. The demon bucked and let go of Magin’s neck and he spun, spearing it through the heart quicker than she could follow. That was all he’d needed, a split second of reprieve, and she had given him that.

“Thank you, Emara.”

She blinked only to find that he was already on to the next kill.

“Emara!” Torin’s rough roar was like a warning call sent from the Underworld.

She whirled around to see a demon hurl itself against her. Its body collided with hers and they tumbled to the ground, her skull smacking against the root of a tree. A screech of pain escaped her as the demon slammed on top of her, its claws finding her shoulders, and it hit her body into the ground again, knocking the air from her lungs.

All she could see was a sparkling blur of mad eyes and ferocious teeth.

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