Page 43 of Queen of Stars and Shadows

I jog down the dune, a laugh escaping my lips, Zyren right on my heels. When we hit the bottom, I break into a sprint. I’m halfway to the next dune when I feel a violent shift in themagic coming from the rift. No, not the rift. A different magic. Something closer. Something…

“Zyren!” I scream, spinning and flinging myself into him.

The sand a dozen paces in front of us erupts like a volcano, and something black bursts upward. There’s another explosion to our left, and another to the right.

Three enormous nightmares, each four times the size of a bear.

They’re the same color as the sand, with glittering beetle-like armor over their bodies, giant pinchers and barbed tails like scorpions, and eyes that glow a pale, toxic green color. They each have at least a dozen legs, which are serrated and blade-edged.

They charge us all at once.

Zyren shoves me behind him and summons his shadows. A wave of black shoots up around him, and his shadow ravens spin and dive for our attackers. But he’s already depleted most of his magic flying, and I know he can’t mount a defense for long. And my magic is still too weak to be of any help at all against such an enemy.

When my nightmare surges forward, I don’t hesitate. I merge with her fully, feeling the strange tingle as my eyes go dark, feeling the swirl of shadows and the rush of darkness and power. Feeling the savage, animalistic desire to end my enemies, to bathe in their blood and stand over their lifeless bodies. The unwavering knowledge that I amhunter, not prey.

It scared me the first time I’d felt this in my dreams, before any of this happened, before I knew who or what I was.

But I’m not scared anymore.

I charge for the closest monster, the one on the left. I can feel daggers form in my hands, like when I’d summoned them before in my dreams. There’s a rush of surprise for a fraction of a second, since I am fully awake and not dreaming, but it’s lost in the thrill of battle and the surety of my kill.

The nightmare rears up as I approach, slashing at me with its pinchers and knife-like legs. I feel a sting and a rush of pain as one of the legs grazes my upper arm, but it doesn’t slow me down. I slide beneath its exposed underside and cut upward with both daggers, feeling a spray of warm blood as I pass. The thing stabs for me as I roll back out from underneath it, but its body is already wobbling, shuddering, the final throws of death. It rears up again and then falls to the side, a huge gaping hole in its underbelly.

I spin. Zyren has just vanquished his nightmare with a blast of shadows that dissolves it into a pile of bone and ash. He staggers as he turns to face the last nightmare, but his expression is so fierce and deadly it takes my breath away. I run to his side and pass him one of my daggers. We take the enemy from both sides, one of us distracting it while the other gets in a strike.

This nightmare is more clever, making sure not to reveal its underside. The armor on the exterior is impossibly hard, the only vulnerabilities at the joints of its shell. We weave in and out, but the thing never falters, despite the dozens of stab wounds it’s endured. Then one of its pinchers arcs out and knocks into Zyren, sending him sprawling in the sand a dozen feet away.

“Zyren!” I scream.

At the same moment, a ripple beneath my feet flings me backward. Twenty feet away, sand flies upward in half a dozen places. More of these creatures are coming.

The nightmare is on me with amazing speed, taking advantage of my distraction. The sky is blotted out as the thing hovers over me where I lay on my back. For a moment, all I see are serrated legs waving above me. I roll to the side as it stabs downward. But when it slashes again, one of the bladed legs stabs down into my thigh. A scream tears from my throat.

And then another scream mixes with mine, this one from the nightmare. It rears up and falls to the side. Zyren is straddlingits neck, his dagger embedded deep in the back of its head, black blood cascading down the side of its body. He leaps clear as the thing crashes into the sand, and he runs for me.

“Come on!” he urges, pulling me to my feet.

“We have to fight!” I snarl, pointing to the six new nightmares that have burst upward from the sand. The beast inside me isn’t satiated yet, and she never runs from the enemy.

“No! I told you I would protect you, and I will keep my word.” Zyren’s tone is harsh, unyielding.

He drags me forward, even as I struggle against him, my nightmare thrashing in fury. The newly arrived nightmares rush across the sand toward us. Zyren throws me over his shoulder and carries me up the hill toward the rift. I scream and pound on his back. “Zyren, no!”

From my vantage point, I can see the nightmares closing in. They’re so close their dark magic washes into us, and the dunes rumble beneath Zyren’s feet. I can hear the snapping of their claws and the slash of their legs as they bear down on us, and still that fearless, furious part of me wants more blood…

Zyren reaches the rift and hurls me off his shoulders into it.

There’s a zing of magic as I pass through, and then I am plummeting through night sky.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sarielle

Ispin and flailas I fall through the sky. As I drop, I catch flashes of snow-capped mountains. The air is cold, cutting into me like blades.

At least, if this is my end, I am back home where I belong.

There’s awhooshand a brush of magic, and Zyren knocks into me, his shadow wings flaring out behind him. We slow slightly, though I can tell his hold on his magic is tenuous. He steers us toward the closest mountain peak, and we land hard in the snow, Zyren crushing me against him to break my fall. We skid across the snowy plateau, finally coming to a stop.

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