Page 33 of Flight of Fate

A few feet to my right, Recienne is slaying men with sword and magic—the latter where his power lashes through the army the same as mine and the former where his magic meets resistant armor. If all of Erina’s forces are similar to this one, this war might not be as dire as we expected. We might stand a chance after all.

A Fire Fairy steps up in front of me, hurling a ball of fire at me with a grin telling me he is ready to destroy me. I take him down with half a thought, silver and night twining as they wrap around his throat, not to kill but to hold him in place long enough to bury my sword in his chest. An easy kill even when my magic falters for a beat at the touch of his armor. He’s still grinning when I pull out my blade and he staggers back, but I don’t touch him to avoid more contact with the drug, so I hold back my punch, turning toward the next opponent.

“Ephegos was right,” the male huffs, pain mingling with dark amusement in a struggle against death.

I reel back toward him, throwing up a wall of darkness that will hold for a few seconds before the next drug-coated bastard punches through it.

“Right about what?” I snarl.

The Flame grunts as he slides to his knees, legs buckling beneath him, and catches himself on his wrists. “You’ll all come running at the slightest threat, all too absorbed with your own importance in this war that you’ll miss where the real danger lies.”

From the corner of my eye, I notice the Fairy King’s attention drift toward us as he halts his sword mid-strike. The soldier in front of him takes the opportunity to knock his blade into his shoulder, slicing through the armor and piercing his flesh.

But before he can cut deeper, Recienne site-hops to my side, seizing the dying man by the throat. “What danger?” He doesn’t need to threaten him with death, doesn’t need to lay a blade to his neck; he’s already dying, and there are seconds left to get the information out of him.

The man laughs and spits in the Fairy King’s face as his dark wind wraps around his chest, holding in the blood that was soaking the leathers around the wound I gave the soldier.

“Speak!” Recienne bares his teeth, tightening his hold.

The man coughs. “I’ll die anyway. But I’ll die knowing … we tricked you.” His eyes roll back in their sockets, and I wish I could read minds the way Kaira and Astorian can.

“Kaira!” I shout in the direction I last saw my sister-in-law at the edge of the battlefield, praying to Shaelak he’ll carry my voice to her.

One breath rattles out of the soldier. Two. Recienne demands again, “What danger?”

The man slackens in the Fairy King’s hold, and Recienne curses violently enough to draw the attention of Silas, who is in the process of beheading one of the serum-coated armor-wearing bastards.

“He might have been lying,” I suggest, but the alarm in Recienne’s voice tells me he won’t risk ignoring the potential of another attack going on somewhere else in this realm.

Recienne doesn’t hesitate to grab for the next best soldier, pinning him to the ground with a blade through his shoulder even in the middle of battle, relying on Silas and me to keep the other opponents away from him as he places a boot on the man’s throat, demanding, “Where else is Erina attacking?”

The soldier groans at the pain, his sword stabbing for the Fairy King’s legs, his abdomen, everywhere he can reach from his position on the ground, but even when his armor is coated with the drug, the weapon isn’t, and Recienne’s magic rips it from the man’s grasp with ease. I make a mental note to do the same with the next bastard coming for me while pitting my magic against the force of soldiers pushing against my shield as Silas is holding the other side, ignoring the battle raging outside this provisional interrogation chamber we’ve created.

“Tell me.” Recienne presses the toes of his boot down harder, and the soldier on the ground gasps for air. “Now.”

I’ve seen enough men being tortured, have been through torture myself often enough to know when a person will breakand when they prefer death over giving their tormentor what they ask for, and this man has chosen death.

Not a word emerges from his mouth even when Recienne lifts his boot, seizing him and tossing him aside to snatch the next soldier from behind the field—one who will hopefully speak.

None of them do. Not the next or the one after. And we can’t afford to lose time when too many in this army are still standing. Our shields are breaking, magic nearly drained from working against the drug-coated armor, holding off the coated arrows that Silas and I need to resort to using our blades as we return to the fight. Royad throws me a glance across the field. I shake my head. Not now. There is nothing we can do before we finish this. Even the Fairy King has accepted it, has become a raging force of nature tearing through enemy throats to end this battle. Kaira and Ayna are still at the edge of the field, luring out and picking off individual soldiers.

Whatever other danger is coming our way, we better be smart and preserve what we’ve left of our power so we can wield it to our advantage when we get out of here. So we can heal what injuries we’ve received in this battle and set out to fight the next.

Slowly—too slowly, the field is clearing until only a few more men of Erina’s army are standing and we meet Tata’s forces between heaps of corpses.

“Take them back to the palace and throw them in the dungeon,” Recienne orders Tata instead of slitting those final throats. “I’ll question them the moment we get back.”

One of the five men laughs hoarsely, and I wheel on him, grabbing him by the throat with my magic. His armor doesn’t put up a fight against my power, doesn’t drain it from me, and when I rip off the leather headpiece, it reveals rounded, human ears. “What do you know?” I hiss in his face, sensing the darkness layering itself over my eyes like a veil of containedviolence; talons shoot from my fingertips, and black smoke coils around the man’s neck, ready to strangle. I blow out a breath to calm myself. A mistake.

The man goes for my weapons belt, catching hold of a knife sheathed at my hip, but he doesn’t go for my throat the way I expected. Instead, he drives it into his stomach and twists, blood gushing from his leathers and pouring from his mouth with his next breath.

It hits me then.

“None of them will give us information,” I say to the Fairy King. “They are trying to delay our departure.” The reason why, I don’t even want to guess, but Recienne understands immediately, shouting a few orders at Tata’s soldiers before he turns toward Tori, who’s already site-hopping to our side of the river.

“Grab them and go,” he orders. The next moment, he’s gone, and the smell of his fear lingers thick in the air where he stood.

Twenty-One

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