Page 101 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

“What happened between the two of you?” she asked him, his gaze lingering on the spot where Daizin had been standing.

Kej shrugged. “He doesn’t like my tendency to wander off in a fight. Says I leave myself too exposed when I shift.”

“You do. Rin, too.” She’d witnessed both of them being badly wounded in their wildcat forms. There was no doubting they were skilled. Strong. But they shared the same reckless quality that Nye had likely chided them for time and time again. “You’re not indestructible, Kej.”

A soundless laugh shook her friend’s shoulders. “That’s what Daizin said. We fell out over how many injuries I’ve sustained since we’ve been going on skirmishes together. Now he doesn’t trust me.”

“He’s right, though.”

Kej elbowed her gently. “Don’t worry, Holt already gave me a lecture about it before we left, though I doubt he has any concerns formysafety.”

Zylah didn’t share his amusement. “I should hope you’d never need to question how far he’d go for his friends. For all of you.”

“I know. And don’t worry about me and Dee. We’ll be back to it in no time. The fighting is the foreplay for him.” His smile was bright but brittle, and Zylah knew better than to press him further.

“They’re in position.” This was the furthest she and Holt had tested the strength of their bond, and she had no desire to stretch it any further. “Ready?”

Evanescing, like all magic, could be traced, but it made little difference if their movements were tracked within the city. They didn’t intend to stick around. Zylah moved them both through the aether to the palace gardens, the closest she could take Kej given the quantity of vanquicite within the palace. Holt and Daizin were on the other side of the grounds, the four of them intending to clear as much of the estate as possible if Zylah couldn’t nullify the vanquicite inside the palace walls.

Already her threads were reaching out. She passed every piece of information she collected to Holt, murmured quiet commands to Kej. The once-maintained gardens were overgrown, offering them thick bushes to hide amongst and move between, obscuring Kej’s line of sight across the gardens.

“Mostly thralls nearby,” she told him, drawing her sword.

“Mostly?”

“One vampire. Three thralls. Headed this way.”

He unsheathed his sword and cracked his neck as if he were resisting the urge to shift. Zylah prayed he didn’t.

“Vampire first,” she mouthed, and they advanced.

They moved for the bloodsucker together, relief washing over Zylah when she realised this one didn’t possess the preternatural speed of some of its ilk. A silver-haired male with a young face, sharp fangs bared and black, empty eyes glaring at them as they faced off, no hint of vanquicite in the layers of his fighting leathers. Kej swung for it first, the monster evading the strike and rolling his shoulders like it was all just a game to him.

The vampire laughed. “Only two of you? Even if you cut me down, there are dozens more to follow.”

It was only partly a lie. The grounds were crawling with thralls, but only a handful of vampires commanded them. She hadn’t wanted to expend much of her magic, but as three of the vampire’s thralls took note of their master’s plight, Zylah had no choice but to summon roots from the earth to slow them down. She understood now why Holt favoured them; with how little magic they consumed, they were a useful tool in a fight.

Despite every cell in her body wanting to constantly check his progress with Daizin on the other side of the grounds, her focus was already split between her threads, her sight, and keeping the thralls from circling Kej as he fought the vampire. And somehow, she had to reach out for the vanquicite within the palace and figure out how to nullify it, too. Her threads kept some of the other nearby thralls distracted, but she couldn’t cast them as wide as she’d have liked, not yet.

I’ve found the blacksmiths, she told Holt, swinging around to throw her weight into a sword strike. Her blade struck true, hacking at a thrall’s neck as she used another eruption of roots and vines to restrain the other two. The vampire swung for Kej, and this time Zylah summoned shadows to hide her friend, giving him the precious seconds he needed to evade the strike. He muttered a curse from amongst the inky black as she sent another root curling around the vampire’s foot. As Kej landed a killing blow, she dealt with the two thralls before more could come, Holt’s affirmation echoing down their bond.

“Five thralls,” she choked out, “two to your left.”

Kej didn’t waste time on conversation, already moving towards their opponents, and Zylah braced herself for the three creatures coming her way. There were more closer to the palace, so many more, and she knew this would likely drag on until they were all exhausted if she didn’t hurry. She pulled back on her threads, sending them instead inside the palace, seeking out the vanquicite cells and any other sources of the material she could find.

The moment the strands of her magic touched the black stone she shoved down the instinct to recoil, the threads probing and prodding at the vanquicite, calculating, considering. Vanquicite had magic imbued into the stone at source, directly from the earth it was mined from, and she’d unravelled magic before. In theory, this should be no different.

But she was stretching herself thin, the three thralls occupying her attention as she tried to focus on all the ways she’d split her attention. Though Holt could withstand proximity to the vanquicite now, they weren’t certain yet whether it would affect his ability to evanesce. Reluctantly he’d agreed that only Zylah should enter the palace, and they’d discussed at length the necessity of getting closer to complete her task, repeatedly reassuring him she would evanesce away at the first sign of Ranon or Aurelia.

It took cutting their way through another cluster of thralls before she could consider leaving Kej alone. A grove of brin trees afforded them some coverage, beyond them another line of overgrown hedges, but Zylah was still reluctant to leave her friend alone, even though Holt and Daizin were close.

We’re making our way around to him,Holt said.How many between us?

One vampire. Four thralls.

Go.

Zylah snapped some instructions at Kej before she could talk herself into staying with him and evanesced inside the palace. She reappeared within one of the servants’ passages, catching her breath for a heartbeat before she sent out her threads again. Moving through the aether severed them abruptly, and it was the first time she’d cut them off mid-task. But it wasn’t just the evanescing, she realised. She’d passed through a large number of wards, no doubt alerting someone to her presence.

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