Page 119 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
Those who were able regrouped, looking to her for further instructions.
Pushing aside the fleeting thought that this was Adrienne’s job, Drue squared her shoulders and brandished her sword. ‘Hold the formations!’ she barked. ‘Hold!’
Above, arrows and wraiths still blocked out the light, and a fresh wave of shadowed assault came for them.
‘Attack!’ Drue screamed.
All around her, the Naarvians fought hard, doing everything they could to incapacitate the monsters – arrows, spears, swords, all cleaving into the distracted and weakened creatures.
Drue scanned the chaos wildly as power lashed out like a nest of vicious vipers.
‘Tal, to your right!’ she cried, fear spiking amid the blur of battle.
The mighty Warsword blocked without hesitation and the wraith screamed as he cleaved its arm from its body and pinned it to the ground with his other blade. Drue sprang forward, gutting the monster without hesitation, slicing through its chest and ripping its heart from the cavity. She panted, not expecting the heavy seeping mass to trigger her gag reflex.
Choking down bile, she kept fighting, blood roaring in her ears as she moved through the fray. It was unlike any battle she’d been in before; more fraught and chaotic than those of the past. Drue swung her blade in a near-mania, carving into the enemy with an unleashed ferocity. Each slice into sinewy flesh was for her mother, every thrust of her sword for her brothers. She lost herself in the song of war, in the rhythm of vengeance.
The assault was a blur of movement, shadows swirling around them, the sounds of people shouting, some screaming in pain, echoing over the field. The clash of steel rang out, as did the metallic snap of the traps releasing as they caught monsters in their spiked jaws. The iron scent of blood mixed with that of burnt hair, searing Drue’s nostrils as she whirled her blade again and again.
Wraiths and Naarvians alike wreaked havoc, and the sensory overload of the battle had her gasping for air, momentarily searching for a way out of the pandemonium. It was crushing, the violence and gore unending and pressing in from all sides.
But she would not succumb to panic. That was not what Adrienne had taught her.Stop, think, assess.
Despite the stench, Drue took a deep breath and kept moving. She fought by muscle memory alone as she searched the skies for the reapers. Both she and Talemir had speculated that the wraith kings would wait until the forces were at their weakest to attack, but they hadn’t expected it to last this long…
She parried and blocked, sliced and carved, dodged and attacked, but it wasn’t enough.
The wraiths kept coming.
And there was no sign of the reapers.
Blood dripped down Drue’s arm. She didn’t know when she’d been cut. She felt nothing.
Shock.
All around her Naarvians were fighting, were dying.
Talemir and Wilder duelled against several wraiths at once.
Her heart seized with regret as she met Talemir’s gaze across the bloodbath, not for the end, but for the time she’d wasted denying what she knew in her heart.
Drue cleaved into another monster and charged deeper into the battle.
If this was it, then so be it.
She would defend her kingdom to the death.
32
Talemir
Drue was a vision of blood-soaked glory and Talemir’s heart hammered with longing at the sight of her amid the war of shadows.
He moved along the paths the Naarvians had created through the orchids, hissing in pain when a bloom brushed against his bare skin. He fought with the strength of a Warsword and a wraith combined, while he let his onyx power strike the weaker creatures down.
A few feet away, Wilder was attacking two monsters at once, his steel a blur of silver and fire as he dual wielded, just as Talemir had taught him, and taught him well. The younger warrior felled two wraiths at the same time, slitting their throats and pinning each of them to the ground with a blade through their wings. He unsheathed the dagger at his boot to cut out their hearts.
On Talemir’s other side, Drue whirled her own blade like a Warsword in her own right, a force to be reckoned with, a force honed by necessity and rage. She slayed a wraith then and there.
