Page 3 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
The answering scream confirmed it, black and red blood spurting from the wound.
Drue’s hands were growing clammy around the grips of her weapons, but she didn’t stop. She delivered an upward cut to another wraith’s abdomen, hoping the flames caught alight across its flesh.
‘Coltan!’ she called, finding her companion further away than she’d realised and surrounded by wraiths.
‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Let me distract —’
She stopped listening. He was hardly one for heroics. Instead, Drue ducked and wove her way to him, delivering as much damage to the monsters as she could. All the while, her mind ticking through the options she had.
There weren’t many.
She knew the top island of Naarva like the back of her hand, all the nooks and crannies, all the secret passageways the rebels and guerrilla forces had carved out under the noses of the wraiths. But those were no good to them when they were in the thick of a swarm, when Coltan insisted on fighting like a prized idiot. And over her dead body would she lead the monsters back to the citadel.
When she reached Coltan, she noted several lacerations and a scorch mark across his chest. He’d been hit hard… He was panting, raising his sword against an incoming swipe of claws. Drue blocked, swinging her cutlass at the exposed shoulder of another monster.
Above, Terrence shrieked, his wings beating furiously as he aimed his talons for the creatures’ clouded blue eyes, clawing viciously, sending one of them stumbling and clutching at its face —
But they were outnumbered and outmatched. Two rangers of Naarva had no chance against seven shadow wraiths from beyond the Veil. Drue desperately scanned their surroundings, looking for anything that might hold them off a little longer, just to give her a second to think —
The thunderous sound of horse hooves vibrated beneath her boots.
Her gaze snapped up to see a pair of mighty warriors leaping from their stallions and into the heart of the fray. In the glowing light of the blazes, the palm-sized totems on their right arms gleamed: a design of two crossed swords with a third cutting down the middle, marking them with the highest honour Thezmarr could bestow.
These were no ordinary warriors. These wereWarswordsof the guild from across the sea.
Drue didn’t question it, not then. Instead, she used their arrival and the wraiths’ surprise to her advantage, slicing through legs and abdomens with as much force as she could muster, weakening the monsters so that the Warswords might pin them down to deliver swift justice. The warriors lit their swords aflame as well, the larger of the two wielding one in each hand as though the blades were an extension of himself. He moved with such precision and grace that Drue nearly stopped in her tracks to admire him.
The shriek of a wraith brought her out of her near-trance and spurred her into action. She parried and blocked, dodged and advanced, all the while inflicting as much pain and suffering as she could muster. These creatures were the reason her brothers were dead, her mother too, their screams echoing in her nightmares. These beasts of darkness had changed the fate of her entire kingdom and wrought despair upon the people of Naarva. Because of them, she and everyone else she knew on these shores lived a half-life, one cloaked in fear —
An ear-piercing scream set her teeth on edge, and she whirled around to see the Warswords working together to carve out the heart of not one but two wraiths. It was a horrific, brutal act, but when the black masses were cast aside, the monsters moved no more.
Drue allowed herself a moment to catch her breath, gasping in disbelief and awe as the Warswords took on another creature, moving as a single unit, as though they had done this countless times before.
Nearby, Coltan hauled himself to his feet and came to stand at her side, and Terrence landed on her shoulder with a quiet cry, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the wraiths. The Warswords’ hands slayed two more, while the remaining three flung out their wings and launched themselves into the sky, leaving near-translucent ribbons of shadow in their wake as they fled.
The Warswords exchanged no words as they lit the carved hearts on fire, before stalking towards Drue and Coltan.
But something tightened in Drue’s chest, for there were no more wraiths in sight, and yet… Her cuff was still hot against her wrist.
As the towering Warswords approached, she waited – waited for the air to clear, for the remains of the dead creatures to drift into the wind… She watched as the smoke swept away the scent and ash of the monsters.
And still the heat against her skin lingered.
Still, the cuff sang to her.
Before she knew it, the larger warrior stood before her, a satisfied gleam shining in his hazel eyes. His dark hair was tied up in a knot. Olive skin peeked from beneath his black armour as he sheathed both his swords at his belt.
He offered a blood-stained hand. ‘I’m Talemir Starling,’ he said with a smile. ‘And this is Wilder Hawthorne.’
Drue stared at him. He looked every bit the formidable warrior, every bit the handsome rogue his kind were reported to be: square jaw, corded with muscle…
But even though he smelt like an incoming storm after a drought, she didn’t hesitate to thrust her blade to his throat.
For the cuff didn’t lie.
And it told her that this man was a shadow wraith.
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