Page 156 of A Reign of Roses
All I beheld now as I darted for the keep were smoking branches sizzling in the gray snow and crumbled dens of animals that would be seeking a new shelter, if they’d even made it out. And where was Lazarus while all his men fought and died for him? Hiding. Staying out of the fray now that he’d lost his precious witch. Repugnant.
Our sentries—those sturdy towers that specked the woods, the first line of defense for the stronghold—had been toppled. Onyx banners defiled, glass panes shattered, bodies of soldiers who had not been able to escape ravaged.
And those front lines I raced for…so rabid with violence I could hardly tell friend from foe.
It was a massacre.
One I did not allow myself to turn away from. To cringe, or heave at the awfulness. I’d never seen a battlefield. I’d been wholly unaware of the sheer brutality—of how it felt to sprint with all I had in me, freezing air funneling in and out of my lungs, and fall to the ground, ice ripping at my palms, only to realize what I’d tripped over was a human head. The flesh still warm against my exposed ankle.
Don’t retch. Don’t retch.
I stood and kept running.
Kane was way ahead of me. He ran with supernatural speed, his legs and arms elongating and darkening, scales spanning across him as he shifted. His vast, horned wings flared violently, taking out soldiers left and right until he leapt from the ground into the air, soaring over the clashing of steel and arcs of lighte with a deafening roar.
He landed atop the tower of soldiers that had piled high before the gates of Shadowhold. They were climbing the walls and wrought iron like ants, stepping on top of one another, swarming and blurring together.
Kane swooped down, ripping soldiers from their grasp of the pointed gates, tossing them recklessly—sometimes in two halves—into the forest.
But by then the mercenaries were upon him.
Harpies and snarling, winged wolves, ripping into Kane’s haunches as he fought to keep them from soaring over the gates and into the keep. His bellows, theflamethat split from between his razor-sharp teeth, doing hardly anything at all to deter their feathers and claws and earsplitting screeches.
And they were here as well. On the front lines. Lashing through the men and women all around me, beaks slicing beside my face. I spun, witnessing in muted horror as Onyx armor was sheared apart like torn bread. I shouldn’t look away but—I could hardly watch. Could hardly witness the faces I knew, had seen trickle through the halls of my home, gurgle out their final breaths. For our kingdom. Formykingdom.
And I wanted to unleash all my power as I’d done so long ago at Siren’s Bay. I could feel it, that vigorous lighte rippling in my veins, charged and furious—fueled by horror and grief and loss and rage—but I had more power now than I’d had then. If I let it consume me, I’d destroy everyone. The Onyx soldiers, Shadowhold—
And even if I didn’t, as evidenced by the weeks after the battle that I’d spent starved of lighte, I’d have nothing left for Lazarus.
The smell of burnt flesh brought a hideous memory to my mind.
I spun, interrupted by a fist careening into my jaw. Had barely caught my breath before another blow sent me to the ground. My sword slashed up, cutting through the Amber man’s leg. He howled in agony.
When I stood, I made his death quick.
But by then the salamanders were well within my sight.
I wasn’t the only one who had stopped midbattle to appraise the lizard-like creatures. Onyx, Amber, and Fae warriors alike had all halted around me, if only briefly, to witness the sheer power of the prowling, fire-breathing beasts from Garnet.
I’d never seen anything like it. Even that night in Peridot, they had attacked from so far away, and it had been the dead of night, and there had only been a few…
At least fifteen of the beasts laid siege to our walls now. Scales as large as the face of an axe and just as sharp. Split, slithering tongues.Cold reptilian eyes. Frying the men who held their ground. Burning the walls, crumbling the brick.
Enough to demolish all of Shadowhold. To reduce the keep to embers.
Kane took a wretched blow of that caustic, blistering salamander flame to one beautiful outstretched wing and plummeted into half the men who had claimed the wall beneath him.
NO—
A scream ripped through my throat at the sight.
I surged for him, thighs burning, racing toward my husband, my partner, my king—
Kane’s ravaged roar as the fire crawled up his sleek scales shredded my heart. Smoke and flame curling as he fell.
I watched in desperate dread as his enormous body took down half a dozen soldiers of all creeds that were halfway up the walls. And their armor, their flesh, the very snow coating their helmets lit, too, with that wicked orange and scarlet like a funeral pyre—
A whip of watery lighte wrapped around my braid and yanked me backward. I went down, the notches of my spine bruising against the icy roots of a sprawling tree. Kane’s pained roars echoing through the trees…
