Page 157 of A Reign of Roses
A soldier in that vicious red glass visor filled my vision as I gulped frantic air back into my lungs. He kicked me down to the ground with the sole of his boot and held me there, slamming his sword into the blade of some Onyx boy—just aboy—fighting to reach me. Calling my name. Calling me hisqueen.
The Fae’s violent, watery lighte shot down from his hands toward my neck like a razor-sharp guillotine. I didn’t have time to think as bright rays of my own power met his liquid strike and evaporated the blow into winter air. My wrists and arms burned with the impact.
Our eyes met, equally shocked.
Before I could recover—make any sense of what my lighte had just done—the soldier snarled and brought down another surge of water, sharp as a meat cleaver.
This time I deflected the blow with that sunfire and allowed the lighte to crawl past his offense and up his arms until the fire turned his armor molten-hot.
He shuffled back, barking at the pain,screamingas he fought to rip his breastplate off, allowing me to scramble up andrun.
Kane, Kane—
Past the still body of the Onyx boy who’d tried so valiantly to save me. That boy…his freckles. He’d been the soldier I’d stitched up. The one who’d wanted to fight for his home, and his people.
Dead.
I doubled back and shot my sunfire at the Fae who’d murdered him. Allowed my righteous, twisting flames to crawl up his calves and legs and groin and boil him inside his own suit of punishing reptilian armor. His screams were soil to my stems. Briefly, I languished in them.
Then I raced for Kane.
My arm flew out again and again, my steel an extension of me, my lighte an extension of that weapon, winding and dodging, bracing for the ache in my back and shoulders every time I swung, every time my sword connected.
But more and more and more soldiers came. From the trees, from their steeds—
And those salamanders—right at the keep’s walls. Hurling balls of fire at the gates. Their creaking like thunder, shaking the forest floor. That wall of silver men, crawling higher and higher.
I could only watch as Onyx soldiers dove from their positions on the gates to avoid being burned alive with their castle. And some were not so lucky, blaring out their suffering—
And I could barely appreciate the reprieve as I sought out Kane now where he’d fallen, charred and bruised and back in his human form, handling himself between the blades of too many Fae soldiers. I had no idea where Griffin was. Hadn’t seen Mari’s red hair or clouds of ferocious magic in too long. Far too long.
And wherever I set my ropes of white fire to one soldier, two more found me. Where I ducked from one blade, another cut through my flesh. Where I deflected, each next blow connected. Too many of them, closing in. Too much smoke, too much tumult, to see or hear if the gates that separated this concentrated, bloody mangling of bodies had broken through to the innocents still housed inside the keep. Leigh and Ryder—
And the animalistic sobs, the cries, theagony…
“Stand down,” I screamed at them all. “We have to stand down!”
Nobody altered a single movement.
I opened my mouth to bellow the words. To beg our army to surrender. Beg them to save the women and children who filled the keep behind us as those monstrous creatures lit the forest and iron ablaze.
Opened my mouth to beg for this just to beover—
Until movement broke through the tree line.
I snapped my head back at the rustling branches and falling snow. More monsters, more creatures, surely…
But the sound—
Not hooves or claws or wings.
Just feet.
The heavy footfalls of thousands—
Helmets turned all around me. Silver and jet-black and gold and rust—
Swords fell from midair in confusion. Even the salamanders halted, turning their heads toward the shuddering ground. Tongues lashing at the air to scent the newcomers.
