Page 73 of Our Vicious Oaths
Both clerics answering in the affirmative was enough to release Malachi in all his chilling glory. He roared and a maelstrom of shadows hurtled toward Rishaud. A blast of golden light collided with it. When void and solar magic—lethal darkness and deadly light—clashed together between the two kings, the magical recoil sent violent land tremors shuddering across the field. Kadeesha widened her stance to remain upright. As their magics slammed into each other over and over, Malachi raised his void scimitars and advanced toward Rishaud, not wanting to give the Hyperion king time to signal his armies to attack, all while emitting a furious war cry and sending a bolt of shadows shooting into the sky. Kadeesha heard the gallops of mountain horses and the thunderous boot thuds of the Apollyon army obeying their king’s order to attack. Rishaud sent a light flare into the air, issuing his own order. While both armies surged forward, Malachi and Rishaud circled each other, each king ruthlessly assessing their opponent.
As badly as she wanted to bear witness to Rishaud’s demise, Kadeesha didn’t remain on the ground. The Aether squadron Rishaud had brought with him flew toward the palace, their kongamatos already spewing flames along their flight path. Her Nkita squadron zoomed toward their fellow Aetherfolk to intercept the flyers, and Kadeesha mounted Zahzah to help her sisters in the air. Their mission was to disarm and disable. The flyers and kongamatos they’d meet in battle did not have the same objective, though, which meant her sisters would be fighting for their lives against an enemy who sought to annihilate them, all while being hobbled.
For the first time, she and her squadron would engage in a battle that she wasn’t positive they’d come out of with the full thunder intact.
AS ZAHZAH BANKEDa hard left to avoid a column of flames hurtling at her head, Kadeesha realized she had no clue how to actually achieve her mission. A quick look around at her squad told her none of them did either and the sight of them all barely staying alive while ever on the defensive lodged her heart in her throat.
A scarlet-scaled kongamato flew at them from the right, its massive wings beating against the air. It rivaled Zahzah in size and its flyer was a decorated squadron general. “You don’t have to do this!” Kadeesha yelled at the Aether male. “This isn’t your fight! Take your flyers and leave!”
Flaming aether fire shot toward Kadeesha in answer as the scarlet kongamato kept up its furious approach. The warserpent’s teeth were bared and its enormous jaws were angled toward Zahzah’s neck. Zahzah read the kongamato’s intent without Kadeesha needing to relay it. Kadeesha threw up a protective wall of aether flames in front of her that the enemy fire bounced off of at the same time that Zahzah dove beneath the scarlet kongamato’s snapping jaws. The scarlet kongamato dove after them. Its teeth ripped into Zahzah’s side and tore a chunk from it. Zahzah’s screech rent the air as fire erupted in Kadeesha’s right shoulder. She didn’t need to glance down to know that her momentary lapse in focus had caused her to be hit. She blinked past the agony tearing her shoulder apart and gripped Zahzah’s reins harder to stay seated in her saddle as Zahzah cut to the right, shot higher into the sky, and hurtled downward fast as lighting as the scarlet war serpent bolted upward toward her at the same speed.
If you collide, she warned Zahzah in case she was lost to battle lust.
I know. I’ve got you and our little one, Zahzah bit off.
Kadeesha gripped the reins tighter. A split second before the enormous war serpents would’ve collided, Zahzah banked a hard right, then pivoted around and snapped out at the scarlet kongamato. “No!” she screamed out loud as Zahzah’s teeth sank into the kongamato’s neck.
It is unavoidable with this one!Zahzah’s response was laced with misery. She released the kongamato’s neck and sank her teeth into it again. Like a winged cobra, Zahzah struck over and over and over again, spewing blood across the sky. Zahzah’s head and Kadeesha’s entire body were covered in it by the time the other kongamato went limp and dropped out of the sky, taking its flyer with it. Kadeesha looked on in horror as the pair plummeted downward. A boom cracked out when the war serpentcrashed against the ground. The sound reverberated through Kadeesha, and she realized how naïve she’d been to think they could engage in battle against their brethren and not accrue any casualties. A high-pitched scream caught her attention and she jerked her focus to the left because she knew the voice behind that scream. Aether fire ate away at Rassa’s midsection while her kongamato—an emerald-green beast named Thilde—was at the mercy of a blue war serpent that was tearing gaping hole after gaping hole in his side.
Get to them!she screamed at Zahzah. The giant kongamato streaked through the air but they were far enough away that ice solidified in Kadeesha’s veins over the prospect that they wouldn’t reach them in time to intervene. She focused on the flyer who sat atop the blue kongamato. He was the one who’d engulfed Rassa in aether flames and was killing her slowly. As she neared, she heard him bellowing, “Traitor!” It was then that something inside Kadeesha snapped. She stopped giving a shit about sparing lives. None of it mattered if her sisters died in the attempt. The world narrowed to Rassa’s and Thilde’s anguish and the two beings who were inflicting it.Kill the war serpent. I’ll deal with the flyer, she told Zahzah. She flung an aether bomb toward the fae, who was so focused on Rassa that he never turned to see it coming. It collided with the side of his head and exploded on contact. Zahzah rammed into the side of the blue kongamato, knocking it away from Thilde. Her aether flames wouldn’t harm a kongamato, only mildly annoy them, just as the magic that bound Aether fae and kongamato as war serpent and flyer wouldn’t allow a kongamato’s flames to truly harm an Aether fae. But kongamatos could incinerate other kongamatos if they chose to and Zahzah breathed out a wave of red flames that roiled over the blue war serpent before it had time to returnits own assault. The blue war serpent screeched in the sky and Zahzah circled around to its front and sank her talons into its right eye. Then she scored them across its neck.
It stopped screeching.
Its wings ceased beating frantically.
It hurtled toward the ground.
Kadeesha swiveled in the saddle to frantically check on Rassa and Thilde. Thilde’s wing beats had slowed. He looked like he was fighting with all he had to remain in the sky.
And Rassa … Kadeesha killing the other Aether fae had extinguished the fire, but Rassa was slumped forward, her limp and badly burned body draped over Thilde’s neck, a hole burned through her chest in the region of her heart.
Ask Thilde if Rassa is dead.Merely projecting the words to Zahzah was like a hatchet to the gut.
She is, Zahzah said tenderly after the span of a few breaths that felt like they’d stretched on for an eternity. Grief cracked through her. Later. She’d feel it all later. Right now, she had to keep herself and the rest of her sisters alive.
Ask Thilde if he has the strength to fly Rassa’s body somewhere safe and keep her hidden until we can get to her.They were among the most awful words Kadeesha had ever needed to speak. A moment after Kadeesha sent the question to Zahzah, Thilde let out a mournful, ear-piercing screech and took off toward the eastern skies.
All around them, their squadron and Rishaud’s continued to wage a fierce battle in the sky. Right then and there she resolved that she would lose no one else—and she would not feel bad for the decision either.
Tell the rest of the kongamatos to disseminate to the Nkita thealtered orders, she told Zahzah.Attack with deadly force. It is unavoidable, and the chief priority is to lose no one else.
Kadeesha finally understood what she hadn’t at first. They weren’t only fighting against their own folk. They were fighting against the sheer amount of control Rishaud now wielded over every individual within the Six Kingdoms—a control that had turned the opposing squadron intohisagents of destruction. And there was no place amongst faekind for mercy when savagery reigned.
Chapter Forty
THE AERIAL FIGHT ENDED SWIFTLY ONCE THENkita could fight to their full potential. Although she’d issued the order and had resolved not to grieve the losses while they’d been fighting, there was a hollowness inside her when she and Zahzah landed on the ground alongside the rest of her squadron. The two armies were intermingled now, soldiers on both sides fighting and tangled up in a mishmash of clashing weapons, sizzling magic, and flying blood and bodies. There was no way to have the kongamatos spew flames across the battlefield without claiming Apollyon lives too. So, she gave her Nkita the order to form a ground fighting unit while Zahzah and the other kongamatos flew back to the palace to stand sentinel in case any of Rishaud’s soldiers managed to make their way there. Malachi had his own sentinels—archers—posted on the turrets and along the outer wall, but the kongamatos would be an added layer of protection for those Trystin was escorting to safety, Yashira being among them.
Once that was decided, Kadeesha didn’t bother reaching for actual steel. Fighting with her flames and her flames alone was second nature and much more effective. She, Leisha, and Samiraworked in a unit as they always did. She and Leisha leveled lethal assaults with aether fire and Samira tore a path through enemy soldiers using her blade, the three of them creating a sea of corpses. The battlefield was the one place where she didn’t need to hold back or feel bad for the utter destruction her flames could wreak. And while she was holding it together still, witnessing Rassa’s death had left her leaning into her destructive urges in full. She hadn’t correctly adjusted for losing the allegiance of the vassal kings before, or for Rishaud having taken command of her court after Sylas’s death. Even those she faced in purple-and-black uniforms wouldn’t see her as a fellow Aether fae on this battlefield, let alone their queen. No, they’d see her as exactly what the flyer who’d murdered Rassa had screamed: a traitor. An enemy to be eviscerated. And there was no time to convince them that they, in fact, were the ones betraying her and their own court. So, she needed to pay them the same regard back unless she wanted to get more of her sisters killed.
Kadeesha gave herself over to the fiery blaze that perpetually pressed up against her skin … then let it detonate out of her and roil forth, consuming everything she’d tagged asenemyin her path. The only sense she retained of anything beyond the wild, destructive rhythm she’d fallen into was the tingle emanating from her Marking. It was as if something outside of her own body tugged her to where she needed to be on the battlefield, and with each step she took, each forward inch she gained by cutting down foes in her path, her Marking vibrated with greater intensity. That sensation morphed into a searing brand that yanked her fully out of the killing haze. She blinked, grounding herself, and spotted Malachi a few feet away, he and Rishaud locked in a fierce battle.
Twin tornadoes formed of Malachi’s shadows ripped up theground beneath the two fae kings and flew toward Rishaud at the same time that Malachi’s void scimitars arced through the air from opposite sides in line with his neck. Rishaud teleported out of striking range, only to appear right behind Malachi with a sunfire sword in hand. Malachi sensed the threat at his back before Kadeesha could call out a warning and was already spinning around to meet it, but the fiery sword was moving now with a speed that made Kadeesha’s heart stop. Malachi spun out of its path a hairsbreadth before the sword would’ve severed his head from his body. He blocked the Hyperion king’s next swing with a speed that matched Rishaud’s. Malachi’s scimitars crossed in the center and formed an X as they halted the trajectory of Rishaud’s sword. Fragments of shadows and sparks of sunfire ricocheted from the spot where the two kings’ blades met and the blowback of the two ancient magics rumbled through the air.
For a moment, all she could do was watch as the two kings—the undisputed two most powerful fae alive—thrust and parried and dodged each other’s killing blows with well-timed teleportation, incredible agility, and blinding speed. Malachi wasimpressive. More than impressive. Kadeesha had thought she’d taken his measure when he’d battled Rishaud’s soldiers and then Rishaud himself during her wedding back in Aether territory. But the ferocity he fought with then was nothing compared to now. Wielding the void blades, locs wild and unbound, his broad, tall form clad in battle leathers and ceremonial armor, his grille gleaming, Malachi looked every inch an entity that was more than mere fae. He looked like a god born of darkness and shadows and nightmares—he might be on par with the great Celestials themselves. It was a good thing she wasn’t overly religious, because that thought was certainly blasphemous.
She pried her gaze away from Malachi and Rishaud to quickly assess the raging battle beyond. None of her Nkita she spotted close by were mortally injured, thank the skies. They hadn’t lost anyone else. In addition, Malachi’s forces were holding the line and keeping the majority of Rishaud’s army from advancing toward the palace by wielding a well-coordinated combination of void attacks and assault with conventional weaponry. But the Apollyon soldiers weren’t stopping every foe. Especially when they faced those who wielded myriad magics.
And that’s when she finally, truly, saw where the strength of a united Six Kingdoms army lay: It wasn’t about the massive number of soldiers; it was about the strategic advantage that lobbing numerous kinds of magical assaults—those born of fire and wind and water and solar energy and aether and the very earth itself—at your enemy. Rishaud’s forces only needed to assess and then strategically counter the threat of mostly one kind of magic, while Malachi’s army had to battle six different kinds at once and remain alive while doing it.
