Slaying the Vampire Conqueror(68)

The goddess was silent.

The world was silent.

Save for a drop of something warm and thick and black-red on my hand.

I did not need to look up. But I heard it when Atrius did, because he let out this horrible, choked sound, strangled, like the air was dying in his throat.

Erekkus saw it next, and he wasn’t nearly as quiet.

“Fucking goddess,” he gasped. “Get them down! Get them fucking down!”

And then he kept screaming it, over and over again, in Obitraen, faster and faster, as he tried to claw his way up the trees.

Tried to claw his way up to the countless vampire bodies staked there, high in the branches above us, not quite dead and not quite alive. Dozens of them. Hundreds.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

And then I felt it—felt what the half-alive agony of the countless vampires had been drowning out in the threads. Movement. Lots of it. Out in the woods.

I leapt to my feet and whirled to Atrius, who screamed orders.

I threw myself against him without thinking, tackling him to the ground.

“Get back!” I screamed.

But the words didn’t make it out of my mouth before the explosives hit.





32





I’m nine years old and crawling from the wreckage of my home. I’m nine years old and I can’t find my brother and—





“Sylina.”

I couldn’t orient myself. There was too much activity, the threads tangled and impossible to read. I flailed my hands out, finding something warm and solid.

Atrius.

His presence was the first firm thing I could grab onto, strong and unique. The only thing that seemed tangible when everything else was moving around us—screaming, fighting.

“Say something if you want to let me know you’re conscious,” he grunted. “I can’t see your eyes.”

I almost choked a laugh at that, and I started a snarky response, but— “Behind you,” I choked out.

Just before the masked soldier came flying from the smoke, sword aimed right for Atrius’s head.

He whirled around just in time, swords clashing. I tried to push myself up to my hands and knees, though that was difficult, with the threads so difficult to grasp. My own sword, which had been in my hands when the explosives hit, had to be here in the rubble somewhere. I felt around, my hands hitting hard rubble, frayed grass—wet, motionless skin of a body fallen from the trees— Metal.

My dagger. Good enough. I grabbed it and managed to get to my feet. Atrius was already yanking his sword from the throat of his attacker. He turned to me for a moment, then his eyes widened as he grabbed me and skillfully drove his blade through another soldier’s gut, seconds before they would have been on me.

Weaver, I didn’t even sense it. How did I not sense that?

“Stay with me,” Atrius ground out. “Right here.”

A command. Firm and inarguable.

I couldn’t even take issue with his tone. I was mostly blind. Staying with Atrius was my only chance of making it out of this alive.

I could barely make out what was happening around us, but I knew that it was chaos. Soldiers—the Pythora King’s?—poured from the forest, mingling with Atrius’s in a chaotic, bloody mess. Atrius’s men were outnumbered, and I had no way of knowing how many of them might have been injured or killed with the initial round of explosives.

They were everywhere. Everywhere at once.

Atrius fought like an animal, like a force of nature. I couldn’t track his movements. Couldn’t even track my own.

And yet, when I finally managed to grasp onto a thread, it was that of a Pythora soldier—a soldier lunging for Atrius’s back.

I acted before I thought. Something I had been scolded for countless times in the Arachessen—an impulse I’d thought I’d ground out of myself.

Apparently not. Because when I saw that blade coming for Atrius, I simply moved.

It was clumsy. A bad shot. I could barely grasp my surroundings.

My dagger made contact with our attacker’s flesh somewhere—I couldn’t even tell where—but seconds later, nothing existed but pain.

It’s a strange feeling, when your body suddenly stopped obeying you. Mine was a tool I’d learned to wield to perfection.

Until, all at once, it wasn’t.

Distantly, as if in another world, I heard Atrius shout something—my name?

My palms were pressed to the dirt. I tried to get up. Failed. My hand went to my abdomen and felt warm blood bubbling between my fingers.

Shit.

I crawled over the sand, groping for my weapon. I couldn’t feel the threads. Couldn’t orient myself.

When I managed to grasp them, I sensed—

Sensed—

Atrius, standing over my attacker, hacking into him brutally, strike after unforgiving strike, long after flesh was beaten down into formless gore.

All around us, there was death. Death everywhere.

And yet when Atrius abandoned his very, very dead target and whirled around, he wasn’t looking at any of that—not his own warriors or the people he had lost.

Only me.

His presence was an anchor. I held onto it tight, like a raft in a stormy sea.

But I was slipping.

Atrius fell to his knees beside me. When he pressed his hands to my wound, it took me a moment to realize the keening whimper I was hearing was mine.