“It’s them. They’re all together.” He shot ahead, and we followed. Each turning made my heart beat faster.
We have them, I told my other self. A few times, I’d felt the slight dizziness as our awareness came together and he checked in to see whether we’d found Kat. I’ll show you when we find her. You focus on the king.
I felt his grumble but also that it was edged with relief.
She would be fine. She had to be. And if she or any of the others were injured, we had Asher.
The trail led us to a bloodstained carpet and a busted door. My stomach dropped.
Faolán scented the air. “Not theirs.” Blade ready, he crept into the room.
More blood and something pulpy mashed into the carpet. Lysander wrinkled his nose.
Faolán shook his head. “Still not…” He stilled, then hurried over to the bloody settee. “Hmm.”
That hmm made my veins freeze. “Faolán?”
Exhaling, he strode out to the hallway, while Lysander and Asher gave me questioning looks. I shrugged and followed him. They didn’t understand his different hmms, and I wasn’t going to dangle bad news in front of them until we knew more.
I found him sniffing at the next door. Its keyhole had been mangled beyond recognition.
Frowning, I touched the damaged metal. “Someone’s jammed the lock.”
“Rose,” he shouted, pounding on the door.
“Faolán?”
A ragged exhale came from him as his head bowed, and for a second I saw how close he’d been to breaking through all this. Then he straightened. “Stand back.”
A second later, he smashed the door off its hinges, and we rushed in.
Faolán grabbed Rose, burying his face in her strawberry blond hair.
Lysander pulled Ariadne into his arms, swinging her around. “Thank the gods you’re all right.”
Asher rushed to Perry, who sat on an armchair with her leg up, bloody bandages around her thigh. They kissed long and deep, all attempts at hiding their relationship forgotten.
Ella stood in the middle of it all, wearing an awkward smile.
Laughing with relief, I turned, looking for her. As I turned full circle, my heart grew tighter. “Where’s Kat?”
She locked us in and headed for the throne room. She went after you.
Ella’s words to my other self reached through my mind as I crept through a glazed garden room full of plants and cosy seating. The sound of low voices drifted from a stone corridor ahead.
Gods damn it. If she’d just stayed there we’d be with her now. I’d know she was safe.
Instead, I had all the more reason to reach the throne room to find both Kat and the king.
Could this all be Lucius’s doing? He was behind unCavendish, so maybe it wasn’t such a huge leap.
If it was, he could cross over into Dusk and beg for sanctuary from this attack. Then he and his people could use that as an opportunity to gain access to the queen.
Muscles thrumming with tension, I entered the corridor lined with busts on plinths and peered around the corner. A dozen fake Ascendants.
Shit. I was a few minutes from the throne room, and this was the only way there without looping back on myself to take a long detour.
On the plus side, this narrow corridor meant only a couple of them would be able to reach me at once, and my shadows…
I adjusted the grip on my Shadowblade and sent wisps of shadow ahead. In their incorporeal state, they could take up more space than the concentrated form, which could touch objects and people. Although these formless shadows couldn’t trip anyone up or choke the life from them, I could feel where they were.
When they reached the attackers, I let them spread, and gave a vicious grin as troops swatted at the rising darkness.
“What’s—？”
“I can’t see. Am I blind?”
Sword and dagger ready, I closed in.
“No, I can’t eith—”
I cut his throat.
Although I couldn’t see, I could feel the shape of the corridor, the plinths, and every place my shadows weren’t. I aimed for those fae-shaped pockets of emptiness, a slash here, a stab there.
“The shadows are attacking!”
A grunt. A gurgle. Two more dropped at my feet.
One swung wildly. I barely dropped in time, the blade whistling past my head.
“Ow! Fuck! Was that—？”
Spinning on one knee, I drove my dagger into her thigh. Blood sprayed through my shadows as I rose.
“Fuck. Fuck! My leg.” As she fell, bleeding out, her panicked voice stirred whimpers from the others and more flailed into the darkness.
A wild slash caught my arm. I bit back my pain.
“Backs to the walls,” a firm voice cut through the rising fear as I crouched and cut the injured woman’s throat. “Anyone in the centre is an enemy.”
“You’d better hope they can’t hear you.” A chuckle edged my voice as I straightened. “Oh, wait, I can.”
But before I could reach the wall, someone swiped for me. On instinct I darted to one side, but my foot caught on the dead woman, and I stumbled below another slash.
White flashed over my vision and pain burst through my skull as I hit a plinth.
Darkness. Vague, spinning shapes. Shadows subsiding.
I blinked.
Incoming, something in me whispered.
I rolled to one side as sparks rained from the plinth, right where my shoulder had been an instant earlier.
“I see him! It’s the Serpent!”
Shadows. Get them up. My other side hissed in my head.
My pulse surged, the world suddenly clear. In my daze, I’d let my shadows sink and lost my only advantage.
A strike jolted up my arm as I caught it on my sword. More flew at me from two attackers, and it was all I could do to dodge and parry, retreating. Sweat snaked down my spine.
If they forced me into the garden room, they’d be able to surround me, and I’d be fucked. My other side would survive, but I needed to get to the throne room before Kat. If she went there alone…
Teeth gritted, I made a neat riposte, slapping my enemy’s blade away before diving in with a lunge. The resistance of flesh told me I’d hit, but the other pressed in, stealing my attention as their sword slid along my dagger.
As the first one fell, another took his place.
Parry. Dodge. Swipe. Duck. On and on and on without a moment to focus on bringing my shadows back.
Pain lit up across my stomach, blinding for a second, followed by the warm spill of blood.
Fuck. Bad.
My lungs heaved and sweat bathed my skin as I fought on, strength sapping. Really bad. I thought I caught a sweet-sharp scent, perfume perhaps or something from the plants in the garden room. Didn’t they say senses grew heightened when you were about to die?
I didn’t have time to die.
I blocked and hacked and slashed, muscles burning, head swimming.
Then the Ascendant I was fighting frowned. One glanced down. I took the opening from her momentary distraction and ran her through.
Her companion’s eyes widened. “What’s…？” He sucked in a strangled gasp and fell.
One by one, they all fell, disappearing in a purple mist that mingled with my shadows.
“Thought you could use a little help.”
That voice.
I spun on my heel.
My goddess. Mere feet away. Saving me.