An Unseelie with long white hair and antlers aimed an arrow at me. “Drop your sword.”
A third stepped forward. “If you make this easy, we might make your death quick.”
I clenched my teeth. That promise didn’t sound particularly likely.
The white-haired archer shot an arrow that glinted in the moonlight as it soared for me. Time seemed to slow, and I blocked it with my blade. The dark-haired one screamed and ran for me with his sword raised, but his battle cry had given me the opportunity to ready myself for his attack. I slashed left, blocking his attack, then carved back again toward the right, slicing through his gut. The Sword of Whispers sang to me as blood spilled on the black lava.
You are death. The final rattle. You are the cold, silent shadows at the end.
The white-haired soldier arced his blade, swinging for my stomach. In one swoop, the Sword of Whispers carved through his weapon. A soldier slashed at me from above, and I drove my blade into his groin, crippling him. I whirled, spinning my sword to adjust my grip, and dodged out of the way of a battle ax. When I righted myself again, I cut my blade through the man’s throat. He dropped to the ground, and his ax clanged on the rock.
I pivoted, bringing the Sword of Whispers down through a man’s shoulder, the blade carving him in half.
I was trying to keep an eye out for the archer as I fought, but he’d slipped into the shadows. I’d always thought of archers as cowards, attacking from afar.
I whirled, driving my blade through the neck of my next attacker, then shifted to slice it through the chest of a demon with antlers.
As I readied my sword for another attack, excruciating pain slammed into me from behind. An arrowhead plunged into my flesh next to my lower spine, and I fell to my knees.
My blood roared in my ears as I tried to keep my grip on the sword. Another arrow pierced my shoulder blade, and I fell forward onto my hands. Blood spilled into my mouth. I clutched my sword as tightly as I could, but lost my grip on the hilt.
14
AVA
The journey up the mountain had seemed long and slow. The one back down?
Fast and brutal, a race on horseback over black, rocky terrain. Lying as I was facedown over a horse, my muscles jolted with every bump. At least Morgant had the decency to pull the arrow out of my back before he bound my hands.
Pain shot through me where the arrow had pierced my back. Morgant held me, one hand gripping my arms and the other on the horse’s reins.
Given the amount of blood flowing from me, if I were mortal, I’d be dead by now.
I closed my eyes, thinking of Torin. I’d seen him jump from the castle, and I bitterly regretted calling out to him. If he’d stayed inside, could he have hidden from them? Perhaps, but that wasn’t his style.
I desperately wanted to know whether he’d found the Veiled One. Maybe he already knew how to get out of here .
When I opened my eyes, I watched as the castle came into view, stone and crooked trees twisted together under a vault of stars.
“Back to the dungeon, then?” I said through gritted teeth.
“If you vex me.”
“And if I don’t vex you?”
Instead of answering, he kicked the horse, spurring him onward to the castle’s entrance.
At last, Morgant reared his horse to a halt. He slipped off first, then yanked me to the ground by my bound arms. I fell hard, landing on the side where the arrow had pierced me. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a scream, so I managed to strangle it.
He pulled me up by my wrists.
I could ask him again where he was taking me, but I knew he’d never answer me.
Inset into the fortress were enormous gothic black doors, and they groaned open as we approached. He pushed me into a hall of carved dark wood. Candlelight writhed over a mossy floor, and vines hung from a vaulted wooden ceiling.
Morgant took the lead ahead of me, turning to look at me with grim satisfaction. “I want you to know that we have your great Seelie king. We will break him before he dies. We will rip off his skin and feed it to our spiders. The Seelie kings always say their old gods protect them. We will prove they do not.”
I felt my thoughts going dark until they were nothing but a vision of thorny vines rising from the earth to rip Morgant to shreds. But the man was trying to get a reaction out of me, and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
After a few hundred feet, we reached a small antechamber with a wooden door inset with green jewels.
Morgant pushed it open, revealing a spiral staircase of dark blue wood. The stairs seemed to be carved from the interior of the enormous tree. Up and up we climbed, my arms still bound and my thighs shaking from exhaustion.