She would not fail her friends. She had no room for fear in her heart.
Only calm. Determination.
And love.
Nesta’s lips curved in a smile as the first of the warriors ran at her, sword raised. She was still smiling when she lifted her shield to take the full impact of the blow.
Nesta slammed her shield into the first male, sliced the shins of the second, and dispatched the third with a parry that sent him careening into the fourth and both of them tumbling to the ground. One for each breath, a movement for each inhale and exhale. She stilled her mind again, let it root her.
For a heartbeat, she wondered what she might have done with Ataraxia in her hand. What she might do with this body, these skills trained into her bones. If she was worthy of the sword at last.
She’d opted for a name in the Old Language, a tongue no one had spoken in fifteen thousand years. A name Lanthys had laughed to hear.
Nesta engaged four of the Illyrians at once, then five, then six, and the males started to go down, one after another. Nesta held the line in a storm of unflinching focus and death, guarding the friends at her back.
Ataraxia, she had named that magic sword.
Inner Peace.
CHAPTER
71
The being that stood atop the lake was a shadow. It must be a reflection, Cassian thought. Smoke and mirrors.
“Where is Briallyn?” Azriel demanded, Siphons flaring like cobalt flame.
“I spend so many months preparing for you,” Koschei crooned, “and you don’t even wish to speak to me?”
Cassian crossed his arms. “Let Eris go, and then we’ll talk.” He prayed Koschei didn’t know of the Made dagger that Eris had again sheathed at his side, that the Crown’s aura of power had blinded even Briallyn to its presence. But if the death-lord got his hands on it … Fuck. Cassian didn’t let himself so much as glance toward the blade.
“You fell for it rather easily,” Koschei went on, “though you took your time making contact. I thought you’d rush in for the kill, brute that you are.” They could make out nothing of him beyond the shadows of his form. Even Azriel’s own shadows kept tucked behind his wings. Koschei laughed, and Azriel stiffened. Like his shadows had murmured a warning.
His Siphons flared again. “Run,” Az breathed, and the pure terror on his brother’s face had Cassian spreading his wings, readying to launch—
But his wings halted. His entire body halted.
Azriel grabbed Eris and shot into the skies, the Made dagger with them. They had to get it far from Koschei. Yet Cassian could not move.
Cassian’s Siphons glowed like fresh blood, then sputtered out. Azriel shouted his name from high above. Koschei drifted closer to the shore. “You can take him now, Briallyn. You have plenty of time before dawn.”
A small, hunched figure emerged from behind the trees. A crone. A golden crown sat upon her head, right above her arched ears. Hate burned in her eyes.
Koschei said, “Tell my Vassa I’m waiting.” His shadows swirled.
Azriel soared back toward the ground, his Siphons creating a blue orb of power encircling him, but Briallyn had already reached Cassian.
“I have need of you, Lord of Bastards,” the ancient-looking queen seethed. Cassian could say nothing. Couldn’t move. The Crown glowed like molten iron. Briallyn ordered Koschei, “Winnow us.”
The death-lord pointed a long-fingered hand at Briallyn and Cassian. Flicked his fingers once.
And the world vanished, spinning into blackness and wind.
Nesta’s shield had become a millstone. Her sword, slick with blood, hung from her hand, a leaden, slippery weight.
Every inch of her body burned. With exhaustion, with her wounds, with the knowledge that behind that line she’d drawn in the dirt, through the archway at her back, Gwyn and Emerie were still breathing, still climbing that final piece of the Breaking to the summit.
So she’d killed the Illyrian males who squeezed through those jagged rocks. Who believed they’d find an untrained, helpless female and found death waiting for them before the archway.
Only one remained.
Some inner part of her quaked at the unseeing, battered faces. The blood running from the corpses.
Valkyrie, she whispered to herself. You are a Valkyrie, and once again, you are holding the pass. If you fall, it will be to save the friends who saved you, even when they didn’t know they were doing so.
A glance over her shoulder showed Emerie still scaling the last of the summit, so slow, but so close. Dawn neared, but … they could make it. Win this thing.
Nesta again faced the archway. Knew who she’d find.