There was a moment of disorientation as the fog of unconsciousness lifted, the veil between dreams and reality disintegrating into splinters of fire and winter, her heart beating faster than she could count. She wasn’t in Hornbill’s Head, and she wasn’t staring up at a Night Empire stormship as it eclipsed the heavens. Instead, she was somewhere outside Frostplum, glancing over her shoulder at her wasp, which had crashed on its side, its slender foils bent at odd angles, its striped sails consumed by bright flames from the cracked Firewarren-infused aether heart that powered the lamps, slowly licking their way toward the rest of the vessel.
She drew in one slow breath after another, until time returned to her. Until she was twenty years old, and all trace of civilization on Sardovia’s Great Steppe was long gone. Eradicated by Kesath’s forces as a punishment for refusing to bow to the Night Emperor.
If Sardovia lost tonight’s battle, the same fate would befall its Highlands—to which Frostplum was the gateway.
Coughing out the last of the smoke, Talasyn crawled away from the wreckage. The wolves had sent her damaged wasp spinning over the longleaf-pine forest that bordered Frostplum and all the way to the other side of the glacial mountain lake. Over a distance marked by ice floes and dark water, through the gaps between stout trunks, she could glimpse the ruined buildings, the rushing silhouettes, the burning. There was no sign of the coracles, the Kesathese ironclad, or the Sardovian frigates, which meant that both sides had switched to ground warfare; she must have been unconscious for a while. Eventually her head stopped spinning and her legs remembered how they worked and she was hauling herself up, she was standing, she was scrambling over the lake, navigating a treacherous path from one large chunk of ice to the next.
By the World-Father’s untrimmed beard, it was colder than the Night Emperor’s heart out here. Mists of silvery vapor curled into the air with her every exhalation. Through them, she glimpsed a panicked crowd spilling from the forest on the far shore: Sardovian soldiers and cityfolk alike. Some headed for the caves while others took their chances on the ice. The light of Lir’s seven moons bore down upon them all, casting the surrounding white mountains into harsh relief.
I have to make it across the lake, she thought. I have to make it back to Frostplum. I have to rejoin the fight.
Talasyn had almost reached the forested bank when fumes of darkness unfurled from the trees and drifted over the snow, consuming the ice floes in a creeping wash of inky black.
She skidded to a halt and the darkness encircled her, rippling with aether. It wasn’t the darkness of the night or the smoke from the fighting that had already broken out on the mountain. It was deeper and heavier, more alive. It moved, curling over the frozen lake like tendrils.
She had encountered these shadows before, on many a battlefield. When they formed rings like this, it effectively trapped all those who were caught within. Sardovian regiments had learned the hard way that trying to pass through these barriers resulted in grievous injuries, if not outright dismemberment. It was a favorite tactic of the Shadowforged warriors that made up the Night Empire’s fearsome Legion. If Emperor Gaheris had let them out to play, suddenly the chances of Frostplum fending off this siege seemed considerably slimmer.
As were her own chances of survival.
She stood statue-still, listening to the creak of footsteps on the ice and the cries from people she couldn’t see through the murky black wreathing the air.
“Pick off the stragglers,” a masculine voice, greasy and guttural like an oil slick, instructed from not so far away. Talasyn bit back a curse. If the Legion was sweeping the lake, that meant there was no further need for them in the city and the Sardovian regiment had scattered. Frostplum was lost. The rest of the Highlands would follow, with its most strategically located settlement now in the clutches of the Night Empire.
Horror and panic tore through her in equal measure, and then ceded ground to a boiling rage. She hadn’t asked for this; the people of Frostplum hadn’t asked for this. No one in Sardovia had. A few hours ago her regiment had been celebrating Khaede and Sol’s future and now they were being mowed down like voles across pack ice. Snuffed out one by one. There was only herself, the night, the black water, and the lurking Shadowforged encircling her like a cage. She would not let it end like this.
With Talasyn’s rage came the spark of an ember in her core. She felt it burn the way it had earlier, but more intensely this time. Sharp, radiant, and demanding justice.
And it hurt. It felt as though her entire being was aflame. She had to let it out before it consumed her.
Don’t let anyone see, the Amirante had warned. You’re not ready yet. They can’t know.
You will be hunted.
Talasyn closed her eyes in an attempt to center herself, swallowing her emotions as if they were bile. No sooner had she succeeded in doing that than the ice shifted beneath her feet and she heard frost crystals crackling under heavy armor. Her nape prickled with the weight of a stare that must be surveying the Sardovian Allfold’s crest—a phoenix, the same one emblazoned on the regiments’ sails—stitched on the back of her coat.
“You lost, little bird?”
It was that oil-slick voice again. Measured steps drew near and the telltale growl of static could be heard as the Shadowgate was opened. The fire in Talasyn rose up as if a dam had finally given way.
There was nowhere left to run.
I’m not going to die. Not here. Not now.
Talasyn whirled around to meet her attacker head-on.
The legionnaire had to be at least seven feet in height, every inch of him covered in obsidian plate, and his gauntleted fists clutched an enormous greatsword crafted from pure darkness, shot through with streaks of silver aether. The edge of the blade crackled as he raised it above her head.
It was the same now as it had been the day Hornbill’s Head was destroyed. It was instinct. It was the body fighting tooth and nail to survive.
The magic spread through her like wings.
Talasyn met the Shadowforged sword with a wave of radiance. The tapestry of aether that bound the dimensions and held all elements appeared in her mind’s eye and she yanked at its strings, opening the way to the Lightweave. It shot out from her splayed fingertips, raw and shapeless and uncontrolled in her alarm, painting the immediate vicinity in hues of brilliant gold.
The last time this happened—when Kesathese troops crept through the ruins of Hornbill’s Head after the stormship had flattened it, searching for survivors to make an example out of—the soldier aiming his crossbow at Talasyn’s fifteen-year-old self had died instantly, flesh and bone devoured by the Lightweave. This giant legionnaire managed to block, his greatsword transmuting into a dark oblong shield with which the radiance collided in a fiery flash. However, Talasyn was desperate and he’d been taken by surprise, and he screeched as light consumed shadow and he was blasted to the ground in a heap of singed armor.
Sardovian forces had arrived too late to save Hornbill’s Head but in just enough time to rescue those who had withstood the stormship’s wrath. Coxswain Darius had been the one to witness her kill the Kesathese soldier and he’d ushered her away, taking her straight to the Amirante.
Tonight on the Highlands ice, though, no one was going to come for her. She was on her own until she made it back to her regiment in Frostplum.