Green flames writhe around my body, and I know the same color glows in my eyes. I fix my gaze on the goblins, then my sister’s Dreadknights. Her pride and joy, the soldiers she’s spent years training. An elite force, loyal to a fault, and adored by our mother.
I’m not sure Birdy will ever forgive me for this.
As for Rosalina…
This will only confirm for her the villain I am. But I told her I’d be her darkness, and if only a villain can save her, then so be it.
Power explodes out of me like a twisted storm. Torrents of green flames burst from my body. Like writhing specters, the energy surges out before diving to its targets.
The flames consume every goblin and Dreadknight in a single breath. Iridescent armor falls in a collective tinkle, almost reminiscent of spring rain.
The Nightingale stands stunned, one moment surrounded by a vast legion, now nothing. No one. Years of her world crumbled around her. Do you see now why she favors me, sister? You shouldn’t covet what you don’t understand.
Birdy lets out a heartbreaking wail and falls to her knees, clutching the cape of the nearest Dreadknight.
I release the magic, and my body feels empty. It takes everything in me just to keep standing. But I can’t bear to turn around and see their expressions.
Rosalina’s hand grips my arm, and I suck in a tight breath. How can you even touch me?
But her hand trails to mine and squeezes three times. She heard me.
“We should regroup at Castletree.” Her brown eyes lock on to my own, and there’s an expression there I can’t read. But it’s not the terror I expected. “All of us.”
Ezryn only gives a stiff nod. I’m sure if he hadn’t just been knocked out entirely by that pollen, he’d have more to say on the matter. And I can’t bear to look at Kel.
But that great oaf grabs my face, his rough hand on my chin making me look up at him.
“You have a lot to answer for, Cas—”
Cas … I always liked when he said my name like that. He’s saying more, lips still moving, but my vision blurs around the edges. I shouldn’t have used so much power, with most of my magic going to the briars holding up Castletree.
Rosalina pulls out her necklace and the air shimmers. Castletree. I won’t be able to stay long before the rot takes over … But maybe I can stay just a little while.
“Cas,” Keldarion continues, “then—”
The Nightingale wails like a banshee. She rises, unsteady on her feet. And that’s when I see it in her hand. That yellow crystal.
“Don’t do it!” I shout, but it’s too late.
She smashes the crystal on the ground. In a flurry of yellow light and vines, emerges Perth Quellos’s monster.
56
Dayton
My hands tangle in the fur of Fare’s brown wolf, heart pounding. Rosalina is in danger. Farron is near rabid with terror as we race down the mountainside. He’s following the pull of his mate bond. Even without my own mate bond, my whole body feels sick.
Or maybe that’s from seeing the Prince of Thorns evaporate an entire legion with the flick of his wrist. We’d seen them from the mountain as we rounded a bend. Hundreds of Dreadknights and goblins—one moment they were there, and the next they were gone.
I can’t even question why he’s fighting for us or how Keldarion got here. My mind is still reeling, trying to comprehend that amount of magic. And those green flames … Just like what Quellos harnessed during the battle in Autumn.
The willow tree sways up ahead. “Almost there!” I growl.
Leaping off the wolf, I drop Farron’s pile of clothes and draw my swords. Only one soldier still stands, the woman who tried to stop us from escaping the Below.
The Nightingale.
A crystal is shattered at her feet, and a noxious trail of yellow smoke curls from it. The ground rumbles. I stagger closer, and Rosalina rushes into me as we hold each other steady. Kel and Ez give me a quick nod, tightening in around Rosalina.
But Caspian keeps his gaze fixed on the smashed crystal and growls, “Blades up, boys.”
The yellow smoke expands, getting bigger and bigger, forming a strange shape with long wispy ends. Then it solidifies and falls to the ground in an earth-shattering rumble.
Before us stands a creature that defies the laws of nature. My heart quickens as I observe the amalgamation of a giant rat. Its fur almost entirely covered in rotten plant-life and moss. Thick, spurred vines wrap around its limbs. Sitting on its hind legs, the creature is over ten feet tall. Its tail is long with a pink spiked bulb at the end.