“Demons! Attack!” someone cries, the voice of a true Crusader.
Adrien slides to my side as the ringing of drawn shadowsteel weapons echoes around us. He examines my stomach with a trained eye I never knew him to have and says to someone, “She should be all right. The claws didn’t go deep enough to cause any real damage, and her druid blood should be able to combat the venom.”
I tilt my head to see who he’s talking to and find Ryven kneeling opposite him.
“Guard her,” Adrien tells him. “And if things start to go bad, you leave us and take her back to camp.”
Ryven nods, eyeing me as if to make the promise to the both of us.
My stomach bubbles with another bout of scalding pain. My jaw locks. I dig my fingers into the dirt to hold onto something—anything.
“What’s…happening…to me?” I manage to grit out.
“It’s the demon venom,” Ryven says, his gravelly voice harsher than usual. “It’ll burn through your bloodstream until it reaches your heart.” He must see fear dilate my eyes because he adds hastily, his crooked smile warm and somehow reassuring, “You have nothing to fear, Halira. You have druid blood in you.”
Although his mouth doesn’t move, I swear I hear him utter the word yet.
I wonder what purpose he’s serving by reminding me of my newfound heritage, and why he thinks that would assuage my fears. Once a demon has broken a human’s skin, once their venom is in our veins, there is no saving us. I am a walking corpse, destined for a burning pyre, if I should be so lucky.
Before I can ask him how druid blood is supposed to calm me, Ryven’s lips pull back in a sneer, his gaze ripping away from me to something behind me. I feel the pounding of the demon’s legs through the earth beneath my head as it charges for us, but another scream of pain tears through me and I am ripped away from reality once more. My world flashes, white hot and cold black, the venom tossing me between life and death so rapidly, that I can’t tell which one is which, if the fog from my lips is my breath or my departing soul.
When the Shadowthorn appears again, Ryven is gone. Feet scuffle near my head and I tilt back to see him locked, arms to shoulders, with a demon equal in his size and bulk. Still, I fear he will be outmatched. All Crusaders die by demons eventually. They lose one unlucky battle, forget to shift on their feet just right.
Mustering all the will I have left, I fling my writhing, aching body over to my side, then stomach. I push my chest off the ground. My entire body trembles with the effort, but I push through it. I push up onto my knees, and once I’ve caught my breath, I sink back onto my heels.
The demon snarls, heaving Ryven across the way with a single mighty swing of its corded arm. Ryven slams into the dirt, the impact of which makes me sway, but seeing the dazed look in his eyes, and the predatorial focus of the demon’s, I stagger to my feet. The world shifts beneath me like the ground isn’t solid at all, but water, a rocking ocean that’s about to sweep me out to sea.
Ryven props himself up on his elbow and spits blood from his mouth as the demon approaches. He doesn’t seem as frightened as I think he should be, not until he sees me hobbling toward him.
Dark eyes wide, his lips part. I already know what he’s going to say: that I should lay back down and rest, that I’m in no condition to try to sneak up on this demon and help kill it.
So he surprises me instead when he shouts, “Behind you!”
My hand dives so instinctively for my dagger that I’m convinced Tor’s ghost is with me. He spins me on my heels, the pain from the demon venom either overpowered by adrenaline or smothered by my big brother, and I am propelled forward. My shoulder crashes into the man in front of me, a Crusader, I realize, judging from the black leather armor. We stagger together until I slam his back against a tree.
When I look up, the fury of the fight revived in my twisted snarl, I’m not surprised to find my cousin, Alphonse, sneering back at me.
He spits in my face and I stagger back.
Wiping my face, I sneer up at him. All around us, the battle continues. Demons fighting Crusaders, Crusaders fighting fugitives, fugitives fighting only for their freedom, their lives. It shouldn’t have come to this.
“I’m as good as dead now anyway,” I say, the two of us walking in a circle, keeping our distance from one another. “Just leave us.”
“And waste a potential source of necro-ink?”
I grimace, the sudden thought that they could do that to me churning my stomach.
A wicked grin blooms on his face. “Once the Spirit Keep is finished with your blood, I’ll tear your spine out myself, and fashion it into a crown to wear to instill fear in all the other mages who see me because they’ll know I’ve bested one of their own.”
I’d remind him that I’m not a mage, but that simple fact can’t seem to puncture his thick skull.
“And I’ll do the same to your sister.”
This part of his threat, above any other, snuffs out the rest of the light inside me. It is the howling wind that blows out a lantern on a midnight stroll, leaving everything in total darkness.
“You won’t touch her.” My growl is so low that I almost don’t even recognize my voice myself.
“Oh,” Alphonse titters. “But I will. And knowing now how much you’d despise it, I’d take great joy in dismantling her. Maybe, I’d even fashion pendants for my Crusaders, bones they could wear in honor of our kill.”
Snarling, I lunge for him. My dagger nicks at the air, but Alphonse is swift. He dodges just at the last second, my dagger slamming into the black tree trunk instead. The reverberation sends another ripple of nauseating pain through me, but I try to swallow it down, to stay focused and present.
Pressed up against the tree, I catch a glimpse of the horrific fight happening around us, a blur of blood and black.
I spin away from the tree before I can tell who’s winning or losing.
Alphonse swings his fencing sword in a swishing, looping motion before striking. I block him with my dagger, using the crook between the blade and the bottom of the hilt to catch his sword and shove it away.
He tries a different tactic, jabbing at me instead. I jump back to dodge being punctured by anything else today, but then dive for him with my dagger ready. He anticipates my desperate strike though, sidestepping me again so that I stumble off-balance. He thumps me in the shoulder and I nearly fall, but stagger to my feet and face him again.
As Alphonse and I dance the coranto of blades, our slashes and twirls perfectly mirroring and thwarting each other in a dizzying swirl of life and death, I’m able to spot my friends through the chaos around us in more detail.
Strike.
I see Dimitri and two other Crusaders. They’re circled by a pack of demons, but their swords make quick work of slicing through them.
Parry.
Imryll flashes between bird and human, dodging the shadowcreatures and using her moments of reprieve to send a gale of wind to blow them off balance, vines to secure them to the earth, and sinkholes to hinder their lunges. Without a shadowsteel weapon though, I can’t help but notice she isn’t able to kill, only encumber.
Jab.
Adrien and his people switch between fighting demons and their other foe, the Crusaders, the Magistrate’s army for whom my uncle has been outrunning for the better part of my life. His skill with a sword is flawless, bordering cocky, but the way he moves with it, I suppose he can afford to be swelled-headed about it.