“I could if you trained me. Zander already mentioned …” My voice fades as I watch her eyes flare with rage.
“No. I do not train princesses, or Ybarisans.” Her tone bleeds with scorn.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “Okay, fine. Zander said you were the best of the best, so I just thought—” Shouts sound from outside. They’re soon followed by shrill screams.
Abarrane moves for the tent’s flap, her sword drawn. I grab the karambit and follow her out into the rain.
The quaint meadow has tumbled into chaos. Two of the bell-shaped tents have collapsed, and servants are fleeing the main rectangular tent where one side has caved in. The screams from inside are earsplitting and steeped in fear.
“What’s happening?”
A second later, a beast leaps out from the tent’s opening, a man’s limp body dangling from its maw, and I have my answer.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Stay here.” Gripping the hilt of her sword with both hands, Abarrane eases forward in a crouch with stealthy steps, a predator stalking its prey—except she is a petite female warrior, and the prey is a massive creature on four powerful legs. Its shoulders reach ten feet in the air, and its back is coated in blue-tinged scales, the rest of its sinewy form in matted, oily fur.
It swings its unsightly head toward us, and I shudder under its intense stare. A sickening crunch sounds, and the man’s body falls from its mouth in pieces to land in the grass like debris. It lifts its upturned snout in the air. It’s sniffing, much like the daaknar did that night when it was scenting Annika.
With a deep roar, it charges.
My heart is in my throat as I watch it gallop forward, its jutting tusks curved like the blade in my hand and twice the length, ready to gore anything in their path. The bloody sheen coating them proves it already has.
Several soldiers with swords approach cautiously, while others hang back. Two fire bolts at the beast’s back using crossbows. They bounce off its scaly armor like toothpicks.
“If your affinity is anywhere within you, I suggest you find it now,” Abarrane hisses.
I assume she means my elven affinity. “I haven’t been able to!”
“Then you will surely die today.” She shifts her position and readies herself to meet the beast head on. It’s moving too fast, and she’s too small. There’s no way she’ll be able to stop that thing, and when she fails …
A surge of adrenaline and terror seizes me as I grip the handle of my weapon, which seems even more pointless and puny than the one I stabbed the daaknar with.
Abarrane dives away from the beast’s thrusting tusks but is back on her feet in an instant, swinging at its haunches. Her blade slides across the back of its hind leg, spraying inky-blue blood.
It roars in agony and spins to lunge at her again. She deflects it with her blade and darts out of the way, stabbing at the beast’s side as she rolls. It snaps at the air, showing off a mouthful of fangs that make the daaknar’s seem paltry.
I watch in horror as it catches Abarrane’s shoulder with its tusk, cutting through flesh and bone. She lets out an agonizing screech—I have a good idea of the pain tearing through her insides right now—but she swings her sword against its neck, using the momentum to pull herself free and stumble away. She makes it five paces before she falls to the grass.
With another sniff of the air, it shifts its attention to me.
I’m paralyzed as it stalks forward. Clutching my tiny blade, I know I can’t outrun this thing, and my meager lessons won’t save me.
My elven affinity to Aoife. To water.
I need it now.
As if in response, the gold begins to burn against my skin. My heart races. Finally, it senses I need help.
Annika said I could have used the river that night to defend myself instead of saving her, but there is no river here, and I wouldn’t know how to use it if there were. No one would teach me.
The nethertaur is a mere thirty feet away now, gaining speed despite its wounds. The trampled grass reaches up and lashes out at its legs, as if attempting to coil and tangle, to slow. It’s Annika, I realize, using her element as she runs this way, yelling something that I struggle to hear over the blood rushing in my ears.
“Use the rain!” I finally make out.
The rain. I peer up at the crying sky. “How!” The only way to stop this thing is with a comparable beast.
The next few seconds seem to move in slow motion.
A surge of adrenaline bursts from somewhere deep inside me, and then I watch as the raindrops pull from every direction, taking shape as they rush toward the nethertaur, forming a body and legs and a head, until a duplicate of the beast but made of water charges forward.
I’m doing this, I realize. This is me, manipulating an element.
They collide head-on, the water beast exploding on impact and the nethertaur collapsing in a daze, long enough that Abarrane hobbles over to embed her sword between its eyes. After a few twitches, the beast stills.
I bend at the waist, waiting for my heart to slow and my shock to settle. For a moment, I’m sure I’m about to hurl. I stopped it, though. I used this elven affinity I can’t even find, and I stopped one of these otherworldly beasts.
A bubble of delirious laughter rises in my throat.
Abarrane limps toward me, her face a ghostly white, wiping the inky-blue blood from her blade onto her pant leg. “Fine,” she huffs. “I will consider training you.”
“Why would the nethertaur leave the depths of the forest and come all the way here, into the meadow?” Zander paces around the tent. “Especially when we had a caster to attract it?”
“I do not know.” Wendeline is perched on the settee, her eyes bloodshot from healing as many as she could. Four soldiers and six servants were killed by the nethertaur, another five were mauled—two far beyond the priestess’s skill. The few female aristocrats remained mostly unscathed, save for a few cuts and scratches. A wicked part of me was disappointed that I didn’t see Saoirse’s body among the heap thrown into the wagon, but I heard she leapt onto a horse and galloped away at the first sign of trouble.
Bena was among the perished. When I saw her body, I cried.
A messenger raced out to carry news to the hunting party of the attack. They arrived back to camp a half hour later, the horses’ mouths were frothing from exertion, Zander’s and Atticus’s faces pale.
Zander won’t accept Wendeline’s answer. “It went from tent to tent, as if searching for something. Or someone. Why would it do that when we had the only caster in the forest? That was intentional for that reason.”
“Maybe it sensed Clyda had been here.”
“We would have crossed paths and drawn it away.”
“There is another possibility.” She swallows. “There may be traces of Margrethe’s caster magic on Romeria. It could have somehow sensed that.”
“This long after?” he asks doubtfully.
“I am no expert in the nethertaur, so I cannot say for certain. But it’s the only reason I can think of.” Wendeline’s eyes flicker to me briefly.
Other than the truth. The beast could sense my caster magic, tucked behind whatever firewall Sofie created and bound to this ring. It came out of the forest’s depths to find me. Bena—and all those other people—died because I was there.