BATTLE
Baleful (adjective): foreboding or threatening evil.
DAY 1, HOUR 4
“Stay low.” Jax’s voice crackled in my earpiece as we moved through the empty courtyard.
Festive bells were strung across the yard, and they tinkled prettily in the icy wind.
They grated across my nerves.
Our attacking group was composed of the champions, the generals, and the four women of the assassin legion, who slithered through the shadows of night.
They were nothing more than a blur.
None of us were.
We were the only soldiers going inside the compound, since we were the strongest and largely had no idea the numbers we’d be coming up against. We had the best chance of escaping if need be.
The rest of the foot soldiers were currently creeping through the valley and creating a perimeter to ensure none of the infected got away.
Jax and Sadie led our group forward.
I was at the back, surrounded by shadows.
The twins guarded my front, and the kings guarded my back. Intensity radiated off them as they slunk silently through the snowy night.
Dread slithered down my spine.
The Necklace of Death pulsed, warm, against my sternum like it was trying to reassure me.
It didn’t work.
I breathed shakily.
As soon as we’d RJE’d and climbed over the high wall of the empty courtyard, the men’s energy had changed. Even John was different.
They’d shed their masks of civility. They were no longer the men I spent my days arguing and laughing with.
They were draconian, more killers than men.
And I was one of them.
We were like the soulmancers of lore, a people so deadly and terrifying they were more myth than reality.
The monsters of all monsters.
Air left my lips in frosty puffs. Thighs trembling, sweat streaking down my forehead, I squatted low and moved swiftly with daggers clenched between frozen fingers.
My eyes watered from the frozen air.
Snow drifted down lazily, and I blinked to clear the wetness off my eyelashes.
The pine trees in the courtyard were wrapped in fairy lights, and the distracting shards of light streaked across my peripheral vision. Bricks were warm beneath my heavy combat boots.
Tendrils of steam evaporated into the starry night.
Jax’s voice was loud and crisp through my earpiece as he whispered, “There are four entrance points. Everyone stays as a group like we planned. Sadie in the front, and no splitting up. Follow me.”
We entered the compound and walked directly into a long, windowless brick corridor.
I shivered as the temperature plummeted and a heavy stone floor blocked the steam and heat from the ground. The only light was flickering torches.
It was musty.
Damp.
Insidious.
My lungs rattled loudly in the quiet, and I held my breath.
One. Three. Six. Nine. Eleven. Thirteen. Fifteen. Seventeen. I counted in odd numbers as we moved silently, a unit of highly trained murderers.
There were no doors, and we appeared to be inside an endless stretch of silent corridor. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought we were in an abandoned building.
Goose bumps broke out across the back of my neck. How could anyone live in this austere, rank atmosphere?
From the quiet, the infected must have a lunar sleep cycle.
At the front of the group, Jax stopped suddenly and held up his hand. Surrounded by darkness, I could barely make out him signaling that the corridor branched off up ahead.
We followed him as he made a sharp right.
We moved silently.
Deeper into the compound.
I scanned the corridors, but there didn’t appear to be any doors or signs of life, which made no sense.
The quiet expanded until I could hear the frantic pounding of my heart in my ears as blood mixed with adrenaline.
Sweat poured down my sides.
My fingers cramped around the hilts of my daggers.
“Did you see something?” an accented foreign voice asked loudly, and all of us stopped moving.
Another accented voice responded, “What are you talking about?”
Down the dark hall, two streaks of glowing blue approached where we waited in the shadows.
It was the infected.
We crouched lower, nobody twitched, and nobody breathed.
“Now, Sadie,” Jax whispered quietly over the radio as we followed the plan.
My toes cramped as I squatted lower, muscles trembling. I was shaking, and it had nothing to do with exertion.
As the blue glow drew closer, I made out the outline of two figures.
The infected started to run towards us.
One of them shouted, “What is—”
“STOP!” Sadie yelled, and the man never got out his question.
The two infected stopped moving—they were frozen, Sadie’s blood coursing through their veins and taking them over from the inside out.
They didn’t move.
They didn’t speak.
“Everyone, move closer,” Jax ordered, and we approached as a unit.
“It’s hard to hold them,” Sadie said over the radio through gritted teeth. “It must be the ungodly inside them. I can only use these two.”
“Don’t you dare overexert yourself,” Cobra whispered back angrily.
Sadie scoffed, “I’m fine.”
“You better not hurt yourself.”
“You better shut up.”
“We’re not doing this right now,” Jax snarled, and the line went silent.
The two infected held glowing blue swords that were pointed directly at us.
I stumbled back instinctively.
The infected turned like mindless zombies and positioned themselves at the front of our group, spinning their swords, a glowing blue blur in the darkness.
They were on our side now, enslaved fully by Sadie’s blood powers.
They led us forward.
Deeper.
Into the compound.
We followed the corridors into the structure. Their swords whooshed as they sliced through the air. Tension gradually released as we explored and didn’t find any more infected. The sprawling structure appeared to be mostly abandoned.
Our plan was overkill.
This is going to be an easy mission.
As soon as the positive thought flickered through my mind, shouts erupted, and infected appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
Blue swords clashed.
Ink dripped off the demons and formed black swords as the angels unleashed their swords of ice.
Someone screamed as they went up in flames.
Daggers whistled through the air.
Crystal wings flapped.
An animal roared.
The kings disarmed the infected and ripped them apart with their bare hands; bones snapped as necks broke.
The twins were equally vicious.
There was a grotesque ripping sound followed by the splatter of water. I stumbled as a familiar, awful chittering sound echoed down the corridor.
It hadn’t been water.
It was blood.
The ungodly were here.
I staggered tiredly as I rounded a corner, slipping on a patch of ice—a trail of cobalt spread beneath my feet and created a path behind me.
I had no idea why I was shedding ice, and I had seemingly no way to stop it.
For the millionth time, I concentrated and imagined the cold forming into an ice sword.
I slipped as more cobalt spread out beneath my feet.
No sword formed.
Frustration welled, and I wanted to scream. My gut told me this was yet another gift from my messed-up heritage.
Far away, a bear roared.
I stopped to listen, then turned and ran toward the sound.
The kings must be nearby, because the bond sickness hadn’t hit, but the compound was a confusing maze of corridors and hidden rooms. We’d explored most of them, but more kept popping up out of nowhere.
It was exhausting.
Another roar made the stones vibrate beneath me.
I could hear the shifters fighting, but I couldn’t find them.
I was alone.
“Scorpius!” I yelled into the darkness because he had the best chance of finding me amid the chaos of the battle.
Another faraway roar, but no one responded to my plea.
The men must have been on the other side of the wall, in the large room filled with hundreds of people where the sounds of heavy fighting were still concentrated.
Acting without thought, I threw myself against the closest corridor wall. I groaned as fresh pain agitated the many battle wounds I was sporting.
Sun god, that had been a stupid idea.
I low-key loved that I thought I could just throw myself through a heavily fortified brick wall and it would break. Where had that confidence come from?
Limping, trembling with exhaustion, body bruised and aching, I forced myself to keep running forward.
I needed to find everyone.
It had all been going to plan—we’d been fighting as a group and staying together as we traveled deeper into the compound.
I’d cut down infected and ungodly with the twins at my front and the kings at my back.
I’d dodged—they’d attacked.
They’d dodged—I’d thrust.
On repeat.
For hours.
We’d picked up the discarded weapons of the infected, and all of us had fought with the more dangerous enchanted swords while the infected screamed and ungodly screeched in the darkness.
It had been hard to discern the locations of my teammates as they’d moved like shadows around our foe.
It had been messy.
Disturbing.
I’d only used the sword and had hesitated to fling daggers because I could not ensure that I wouldn’t hit someone on my side. It had been hours of close combat.
My arms had trembled from exertion.
Then, about an hour ago, a sudden explosion had collapsed a portion of the large room where the fighting was concentrated, and my earpiece had fallen out.
Enchanted swords had swung through the rubble in a blur of bodies. Ungodly had screeched and attacked beside them.
I’d stumbled out into a hall.
I’d barely had time to throw a dagger at an ungodly’s neck as I’d brandished my enchanted sword.
The ungodly had surrounded me.
Dust had been in my eyes, and bricks had been falling.
Bedlam.
I’d turned and sprinted, fighting off ungodly as they chased after me as I ran into the dark. It was disorienting.
The building was a maze of overlapping narrow halls. False walls and dead ends.
That was about an hour ago.
In the present, I sprinted around yet another corner, struggling to breathe as frustration made me panicky.
Squelsh. I kicked something wet.
Torches flickered and illuminated the streaks of gore and entrails that covered the corridor.
Had I already run past that severed head? Was I going in circles?
I kept running forward, refusing to look down at the severed body parts strewn over the stone floor like discarded clothes.
The stench was awful.
Gore covered mostly everything in the compound.
Every hidden room.
Corridor.
Crack and crevice.
I struggled to breathe, and ice crackled as it spread out around me and encased the body parts.
“Stay calm, find the rest of the team,” Jinx’s voice echoed fuzzily in my head.
A part of me was convinced I was hallucinating her voice and I just wanted it to be our guardian-angel connection.
I was lost.
Bond sickness made me queasy, but it wasn’t unimaginable pain, which meant the kings still had to be nearby.
I was most likely running in some sort of circle outside the big room where the battle was concentrated. What didn’t make sense was that I should have run around and found the entrance by now.
The only logical explanation was I was going in a circle.
A scream bubbled up my throat.
Stupid corridors.
I ran faster through the dark, stumbling and desperate. Panicky.
If only I could find them.
A bone-chilling bear’s roar echoed louder than before.
Shadows stretched and contorted around me as the silence smothered.
I was losing my mind.
Without sunlight, I couldn’t tell if we’d been fighting for hours or days. The compound housed thousands of people, and the battle felt never-ending. It didn’t help that almost every infected was armed.
I was lost in a sprawling compound filled with trained warriors.
A mecca of ungodly.
My foot cramped in my boot as I turned another corner, arches burning as I searched desperately for a door out of the maze.
I slipped again but kept my eyes straight ahead as I pretended not to see the streaks of gore in my peripheral vision.
The corridor was gleaming in cobalt ice.
I was losing control.
Walls and floors melded as my vision blurred. Everything was spinning.
I was losing my mind.
I turned down another dark corridor, then skidded to a stop, then doubled back—it was the outline of another hidden door.
Tightening my core, I kicked and prayed it was an entrance to the main battle where I’d lost my teammates. I prayed the men were inside.
Wood splintered, and it whipped open.
I was wrong.
An infected woman screamed and swung a sword at my face.
My reflexes were the only thing that saved me as I brandished my stolen weapon.
My stomach sank as I took in the cramped dark bedroom.
Sparks flew as steel banged together, and I towered above my foe, taller and stronger. I easily overpowered the infected and pushed my sword closer to her neck.
Her features glowed in the blue light of our enchanted swords.
Innocent eyes were wide with fear. “Why?” the woman whispered brokenly.
A screaming sound started in my head.
My vision wavered.
There was a scraping sound, and I whirled my head to the right to find more women hiding behind her. They were unarmed.
My mind fractured.
“I-I,” I said uselessly, my voice hoarse from hours of exertion. It didn’t matter anyway; there was nothing I could say.
My limbs went numb.
I drowned on air. It felt like I’d plunged into a lake and it had frozen, crushing my organs.
Jinx said inside my head, “Calm yourself, they are already…” Her voice warbled and disappeared.
The woman pressed her glowing sword back toward my neck, and I couldn’t find the strength to resist. I hunched low so we were at eye level.
Her sword hovered inches from my face, sizzling with the blue enchantment that sliced through bone like butter.
She pushed me backward across the room.
I was powerless to stop her.
Time warped.
The dark room and glowing blue swords faded into shades of morbid gray as a hush descended over the world and blanketed me in stillness.
Outside in the hall, a familiar male voice shouted, but it was an indiscernible garble.
The woman said something, but I couldn’t hear.
I was lost.
In the haze.
The woman must have realized I wasn’t fighting, because suddenly she pulled her sword back and thrust it forward.
The descent happened in slow motion. Millions of seconds of possibilities and avenues of action unfolded before me.
I was emotionless.
Unfeeling.
The haze took everything.
I was numb.
In my imagination, I raised my sword and gutted my attacker before she could land a blow, and then I killed the ungodly as it ripped from her flesh. I killed everyone in the room.
In reality, I didn’t move.
“You’ll always be weak,” Mother said as I screamed on the palace floor. “You’ll never amount to anything. You’ll never be like me.”
A towering shadow burst into the room and watched as the steel sliced through my skin, and relief filled my lungs.
Silver eyes glowed through a black hood.
I didn’t know if not killing her made me good or evil; all I knew was it made me feel less like Mother.
In slow motion—I crumbled toward the ground.
Terrible agony screamed along my neurons, and my eyes watered as I crashed to the stone floor. It echoed like it was hollow. It was warm. I was glacial.
If I were anything less than the reigning Queen of the Fae, I would have blacked out.
I stayed awake.
It had all happened in a split second—and Malum had seen it all.
Four other men burst into the room behind him, but they were too late.
Only he knew.
The woman backed up, her green-tinted eyes widened with fear, and she opened her mouth.
She exploded in scarlet flames. Then, so did everyone else in the room.
Mouths open, they writhed helplessly against merciless flames.
Paralyzed with pain, I could do nothing but watch in horror as they boiled to death.
Ungodly ripped from the flaming flesh of innocents and towered to the rafters. Pincers clacked as their six arms attacked.
Fire danced across their patches of exoskeleton harmlessly.
Five men stalked toward them.
Enchanted swords swung in a glowing blur as they carved the ungodly to pieces—the tallest shadow ripped their heads off with his bare hands as flames shot from his fingertips.
I choked on copper as it dribbled out my mouth, and everything spun faster.
Psychogenic dissonance devoured me.
I spat up blood.
Someone bellowed, and shadows fell to their knees around me.
Everything whirled.
Head lolled back like a corpse, I could do nothing but hang helplessly as the shadow who tore the ungodly’s heads off carried me against his chest through the maze of halls.
I closed my eyes.
Time twisted.
Chilly air slapped against my skin, and I opened my eyes to see the dark sky.
Malum ripped off his black hood, flames leaping off his head.
I thought I’d seen him angry.
I hadn’t.
Molten silver eyes flashed with so much rage I could feel it radiating in waves as Malum snarled inches from my face, “I’m going to kill you for this.”
So much for hoping he hadn’t realized what he’d seen.
He was fully aware that I’d made a choice.
Watery blood dripped from my eyes as the corner of my lips curled upward in a mocking smirk.
Who was going to tell him?
I was already dead.
