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Danu was so sure they would take to their powers like a fish to water, which she hoped the others had. Feeling selfish at the thought of not checking in on her friends during all this, she tried to be thankful she’d at least had the chance to know Faerie.

The entire world came back to life as Bryn stumbled. The utter chaos and torment happening only feet away from her dried up all the saliva in her mouth.

Her gorge rose as she watched a man who had for years tended to the church garden lose his head just for having been in the way of the deadly assassins. As the head rolled, it stopped at the toes of her boots, and she tried very hard not to lose her composure.

Or pass out from the blood.

Her eyes were so focused on the macabre sight that a wraith was able to make it to her, almost taking her head off had Niamh not been there to rip his own off instead.

Bryn felt her mouth start to water as bile rose in her throat.

“Focus!” Niamh yelled, using clawed fingers to gut another wraith.

Her adrenaline finally kicked into gear after another wraith stabbed at her, and she sliced at the creature wrapped in all black and shadows.

Managing to cut into its arm, Bryn faltered when she pulled her knife back to see that instead of blood, there was black ichor.

“What the hell?” she groused, immediately earning a punch to the side of the head from the creature.

Stumbling, her bell sufficiently rung, the creature moved to stand in front of her as it pulled its hood back. Her curiosity to see what kind of being bled black was abruptly halted by Kian yelling right into her poor brain still ringing from the hit.

“Do not look right into his eyes!”

A scream tore through her at the sight before her.

She stared at the mouth missing lips, its skin pulled tight and blue as if it were a walking dead person. As far as she could tell, the eye sockets were empty, though with Kian’s words, she decided not to bother double-checking.

“Dagger!”

Shaking away the thoughts, she took the dagger she held and aimed at the top of the head, trying to miss the eyes. The moment the brand was cut, it froze, and the preternatural stillness was somehow even more disturbing.

Her panic took over, and she slammed her knife down into its eye socket, which was in fact empty, but she didn’t look into them directly as the creature exploded into dust and ash.

“That,”Kian said, as he moved to her side, obvious irritation that he no longer had the energy to manipulate the world around him, “was a sluagh weaponized.”

“What?” Bryn’s voice was borderline hysterical as she dodged another blade, about to yell at Kian to quit distracting her.

“Soul eater. Reanimated in corpses, they move in packs to steal and eat souls. The symbol on his head weaponized him for the king.”

As Bryn shook and Niamh tore into another wraith gunning for her, the man made of shadows looked completely calm and assured as he stared at the new soot smear on the brick building they killed the wraith in front of.

Another’s scream unfroze her, and Bryn tightened her grip on her dagger, running in the direction of the yell. She could sense Kian following her and wondered when she’d become so in tune with him. He was nothing like the wraiths, yet he claimed to be Fomori... and he helped her kill one of them.

Nothing about their situation made sense. However, Kian was an enigma she’d have to figure out another day.

She saw Declan take aim with his pistol at the wraiths as he walked down the street; he managed to get several headshots, though most of the bullets went wide. Black dust was blowing in the air around them from the dead wraiths... or sluaghs.

Bryn promised to kill him herself once the battle was over for not staying in the buildings, but when she saw the child on the ground running back to its mother, the wraith now focused on Declan, she couldn’t begrudge his decision.

Declan had figured it out, taking out the mark and rendering them to dust in one hit. The other men copied him as they came out of the buildings, following him, so obviously this had been a group decision.

Tripping, Bryn looked down to see a storekeeper grasping her ankle as he looked up at her with his remaining eye. He was one of the very few that hadn’t followed the crowd and called her a witch. He had taken a huge risk in sneaking food to her as a young child when their crops were not faring well, knowing what that could cost him and his reputation.

To be sympathetic to the witch was as good as being one yourself in this town.

“Please. . .,” he whispered, bleeding profusely from a gut wound. His entire body glowed yellow, his eye shining in a way she’d never seen before, as if it were a lit candle.

Bryn couldn’t save this man, but still she knelt in the middle of the battlefield and took his hand in hers.