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Half-wraiths.

Dozens of them. They were cramped together, bruised and bloodied, some unable to stand. His heart sped up as he scanned the faces, looking for one in particular, one he knew as well as he knew himself. But it was too dark.

All he knew was that the souls within the cage had already been condemned – to torture, to death.

A rumble sounded in the distance.

Wilder turned back to the battlefield, his skin crawling, his heart in his throat.

The missing Tverrian unit had made itself known. And they were now one with the enemy.

Nothing remained of the human soldiers who had left their city to protect it. In their place were mutilated monsters of darkness, foaming at the mouth to get their claws into the men who now defended Notos, the men who had once been their comrades.

At last, Wilder saw what he’d known in his bones since they’d stepped foot in the capital. That the forces of evil had waited, day and night, for the armies of the midrealms to gather in one place.

Rife for extermination.

Sitting ducks, waiting for a wave of darkness to descend.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

THEA

The rumble in the distance shuddered through the earth beneath Thea’s boots, rattling her bones. She fought in the muddied fields at the northern perimeter of the castle, leading a small unit of her own through the turmoil. Wilder was nowhere in sight, but Vernich the Bloodletter was bleeding the enemy dry at the vanguard. He might have been a bastard through and through, but the Warsword cleaved through his opponents with a viciousness Thea had never witnessed before.

Another rumbling sound echoed across the battlefield and Thea looked up, squinting across the darkened sky and sea, trying to make out the Veil in the night. But there was nothing but inky black – and Wren was somewhere out there, trying to patch the tear in the wall of mist with Farissa.

Thea blocked a blow to her side with Wilder’s sword and gutted her attacker with her dagger. Where was her Warsword? It wasn’t like him to hang back from the thick of the fighting.

She scanned her surroundings. In the light of various fires and torches, the lawlessness of war ensued. The air smelt of blood and vomit and shit, and men lay dying in their own filth. Soldiers with severed limbs or their entrails hanging out sat in the mud, shaking and looking dazed as the ongoing ringing of steel sounded all around them.

Another pair of wraiths landed and Vernich surged for them.

Thea was right behind him.

He merely grunted in surprise at her presence and carried on fighting.

Every lesson she’d learnt from Wilder coursed through her and she moved as Vernich moved: like a warrior, like a Warsword. Together they drove the wraiths back from their forces.

Vernich went feral, hacking away at their limbs, even going so far as to bite the flesh from a wraith’s shoulder as it tried to clamp down on him with its talons. The older Warsword spat black blood into the dirt and kept slashing —

Until an unnatural stillness blanketed the battle.

And Thea saw why.

From the uniforms they wore, it appeared the missing Tverrian force had returned.

But they were much changed.

They were neither wraiths nor half-wraiths, but some mutilated, warped form of the two. Their bodies were twisted and leathered beneath their armour, reminding Thea of the vine blights she’d seen.

Suddenly, Wilder appeared in the stretch of land between the midrealms’ legion and the advancing unit of monsters. He raised his single sword, welcoming their impending violence, a lone figure ready to take the full force of the enemy.

‘No,’ Thea gasped, her heart lodging in her throat. She whirled around to their own units. ‘Reform the lines,’ she yelled. ‘Reform the fucking lines!’

The monsters surging for Wilder roared, and even from a distance Thea could see the spittle foaming at their mouths and the savagery in their eyes.

‘Thea!’ a familiar voice shouted. ‘Thea!’