Page 97

CHAPTER33

Jade

“Where are we going now?” I asked. Something I said must have hit home with Malachi, because he was no longer dragging me into the depths of the dungeons to hide away for the entire battle.

We were heading somewhere else.

“You were right,” he said. He pulled me down the hallways of the castle in a direction I had never been before. “These are my people, but they are also yours. We shouldn’t just leave them undefended when we have power that can help them.”

“Wow. Malachi Weyland admitting I’m right? Our kingdom might be falling, after all.”

“Not the time for jokes, Jade,” he sneered, but I saw the way he hid his smile.

Mal pulled me into a small wooden doorway that we both had to duck to get inside of. Once we were in, I could see a spiral staircase leading upward.

“We’re going up?” I asked.

“To the roof,” he answered. He led the way, taking step after step with his black wings tucked in tight so they would fit in the small corridor.

“Sounds much better than hiding in dungeons,” I replied.

I tried to keep my voice calm, but the closer we got to the roof, the louder the shouts and screams from the battlefield became. “Deadlings?” I asked.

“They’ll attack first with deadlings,” Mal answered. Holding onto his hand was enough to keep me sane. He had done this before. Saints, he was practically a professional at battle.

I knew nothing.

“They’ll try to weaken our armies. It won’t work, though. Deadlings may have caught us off guard the last time, but we prepared for this.”

“How are they even controlling them? I thought deadlings had a mind of their own?”

“It has to be the Paragon. Either a witch or a fae who has the power to control others. That’s the only explanation.”

He let go of my hand to pull himself through a small hole at the end of the staircase.

Once he was through, he reached down to help me up.

Saints. We really were on top of the castle.

The flat roof allowed us to maneuver easily, and a small ledge kept us hidden from the battlefield.

The smell of rotting flesh hit me instantly.

“You’ll get used to it,” Mal said, reading my thoughts. Together, we crawled on our stomachs to the edge of the roof, where we would be able to see at least some of the battlefield below.

I peeked my head over slowly, and instantly sucked in a breath.

Our soldiers were ready. Every movement of a fae’s weapon brought down one deadling, if not two.

In comparison to the skilled fighters, the deadlings were slow and unorganized. I scanned the battlefield, looking for a single sign of a fallen fae.

When I saw none, I took a deep breath and returned to the safety behind the ledge.

“See?” Malachi breathed, doing the same. “There’s nothing to worry about. Serefin and the others have this under control. They could defeat an entire army of deadlings in their sleep.”

“Really?” I asked. “And what happens after the deadlings? An army of witches?”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was too easy. We knew they were coming. We had prepared for weeks. We called out to the surrounding kingdoms, and nearly all of our allies had come to help.