Page 34 of Blood King, Part I (Crowns #4)

Chapter twenty-seven

Cyrus crossed through the portal to find the capital in chaos. Smoke filled his nose, and violence filled the streets. Somewhere in the distance, bells clanged wildly. He immediately reined his horse closer to Essandra as his men flooded through the portal around them.

“Stay together!” he ordered, until he could figure out what was going on.

An arrow sipped by his ear. “Look out!” he shouted at Essandra, jumping from his horse and pulling her down with him.

The portal wavered, and she pushed Cyrus off.

“Stay focused!” she called to Tomel, her portal witch. Together they wove their hands rhythmically through the air to steady the magic supporting the portal. The arc shimmered like stretched glass, rippling with every shift of wind and violent rift.

Another wave of arrows came, and Cyrus jerked Essandra back again.

“I need to help Tomel keep the portal open!” she snapped.

“Well, you can’t do that if you’re dead!” Which was exactly what they would all be if they didn’t find cover. They needed to get out of the open, but his men were still coming through from Mercia.

Tomel nodded to Essandra. “Go!” he told her and Cyrus. “Get to the palace. I’ll keep it open until everyone—”

He stopped abruptly, midsentence, then looked down at the arrow that had buried itself in his chest.

“Tomel!” Essandra cried.

The witch dropped to his knees, then fell forward onto the ground. The portal slammed shut, severing the path for the men still in Mercia, and severing everything split between the two kingdoms. Two horses screamed as they fell without their back halves.

“Tomel!” Essandra cried again.

Cyrus barreled back to where the portal had been, his heart in his throat. None of his men had been hurt, but there were still quite a few of them stranded in Mercia, including Jaem and Kieve.

“Open it!” he shouted at Essandra. “They’re not all through!”

“I can’t!”

“Cyrus, get down!” Kord bellowed somewhere behind him.

“Open it!” he roared at her again.

“I can’t! Not without Tomel!”

Another sip of an arrow. A thud. Pain pierced his shoulder. He staggered sideways.

“Cyrus!” Kord grabbed him and dragged him down behind a fallen horse for cover.

He was stunned for only a moment. “I’m fine,” he rasped, and broke off the arrow shaft close to his flesh. “We have to get the portal back open!” He winced between words. “Not everyone made it through!”

“They’re better over there right now! Focus on yourself.”

The arrow wasn’t too bad, and thankfully not in the shoulder of his sword-wielding arm. He’d manage until he could get to Teron. What he couldn’t manage was staying out in the open. They needed to get to the palace.

Another onslaught of arrows came. One of his men was hit in the leg, and another horse fell. Cyrus gritted his teeth. It would be a long run—

Essandra stepped out, unprotected, her hair wild in the wind around her, her face twisted with fury. She was too far for him to grab. An arrow buried itself within paces of her feet, but she didn’t even flinch.

Cyrus’s heart leapt to his throat. He got that she was upset right now, but this woman was going to get herself killed. “Get down!” he shouted.

She paid him no mind. Instead, she clapped her hands together, chanting words he didn’t understand, then threw her arms wide, as if casting something away from herself.

The ground shook. Cyrus struggled for his balance as the earth erupted in front of her and a series of trenches snaked in multiple directions.

One slammed through the embankment under a cluster of buildings from where the arrows were being fired.

Men screamed as the buildings collapsed in on themselves.

Cyrus gaped at her in surprise. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten he had a witch with him; he was just starting to realize how powerful she actually was.

And she wasn’t finished. Essandra threw up a wall of thin rock, splintering it into a thousand jagged pieces, then flung out the shards like possessed arrowheads.

At the same time, the illusion witch cast a cover over them.

It was a sloppy one, the outer edges frayed, but it was better than nothing.

“Let’s go!” Essandra shouted.

Cyrus rallied his men, and they charged toward the palace.

The illusion shimmered over them, blurring edges and warping light.

They tried to move quickly, but the cobblestone street beneath their feet had been broken and scattered in heaps—from Essandra’s geomancer.

There had been fighting. And a lot of it.

One of his men stumbled over a body, barely catching himself.

As they reached the denser parts of the capital, they had more cover and dropped the illusion; however, Essandra again started ripping through earth and stone in counterattacks against the nobles. The enemy fell—tens at a time. Those Essandra’s destructive magic didn’t claim, Cyrus’s men did.

The fighting thinned as they made their way closer to the palace. When they reached it, they were met by Hephain. The dogs were with him, and they shook their hinds when they saw Cyrus.

“Is the palace secure?” Cyrus asked him.

Hephain nodded quickly. “Yes.” He’d stayed in Rael instead of going to Mercia—Cyrus had left him in charge of palace security. Clearly that had been the right decision.

“All walls and gates are reinforced,” he told Cyrus, “but they didn’t come for the palace. They came for the witches.”

Both Cyrus and Essandra snapped their eyes to him.

“They what?” Essandra demanded.

“The nobles came for the witches. They attacked the fields first, but we were able to get the hedge witches out. Then they attacked the east side, where the rebuilding efforts have been focused. Necross held them so everyone could fall back to the palace, but we did lose Merene.”

Necross was the geomancer, but Merene…

“Your fire witch?” Cyrus asked.

Essandra clutched her chest and gave the slightest of nods. “She was the youngest in the coven,” she said quietly.

Hephain gave her a regretful dip of his head. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “The palace is secure, though, and everyone is inside.”

Essandra glanced at the young witch with them. “Go inside,” she told her.

Hephain motioned them toward the doors as he said to Essandra, “You can shelter with them until we push back the—”

“I’m not sheltering,” she said firmly. “I’m fighting.”

Cyrus wanted to object, but he had seen what she could do. He needed her. “Where are we positioned?” he asked Hephain.

“Everything to the west and south is clear. The men from House Aramine are near the temple, corralling everything east. Houses Lycus and Akim are doing the same from the north.”

“You said the rest of my coven is in the palace?” Essandra asked. “All of them?”

“All but Tomel.”

The portal witch.

Her expression darkened. “Make sure they stay here,” she ordered. Her voice had sharpened—clear, clipped, commanding. The grief that had blanketed her face just before was gone now, replaced by pure fury.

She turned to Cyrus. “We’re not done.”

And her eyes turned black.

They fought well into the evening, and as the sun slipped below the horizon, they’d driven the last of the nobles’ army into a villa on the east side of the capital. It was a stronghold, fortified by high walls, with the men inside well armed.

Cyrus surrounded it, careful to keep his men far enough back from the reach of arrows. The dark of night covered them, but he didn’t want to take chances.

“How are we going to get in there?” Kord asked as he and Cyrus eyed the iron gates. They could rush the villa, overtake it with numbers alone, but that would cost a lot of men, and Cyrus wasn’t willing to do that. Not yet.

He shook his head. “I don’t know yet.”

Essandra snorted beside him. “Have you learned nothing?”

“You can bring it down?” he asked.

She looked out at the villa. The torchlight danced in her eyes. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “When all this is finished, I want men.”

He frowned. “For what?”

“For my coven. For protection.”

“She has the power to rip apart this city but wants men for protection?” Kord scoffed.

“Because we’re vulnerable,” she snapped back, “especially when we’re focusing on using our powers. I can’t lose another witch.”

“So, you want guards?” Cyrus asked.

“Protectors, at least two per witch. And not just any men. I want your bloodsport fighters.” She cut Kord a daggered glare. “Not him.”

“Good,” Kord snapped back. “Because I’m not guarding some fucking witch.”

Cyrus flashed him a warning glance. If Essandra lost power every time she lost a witch, that would be bad for everyone, including Cyrus. And what did she have—fifteen, maybe twenty, witches in her coven? He could spare forty men.

“I’ll give you men,” he said.

Satisfied, she held out her hand for his.

“I’m already bleeding,” he protested.

She wrinkled her face. “Old blood? I’m not putting that filth in my mouth.”

“She has standards,” Kord said sarcastically.

Essandra ignored him. “Give me your hand,” she told Cyrus.

Finally, he gave it to her. She pulled her dagger and sliced the flesh across his palm.

His jaw tightened. She liked to take his blood from his palm, which was frustrating because it made it difficult to use his hand until Teron healed him, but she could collect it easier, whether into a bowl or directly into her mouth. She held his hand up and let it drip onto her tongue.

The pull came immediately—not a pull to enter her mind but a pull of power as she drew it through him.

A phantom wind rose from nowhere, fierce enough to make a man stumble. “Give me your sword,” she told Cyrus, her voice hauntingly low, not entirely human.

He pulled it from the sheath across his back and held it out to her.

Grasping it by the hilt with both hands, she lifted the sword high, the blade pointing down, and plunged it into the earth in front of her.

The wind collapsed into silence, and quiet settled over them. The sword rocked back and forth slightly with the tip of the blade buried in the earth. Then it stilled.

Kord snorted. “That was incredible.”

Cyrus shot him another glance, and Kord shrugged.

Murmurs rippled through the men.

“If you’ve got something else,” Cyrus told her, “now might be the time to use it.”

She said nothing.

Cyrus looked around. Had something happened to their geomancer? Had they lost that power too? He felt his impatience growing.

“I say we scale the wall,” Kord said. “We have the cover of night.”

“We’ll lose the benefit of darkness when we reach it, though,” Cyrus said. “They have it lit up with torches pretty well.”

“Your witch can use her illusion charm, unless she’s lost that too.”

Yes, there was that.

Suddenly, the ground rumbled underneath their feet, and they widened their stances to keep their balance. Cyrus’s sword sank farther into the earth, almost to the hilt. Ram held a torch closer. A small crack gave way, and they took a step back.

The crack snaked from the blade out toward the villa and disappeared into the darkness. Cyrus and his men all glanced at one another, then turned their eyes back to the villa with bated breaths.

All was quiet.

Until it wasn’t.

A thunder boomed through the air, so loud the vibration rolled through him, then the ground quaked again.

Cyrus and his men struggled for balance.

However, their attention was quickly snatched from the ground underneath them back to Cyrus’s sword, where the small crack split wider.

Wider, still, it grew, trenching toward the villa wall, sending plumes of dust against the torchlight.

Then, along the base, small cracks spidered from the ground to the top.

They grew darker. Deeper.

The wall buckled and collapsed.

The thick stacked-stone entryway of the villa burst apart, then the sidewalls, filling the villa with the panicked shouts of the men inside as the roof started to fold.

The large structure crumpled to the ground, sending a tidal gale of sand and dust in all directions.

Then, the tremors ceased.

As the air settled, Cyrus’s men let loose a series of cheers and laughter. They’d never seen anything like that before. Cyrus couldn’t help a smile himself. It was actually incredible.

Ram pulled his sword. “Now to make sure they’re dead,” he said.

The men moved to advance, but Essandra snapped, “Stop.”

They stopped and quieted, confused.

She lifted her arms, and the rubble of the villa started to tremble. Slowly, the broken stone began to rise—massive boulders, fragmented rocks, debris.

Shouts echoed from beneath, the nobles still alive within realizing too late what was coming.

Essandra held one arm straight out in front of her, her hand spread wide with her palm toward the villa, as she stirred a circle in the air with her other hand underneath. She chanted words Cyrus didn’t understand.

The rocks rose higher.

Kord and Cyrus glanced at each other.

Essandra brought them even higher, poising them, positioning them, then she wrenched her arms down, balling her fists as if ripping the air from the sky.

And the rocks came crashing down.

The nobles’ screams were quickly cut off. Plumes of dust beat against Cyrus’s face. The torchlight from within was snuffed, and everything went dark.

Everyone was quiet, in shock of it all.

“They’re dead,” Essandra said.

The capital was theirs again. Cheers erupted from his men.

She turned, and as their eyes met, he gave her a small smile.

The corners of her mouth hinted at a smile of her own. Until her gaze dropped to the arrow through his shoulder, and Cyrus realized that he couldn’t feel his arm.

Then all hints of her smile fell.