Page 35 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Wyntre

Peering over the hump of the hill from where Rorsyd has us concealed is tricky. Since I’m seated on him, and his dragon form is huge, the smallest wriggle of his rump might lift me too high. Alerting Kroll Krasten’s men that we are here and about to attack would risk not only getting Andacc’s men killed but also Landos.

I pray he’s alive. He has to be. He has to be. I’m sweating, my face is hot, every muscle seems tense, and I need to relax. I’ve never been in a real battle before. That fight in the forest after the ambush was rushed and unplanned. Having time to think is the worst.

We dropped off Andacc behind another hill, well to the north of the house, so he can join his C of U men. By now, he should be close to where they have gathered.

“Can’t see the arrow yet,” I say quietly, swallowing. Our disguise pendants are off—not that Rorsyd’s would work in this form.

“No need to whisper. We’re a mile away.” His immense rib musculature shifts, and his chest inflates. The trees to the forefront rattle their leaves when he exhales. “Wyntre, I cannot see you being of great help in this fight. Your necromancy skills are few.”

I haven’t thought that far. “I have sword, pistol, and dagger. Do not dismiss me.”

“I don’t want you harmed. I should just leave you here when I go.” He’s almost whining that—a dragon, whining.

I’m amused, which helps to defuse the moment, lets me wind down a little.

Breathe.

“No. We’ve been through this. I need to be there. My father, my rescue.” Or my revenge. I don’t want it to be that, but Andacc said some brutal things about this Kroll.

I need to see Father again, even if only for a day, an hour, a minute, before I go to war. Because I am going to war after this. With the back of my hand, I brush at my watering eyes.

Kroll is an edgemaster—a skill I’ve never heard of before—and an ironskin, which means we need something like a sledgehammer to dent him, or a very, very sharp sword.

Anathema? Guilt sneaks in. Should I ask this of him? Each time I use his darkthing matter, I worry I diminish him.

He knows my thoughts better than I. My shadowy dark-cat-thing prances up Rorsyd’s scaled hide and deposits his ass before me.

Purring in his sweet but completely fake manner, he switches his tail to show it to me, making it undulate like a snake.

“You’re sure?”

The tail is a black stripe on the golden scales of Rorsyd’s withers. It’s still early morning, and the sun paints the contrast starkly.

I unsheathe my dagger. This will be new, though that seems the very definition of necromancers, if my parents can be considered normal—to learn on the job.

As when I coated the bullet, I coax darkthing matter from the tip of Anathema’s tail and set the blob squirming toward one edge of my thin, leaf-shaped dagger.

I’m keeping watch on the horizon for flaming arrows at the same time—difficult, but I manage.

Absolute blackness coats the finest sliver of the edge of the blade and begins to bleed down it like melting tar, until the metal is coated from tip to hilt. How long will this last? How long is a piece of string? I’ve no damn clue. Doing it to the sword would take too much material from Anathema. Even if he would accept this, I will not do that to him.

Is there something wrong with me that I cannot sacrifice such an artificially created creature in a battle to save my father?

A dash of orange fire licks into the sky then begins to plunge, vanishing into the canopy of the sun-washed forest. A flock of startled birds bursts forth.

I re-sheathe my dagger with a click. “It begins.”

“I see it.” His wings unfold and stretch. He crashes through the foliage we hid behind and thunders down the slope, crushing and flinging aside shrubbery, twigs, and branches. Soon, we are airborne and swooping toward the house where Andacc must already battle Kroll’s soldiers.

It’s barely a minute of flight before Rorsyd is torching a bunch of running men to the south of the green-roofed house. They’re dressed in enforcer black, and few are wearing armor. They roll in flames, screaming, batting at the fire, then screaming and rolling some more. Three of them bolt for a nearby creek.

“Now!” Rorsyd shouts, and thuds down and skips across the open ground, landing in a clear space, beyond where he roasted the men.

I’m trying to be stalwart despite my stomach churning with nausea at the smell, the screaming, the suffering. Then I’m sliding and jumping off him. He rolls a skeptical eye at me as if to say do not get yourself killed or else , then he’s off again, rising, roaring, catching four men with a blast of fire. Four who were coming at me and Kyvin.

Kyvin? I spin, looking for where the rucksacks and canvas bags were left, find it all behind me. The undead has already undone his bag, and he wriggles out holding a sword. We chose to arm him. I dearly hope that is a good decision.

“Come with me!”

He plods forward, and I sprint toward the house, dodging the blazing grass, the dying, the crackling, burning, jerking clumps of seared flesh who once were living fae enforcers. Dragon fire is unforgiving.

I slash at the throat of a man with the bravery and presence of mind to try to oppose me. Blood gouts from his neck—he was only partly burned, and now he’s likely dead. I keep running, dodging, circle a well where a soldier sprawls, where I retrieve his small shield.

Two, no, three men guard the open front entrance.

Above the smell and the nearby yells comes the clang of metal and the shouting from combat at the rear of the house—Andacc and others. Rorsyd is busy gliding overhead, checking for anyone around me, killing the stupid ones who try. The only things he cannot do are burn down the house or Andacc’s men.

The house belongs to me, Kyvin, and whoever else breaks in from the rear. I consider skidding to a halt as I close with the three guarding the door, but Kyvin is somehow galumphing with me, in a gait suggestive of a charging glombustle, and they’re watching him with growing horror. I keep running. One guard retreats into the shadow of the doorway, so I slant to the right and engage with the nearest.

Having slid off the roof, Anathema drops onto his face, claws at him. He shrieks in fright, tries to stab his own face, and almost succeeds.

I send my blade into his guts because it’s softer than the chest, angle the sword upward until his burbling gasp and collapse tell me I hit the right spot. I step aside, tugging the blade free. Blood gushes, making an ugly pool on the front porch. Another kill . I blink, gulp, brace myself to get past this moment.

The third man who retreated has revived his courage, but when Anathema leaps onto his leg, he cringes, shakes his leg, and tries to fight my darkthing instead of me, the insignificant girl with the sharp sword. He slashes at his leg, so I stab him in the eye. The adopted shield takes his one sloppy blow before he’s staggering aside and falling.

Kyvin has a sword lodged in his chest but with his own weapon he is hacking at the first man…who has already lost an arm. The enforcer sways and melts, his knees jelly as most of his blood seems to have gushed from the stump.

This entrance is now awash in fresh blood. Anathema has plastered himself to the wall, and I focus on him for a second and notice he’s smaller and his claws are gone. Whatever flesh he enters, he destroys, but that flesh also makes his darkthing matter react and vanish? Fuck.

My mouth is open. I shut it, nod encouragement at Kyvin, and step through the doorway.

Can an undead feel encouragement? No idea.

“Stay!” I bite that at Anathema, and he flattens his ears then prowls roofward.

Inside this thick-walled stone house it is quieter, and the screams are muted. My boots crunch on grit, and the furniture I pass in the living room is dusty, webbed, and the floor has been scoured clean by enforcer feet. I pause in the hallway where it splits off to kitchen—empty—and then ahead must be two bedrooms and a bathroom or similar.

Muffling panting and squeaks come from the left where a white door sits an inch ajar.

Kyvin is somewhere behind me.

I nudge open the door, glimpse a chest of drawers and half of my father spreadeagled against the opposing wall. I boot the door fully open and step in. Thank the gods the rest of him is there too. Though gagged, he is breathing. He rolls his eyes from me and looks to his right, behind the door. I skip aside with my sword raised, only to have someone grab the back of my shirt, tear away the shield, and spin me into them. Their knife lies across my neck, stinging as it cuts the finest line below my jaw.

“Be still, Wyntre, unless you wish my steel to bite. Now. We are going outside, and you will call off your friends and your dragon. Then, if you’re good, your father will stay alive, though you are leaving with me. Drop your sword.”

I hesitate then drop it, scraping my feet against the floor as he shoves me forward. I’m trying to resist but he’s far stronger. He grabs my sword wrist, yanks it to the small of my back then higher, and I hiss at the pain of the hold and the bite of the knife.

“You’re cutting me.”

“Then be still. Tell your creature to withdraw!”

“Go back!” I gesture semi-blindly at Kyvin where he blocks the doorway, and it takes a few seconds for him to understand. Then he backs away. Whoever has me kicks the door. Timber scrapes as a bar falls across, locking it shut.

“I’m going to tie your hands at your back. Co-operate or this will go badly for you.”

Landos looks desperate—his eyes communicate his distress. Knowing him, it’s my predicament that’s bothering him, even though he has cuts all down his chest and arms, with streaks of red dribbling everywhere on his bared upper body. The old wound in his shoulder is a puckered, bright red. The waist of his pants is dark and wet from blood. He’s tied to pitons hammered into the wall, his limbs and body fastened in an X shape.

“Who are you?” I gasp as he marches me toward the bed. “You know we’ll have killed all your men by now.”

“My men? Pfft. I just need you and a horse. We leave out the window. You will call off everyone out there. Dragon and the others. Say it. Oh yes, who. I am Kroll Kraven, dearest Wyntre, edgemaster and?—”

He wants me alive —that revelation agrees with what everyone has said and done, and it’s still running in my thoughts as I pull my dagger from its sheath with my left hand. As I hook his left foot at the ankle and spin, I throw myself backward, risking arm dislocation.

He releases me and has whipped his dagger away to avoid slicing my throat, and so I barrel at him until he thuds into the barred door. He’s laughing as I hold the dagger higher.

“You can’t hurt me with that.”

The floor underfoot is solid oak boards.

“No?” Ironskin means he’s almost impossible to penetrate with a blade. Almost. And an ordinary blade, this is not. “You tortured my father?”

Kroll smirks and lifts his hand as if to grab my wrist again. “Of cours?—”

I drop to my knees and hammer the dagger through his boot, his foot, and into the floor. It sinks in as if he and the oak are made of butter. The shock makes him loosen his grip on his knife, and I smack it aside, sending it flying beneath the bed.

Jumping backward, I scoop up my sword and pray my dagger holds. It has so far.

His mouth hangs open. He keens at the pain, staring at where I have nailed his foot to the floor. So fucking satisfying. A tendril of black smoke rises from his boot and dissipates. Blood leaks from beneath the leather.

“How? Fuck. How! Your eyes,” he splutters out, horrified, fascinated, sounding confused. “Soulmate with a dragonshifter?”

What is he talking?—

I don’t care. I yank out the gheist pistol and fire at the center of his chest. Though it thumps him back into the door and he coughs, he slowly recovers and straightens. The flattened bullet drops to the floor. It’s lucky I used darkmatter on the blade. When he held me, I’d never have cleared the gun from the holster. I re-holster it.

Someone bangs on the door. “Wyntre? It’s Andacc!”

“I’m here!” I stare at where Kroll is pulling at the dagger and trying to free it from the floorboard. I think I hit a beam. “Good luck with that. What is it?” I yell the latter at Andacc.

I doubt it’s safe to try getting around Kroll to unlock the door.

Kroll spits at me.

Landos. I turn and start to cut him loose, severing the ropes, the gag.

“We have more enemies coming! His men have circled back!”

We have so little time. We might defeat them, and this bastard might get loose and use his whatever edgemaster thingummy talents and kill us all. I don’t know enough. He slumps forward, groans, tries again to free his foot.

“Get to the window. The window!” I yell at Andacc.

“Got it!”

A boarded-up window shows beyond the rusty bed with the thin bare mattress.

Landos tries to croak out words and smiles weakly. I whip my head around to check Kroll as the last piece of rope is severed, taking Landos’ sagging weight as I do so.

The asshole is still grunting and pulling at the dagger’s hilt, with both hands on it. I should kill him but cannot. I’m not using more of Anathema, and I have no time.

Besides, I know how to finish the job on this fucking evil torturer.

By the time Landos and I reach the window, Andacc’s men are there, ripping off the board. Two are wolfshifters, strong, furred, with blood on their snouts and singed fur.

“Fire mage,” one of them hurriedly explains.

“I iced him,” Andacc adds, grim of tone.

They help me get Landos through, wrenching aside the remains of the thin board nailed to the frame.

“Tell them to escape, now,” I tell Andacc. “Rorsyd can take me, you, Landos.”

And Kyvin? What about him? I don’t know. Maybe not. I’m aching from the fire that touched me, from cuts, from my heart when I see Landos. But Kyvin? Would he survive by himself?

Andacc and I help Landos walk to where Rorsyd has landed beside the rucksacks and bags. Smoke wreathes the ground. The scorched men are silent and still. Landos is surprisingly strong, considering his injuries, and he lurches onward. A few times, I glance backward, wondering if Kroll will try to follow us. I want him dead.

I so want him dead, my need awful when I recheck the signs of torture on Landos.

“I have you,” I keep telling Father whenever he groans. “A doctor can heal all this. Once we are out of this, we’ll find one.”

“Thank you,” he whispers as we lay him inside the canvas bag and tie it, leaving his face free so he can breathe. “You are my bestest-ever daughter.” He cracks an actual smile. His voice is raspy as if damaged from screaming. I’m tearing up, and we need to move, but he grabs my hand in a, dare I say it, death-grip. “You’re a good person no matter what anyone might say.”

I nod. “Rorsyd will carry you.” I look at my soulmate. “Gently.”

“I will do so.” Rorsyd assures me. “Mount up. Andacc and Landos are ready?”

I glance aside. “Yes.” Andacc has tied himself into the bag. Kyvin waits. He looks forlorn, to me, his bag taken by Landos. “Kyvin…do we have to leave him?”

Rorsyd grunts, aware of how I baby the undead man. Weird but true.

“I feel that we need him. He fought for me, at the door.”

The sword wound that punched through shows on Kyvin’s chest. No blood of course, just tattered cloth.

“He can ride atop me, if he can. Landos is light. Hurry!”

My father is lying as if in a coffin, wrapped in the canvas. He has suffered so much during the past month. I give him a final kiss on his pale forehead. Then I jerk my head, indicating to Kyvin to follow me and I sprint to climb Rorsyd.

I clamber up his scaled leg and side, seat myself.

To watch us, Rorsyd’s neck is twisted backward, then he swings it to check the house. As if he has heard something?

I see what caught his attention. Someone stirs in the window, someone who limps.

“Kroll is free,” I snarl that through teeth as Kyvin climbs past me. “Rorsyd! Can you burn him for me? Can you burn an ironskin?”

“With pleasure. Once you’re secure.”

Kyvin swings in behind me. His undead hands clasp my waist.

“Go!” I shout.

If he falls, he falls . I pat Kyvin’s hand.

Rorsyd sucks in a breath, aims at the house, and lets loose an air-blurring flame that curls and billows, then engulfs the entire building.

Despite the stone construction it begins to melt.

“Done,” Rorsyd declares. He lumbers forward and reaches for the sky. To the left, the trees rustle with movement and three cavalrymen tear from the forest toward the house, galloping hard. As they sight the blaze, they rein in, horses rearing.

We have barely left the ground when a figure that is more fire than fae stumbles from the house. He seems to shake both his arms toward us as he flings a cloud of glittering metal into the air. The spinning cloud leaps the gap. Rorsyd curses, and something thuds into Kyvin and Rorsyd’s side, then finally we are away and soaring higher.

Twisting in place, I see Kroll ablaze and staggering toward the well. He topples in, flipping upside down, and vanishes from sight. I hope, I really hope he breaks his neck, then burns to death in agony.

A sword is stuck into Kyvin’s arm. Another projects from Rorsyd’s side that wobbles as if only a superficial wound.

“Are you okay?” I bellow. “He hit your flank.”

“That is nothing,” my dragon grumbles as we arrow southward. “Aiming for Bollingham. Thander will care for your father.”

“Nothing? Thank the gods. Kyvin has been hit, too, but he doesn’t seem to care.” I smirk, as my undead hero extracts the blade then casually discards it over the side.

The weapon spirals out of sight. So, this metal storm is what an edgemaster can do. Begs the question, why did he not leave the house and use it earlier?

Fear of Rorsyd…of course.

I recall his awed soulmate with a dragonshifter words. How did he see that? I must ask later.

Something wet spots my hand, and I look up. Blown by the wind, a thin streak of red runs along Rorsyd, from his head to where I sit.

Oh no. Oh fuck no.

I bite my lip. “You have another wound?”

“Yes. My eye. I can heal it, though. Fret not. Ouch, but I will heal in time.”

“In time for what?” His eye? I’m wincing.

“Your war.”

My war. This, today, is war.

Can I withstand more of this? Can anyone? Why should I be spared? I am tempted to run away.

“You’re certain your eye is okay?”

“I am.”

Until we circle to land near Bollingham, and I prepare to rush Landos inside, up the ramp, to demand a doctor attend him, no matter my banishment. I will do anything.

But when we land, Rorsyd rounds on me ponderously. Despite his half-closed eye, he nudges me with his nose toward the canvas bag that holds Father.

I can and will do anything, except bring Father back from death. A sword is stuck through the middle of the bag.

He looks so peaceful, eyes closed, he’s almost smiling.

I drop to my knees, tears spilling in huge blobs that splatter onto the canvas. “Daddy?” I drop my head to him and let out a coarse, rending sob that feels as if it will tear me in two.