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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I t was probably when the slyviks roared, all together, that I thought maybe this was not the best of ideas.

One slyvik’s scream was a bone-chilling sound—dozens of them, layered on top of each other, echoed like an orchestra of death. We were so close to them now that their smell stung the air, a scent of decay and blood. I no longer had to sense them through the threads—I could feel their movements through the vibrations in the rock as their powerful bodies hurled from wall to wall.

I stopped around a corner. Atrius nearly stumbled into me. The visibility was especially poor here. Even vampire eyesight was mostly useless.

I whispered, very, very softly, “They’re over there.”

A muscle feathered in Atrius’s jaw. His presence exuded resolute focus. If I’d had time to think about anything other than the bloodthirsty beasts mere feet away from us, I might have stopped to appreciate exactly how fearless Atrius was. I wondered if Nyaxia had appreciated what she’d had in him—probably the only man alive who’d throw himself into any inconceivable task a goddess might toss his way without a second of hesitation.

And yet, when his gaze slipped to me, that resolve flickered. Just a little, so quick I almost missed it.

He’d wanted to come up with a way that I didn’t have to do this. I knew that, even though he didn’t express it aloud. But we both knew that I was critical to this plan. He didn’t have to be, though—that, we’d argued about. It didn’t make sense to put the most important person here in this position. Let it be Erekkus, I’d said. Let it be any of his men.

He wouldn’t hear of it.

So here we were. About to do perhaps the most dangerous, stupidest thing I’d ever done, and if we got ourselves killed, everything would be over.

The stakes were, if nothing else, exciting.

“Are you ready?” I whispered to him.

He looked at me like this was a stupid question.

Of course. He was always ready.

He stepped in front of me, slow and silent. In his arms were three canteens, which sloshed with blood.

One more reason this had to work: because if it didn’t, the vampires would starve to death.

Atrius uncorked the canteens, one after the other.

The first, he tossed slightly down the path, the blood spurting out and trailing over the rocks below. Then, after pausing a moment, he took the second and hurled it as far as he could into the darkness of the mists.

Immediately, I felt the stirring interest in the slyviks. First one, then the others. Clicks and purrs, then growls, echoed from down the tunnel.

I grabbed Atrius’s wrist. “Now,” I hissed.

We’d gotten their attention. The blood gave us head start. Now it was time to run like hell.

Or stumble like hell.

It was the best I could do in the darkness. I clung to the walls, one arm extended behind me to grip Atrius’s, and felt our way forward as we ran. Behind me, I heard the steady sound of blood dripping onto the rocks as Atrius dumped the final canteen behind us, leaving a crimson trail. When it was empty, he dropped the container.

And then we heard them coming, stirred by the scent.

My steps quickened. Atrius’s strides lengthened, our gaits shifting. I thought it would be impossible to truly run over these rocks. I was wrong. When you hear a herd of slyvik screams behind you, you run .

“Which way?” Atrius barked. The air itself shivered with the beat of countless wings. We stumbled as the earth shook with the weight of their bodies against the rocks, growing frenzied.

The moment they saw us, the shrieks pierced the air. I could’ve sworn they were of delight.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

“That way,” I ground out, and dragged Atrius left, to a smaller path between the cliffs. Now only my fingertips brushed the walls, maintaining just enough of a connection to the stone to sense the path back

I’d tried to memorize the route before we started. I prayed I remembered right.

Another shriek curdled my blood. Atrius broke into a sprint, dragging me with him.

Weaver help me. Gods, I’d better remember that path.

“There!” I choked out, just in time, and the two of us rounded a corner sharply, nearly slamming into a wall.

The slyviks were great hunters. They didn’t lose their prey. Seconds later, we heard them behind us. They were gaining.

Soon they would be on us.

Neither of us could speak—no time for that—but I could feel the pressure building in Atrius’s presence, like a thread growing taut. Could feel his hand creeping toward his belt, just in case.

We were close.

We had to be.

I reached into the threads, checking our path?—

Pain shot through my shin as it struck a sharp rock.

I stumbled, my knees nearly hitting the ground. Warm blood spurted down my leg. Atrius grabbed me roughly and yanked me upright again, dragging me along, and not seconds too soon because that time, I felt the slyvik’s breath on my back.

We were going too slow.

I could feel the same realization settle over Atrius.

A little farther.

The turn was up ahead, just a little more?—

I grabbed Atrius and we took the next corner, gravel sliding beneath our feet, and I could feel movement in the threads above even if I didn’t have the time to focus on it, and we were going to make it?—

SNAP.

I was yanked backwards with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.

The slyvik’s roar surrounded me, shaking my bones. A burst of damp, hot air engulfed me.

My shirt. It had grabbed my shirt?—

Before I could move, Atrius sprang into action. It was beautiful, the way he moved, with such sudden viciousness—like nothing ever caught him by surprise. His sword was out, and by the time I realized what was happening, his strike had already landed—right into the slyvik’s eye.

A screech of pain rattled the earth. The ground hit me hard, my legs collapsing under me. Atrius fell back, too, rolling and falling back into a clumsy crouch behind me. Before us, the slyvik reared back, blood dripping from its face, wings spreading wall-to-wall. Behind it, other snakelike bodies slithered through the mists as its nest-mates caught up to us, heads of teeth and starving eyes curling through the gaps in the stone to corner us.

This time, I couldn’t keep the fear down.

Atrius froze too, his hands gripping my shoulders, like he was ready to go down fighting for both of us if he had to.

My fingers curled around my weapon.

We’d both go down fighting.

The slyvik before us prepared to strike?—

And then a cacophony of animalistic shrieks pierced the air.

Not from in front of us. From behind us.

The flood of relief left my body momentarily limp.

Because we had made it. We had made it.

The slyviks’ heads snapped up, peering into the mists, far beyond us. Their bodies coiled, readying for a fight. The roars lowered to glottal hisses and clicks. Stone screeched with the bite of claws .

Behind us, the same sounds echoed back, as the other nest of slyviks prepared for a fight.

Territorial men—human or vampire or slyvik. The one thing you could always count on.

We were never going to get past the slyviks with our strength or our stealth. The only chance we had was to distract them with something far more interesting than some prey.

And a rival nest? Well. That was interesting.

I’d never felt anything quite like the sensation of those short, endless seconds—like the electricity hanging in the air before a lightning strike, or the quiet in the sea before a tidal wave crests. We were in between two deadly forces of nature about to destroy each other.

It was, in a strange way, beautiful.

Then Atrius’s fingers tightened around my arm, and he whispered in my ear, “Run.”

We dove out of the way just as the slyviks lunged at each other.

The wave crashed. The lightning struck. This fight, of creatures utterly oblivious to any goal other than ripping each other to pieces, was just as powerful.

They collided in an explosion of teeth and wings and scales, and we bolted.

The air was thick with the screams of slyviks, sounds of such range and pitch that I never imagined an animal could make them. We couldn’t speak to each other even if we’d tried. I couldn’t stop to navigate our way through the stone—surely the vampires couldn’t see much of anything either, through the mist and the writhing bodies of the slyviks. But they knew the plan. They knew the signal. When they heard the commotion break out, they knew there was only one thing to do: run for their damned lives.

It was a straight run out, I’d told them. I’d been careful to sound very confident about it, even though, in reality, I wasn’t completely sure—it was so hard to sense the specifics of the rock formations this far away, and through the disruptive presences of the slyviks.

If there were turns or another split in the path... we were done.

We ran, dodging stray claws and flying tails. I felt the soldiers, too, following behind us, moving as fast as they could.

Weaver, there were so many of these things—my upper estimation of fifty had to have been right, even if I couldn’t stop to count. The claws and teeth and scaly bodies seemed to go on forever, the wails growing louder as the clash between the two nests escalated, more and more of them rising to the front of the pack for their attempt at asserting dominance.

My sword slashed wildly at whatever got in our path, without any time to look or judge. Blood spattered my face—my own or slyvik, I couldn’t stop to tell.

When I sensed a change in the threads ahead, at first I thought I was imagining it.

But after several more stumbling steps, dodging a stray talon that nearly claimed the left side of my face, the truth of it dawned:

The end of the pass.

Not far ahead at all.

“Atrius,” I choked out, and he knew without me saying anything else exactly what I meant. He lifted his sword above his head and let out a roar—a warrior’s roar, a predator’s roar, a sound that seemed fit to match the screams of the slyviks around us.

And with that roar, one juvenile too far away from the rest of the fight figured he’d take his chances here instead, and leapt down at us. Atrius was already responding before my warning shout had left my lips.

The beast came at him with its mouth open, razor teeth bared, and Atrius didn’t hesitate as he brought his sword down on its throat, decapitating it in a single smooth stroke.

I choked out a shocked laugh, but didn’t stop running—none of us did, not until the ground beneath us leveled and the walls opened up and the soul-deep darkness of the cliffs fell away.

I just kept running, and running, and running, until Atrius grabbed me and forced me to slow. The moment I stopped moving, my legs folded beneath me. I sank to the ground—actual ground , not rocks. My breath ached in my ribs.

Atrius sank down with me, his hands on my shoulders. A slow smile rolled over his face. Then he turned back—to see the rest of his warriors, now finished pouring through the opening in the cliff face, bleeding and bruised and exhausted, but very much alive.

My cheeks ached with my grin, which probably looked slightly manic. “I didn’t know if we were going to make it.”

“I did,” Atrius said, matter-of-factly, and I found it so amusing I decided not to tell him that I had been there, and I knew for a fact he had some doubts.

Beside us, Erekkus flopped over on the ground, laughing and muttering a string of curses to himself.

I still was swaying a bit with the shock of what we’d just done.

“You decapitated one of them,” I said. “One strike.”

A smirk he was trying and failing to suppress twitched at the corners of his mouth. “I did,” he said.

He just sounded so smug.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Let him get a little full of himself. That was worthy of some admiration.

He laughed too, softly, and he let his forehead fall against mine, and for a few breaths we both just reveled in the fact that we had survived.

Then, as if in unspoken agreement, we straightened.

We weren’t done. Actually, the slyviks were nothing compared to what we were about to face.

Together, we stood.

The end of the pass was abrupt, spilling us out into an expanse of sandy plain. It was cold here, and the mist nearly as thick as it had been in the cliffs, only just thinning enough that I could sense the moon above—a perfect crescent.

The quiet felt like a warning.

Because there, looming over us to the north, emerging from the sparse trees on a cliff that overlooked the churning, angry sea, was the Pythora King’s castle.

A strange calm fell over me. What did it say, that I had been afraid when picking a fight with the slyviks, but wasn’t afraid to go kill the Pythora King?

Maybe it just meant that anger was the antidote to fear. I hated the Pythora King so much that I had little to be afraid of. I would die either way. Let me die with my blade in his throat.

Atrius was staring at the castle, too, and I could sense the same calm resolve in him. We moved at the same time—our bloody, sweaty hands clasping together.

“Is that his?”

Erekkus’s voice was quiet with rage. Gone was his comical glee at having survived the pass.

Our silence was enough of an answer.

Finally, Atrius turned to him. “We don’t have time to rest. Get them ready?—”

But the words didn’t make it out of Atrius’s mouth before a wave of soldiers poured from the forest.