Page 71

Shadows, Shadows Everywhere

A roar of a single voice rises above the cacophony and ice blasts through the fighting, slamming the Tyndran away.

Vos. I can’t see him, but I know it’s him.

Cain is on the Tyndran soldier in an instant. He stabs a knife through the soldier’s neck, falling with the man to the ground, pinned under the soldier’s weight. The shadow soldiers swarm over them.

A spear of ice slices through them, then splits, like two arms spreading wide, violently forcing everything away from Cain and Tziah.

Riding a wave of ice, Vos slides to where they are. He drops beside Tziah, who is lying on her side, her body twitching. Vos checks her over frantically, and I see the instant he knows she’s going to die. Loss sweeps over his face. His lips form the sounds of her name.

No. Mother Nova, no. Not her.

Tziah tries to lift her head, but I don’t think she can, and maybe she says something, because he scoops her closer. Then he looks at Cain, who has already extracted himself from under the soldier’s body and taken up a defensive position over them, and Cain, grim faced, nods.

Then, like he’s given up all hope, Vos lays down beside Tziah, face-to-face and takes her hand. I should have known he would never let her face death alone. Not even on a battlefield surrounded by death and impossible odds. Not after all they’ve been to each other.

Pella plows through the fighters, dodging swords and felling soldiers with shots from her bow until she gets to Cain and helps him stand over Vos.

I grip the edge of the roof wall, wanting so desperately to be there with them. Vos’s lips move as he talks to Tziah. I don’t look away even though it hurts down to my bones to watch.

Tziah.

The best of us. The sweetest of us.

Her twitching slows as her struggle ends.

Hakan sprints around the edge of the ice, fighting his way to them, and drops to one knee beside Tziah but I know he’s too late. He bows his head, covering his face with one hand.

Meanwhile, Pella and Cain are struggling to keep the growing swarm of shadow soldiers off them. She shouts something over her shoulder that I can’t hear. Vos doesn’t react.

Hakan jumps to his feet and goes off, blasting lightning at anything that moves. But they’re still outnumbered, and Vos still isn’t moving. They’re fodder for the afterlife if something doesn’t change.

I have no choice. I can’t watch them die.

I call the king’s power forward, the purple light of my palms reflecting off what’s left of the shadow dome in front of me.

I focus on a single shadow soldier. I can feel him. I try to stop him, but nothing happens, and more are coming. Then one—not the one I’m focused on—just…disappears?

Yanking my hands close, I look down at them. Was that me?

“I’m here,” a familiar voice says behind me.

I whirl to find Scoria standing on the ground, leaning over the tower I’m on—probably having flattened an entire house.

The relief that bursts through me is like taking a breath after being underwater too long.

“What happened to him?” she asks. She’s frowning, I think, at Reven’s frozen form.

Inside the ice I can see darkness swirling. He’s trying to get out.

We don’t have time to deal with him until he becomes a problem again. “Help them.”

Scoria wastes no time freezing the shadow fighters clamoring to get to my friends. Cain lowers his sword, looking at Pella, who lets up on her bow only slightly as they assess the immobile shadow soldiers.

“Can you take them away?”

I hear the grind of rock on rock and assume she’s shaking her head. “They can’t be taken to the afterlife in their current form,” Scoria says. “You have to turn them first.”

“Damn.”

Pella fires an arrow through one that Scoria is holding and the thing disappears. Seeing that, she and Cain plow through the rest. They just show up somewhere else on the field.

Goddess damn those things.

“Can you freeze them all?”

“No,” Scoria says, her voice straining from just these.

Hellfires.

No choice. “We do it in groups,” I say.

I get set yet again, praying to Allusian and Aryd that Eidolon stays away. Before I can draw on his power, a sudden rumbling pushes up through the ground, vibrating beneath my feet, softly at first, but then with growing violence. I search the field and then farther away. Is that…another army?

The trembling worsens. It builds until I have to hold onto the wall of the tower to stay upright.

The fighters on the field pause, looking around with confusion at first, but then with growing fear.

“What’s happening?” I hear one of them yell.

A Tyndran soldier points to the sky. I can’t hear what he shouts, but I look up and my heart drops to the bottom of my feet. The sun looks like a slivered crescent moon now. The eclipse is overtaking us. This can only be one thing.

“The Alignment,” I hear myself say out loud.