Page 56 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

I Dare You

Rayze

I’m snatched away from Warrick.

I growl and swivel into a kick, boots skidding against the flooded street. Synlon’s gutters run red. Lightning flares across roofs, throwing fractured light over the throng of fighting bodies and casting everything in a flickering, violent glow.

ALL CITIZENS OF SYNLON, the speakers blare between high rises.

We prepared for everything.

Everything. Except. This .

Lightning crackles across armor. A fist slams into my gut with the strength of ten men. Without The Storm’s support, they never should’ve had this kind of access to Volt.

I crash into Aleksi, knocking her off balance. She misses a shot with her spear, and a Serpent blade careens toward our necks.

I grab her wrist and yank her down just as the poisonous barbs of Sonya’s whip tangle around our attacker’s exposed wrist. She reels him in and bites down with her fangs.

He folds with a wet crack, and a dozen more Serpents surge forward. Armor and blades glint as they trample the corpses of innocent civilians, people who left the safety of their homes to help, cut down in seconds after putting their faith in us.

DO NOT ENGAGE. CURFEW IS IN EFFECT.

“We have to retreat,” Aleksi shouts.

“I’m not giving The Serpent an ounce of surrender.” I nock an arrow. “Leave if you want, Ender. I’d never fault you for it, but I’ll die before I wait any longer for my shot.”

“This is suicide,” she answers, but her jaw is set, her eyes locked with mine. “Fuck it.”

We pivot, dodging two Chrome Guards.

I rip off my mask and let it fall to the gravel, rain washing blood from my face. The storm above flickers white, caught in the glass of hundreds of windows, faces peering down.

I grit my teeth. Let them watch.

The cool steel of an arrow kisses the hollow of my cheek as I level my bow. The threads of every soldier’s life tangle across my vision. Each is burned black with the sharp, electrical spikes of Volt.

Fuck it.

Warrick

Chains bite into my arms, and cronies drag me across gravel into a narrow alley. Rain hammers down, spilling from busted gutters. Ratty tarps whip overhead like hungry, split tongues.

All I can hear is the massacre in the streets.

Screams warp as they hit the alley walls and drill into me, sharp as daggers through my ears. Volt flares off my captors’ armor, refracting across my skin until my chest jerks with each pulse.

What the fuck is happening?

My mind burns.

Angel, baby—no. Who is—where is—

I try to hold on to a single thought, but it slides away, slippery and grinning, like it knows I’ll never find the truth again.

There’s a purpose to this fight, to those screams, but it all melts and ruptures.

Every shriek is an accusation. Every death cry, a kick to my ribs.

I can’t latch to any of it. Can’t claim it as mine or take a breath as if I own myself.

Volt skews and distorts everything beyond my control. Names, places, my own damn face.

Static.

My skin tightens. My lungs heave.

Then I’m yanked back.

Pavement slams into my spine. My tongue tastes metal. Blood stings against my swollen eyes, but I strain to watch. My body begs to stay, even if it kills me.

DO NOT ENGAGE, the speakers echo on a loop between rumbles of thunder.

The street is a kill zone. Citizens scream and scatter, cut down by chrome. Serpent cronies clad in Volt-infused armor move without grace or mercy, every mortal in their vicinity marked as an enemy.

Then— there she is.

A streak of black leather. Blood on her face. Arrows singing. She kills her way forward. Shot after shot, she doesn’t flinch. Her arrows carve through armor like it’s air, her grip around her bow sparking with white flashes.

It isn’t Volt. It’s something else.

Something greater.

Magic .

“Blood Betrayer,” a voice growls low in my ear.

Zane Hale. One of my father’s golden boys. Next in line for command of the Chrome Guard. Though his name won’t fucking matter when he’s on his knees.

Zane tightens the chains around me. He fists an ending link, winding it around his knuckles. “I expected more from you than a few women.”

I cock my head to the side, but a deep shudder runs down my spine. Did I do this? I stare out at the massacre of the street. Then I analyze the Serpents at Zane’s back. They blockade the alley, all of them watching in anticipation.

“I’m your Heir,” I hiss.

“Maybe if you took your dick out of a traitor’s cunt for five seconds, that would still be true,” he spits.

I don’t remember her name, but I remember what she is.

My everything .

“Threaten my woman again,” I breathe. “I dare you.”

My mind is a ruinous landscape of shattered thoughts, but what’s left of me still knows who I fight for. My blade is to be wielded in her name.

“I’ve no fear of a snake with its head cut off,” Zane sneers.

My pulse drums in my ears. My gut twists in recognition of her pain.

“One look at you with your whore—”

I smash my forehead into his nose, and my lips stretch with a tight smile at the crunch .

Zane howls, and the chains slacken.

I fist them, shift my weight, pivot, and snatch the blade at his belt. Then I plunge serrated steel through the thick column of his throat.

“A man who threatens what’s mine doesn’t deserve a voice,” I growl.

Volt surges from his armor, ripping across the hilt of the blade, snapping over my knuckles, and sizzling against my tongue.

Doesn’t fucking matter. Electrocute me until my heart stops. Nothing is a match for her wrath. The innate rage that bleeds between us, no matter the distance, no matter the pieces of my mind.

Angel . My vicious angel.

No one talks about my woman unless it’s the praise she deserves.

A quick rip of my teeth and I sever his ear. His gargled scream bounces between the alley walls.

I spit the mangled flesh to the ground. “A man who ignores me when I claim what’s mine,” I yell, blood spitting with the words, “ doesn’t deserve to fucking listen. ”

Crimson spouts down from the side of his head, mingling with the dark river spilling from his neck.

I step into him and dig my thumbs into his eyes, his gurgling cry a Godsdamn victory song. “A man who chooses to be blind to a fight he can’t win,” I snarl against his one remaining ear, “doesn’t deserve sight.”

Then I rip my thumbs from his eyes and yank the blade from his throat. Blood splatters among rain with Zane’s final, choked cough. He slumps toward me.

“Who the fuck is next?” I shout and drive my boot into his gut.

The fucker rams into the blockade of watching, stunned Serpents. They stumble, and I charge.

It’s seconds they’re off-kilter.

It’s seconds I slaughter them.

For her.

For always.

Rayze

ALL SERPENTS ARE TO REPORT TO THE DREDGE.

Reinforcements. We can’t withstand reinforcements.

I jerk my bow up, aim—

An elbow slams into my windpipe.

I drop fast, gravel tearing at my knees as I hit the street. My nose cracks against wet stone, and my bow skitters into the gutter, swallowed by rain and bodies.

I cry out, but the sound is drowned by the chaos. Water rushes over my lips as a palm presses into the back of my skull, broken glass grinding into my forehead.

My fingers fumble for the daggers lining my waist, but I can’t breathe. Adrenaline breaks apart with fear. I claw forward, desperate for any leverage.

Only to be met with the sole of his boot stomping down on my dominant hand.

No .

Bone crunches. Pain shreds up my arm and crashes behind my eyes. My world splits in half, and a raw shout of agony tears from my throat, choking against the pavement.

I can’t move my fingers.

My bow is lost.

I cough and sputter before his weight wrenches away. I jerk to my feet, vision swimming. A flash of silver slices through the rain— Sonya .

But it’s not my sister.

Steel-blue eyes lock with mine before my snake wraps a set of Serpent chains around my attacker’s neck, spitting threats against the crony’s ear.

Warrick

One wrap. Two. Fuck. You.

Crack.

The guard falls limp to his knees, his neck snapped and blood dribbling from his mouth across my chains. I tear them free and let him fall, my pretty angel’s green eyes wide before she spins away.

I lunge after her, but the dark roar of engines cuts through the night, breaking between screams, sirens, and thunder. Tension knots my shoulders as bright headlights flare between fighting bodies and scrape over the dead.

I tear a Serpent blade from the gut of the nearest corpse, tightening my grip on the chains in my other hand.

Mine. My woman. My city.

Get. The. Fuck. Out.

Rayze

SURRENDER IS SURVIVAL, the speakers boom.

Aleksi lies in a puddle, her eyes wide behind her mask. Blood oozes from a deep puncture above her left hip, soaking her side and pooling beneath her. A shard of metal glints where it’s lodged halfway in. Her legs lie useless, bent awkwardly beneath her.

I duck low, hooking my arms under hers to drag her out of the crowded street, but a blade slices across the back of my leg.

Pain rips through me. I fall hard with a hiss, Aleksi’s head thudding against my chest.

“Sonya?” I gasp out, eyes scanning the fray. I search for the flick of a whip, the curl of steel flashing through rain.

Aleksi wheezes. “They grabbed her.”

“Who?” I demand.

She nods toward the edge of the fight.

Engines snarl low through the downpour, hulking frames pulsing with coils and raw iron. Sparks snap across storm-fed bikes as they lurch in retreat, gears grinding with every shuddering turn. Blue plumes of smoke hiss from their sides, staining the rain.

Stormrigs.

Steam spits from their undercarriages as the bikes cut through the chaos, wheels spinning arcs of water into the air as they vanish between alleys and wreckage.

The Storm is here.

SUBMIT, the city wails, the word bouncing from speaker to speaker.

“Aleksi,” I breathe.

Her bloodied hand grabs mine. I squeeze back as a shadow rises over the city. A ship crests the skyline, engines humming with menace.

The Kraken.

Guards cut down any who stand against them. Civilians are dragged screaming into cages. My snake—

My gut clenches.

Warrick charges forward, sprinting after the stormrigs. Chains drag through the gravel behind him, blood streaked across his shoulders. He moves like instinct made flesh, and for a moment I think he might reach them.

But the Chrome Guard intercepts.

They collide into Warrick in a wall of armor. Volt lights up the rain as they bring him down. His body twists under the weight. His teeth flash in a vicious snarl as he tries to tear free.

Then they pin him.

Slam his face into the street.

Bind him.

OBEY, the speakers crack.

“Warrick!” I scream, dragging myself out from under Aleksi.

I claw over the dead.

Fingers brush my skin, slack and cold. Eyes stare past me, fixed on the sky, rain drilling against their open, lost gazes.

Warrick’s eyes meet mine. He roars, straining against the chains as he fights to reach me. His muscles snap taut, blood smearing across his arms as he thrashes beneath the guards.

A hand seizes the back of my neck.

I cry out as I’m yanked off the ground, boots kicking uselessly. Armored fingers cinch tight around my throat.

“Let me go,” I choke out.

My magic cracks from my lips with the command. Threads flare to life. I tug on them. Any that will answer.

They bend.

Then they snap in half.

I can’t even summon my Godsdamn arrows, there’s so much Volt drifting through the street. It burns along the waning tendrils of threads, and there isn’t a rage that can save me. There’s nothing but my broken hands and my bleeding heart.

The grip around my neck tightens. Dark spots crowd my vision.

GIVE IN, Synlon screams.

Never .

I growl and jerk a knee up, seizing a knife strapped to my calf. I arc the blade, my pinched-off yell thundering between my ears.

He catches my wrist and squeezes . Volt crackles along his armored knuckles, and my cry gutters into blinding agony. He twists and my forearm releases a sickening crunch.

My hand goes slack.

I bite down on a sob, my blade tumbling from my fingers like a fucking verdict.

“Rayze!” Warrick roars.

My name. He remembers my name. Just in time to know me in death.

INSURGENT UNITS NEUTRALIZED.

Manacles lock around both wrists, my broken, mangled hands twitching. Then iron snaps around my ankles. Warrick still fights. On his knees, snarling through blood, teeth bared. Chains pin my arms. Serpents drag me toward their caged wagons.

REMAIN INDOORS FOR PROCESSING.

I can’t fight. Can’t run.

But I can scream, and motherfucker, I scream . Loud and raw and defiant—

A fist slams into my temple.