Page 58 of The Shattered King

Sten rose to his feet. Clenching his jaw along with both fists, Renn sucked in his light until he nearly turned blue in the face, and when he released, it stayed beneath his skin, leaving him only with that natural glow I’d so often noticed about him.

I’d thought it a trick of charisma or kindness, but it was so much more than that.

So much more of something I still didn’t understand.

Gods-touched.

“You need to run,” Sten said, snuffing any lingering exhilaration from Renn’s rebirth. “They will come for you. They will kill the king.”

King. I’d said as much before, but hearing it from another’s lips ...

Renn ground his teeth. “Come with us, Sten. We’ll need someone who can wield a sword.”

But Sten shook his head. Went to the space under the stairs and pulled out Renn’s sword, still in its scabbard. With both hands, presented it to Renn. Renn, who’d had five months of training with a blade at best. And me, who’d had none.

“I will stay. Hold them off, as Ard did.”

“Ard is dead,” Renn whispered.

Sten only nodded. “He knew what he was doing, and so do I.” Pounding his fist over his heart, he recited his guard oath: “My body for the crown. My blood for the Phoenix.”

Renn seemed to shrink. “Sten, please—”

“Take her and go.” Sten drew his own sword, the same he’d had at the castle, and ran up the stairs.

The screams intensified.

“You will rebuild this. You will avenge all of them.” Tears filled my eyes as I ran to the window and pulled the blanket free. Shoved my feet into my boots, grabbed my cloak, crawled into the well, and held out my hand to Renn. “But we cannot rebuild without a king.”

Sorrow flowed off him in waves, but he slid his scabbard through his belt, pulled on his coat, and took my hand. I heaved myself up onto the soggy winter ground first, followed by him.

The screaming escalated. Smoke limned the air.

Renn yanked me northward, away from the sounds and the carnage.

Exhaustion still pulled on my body from dowsing, but the urgency of the moment fueled my limbs and sped my blood.

I ran on the tips of my toes, my cloak billowing behind me as I tried to keep up with him.

He was so fast . Had he always possessed such speed?

I dared to glimpse over my shoulder, between houses. I could see just to the village square. Sestan blue flashed. Swords clamored, spilling Canseren red.

Gods help us, there were so many of them, descending on us like wasps. My heart quivered, tiring too quickly from the stress.

I heard the faintest whistle before an arrow sank into my shoulder.

I wheezed and tripped, the shock of the blow whipping back my head, the pain radiating outward into my shoulder blade, shoulder, neck. My half-heart sped double time, aching. Renn swore and dropped down beside me—

In my lumis, I scrambled to put together the pieces of a fallen merlon; the topmost pieces kept toppling over, toppling over—

In the present I struggled for air. “Pull it out,” I croaked. “Pull it out!”

Renn grimaced, holding his shoulder—the match to my wounded one—but I saw no injury through the haze of pain.

Wincing, he grabbed the shaft of the arrow right at the base; even that much jostling made me scream.

He ripped it out in one pull and gasped, teetering.

My vision swept white, the town spinning around me.

“Nym.” Renn held me up, trembling. “What . . . ? Why do I . . . ?”

Back in my lumis, I assembled the pieces with blind practice.

In reality, my wound sealed itself shut, leaving a bloody hole in my dress. I sank toward the snowy ground, so tired—

A second whistle hit my ears. I stiffened, ready for the blow—

A clump sound of wood striking flesh. I looked up to see Renn, a clean arrow in his hand, right next to his ear.

Gods above, had he caught it? How?

Gods-touched.

He seemed as confused as I. For a moment I thought he’d been injured as well, but to my relief, he remained unscathed.

He threw the arrow to the side and lifted me to my feet.

Took my hand and pulled me again, but we only made it a short distance before two Sestan dragons cut us off, their eyes locked on Renn.

On the man who matched the description of the new king.

They charged us. Renn shoved me back and drew his sword.

I screamed, ready for his head to fall, for a blade to pierce him through, but when the first soldier struck, Renn dodged it.

He slipped the second strike, too, as though the dragons swung their blades through water compared to Renn’s air.

Renn sliced his blade through the second soldier, one-handed , and cut the man clean in half, slicing through one arm and the entirety of his chest.

My ears rang with the shock of it, my head fuzzy. Even Renn stumbled back, gaping. He’d never killed a man before.

Memories of the dragon I’d killed in the castle opened, unwanted. The number three in my hands, the death lines, pulling, pulling, pulling—

The remaining dragon shouted and gripped his hilt with both hands, swinging wildly.

Renn whipped his blade up to block. I felt the sound of the clashing metal in my bones.

Renn shoved the enemy sword away hard enough that the soldier’s arms went flying up and over his head, giving Renn a perfect target to run through.

He pulled the bloody sword out and snatched my forearm, hauling me up as though I were a child.

He’d started to glow again.

“Control it, Renn!” I cried as we ran, him tugging me forward. A dull pain thumped in my heart, but he fueled my legs. Every dragon in Speth would target him if he couldn’t stop glowing.

The light around him dimmed a little, then pushed out again, untamped, barely masked by the sun.

Another troop of dragons spotted us and ran to intercept.

Cursing, Renn sheathed his sword and grabbed me, one arm under my arms, the other under my knees, and lifted me off the ground. He took off running like I wasn’t a hindrance at all. Like he hadn’t spent twenty of his twenty-one years in bed.

He swept between the last houses of the village, leapt over a ditch like a deer, then dove for some wild brush, setting me down on the other side of it. “Stay here.” He wasn’t even gasping for breath.

Gooseflesh pebbled my skin. “Renn—”

“I’ll be right back,” he promised, then bolted back into the fray fast as a horse, ripping his bloodied blade from its sheath. My heart hammered at a dizzying speed; I hunkered low, willing myself to disappear into the brush. Mud seeped into my dress and pressed between my fingers.

“ Quiet, ” Ursa urged.

“I know,” I whispered. I drew my mother’s knife, clutching it tightly in my hand, its citrine digging into my palm.

I crouched there, letting my feet tingle and then go numb, too afraid to move. Wincing at every scream, praying at every clash of metal, trying to shrink myself as small as possible, my hair soaking up half-melted snow, my nose running with cold.

Please, Renn, please come back. Please gods, spare him.

“ Just a little longer, Nym, ” Ursa said.

I shut my eyes, focusing on my breathing. On slowing my too-fast heart. So intent was I that I didn’t hear someone approaching until his arm came down like a noose around my neck.

“So much blood for no wound,” he whispered into my ear, hauling me up. Fear shot through my limbs, paralyzing me, pushing my heart to its limit. “Is there a healer on the field, or is that you?”

He spoke with a heavy Sestan accent. Winter shot through my veins.

Move, move, move! my thoughts screamed.

“You think so loudly,” he said. “Healer, yes. Oh ... oh .”

He spun me around; in my terror, I dropped my knife.

He seized a fistful of my hair, locking me in place.

He wore black, his cloak lined with Sestan blue, hood pulled up.

I could just make out short black hair with a shock of gray over each temple.

Startlingly white skin, snowlike, as though he rarely saw the sun.

A broad nose and a triangle of facial hair on his chin, pointing downward. He looked to be about fifty.

Excitement sparkled in his dark eyes, creased his brow. He tilted his head. “I remember you from the gallery.” He grinned. “She should have given you a uniform. You stood out, healer .”

My insides seemed to liquefy. Only then did my fear-torn mind orient itself.

Only then did I notice the violet cincture peeking through his coat, and the gold, not silver, bars on his collar.

I’d been farther away, before. In the gallery.

He looked different close up. More human, and yet . .. less.

I tried to wrench myself away. Succeeded, save for his grip on my hair.

He’d revealed himself a mindreader—I couldn’t let him touch me.

My heart pulsed so rapidly. If I reached my knife, could I cut my hair quickly enough to run?

If I barreled into the fray, could Renn or Sten find me before another soldier ended my life?

His other hand launched out and seized my neck. His eyes lost focus. “Ah, you’re very clever. Not all Canserens are ignorant.” A pause, eyes unfocused. “Nym Tallowax, is it?”

I panicked. Was Renn’s lumis holding, or had it given up on him like his first? He could be bleeding out in the town square while I hid in the brush—

A broad grin split the Sestan’s face. “Thank you for confirming, Nym. I was hoping you were his.”

Panic made me dizzy. Stop thinking. Stop thinking!

But it couldn’t be him . Kings never fought their own wars—

I reeled back, hair yanking from my scalp. He stepped forward.

“So you’re the one who undid all my hard work.” He rested his fist on his chin, casually stalking forward as I stumbled back. “You must be powerful indeed.”

“Wh-What?” I asked, slipping, catching myself. I swept back through the knots of my own mind.

My heart stopped. Lungs stopped. All of me, stopped.

His hard work.

Was Adoel Nicosia ... somehow responsible for Renn’s illness? Could he have been the one who shattered his lumis in the first place?

The Sestan king grinned. “Surely you know me.”

I tried to swallow and found I lacked the ability. “Nicosia,” I whispered.

He bowed. “I’d like to get to know you after I capture my quarry, Nym. I think we have much to discuss.”

He leapt at me like a serpent, snatching my wrist. I twisted, ready to break my own arm to free myself from his grip, but I felt magic punch into the core of my being, like a great needle threading through my very spirit.

And suddenly I couldn’t run anywhere. I writhed, I pulled, but my body would not move away from Adoel Nicosia, only toward him, as though he’d put me on a three-foot leash.

Gods above.

“Y-You’re a soulbinder,” I whispered. But how? He was a mindreader ... how could he possibly be both ?

He would read my thoughts. He would dive deep until he saw my connection to Renn. Saw the “queen” and my patchwork heart, heard the way he said I love you .

He would use me to hurt him.

No.

I dropped to my knees in the snow, covered my head with my arms, making myself dense and heavy—as immovable as possible.

Then I shifted into my own lumis, and from my palms I sucked magic from the ether, from Ursa, from the earth, from the gods themselves, forming new blocks, growing new walls, making them as dense and hard as I was, summoning them into stone, iron, steel.

I shoved magic into my lumis even as it fed off my own strength, erecting a dome over my crenellations, blocking access to my brain and head, forbidding anything from touching me, anything from reading me.

The black that rimmed my vision was not that of death, but it might as well have been. I’d sacrificed the last of my energy, my consciousness, to erect that wall.

“ Nym, wake . . . ”

But Ursa fell silent, too.

Strength fled my limbs; the black closed in. I was nothing more than a cloth doll when Adoel Nicosia patted my cheeks, picked me up, and clicked his tongue in annoyance. “We shall see, my little pet. We shall see.”

I didn’t even have the strength to scream.