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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

IN WHICH THINGS TAKE A TURN FOR THE WORSE

It was an impressively diverse group of people, as far as angry mobs went.

Well, how about that? I’d finally learned to look on the bright side. Shame that it was moments before we all died violent deaths on a remote island.

It also struck me how organized the group of villagers was. There were no overzealous individuals growing restless, shouting over one another, or jostling for position. I could almost see the benefit of mind control. It made for an intimidating sight, if nothing else.

“I’m done trying to do things the right way and be nice about it,” Savreen declared, her voice wobbling.

She brandished her rapier, and a handful of her captives copied the movement with their own equipment, as though she was too distressed to worry about who was doing what.

“This was supposed to be paradise. Safety. Our future.” Her face scrunched as tears rolled down her cheeks, and the next words were sobbed. “You’ve ruined everything.”

“ We ruined—!” Luthri barely cut off his protest in time.

He wasn’t stupid; he also recognized there was a chance to deescalate the situation. Where Rugaveld was set in his ways, Savreen was young and emotional. She might be open to convincing, or at least negotiating with. Either way, we’d have to tread carefully.

I asked for space with a hand on Hohem’s arm.

As the twins shifted so that I could move up, I addressed the young woman.

“Savreen, I’m sorry, but this isn’t right.

I understand where you’re coming from, but these people want the same things.

They have their own families who love them and their own hopes and dreams to fulfill. You should let them go.”

Savreen’s head jerked from side to side. “I gave them peace,” she hissed. “We did that. Dad and I rescued them from the demands Narille and her family put upon them.”

Using her sword, she pointed to the heiress standing frozen by the door.

“You don’t know what it was like here before. People worked themselves to the bone and barely scraped by, only for her ilk to come in and demand tribute! What sort of life is that?”

Her sword lowered as she admitted, “At first, I thought Narille was a mistake. Taking someone important attracts attention. But when people kept coming for her, my dad saw an opportunity. We needed people to build all this, to keep it running, and she made the perfect bait. You would have been taken care of—clothed, fed, housed. Comfortable.”

It’s as if she’s playing with dolls and not people .

My shoulders shook from the sudden chill.

Keeping my voice level, I tried again to reason with her.

“Some people live hard lives, but it doesn’t mean they’re unhappy.

Did you ask them what they thought of your plans?

In my experience, people appreciate being able to make their own choices.

Sure, mistakes come with the territory. It may not be perfection, but that’s a good life for most of us. ”

Savreen’s head shook faster. A section of black hair split from the woven crown and flopped against the side of her face, framing wide, crazed eyes.

“It’s not a good life if you’re only working to further someone else’s agenda, having to look over your shoulder at all times or risk losing everything you’ve built. It’s not right. No one wants that.”

“You leave if that doesn’t work for you,” I argued. “Take freedom with your own hands. Build the life you want for yourself, one where your wins are entirely yours to celebrate. Yes, it will be hard, but you can’t take advantage of other people to make that happen.”

My appeal fell on deaf ears. Savreen wasn’t listening anymore, muttering her next words to herself as if too caught up in her own head. “This way, there’s no pain, no anger, and no sadness. That’s how it should have been, anyway. Without Dad… I don’t know how I’m going to do this by myself.”

Her free hand balled into a fist.

“But I’ll figure it out. You need to be gone.”

The group rushed us at once. My hands came up instinctually, though there was little flesh and blood could do against wood and metal carried with the intent to kill.

The twins stepped in front of me, forcing me back, and met the villagers head-on.

The world dissolved into chaos—grunts of effort, flashes of magic, cries of pain, and bodies crowding together into one suffocating mass.

A blade clanged against stone as Luthri fended off Narille behind me.

“Nonlethal force!” I hollered, hoping the twins could hear me over the din.

It would be helpful to be a beast right now, but trying to summon mana brought on sharp jolts of bone-deep pain, like a stitch in the side but throughout my entire body.

I managed enough to toughen my skin and turn my nails into weapons.

Luthri disarmed Narille in the time it took me to fight through the discomfort.

He’d melted and rehardened a section of ground to lock her feet in the cobblestones, making it impossible for her to do anything but swipe ineffectively at him.

Evading her wild swings, he bent to snatch up her sword just in time to dodge another villager and knock him out with a well-placed strike to the head .

He came to a sliding stop at my side. “Can you do another change? Like before?”

As much as I hated to admit it… “I don’t think so. That took a lot out of me.”

Lu stepped forward to disrupt a turtle person’s charge, neatly knocked the club from its hand, and sent it flying.

The villagers’ movements were not as fluid as they should have been.

Whether Savreen was an inexperienced fighter or it simply became too much to coordinate a hundred people attacking at once, our opponents were sloppy. Good.

“No problem.” Luthri paused to assure me. “We’ll figure something else out. I’ll do my best to keep them away from you. If someone makes it past, do what you need to do.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” I muttered. He passed me Narille’s sword. I might not know what I was doing with a weapon like that, but I wasn’t about to turn it down. Being armed put me in a much better position. If we got out of this alive, I’d have to work on my stamina.

Having something to look forward to filled me with purpose.

Luthri and I faced the onslaught side by side, determined to defend ourselves while doing as little damage to the people under Savreen’s control as possible.

Unfortunately, they were hellbent on making that hard for us.

Lu took down two more stragglers before a group of people broke off from the swarm, diverting their attention from the twins to what they saw as sitting ducks: us.

I would have loved to sit back and watch Luthri fight, but I didn’t have the opportunity, as one assailant dodged his attempt to corral them right away.

The young woman went for my legs. She appeared unarmed, so I dropped the sword to counter her tackle.

My arms locked around her torso, and I threw my weight backward, twisting to pull her to the ground.

Dazed from the takedown, she froze. It gave me the opening I needed for a rear naked choke.

When she went limp, I gave it another second before letting her fall from my arms.

Running my hands over cramping muscles as I caught my breath, I checked in with Luthri.

The Peri man was a blur of magic, fists, and talons.

He would use a burst of air or light to push an aggressor aside or create an opening for himself, then deliver a stunning blow or lock them to the nearest structure to incapacitate them.

He’d taken down three—make that four—in the time it took me to face one, and he’d hardly broken a sweat.

Given a brief respite, I caught his attention and exaggerated a stretch.

“Whew,” I exclaimed. “You know, this isn’t bad at all. To think I was worried.”

Luthri’s lips curved. “Oh, you think so?”

“Yeah. I’m tempted to ask for a real challenge.”

“Well, you’re a formidable adversary.”

“I’m glad you agree.”

I retrieved the sword, and we squared off against the next wave.

With every opponent, we drifted closer to where Hohem and Vyrain fought their way to Savreen.

She certainly wasn’t going easy on us. At one point, I twisted my ankle trying not to impale a villager in the gut.

Lu attracted their focus, giving me a moment to recover, and an arrow narrowly missed his neck.

I whirled around, searching for the hidden archer.

There! The Santouri —a beast of a woman by all accounts, even before the horse parts—kept to the sidelines, waiting for a break in the action to set loose her deadly projectiles.

What could I do here? Could one of the others afford to confront her if I covered for them?

First, I needed to take stock of the situation.

Where did we stand?

Our efforts thinned the crowd, but we weren’t untouched.

Hohem was missing part of an ear and had a gash across one brow, forcing him to keep his eye closed.

The combination turned his blond hair pink with blood.

Vyrain limped, and the collar of his shirt gaped to reveal the beginnings of a nasty bruise along one side of his chest. He cradled one arm close to his torso.

Luthri wasn’t faring much better. More than one shallow cut decorated his forearms from aggressors who’d gotten too close. His reaction time had slowed, and he no longer used bursts of magic recklessly. No doubt he also felt the ache of magical depletion.

Even with exhaustion weighing down my body, I was in the best shape out of the four of us.

That being said, I couldn’t tell what or how much pain to attribute to a new injury.

The nick in my side from Rugaveld’s dagger had long since stopped bleeding.

My ears rang, my jaw throbbed, and my ankle twinged, but that was all inconsequential. I’d make do.