“Don’t you see it?” She saw it go black, saw the branches coil and begin to slither. “It’s swallowing the light.”
She threw up a hand and, as she swayed, as Keegan caught her, she stood on the other side with the black castle looming.
“So valiant.” Odran laughed. “The key, they say, but not just for them. Your father’s blood closed it. And yours opens it. Blood on your hands.”
He swiped the blade of a knife over her outstretched palm.
She held it up as Keegan steadied her, showed him the blood.
“He’s coming.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The tree bled. Black streams of blood sizzled down its trunk and carved through to smoke. As the smoke, fetid with sulfur, eked out, Keegan raised his sword.
He turned to the elf beside him. “Go.”
She blurred away while, dazed, Breen stared at her bloody hand.
Marg gripped it, and that sudden fresh shock of pain brought Breen back. “Fight. He won’t take you, he won’t have you, but you have to fight.”
Dark drove out behind the smoke. As the cracks lengthened, claws gripped the edges, pulling them wider. A head pushed through, black eyes rolling, long teeth snapping. Keegan severed it, but more cracks opened, breaking the rough bark like a shattered mirror.
The dark pouring out sucked at the light.
With a long sword, Sedric impaled a demon dog as it leaped through, and even as its body writhed on the ground, more came. On a feral snarl Bollocks charged. Breen saw him latch on to the throat of a demon before they rolled away, lost in the smoke.
She threw out power, more from instinct than purpose as the light died to dusk, and they came and came.
So many, too many, crawling, clawing, leaping through the widening portal.
As she stood frozen, Phelin shoved her away from the diamond-point antlers of a black stag. “Defend,” he told her as he destroyed it. “Yourself and all.”
He took wing, shooting up to send a dark faerie plummeting to the ground. When it landed at her feet, Breen stumbled back. Bleeding, one wing gone, it gained its feet to come at her.
Marg drenched it in flames.
“Fight!” she snapped, then turned to slash her short sword at an oncoming elf.
But she could barely see Keegan, splashed with blood, battling with sword and magicks as more flooded through the portal, and his mother, fighting back-to-back with him.
Then Bollocks ran to her through the smoke, his muzzle bloodied, his eyes fierce and feral.
And he felt, she felt.
Fight. Defend. Destroy.
When he leaped at the demon charging her, putting himself between her and the sword, rage replaced fear.
Breen enflamed the sword and the demon with it.
As the smoke thickened, it seemed she fought alone, furious and desperate, enraged and terrified. Surrounded by enemies, by shrieks and screams, all but smothered by the stench of smoke and death, she hurled everything she had.
Fight. Defend. Destroy.
She turned a scrabbling gargoyle to dust with her wand, slapped burning power at a demon with wings like a bat so it screamed and burned.
It was nothing like watching a battle in the fire, nothing like fighting wraiths on the training field. She was no observer here, and the consequences would be more than bumps and bruises.
She fought for survival, for the world of her birth and all beyond it. She fought, even knowing they were too vastly outnumbered to win.
Then in a rush, others came to fight with her. Led by the swift elves, followed by faeries and riders, more Wise spinning light through the smoke, they charged into the forest.
Through the terrible noise of war, she heard Keegan’s shouted orders.
Arrows whizzed by her, and though two of the enemy drove her back, attacking with power, with fang, her training held. A vicious swipe of called wind shot them both away from her. When she stumbled over a body, she blocked out the horror and took the sword from the dead hand.
Beside her, a tree exploded, a flaming red bomb that sent shrapnel flying. A limb, sharp as a spear, impaled the wizard who’d ignited it, and impaled him, writhing, to the ground.
Bollocks streaked up to her, snagged a gargoyle in his teeth, and shook it like a rag doll. He heaved it aside, took on another as she cleaved the third in two with the sword.
Through the haze, Loren fought his way to her. Soot smeared his hair, his face, and blood—from his own wounds and from others— stained his doublet.
“We’re to fall back,” he shouted. “I’ll get you safely away.”
“I have to fight.” Fight, defend, destroy sounded like a drumbeat in her head.
“And you’ll fight. But some have broken through the line to the east and the castle. Keegan wants … Shana, don’t!”
He shoved Breen back as Shana broke out of a tree and struck out with a knife. Its jeweled hilt glinted in the dim light as she drove it into Loren.
And laughed. “Oops, missed! You got in my way.”
He said only, “Shana.”
As he fell, as his sword clattered to the ground, he took Breen down with him. The hard fall cost Breen an instant, only an instant. But when she gathered herself to lash out, Shana blurred away.
Breen shoved up to her knees, pressed a hand on the wound and the blood spreading over Loren’s chest.
“I can help.”
But he gripped her wrist. “Poisoned, dark magicks. Too late.” A bloody froth foamed between his lips, and all she read in his eyes was sorrow. “I loved her, but I couldn’t save her.”
He died on the edge of the forest where the dark and the light clashed.
She wanted to weep, just weep and weep, but she made herself get up and push through to the light.
The castle didn’t burn, nor did the bridges, but the battle raged here, too. She lifted the sword, drew her power up. Whatever it took, she’d give.
Then whirled back when she felt the change in the air.
Yseult stood, her two-headed snakes coiled around her waist like a belt. Instinctively, Breen flung out light. Yseult met it with dark, so the opposing powers slapped, shot sparks, then merged into smoke.
Fog, silent, stealthy, crawled over the ground toward Breen. Heart pounding—but not with fear, no, not with fear this time—Breen burned it away.
“You used that trick before. It won’t work anymore.”
“Learned a few things, have you now?” Tossing her hair, Yseult began to circle. “And you think it’s enough? That you’re enough? You were created by Odran for Odran. That is your destiny.”
“No.” Eyes on Yseult, Breen reached deep for power. The sounds of the battle smothered into silence, and they stood alone. That, she knew, was Yseult’s illusion. “My destiny is to stop him. But I’ll start with you.”
“Such confidence! Such spirit.” Yseult flicked out. Breen felt the sting, like the bite of an angry wasp, on her cheek, but continued to reach. And wait.
“Why don’t you show me what you think you have? You’ve never been enough, and won’t be no matter what they tell you in their pitiful attempts to use you.”
Once again, Breen burned away the fog. “Then why do you keep trying to drug me?”
“Only to make it less painful for you, my sweet. I promised Marg I would lessen your pain right before I killed her. It’s all she asked of me.”
Her world wobbled. “You’re lying.”
“She fought bravely, but in her worry for you, not well. Nor did the one she took after Odran to share her cold and righteous bed.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Sure and you do. A cat’s a sly thing, and it’s said has nine lives. Well, this one used his last today. Gone now, they are, and the dogs feast on what’s left of your taoiseach. All dead and dying because of you. Take my hand now, and come with me, and Odran may spare the rest.”