Page 88 of The Prince's Fealty

As sweat trickled down his back, Tor acknowledged he should have checked his avatar before, but it hadn’t occurred to him. He didn’t know if five thousand people was enough.Did Var have an avatar that would fill this whole room because he had the Fealty of every ruler? Not a helpful thought at this point.

Nostex’s eyes gleamed with a maniacal light, no humanity in them. He really planned to kill Tor’s whole family and his own daughter and granddaughter to try to seize power, as if he didn’t have enough already.

Tor thought he must have been a phenomenal fighter when he was younger. He wasn’t quite as fast on his feet as Tor was, but the sheer power behind his blows was a serious problem, and his avatar had a huge reach.

If Tor hadn’t had Stronex with him, he would have been in serious trouble, but it was still difficult. Nostex thought he was on the cusp of bringing a decades-long plan to fruition, and the glittering hatred that he shot Tor’s way was disconcerting in its ferocity.

Without warning, the shields around Fernila, Cala, and Ada disappeared, and magic surged through Tor. Not giving himself time to think, Tor threw up his own shields, protecting his family once more. These shields gleamed pure white and Nostex’s eyes flew to Tor’s.

Tor made himself smile at the man. “Have to have a few tricks up my sleeve. After all, I do have the Fealty of the entirety of the United Realms at my fingertips.”

Nostex let out a snarl of rage and came at Tor.

“Not mine! You don’t have my Fealty, you peace-loving fool!”

Tor was driven back by the savage strikes, but Stronex managed to intervene again, his Avatar crashing into Nostex’s and distracting it, sending the two avatars off into battle so Tor could square up against Nostex once again.

Had Nostex renounced his Fealty to Var? Goddess, what sort of a toll would that have taken?

Tor gritted his teeth. “I don’t need your Fealty to defeat you. I’ll do it just like my mother did.”

Face twisted into a rictus of fury, Nostex attacked Tor again, savage blows that sent pain ricocheting up his body.

Did Tor know how to piss someone off, or what?

He fought back with every trick he had, unleashing more magic than he ever had before, because he was normally up against an opponent who was magically weaker than he was—or he’d been playing with his brother. Even when they’d battled hard practicing with the guards, Tor knew now that he hadn’t been putting everything he had into those fights. He had the Fealty now, but he’d never felt like he was fighting for his very lifethe way he was now. (Unless it was the landslide. Fighting to keep everyone safe from the landslide had had similar dire consequences, but fighting nature wasn’t the same as fighting someone who hated you with burning ferocity and was determined to kill you and everyone you loved.)

His arms ached, and he was sure he was bruised from head to toe. Mantling his skin with this much of his magic was close to the strength of a shield, but the magic didn’t entirely deflect the force of all the blows that slipped past his guard. None had been fatal or broken skin yet, but they still hurt.

Tor felt like he was getting firsthand experience of what it must have been like to fight in the war, and he had to say, he didn’t like it. Rulers were meant to be protecting their people and the land, not wielding their magic like a weapon.

Pel really was right that their society put way too much emphasis on Extraordinary magic.

Would Nostex would run out of magic eventually? He’d been attacking Var’s shields when they arrived. Wouldn’t he need to pause and replenish at some point? Was he fueled purely by spite?

He had the advantage in that he wanted everyone in this room to die, and so he didn’t have to take care to protect anyone the way that Tor and Stronex did, always trying to make sure everyone else stayed safe.

Really, that was always going to be Tor’s weakness—and likely Var’s, too. Nostex finally figured that out, going after Beluna. Tor knew she was absolutely no match for the magic-powered force of Nostex’s blows, so he lunged after the man—and failed to take note of what Nostex’s avatar was doing.

It crashed into him with the force of a collapsing building, sending him flying into the wall, his sword falling from his temporarily nerveless grasp.

Head ringing, Tor looked up at the enraged, triumphant man bearing down on him, sword raised for a killing blow.

Chapter Nineteen

Varex

It was impossible to track time. Var had no idea how long he’d been trapped underwater in his shield, desperately trying to maintain it against the force of the water and the attacks against it, plus the shields surrounding his wife, daughter, and sister.

Itfeltlike an eternity, though he was aware it wasn’t likely as long as he imagined, surrounded by water that was lit only by his shield and the unrelenting attacks coming from above.

The experiments that he and Tor had conducted when they were children—before their incensed mother had made it clear in no uncertain terms that they wereneverto shield themselves underwater again—had proved that they didn’t seem to run out of air, nor did they seem to grow tired or hungry as quickly as they would outside of their shield. (He’d long since sat down at the bottom of his shield, because there was no one to see him standing tall and brave.)

It wasn’t terriblyinteresting, being trapped in a shield, though, and so he and Tor hadn’t experimented with it as much as they could have as teens, though they’d tried afew things. They’d never managed to keep a shield up around one another for more than a day, because when they fell asleep, the shield had fallen. Var had once managed to keep a shield up around himself in their bedroom for just over two days, while Tor had run around pretending to be both of them so they wouldn’t get caught, but it really had been boring, so they’d abandoned the experiment. It had certainly never occurred to Var that it might one day have life and death importance.

Quite simply, he didn’t know how long he could keep this up. Nostex’s revoking of his Fealty had left Var reeling and in pain, his magic dangerously unbalanced by the chunk that had been ripped out without warning. The constant blows that hit all his shields shuddered through him, a terrible external pressure that was also a resounding ache deep inside him, slowly building and building.

The exhaustion that was creeping up on Var wasn’t a need to sleep. It was a product of the unrelenting call upon his magic. He might not know how much time had passed, but he knew with certainty that he’d never used his magic without pause for this long. He and Tor might have tried all sorts of magic as children, but they’d alsobeen children. They’d gotten bored and stopped for food and hidden from their tutors. Var couldn’t imagine Tor sitting still long enough to be trapped like this.