Page 117 of Sword & Sacrifice

“—to bow your head and pretend to play nice with a bunch of barbarians?”

Silas tried to retreat toward the palace, but the soldier lunged to the left, cutting off his path. He stumbled backwards, thumping hard against the wall.

This wasn’t like the fight against Quentin, where the treasury aide was small and skinny and desperately attacking Silas with his bare hands. Griselda might sneer at the Bellacostan soldiers’ training, but this one was still skilled enough to back Silas into a corner.

“Can’t wait to tell the general I’m the one who killed the fucking king!” the soldier crowed in triumph as he plunged his sword forward.

Not eager to see what his own guts looked like, Silas flinched and squeezed his eyes shut.

A loud clang startled him into opening his eyes.

Langley’s sword had intercepted the soldier’s, knocking it away from Silas. The guard twisted his arm up and back, yanking the sword right out of the soldier’s hands. It flew through the air until it landed on the ground several feet behind them.

Unlike the soldier, Langley didn’t boast or taunt—he didn’t say anything at all as he skewered the soldier on his sword, his face totally impassive.

Silas watched blankly as the dying soldier collapsed to the ground. Just a few months ago, he might have been filled with guilt in his part leading to the man’s death. Now he only felt a vague sense of relief that he wasn’t on either end of the blade.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Langley said, pulling his sword from the corpse and wiping the blood off on the grass. “But it would be a lot easier to guard you if we went somewhere less open.”

“Someone should have warned you that I wasn’t an easy job,” Silas said, his voice surprisingly steady. Despite his words, he allowed Langley to guide him back toward the palace.

Fighting had spilled into the courtyard, though the darkening night made it difficult to see who was fighting who. Langley held his sword at the ready to fend off any other attacks, but no one else approached them.

They’d almost made it to the doors when Silas felt the strong magical tug again, warning him that Emmaline was in danger. Did Varro’s men make it inside the palace? Except the magic wasn’t pulling him toward the kitchens. Slowly, Silas turned toward the direction it wanted him to go—toward the coast.

“Emmaline, what have you gotten yourself into?” he whispered.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Green fluid splattered over Val’s grinning face, staining his teeth with the taste of death. The spider collapsed to the ground, but there was already another in its place. No matter how many he killed, there always seemed to be more. He was already ripping his axe from the latest carcass to meet the newest threat.

Heat flashed against his palms so suddenly he almost dropped the axe, afraid he’d set fire to the handle. No, not heat, he realized as he watched the gore staining the blade freeze into grimy crystals. Ice.

Valerian fought his own reflexes, gripping the axe handle tighter, and ignored the burning cold as he buried it into a spider. He pictured heat transferring from his skin to the ice until it melted and dripped away. Then growing hotter, building it into a full-fledged fire.

The fire spread from the axe to the spider and the creature writhed in desperation as it burned alive. Finally, it collapsed, revealing the figure in white standing behind it.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Alistair demanded, cold fury brimming in his ice blue eyes.

“Getting your attention,” Valerian replied, climbing over the spider’s corpse with a wet crunch.

“You can’t hurt me without destroying yourself.” Alistair gestured to the forest around them. Several trees had collapsed against each other, the webbing in their canopies keeping them connected. Others merrily burned in the distance. Before, the mindscape had isolated each fire in its own little clearing. Now, Valerian’s subconscious had finally given up on protecting him.

Val cocked his head to the side as he examined Alistair. “Then leave.”

The calm words shocked Alistair. “What?”

“If you don’t want to burn, leave.” Valerian lunged for Alistair, swinging the axe with all his might. “Get the fuck out of my head!”

Alistair flung his hand out, freezing the gore-soaked ground around them. Valerian’s boots stuck in the icy mud long enough for Alistair to dodge the attack. “Or what? You can’t burn me out without killing yourself.”

Chest heaving, Val bared his teeth in a wild grin. “If that’s what it takes.”

Flames spread from his feet, melting the ice holding him. They clung to him with every step, melting Alistair’s ice as fast as he conjured it.

“You don’t want to die,” Alistair argued, as if he could convince Valerian to choose a different course of action. “You’ve clung to life through so much hardship. Every day of childhood abuse, every mission you took to scrape together a few coins. You aren’t ready to give up yet.”

“I will not”—Valerian swiped at him with the axe. It sliced through a barrier of ice, spraying water over his face. Much less satisfying than if it had been Alistair’s blood—“live as a prisoner in my own mind!”