Page 79 of The Blood Queen

The High Blade marches toward me, stepping over the bodies of her fallen soldiers. More are coming, closing in; her army is not slain yet. Merely a handful of them are at my feet.

I lift my sword, arm shaking, exhaustion starting to creep over me. The air is tart with blood and the scent of death. My doing.

For Alyth.

A rabid snarl tears across the High Blade’s face. She lifts her arms, and I brace. I won’t let her control me. Not now. Not at the end.

Across the encampment, that tall stone starts to…starts to glow.

It wasn’t glowing before. The portal was dead.

White light launches out of it, but the High Blade doesn’t react. Doesn’t even turn.

My eyes drift to the scorching light, and I wince, recoiling. I have to; it’s too bright. Too much.

“Samson Calthorpe,” a voice says. A hundred voices, an eternity of them. “Not yet.”

The whiteness consumes me.

I’m gone.

20 Alyth

To the stags, I think, my heart racing as I dodge a blow from a red-haired lass with an axe. She screams in frustration, but the sound is already distant in my ears, replaced by the whistling of arrows. Without thinking, I raise my hand, calling wind from the sky to scatter them before they hit me. No sense hiding my magic now.

All I have to do is get back to the stags. I’ll grab them, then come back for Samson.

We’ll laugh about this later, the way I rode goddess-given fae stags into the heart of a Red Cap camp and swept him free of the High Blade herself before the stags magic us halfway across Scotland and into safety.

We’ll laugh.

Because we’ll both survive this.

My feet stumble, my eyes blurring.

A dagger slices through the air, and I’m not quick enough. It pierces the cloak, stabbing into my bicep, and I feel warm blood and a strange cold tingling in my fingers, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I have to get to the stags. I have to save Samson.

He’s definitely still alive. I know it. He’s alive, and I’m going to save him, and—

A wall of soldiers blocks the path I’d been running down, and I skid in the dirt, scrambling, pivoting to the left—no, there’s that woman with the axe again, grinning. Right, then. Around a tent. More arrows, more wind.

How do I get out of this den of murderers? I circle back around the tent, shouts behind me, a signal horn cutting through the night as the Red Caps block my every move. I have a magical barrier up, but it won’t fully stop their weapons.

Another wall of Red Caps, shields up, swords out. I rip a squall from the sky; it smells like salt, and maybe that’s the ocean or maybe that’s from all the blood, but I heave the wind at them, scattering the soldiers as they tumble down. Run, run, he told me to run.

But that way’s blocked again too quickly, so I scamper around a fire, crashing into barrels, my breath knocked out of me, but the roaring in my ears chanting, over and over again: Run!

I get up. When did this camp become a maze? I can’t think straight. The dagger fell out of my arm. Stupid. I should have kept it; I should have used it. I wasn’t able to grab more weapons before we fled the court. Too late now. Blood pours out, slicking between my fingers, and—

They can smell it.

There’s the woman with the axe again, her lips curled, and I know she can smell my blood; I know she wants it.

Dirt sprays behind me as I sprint desperately to the only empty spot I see.

Oh no.

I’ve been trying to escape this camp, but now I see I’ve made a big circle, not to the edge, closer to the town and the stags, but right back to where I started. There’s the High Blade’s tent, still burning, casting a golden glow over the huge white standing stone.