Page 77 of Royal Hunt
I’d made a vow the night Ellis’s family was murdered. I’d vowed to protect him at all costs. This was simply part of it. My hand hovered over it, hesitating.
“Eve! What are you doing?”
I drew my hand back as Ellis pushed next to me, his eyes dark with rage. “Were you going to release them? What’s wrong with you?”
“She’s the only one who will listen, you stupid boy!” Cassus roared back, his once pristine, straight black hair now tangled and dull. “If the connection is completely severed, this place will become a wasteland just like it was when we first built the connection! This mass of land was nothing but ashes when we came, and so it will return should we never come back!”
He was too angry to be lying, too passionate.
“Fae scum!”
I whirled around as a man brought his sword down toward me in a flashing arc. I ducked, and the sword cut the chains holding the cage door closed.
Ellis was there the next moment to defend me, but so were five more men. Ellis couldn’t possibly parry all of them at once. Someone was going to get through his guard. I bent down and grabbed the dead man’s sword, trying to hold it like I was supposed to and not panic. Sweat dripped down Ellis’s eyes as he fought, his movements sluggish and weak. He was going to fall because he’d given whatever strength he’d had to me! It wasn’t right!
I screamed like a banshee and charged the three men left, tearing a large gash on one man’s sword arm and putting him out of the fight. I spun and jabbed forward, and the second man stumbled and fell in his efforts to avoid the point of my sword. Vindicated, Ellis and I tag teamed the last man, knocking him out and kicking his sword away.
Ellis stumbled against me, going limp as he panted and tried to catch his breath. His face was pale, with every vein showing through his translucent skin.
At least we’d won!
Laughter bubbled up in my chest but died quickly. My short-lived euphoria sputtered into ash as a man neither of us had spotted shot up from the shadows, kicking my blade away and stabbing down at Ellis with a dagger.
“Long live the king!” he taunted, blade flashing.
Time slowed to crawl and I saw every movement. I saw the way victory gleamed in the man’s eyes as he moved to murder a tyrant and the agent of his people suffering. I saw the resignation in Ellis’s eyes and the surrender—finally the struggle would be over, wouldn’t it? Something else flashed briefly at me: regret.
No. Ellis had suffered enough, and I had plenty of piss and vinegar left in me for the both of us. With one arm grabbing onto Ellis’s forearm and holding tight, I put my body in between the would-be assassin and Ellis, raising my arm as a pathetic attempt at a shield.
Ellis screamed and I closed my eyes. White light erupted from behind my eyelids, but no pain or kiss of steel against my flesh followed. Everything went quiet, then an explosion rocked our world.
I opened my eyes to find dazzling white light all around us in a large dome. Viana skidded in next to us, covered in blood and dragging a crying man with her.
“Don’t object. I don’t have time and we need you.”
It took me a moment to realize she was talking to Ellis and not me. Ellis’s mouth worked angrily, but Viana fisted her hand in his tunic and kept her other hand clawed into the crying man’s arm.
The man’s cries grew weak as color returned to Ellis’s cheeks, and in horror I realized exactly what was happening.
“Nessian is holding a temporary shield over the castle. It’s enough to blow back the others, but it won’t keep them. We have to evacuate.”
Viana let go of the man, who slumped to the ground and didn’t move. I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t.
Ellis sat up, his face flushed and the hollows and pits on his face and body filled out. He looked healthier than I’d ever seen him. “I hate you,” he spat at Viana, refusing to look at her.
Viana spit at his feet. “You whisper those same sweet nothings in her ear? Or do you only get this hot and bothered for me?”
My hands shook, and I wasn’t sure why. I turned to Ellis, who was staring at the ground and clenching his fists over and over again.
Viana’s gaze snapped up to the cage. “Where are the fae?”
The three of us stared, our argument forgotten as we stared at the empty bars. The fae were gone.
“Fuck, fuck,fuck,” Viana hissed.
Together we ran up to the edge of the wall. Nessian stood in a defensive stance, able to keep his shield up over the castle and the rebels out, but at a clear price from using so much magick. His hair hung limply around his shoulders and his leg muscles trembled in exertion as he was stuck standing on the wall, forced to hold his position. The triplets hustled up the stairs after us, who knows where they’d been fighting, eyes large as they took in the sheer amount of magick radiating from Nessian. Cassus’s warnings about the heirs burning themselves out rang in my ears. The hungry masses outside the shield taunted him, sure he would fall soon.
“He can’t hold that shield forever!”
