AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It seems that I am late. Apologies,” he growled, placing a hand against one of the many red trees of the forest. He didn’t look away from me even as the tree turned to the color of pitch, the bark breaking and flaking away to something close to ash.
“Although, you seem to be doing fine without me. If he has a cock left after that kick I’d be surprised,” his lips pulled into a half smile that didn’t match the darkness in his voice as he turned, the tree drifting to nothing but dust on the wind as he faced my attacker, the shrouded imposter taking one wide step back.
“Oh come now, we were just going to have a little fun,” the newcomer said, taking another step toward the imposter as he unsheathed long curved swords the length of my arm. The imposter took a panicked step back.
I shuffled back as the imposter did, eyeing the newcomer warily. Something about the blue-eyed man was turning my magic into light, but there was something else about him, something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to see, not with the way he held those blades, the wicked things glinting in shades of blood and death. Something that the imposter already understood.
“Vynari,” the imposter snarled the odd word. It was beautiful somehow, spoken like a curse and a prayer. I had heard it before.
The man in my chamber, the Fae, he had said he was a Vynari, a Walker or something. This man, this Vynari or whatever he was, looked nothing like that Fae. Although, the imposter knew what he was, what a Vynari was, and he feared him.
The blue eyed man smiled as he stepped forward and promptly vanished into nothing. A moment later he appeared behind the imposter, the blades already swinging through the air.
Somehow, impossibly, the blue eyed man, the Vynari, had walked through nothing. He had moved from one place to another without so much of a blink.
What magic was that?
“A Walker,” I whispered the other word the Fae had given me.
The imposter ducked, the black cloaks shifting through the air like shadows as they countered one another in movements so fast that I couldn’t see more than a twist of inky shadows as they fought, the glint of the blade flashing between them as that Vynari sliced again, and this time the scent of blood rang through the clearing.
Someone was hit, the imposter judging by the way the grunt echoed over everything. Before I could get a look, five more figures raced into the clearing, all of them dressed like the Boy.
“By the Goddess.” I moaned, looking between them as though I could somehow decipher if any of them were the right one.
They all looked the same. They all stood the same.
But none of them stood like him.
Knowing that he wasn’t attacking me should have been a relief, except now all of the others were racing toward me, some with swords outstretched, some with hands out in impending magic.
“Elara! Move!” The Vynari shouted, fire erupting from his hands as he shoved the first imposter back, throwing him into a tree like a rag doll. A second later the ground rocked beneath my feet, the soil splitting open as a wide gaping hole spread through everything. Trees quaked, bare branches quivering as they slid into the opening maw, brush and dirt sliding in and taking two of the men with it. Their screams shook with the trees as the ground swallowed them whole. Two more men jumped over the crack in the world with flailing limbs; their hands out, that sparkling lightning, already crackling between their fingers.
“Elara!” The blue eyed Vynari shouted again as the new imposters sent more lightning right towards me.
I lifted my hands, screaming as I focused on one branch of that magic as the Boy had instructed. Fire. It dripped and rippled from my palms before a line of oozing fire shot forward to slam into the one nearest me. The attacker screamed and stumbled back, his black tunic blazing into an inferno. It was enough for him, but not for the one who was raging right behind him. I looked at the blue eyed man, panic in his face before his jaw tightened and he vanished.
One moment he was across the clearing; the next, hot hands held my bare arms, pulling me back as the sparking attack breezed by me, erupting against a tree and sending red splinters everywhere.
They flew through the air like sparks of blood, the dark slivers of scarlet growing bright as everything exploded in a blast of white and gold.
That sun I felt before had erupted from me. Heat was everywhere, it rippled over my skin, it rippled through the air around me in waves of golden light brighter than the daytime sun.
Pure light illuminated the forest as though it was day, it spread around me as the stranger stared in shock. I could only look back at him, at the light that was reflecting off every tree from every bush, turning the inky sky into an azure bruise before a sunrise. The light was beaming from his skin, peering out of his soul.
“You’re glowing.” He stated as if it was the most boring thing in the world. He wasn’t the only one who was glowing, it seemed.
The light, it was from both of us.
The Vynari pressed his lips into a hard line before pushing me behind him, all of that light traveling back down my arms and into my hands as the man’s hands slipped from my arms. His blades twisted and sliced through the air as he raced toward the last of our attackers, one of them rushing to him, while the other raced right to me.
Focusing again on the fíra magic, I pushed that rumbling power out of my skin. I lifted my hands, yelling as that pain mixed with the power that ripped from me in a wave of gold and red, light and fire twisting around one another before they slammed into the chest of the attacker and sent him back into the tree. He slid to the ground as the blades of the stranger sliced through air as the last shrouded men rushed him, the world seeming to slow as the imposter's head slid from his shoulders before dropping to the ground, what was left of the body following behind.
I could only stare, my heart that had forgotten to beat over the last few minutes catching up in a quick staccato that pounded painfully against my ribs. He had done that so easily. Quickly. He had clearly done that before, killed before. He had said he was late when he arrived, but late for what exactly?
“What…. Who… Who are you, Vynari?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay level, my chin to stay high. “Were you sent to kill me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Princess,” he snarled, everything about him dangerous as he cleaned the blades of his swords on his cloak, wiping the blood from them before resheathing them. “I am fairly certain these men were the ones sent to kill you.” He knocked his head toward what was left of the imposter, kicking him as though he was nothing more than a weed. It made my stomach turn over.
