Page 47 of Keldori By Daybreak

Ferrin’s flames advanced, and I concentrated as much of Ciarán’s magick as I could in my fists before letting the flames surge forward.

Fire roared and magick snapped as orange met green. Hot air rushed over us, and Orla put a protective arm over Tiernan to help him after Ciarán and Iseult.

“You lied!” Iseult struggled against Ciarán’s grip, still trying to get at Ferrin. “You’ve been lying for weeks!”

“Longer than that, dear.” Ferrin called from his side of the flames. “Go home, Cade. You’ve done your part.”

His fire flared, and heat seared across my front and blew back my hair, but I held firm as Orla, Tiernan, and Iseult disappeared down the spiraling stairwell.

Ciarán paused on the top step and threw a bottle of Skal down his throat before disappearing after the others. Fresh magick coursed through my veins, fueling my fire as well as a dull hunger I hadn’t felt in weeks.

Skal was intoxicating, but I wouldn’t let my thirst for it get the better of me, not when I needed to keep Ferrin from reaching my friends.

The fires reached a breaking point, then burst and dissipated, leaving orange and emerald sparks hanging in the air between Ferrin and me.

Cade was gone, having heeded Ferrin’s command to leave, but Ferrin would probably be more dangerous without his nephew here to get in his way.

Ferrin removed his goggles to polish the lenses on the hem of his vest, and I tensed, wondering if he was trying to lure me into a false sense of security.

“I thought Iseult was less emotional than that.” His eyes flicked up from his goggles to meet mine. “I made the same miscalculation about you once, thinking you wouldn’t let your feelings get the best of you. Where’s your real body, then? Squirreled it away somewhere close?”

He pulled his goggles back over his head and adjusted them over his eyes. I’d fought him as a Nightmare before. I’d gotten the upper hand. He was strong, sure, but even if he did manage to destroy this version of me, I would make sure it hurt.

“You know you can’t kill me,” I said. “Not permanently.”

“Perhaps I don’t want to kill you,” he said. “Not before you tell me more about this secret passage into Keldori that Orla mentioned to Cade.”

My stomach dropped. Orla had told Cade we knew of a way into Keldori that didn’t involve the Rift.

“You’re going to have better luck killing me than getting me to tell you anything.” My favorite weapons, my blades of bone, pushed out of my forearms.

“Does this version of you make you feel brave, Just-Wren?” Ferrin hissed. “I hope it does, for your sake. I know I can’t kill a Nightmare, but do you remember what can?”

Ferrin’s hands glowed green, and the dirt between us gathered and pooled. A hand extended out of the swirling dust, and a Nightmare pulled himself out of the floor, his body forming out of dirt and Magick. He stood tall and muscled but looked into the distance with that faraway look I was used to seeing on most Nightmares.

Relief unknotted my stomach. If this was the best Ferrin could do, I would be fine. I could take a Nightmare.

A second Nightmare formed next, pulling herself from the rock. She was lithe and beautiful, but she bore the same empty gaze as her comrade.

“Get out of there, Wren!” Ciarán barked in my head, but I ignored him. He must’ve not thought very highly of me if he thought I couldn’t take two Nightmares.

Ferrin put his hands in his trouser pockets and stepped back, as if finished and satisfied with the aid he’d summoned. Maybe it was a test. Or a trap. Either way, the others were still escaping, and the longer I held Ferrin’s attention here, the better of a chance they had.

I brandished my serrated bone blades ahead of me and ran to meet the first Nightmare.

His haunting gaze met mine, and for a moment, I thought maybe he was lucid because his eyes widened in fear, and his mouth drew into a horrified grimace.

Then dark smoke rolled from inside his mouth and off his skin, enveloping him liquid shadow.

I skidded to a stop, watching in horror as the Nightmare’s body contorted and grew. His limbs cracked and snapped, and his scream mingled with that of the Nightmare behind him, who also writhed in the center of her own smoky mess.

Bone pressed against the skin of their faces, and their eyes receded into deepening sockets until they were pinpricks of emerald light glowing from the depths of their skull.

Ciarán screamed in my head, but his voice was lost to the harsh, tortured cries of the two rotsbane that had just been Nightmares.

That had just been people.

People who were now dead in their beds back at home with their minds trapped forever in the hungry beasts in front of me.