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Patience, Bedesh said.
The sleeve exposed on her forearms tore open, a blade managed to scrape over her arm.Slice. Here she was, losing the battle started in their name and all the gods could say was patience? She screamed the word inside her thoughts.Patience!
Holy fire sliced through a man’s arm.Patience!
Someone’s throat.Patience!
One arc of her sword and she cut a clean diagonal line through a man’s skull, revealing oozing red tissue and sharp white bone.Patience!
Bodies fell over and over and over only to be replaced again and again and again. Ace received wounds, though most healed relatively quickly before a new one was given. Humans were flooding the street. There was victory in their shouts but King Osiris did not call back his men nor did they lay down their weapons.
With the breath she could never catch, Ace’s lungs burned. But she joined the Fae and released her own angry cry. She let every ounce of hurt she’d ever had fill her lungs and leave her. She hoped her sisters heard her rage. She wanted to give her parents another look. She couldn’t because if she did she would stop and beg to be held in her mother’s arms once again and to receive a gentle kiss on her forehead from her father. Whatever Idalia had done, she had made them into the same sort of abomination that Ace believed she was.
Rehan was a streak of glowing blades. His hair was matted to his face on one side, sticky and red. His eyes glowed just as the weapons he held did. As he spun and she saw his face, Ace swore that he was smiling. But then his features were lost and she couldn’t be certain of what she saw.
Strangers, Fae beasts who at one point would have caused her immense unease, now ran with her into the chaos. They slipped into Rehan’s wake as he forged through the troops. He moved on the battlefield like a god more graceful and fluid than any other being—even the king himself, who had lived for a very long time.
They collided with a new wave of soldiers and anotherboomof magic flung the Fae. A soldier with more broken bones than what might be considered possible fell from the sky. Ace registered his weight as he crashed into her before registering the pain. There was a pop and a crack somewhere in her ankle and down into her foot as she went down, sandwiched between two dead bodies. She ground her teeth together, her sword collapsing as she sucked in a breath and shoved the body away.
Lighting quick, agony spiked up her leg as a second crack filled the air and her foot twitched back into place.
There isn’t that much better?Fareesh exclaimed. There wasn’t time for a response as the queens’ troops, who had emerged from their left, had finally made it through the Fae at their side, and now Ace, Rehan, Shelby, the king, and their own small sector of men were surrounded.
King Osiris cursed. “We aren’t going to win this.”
Rehan shrugged and dragged his hand over his forehead pushing away the crimson-stained strands of hair. “I wouldn’t count us out just yet.”
Shelby staggered to Ace’s side, throwing up his palm. The line of humans charging forward halted. Orange flames grew into a flickering wall. Muscles corded in Shelby’s jaw and his whole body shook with the effort.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said to Ace who shook her head.
“No, if today is the day that I die then so be it. I’m either completing this mission given to me by the gods and saving the warlocks or I die on this battlefield.”
“Like hell you are!” Shelby’s wall fell and he hissed, thrusting his palm back up to send men running around them and into the waiting blades of others. “I will fly you out of here; you are not dying today.”
“Haven’t you learned not to try and tell me what to do?” Ace laughed but a fresh batch of tears sprung to her eyes. With two quick steps she was at his side, her hand fisting into his shirt and dragging his height down to her level. “I’ve already cheated death once. There is a grave with my name on it.”
She pressed a kiss to his lips, fast, desperate, and filled with everything they could never be. She let him go, taking her blade in both hands. The hilt was hot against her palms and her knuckles were white as she gripped it. She refused to let herself think as she dodged a coming sword.
There was hardly a place to step that didn’t have a body. They fought over human and Fae alike. The Fae that had managed to stay with their king and the small band of misfits had dwindled to perhaps only twenty. The time they had was gone. King Osiris bellowed something in the ancient tongue she didn’t understand.
Ace began to ready herself for death. She said her prayers and wished with all her might that Shelby might somehow survive this. A blinding wave of blue light flashed over the streets of Marlux, over the battle nearly finished, and exploded against the shield Farah had created. Ace’s body tingled from the tip of her head all the way down to her toes. In her mind’s eye, that shield was crashing down and when she blinked, she watched as an arrow arched through the air and landed on the other side of the iron gate.
Ace
Fae and human alike paused on their battlefield as magic crested and washed itself upon the castle. The tall window panes rattled until a few cracked then shattered. Shards of glass rained down on the queens, small fragments clinging to their hair and gowns, larger pieces crashing at their feet.
Witches, the gods hummed together.
“Witches?” Ace screamed.
“I might have suggested to anyone I could get my hands on to join our cause while we were in Glatton.” Rehan was quite smug with himself as he launched into another fray of men, dancing with his sword as if he’d been made for it. Well…technically he was.
“I have to get in there,” Ace ground out.
“Go! I’ll watch your back!” Rehan’s voice followed her.
Ace rushed forward, Shelby suddenly at her side as she began making her way to the gates. Ducking, dodging, and with the occasional strike of her sword, she was making her way. Meanwhile, witches burned a hole in human troops that had them surrounded. Bodies collapsed into ash and cloud.
