“One of my people is injured,” the creature told me. “Will you let us help him?”
The request was quiet, measured, calm. The blinding energy of a moment ago was gone, drawing back inside him. He looked like a fey, I realized.
He wasn’t one.
But he wasn’t attacking, either, and he’d drawn his power down. I hesitated, feeling strangely off-balance. He wasn’t even looking at me now, but at something behind me, near the door to the outside.
Where a fey lay on the floor, I realized, arching up in pain and screaming.
I didn’t know why. There were no wounds of consequence on this one. He seemed to be—
And then I understood, when something hit me, too, like a wave of acid.
* * *
—
It hurt—God, it hurt—like nothing I’d ever felt before. And that was saying something, I thought, staggering against the counter. Caedmon was there, grabbing me before I hit the floor, holding on while I writhed and screamed. I wasn’t usually the screaming type; I’d trained myself out of it years ago, because it doesn’t up your chances of survival if you broadcast to the enemy both the fact that you’re wounded and exactly where you are.
But this time, I couldn’t seem to stop.
And then it cut out, as abruptly as it had come, leaving me panting and bent over. And then straightening up and staring wildly about, knife in hand. But all I saw were confused-looking fey.
“Dory?” Caedmon said carefully, concern in his voice, because yeah. I was acting crazy.
With good reason, I thought, still trying to spot the attacker.
Because there was one. Something the fey had missed. Something I had missed.
“Someone’s here,” I heard myself say, and it was my voice, but lower, deadlier, almost unrecognizable. I saw a nearby guard’s eye twitch, ’cause yeah. Not bored anymore, huh?
Neither was I.
“Dory.” That was Claire, getting up from where she’d been kneeling by a fey. Soini, I thought, recognizing the baby fey, who didn’t look like he was enjoying his vacation, all of a sudden. He was white-faced and panting, and looking like I felt. For a moment, we just stared at each other.
And then Claire was touching my arm, and the cool feel of her power was swamping me, trying to soothe, to help—
“No!” I jerked back. That wasn’t the kind of help I needed.
* * *
—
I flinched, suddenly back in control, but I hadn’t been for a moment. I knew that, even though it felt like no time had passed, because there was a knife in my hand, and I was suddenly in a different position. It was disconcerting, confusing. I took control and kept it until the job was done. I didn’t slip like that; I never slipped!
My back hit the counter and I snarled, my eyes flicking around the room, trying to assess the threat. But for the first time in memory, I couldn’t do it. Not for all of the ones right in front of me, the ones I could see.
Much less the one I couldn’t.
The one that was sending waves of excruciating pain that were causing my brain to malfunction. Or to switch consciousnesses in a desperate attempt to ward it off, I realized. Flipping between me and my twin whenever one of us became overwhelmed.
Which was happening every few minutes now, and I didn’t even know what I was fighting!
“Dory—”
That was the woman called Claire, my twin’s friend. She was standing nearby, beside the fallen fey. There were several more fey behind her, well armed and outside her field of vision, but she didn’t seem to care. Perhaps she didn’t have to be careful; she was powerful, too. I could see them, the eyes behind the eyes, staring out at me, curious, wary, strange.
But not afraid.
Like I was, I suddenly realized.
And blinked at the shock of it.
I was afraid, and with cause. I could take the fey; I could possibly even take the dangerous creature staring at me from behind Claire’s eyes, should it choose to attack. I could not take the glowing one. And I could not even see the other to assess its power.
But I could feel it building. A pervasive heaviness in the air, an electric frisson up my spine, a metallic taste in my mouth—not like blood, but like I was biting onto a sheet of metal, chewing on foil. It made my teeth hurt and my brain ache and it seemed to be coming from everywhere, all directions at once.
I’d never felt anything like it.
I realized that there was a sound issuing from my lips, and it was unfamiliar, too. Pained, fearful, dangerous. Like an animal that knows it is beaten, but will fight to the death anyway. We might die, but it would be with our teeth buried in someone’s throat!
And then the attack increased, and I screamed, screamed as I never had, my brain feeling like it would explode in my head.
* * *
—
“What is happening?” Claire screamed, although I could barely hear her. Because other people were screaming, too: Soini, on the floor, convulsing like his spine would break, and someone else—
I abruptly realized it was me.
I cut it off, breathing heavily, and mentally slapped myself.
Get a grip!
“Dory?” That was Caedmon, while Claire stared at me, her eyes wide. And then she snapped orders at the fey, who rushed to help hold Soini while she forced some black, horrible-smelling draught down his throat.
It must have tasted as bad as it smelled, because he fought it, but she won. And it seemed to do him good. It knocked him out, almost instantly, and I watched the long body relax into sleep.
“I have more,” she told me, looking up, but I shook my head.
“Dory. Who is here?” Caedmon asked, his hand on his sword hilt.
“I don’t know.” I sounded hoarse, probably from all the screaming. I shook myself and started moving around the room, searching for some hint, some glimpse. Which would have been easier if I knew what I was looking for.
And if the static would stop and let me think!
The static.
“This way.” I still didn’t know what was going on, but I knew that every time I got closer to the door to the hall, even by a single step, the static grew worse. Whatever this was, it didn’t want me out there. And that meant—
And then I was running, slamming through the door, my newly healed ankle throbbing, my heart pounding. Because I’d held the stairs, somehow, against every advance, but there was no one on them now. Just pockmarked holes trying to heal, all other signs of the battle scoured clean, even the usual layer of dust still gone. Leaving an open path, straight up to—
I hit the stairs, practically flying, and was knocked back by a wave of pain so breathtaking it was like a physical blow. And the annoying static in front of my eyes was suddenly a blizzard. It would have stopped me, all on its own, except that I knew this place so well I could have navigated it blind.
Which I almost was by the time we reached the second floor, where Olga’s snores—and how the hell had she slept through all that?—echoed strangely in my distorted senses. They were as loud as a freight train one second, and almost silent the next. Like the corridor flickering in and out of view.
“It’s here,” I said, and it was a growl that time, full-on and feral.
“Check them!” Caedmon snapped, and I felt rather than saw guards stream by me. I heard Olga’s snores pause, and then continue, and a fey call out that they couldn’t wake her. Heard people tearing through my and Claire’s rooms, careless in their hurry. Something shattered against the floor, knocked off by an untucked elbow, but there were no warning cries.
They hadn’t found it yet.
And then someone yelled, and I sprang forward, only to be hit by an avalanche of agony, all at once. It was staggering—literally, I would have fallen if someone hadn’t grabbed me. And excruciating, leaving me writhing in that someone’s arms for a second. But only a second, because the shouts were coming from the boys’ room.