“Where’s her sword, if she’s really dead? She wouldn’t have gone looking for the Shade-baiter if she didn’t have her sword and her—”
“She’s dead, I assure you. She made a nice meal for my hungry Shades,” a harsh voice says, causing us to whirl toward the sound. “As will you both. Very soon.”
XXVI
Even with his tall form hidden beneath a handsome cobalt cloak, his face obscured and his eyes shadowed by a painted silver mask, I’d recognize him anywhere thanks to his gravelly voice. Vane, the powerful rogue necromancer, strides briskly down the shore toward us.
I draw my sword and step in front of Meredy and her grizzly, the necromancer’s words cutting into me like a dagger to the stomach, laying my insides open. Cymbre’s dead. And all her stories, her hopes, her loves, her wisdom have died with her.
Lysander growls, low and menacing.
Several more cloaked figures form a half-circle around us, creeping closer by the moment. If we want to flee, we’ll have to go through them. Or swim out into the lake, which is as good as a death sentence.
Vane holds a broadsword at his side. It’s so much larger than mine, I don’t know that I have a hope of matching him in strength. But I might be quicker. And perhaps smarter, too.
It isn’t until I spot the five Shades waiting in the distance, in the field at the necromancers’ backs, that my heart seizes and I don’t know how we’re going to make it out of here alive. But we have to try.
I raise my sword.
“Vane,” another of the cloaked Shade-baiters—if that’s what they are—mutters worriedly. “Don’t forget to collect the Sparrow’s pin as proof of her death.” She locks eyes with me. “He could stiff us if we don’t follow orders exactly as he gave them . . .”
“Who’s he?” I glance briefly at the woman, whose dark curly hair spills out from her hood. “Tell me, and maybe I’ll bring you to the dungeons instead of killing you.”
“Silence!” Vane raises his free hand at the female Shade-baiter like he’s about to strike her. Then he turns toward me, no doubt sensing where I’m standing. “You all kill the others. I want the satisfaction of slaying this one myself!”
He charges toward me, swinging his blade. I stop him mid-strike with mine, metal screeching against metal as I try to push him back, my shoulders burning with the effort.
“Don’t worry about the others,” Meredy says tersely from somewhere behind me. “Lysander and I will keep them busy.”
Lysander darts past me, his eyes glowing green again, charging up the beach and making the other necromancers scatter as he tries to eviscerate them with his claws.
Someone screams. A sword drops onto the sand, accompanied by a spray of blood, and I have a feeling someone’s just learned not to point a blade at a bear.
“You’re lucky he let you live this long,” Vane growls.
Something tumbles from his cloak pocket as he slashes at me. I dance away from his blade, and as my mind makes sense of the tiny object on the sand, my heart lurches. Vane might as well have stabbed me when he dropped it.
Master Cymbre’s ancient book of poems.
The one with my sticky jam fingerprints on the front page and a few of my tears in the middle. There’s a page still carefully held by the braided silk bookmark I gave Cymbre on her birthday last year.
She’s really gone.
She’s gone, and I still need her. Just like Evander.
Vane lashes out again and again, never even breaking a sweat. Without his vision, his other senses are heightened, making him more than a match for me. My forehead grows slick, my mouth cotton-dry as I jump and dodge to stay a hairsbreadth away from his blade. Each time our swords clash, my body screams with the staggering force of his blows. I can’t keep this up much longer—the realization that Master Cymbre’s gone forever has made my blocks and jabs as clumsy as a beginner’s.
There are Shades waiting beyond the shore, their skeletal bodies restless with the need to hunt, and I’m sure the only reason they aren’t charging toward us is because they’re waiting for Vane’s order. It could come at any moment.
I barely deflect his next blow, which knocks the breath out of me and shatters the vials of honey and blood on my belt. I try to scoop some of the honey into my hand, but it oozes through my fingers, and tiny shards of glass slice my skin.
“Oh, did you need those?” Vane snarls as the vials crunch.
He throws me to the ground, ramming his shoulder into my chest. I get a brief glimpse of Meredy as I go down, standing mere paces away near the water’s edge, her eyes glazed in concentration as she controls her grizzly like a puppeteer. I hope she snaps out of that daze before Vane comes for her.
Pain blossoms through my middle as I writhe on the sand, my sword lying just out of reach, everything hurting too much for my body to obey my commands to roll away. My neck is exposed, ready for Vane’s blade to come swiftly down and cleave my head from my shoulders.
He raises his sword again. I force myself to gaze into the slits of his mask, hoping I’ll make Master Cymbre proud by witnessing my own death. By not letting Vane win entirely, because I’m not afraid. It’s exactly what Cymbre must have done earlier, on this very spot. I won’t disappoint her.
Fury sings through my veins as I greet my coming death.
His sword slices through the air but swings wide as it flies out of his hand. Finally, I manage to draw a shuddering breath that clears my head a little. But the pain in my chest is still white-hot as I roll across the sand to dodge the errant blade.
Vane crashes to the ground beside me, a dagger sticking out from between his ribs. That explains his poor aim with the sword.
Running over to admire her handiwork, Meredy gives a satisfied nod. “Finish him, Odessa,” she growls, looking past me and raising an arm. I follow her gaze in time to see Lysander raise that same arm, his claws slashing the face of an already-wounded man.
Beside me, Vane groans, drawing my attention.
“I think your dagger might’ve done the job,” I tell Meredy, but she’s not listening, once again focused on fighting through Lysander.
Still breathing hard, I wrap my bloody, sticky hand around the hilt of the dagger in Vane’s ribs and shove it in a little deeper. My stomach does a flip as his scream fills my ears, but I hold on tight to the blade in case he’s less injured than he’s letting on.
“Silly girl,” he coughs. Blood flecks the narrow mouth opening of his mask, like it flecked my lips the day Evander died and I nearly lost my life. “I would’ve made quick work of you before the Shades cleaned up your remains. Now you’ll have to feel their every bite.”
I glance toward the horizon. Sure enough, the Shades are opening their cavernous mouths and scraping their bony fingers against the hard ground—impatient to come for us when their master gives the order.