My neck bristles.
Suddenly Princess Rasha hollers what sounds like a warning, but whatever she’s saying gets drowned out by the sound of metal wrenching and bombs falling. The Keep starts shaking and the sky blisters, and the interior of Faelen appears to explode in fire.
The first wave of ships has made it through the pass.
CHAPTER 34
THE SKY DIMS BRIEFLY, THEN THE CLOUDS ERUPT into what looks like a mirrored image of the ground. They light up and explode in orange bursts and angry heat, their thunderous noise rocking the valley.
With a flick at those clouds, I rip a lightning streak through one of the airships, taking it down before a renewed war cry rings out and the Bron soldiers rush us.
Colin snaps the stones underfoot, effectively knocking the men over before launching himself toward Breck just as Rolf and the king charge Adora. I swerve my hand to aim at her, but she’s suddenly slipped away and somehow Breck’s hands are free and the serving girl is lunging for the captain of the guard.
What the—?
She flips him in front of her, and Adora’s knife is now glinting in her fingers. Breck raises the blade to Rolf’s neck and smiles, and then it hits me: Breck’s smirk.
Breck’s smirk is toothy.
Oh good-mother-of-Faelen.
I drop my hand as my friend’s face flinches and twitches and for a moment takes on the persona of a wolf. Her body lengthens and mutates, until she looks taller and older. Sharp teeth and a flat snout sneer down at us from an ancient man’s fearsome face before she shivers and relents back into the form of Breck. Complete with those brown eyes set above freckled, rosy cheeks.
The boots of thousands of marching soldiers rise up on the wind.
The drone of the airships.
From somewhere King Odion laughs. Rich. Deep. So like his brother’s. “Well, this is an interesting twist!”
But all I can see is Breck with her bruised and disjointed face, cleaning up a pool of her own blood on my bedroom floor. A half-hidden gash on her back. Not just a gash, a clawed incision.
Adora didn’t just betray us. She’s condemned us.
Colin shakes his head and takes a step toward his sister, as if not fully comprehending.
Breck’s body gives a final, eerie shudder, causing her to drop the knife and release her grip on Rolf as her skin shimmers and tears at the seams, her flesh becoming a diaphanous wisp that dissolves into a thin pile of skin and clothes on the ground. She leaves behind a monstrous half-man, half-wolf with fur and claws and teeth as dark as the demonic atmosphere that owns this place. Draewulf.
I hold back a brokenhearted gag as black air eeks up from the stones beneath Breck’s remains and swirls like ghostly guards around the monster. Slowly, he lifts a claw and tucks a chunk of straggly hair behind a hideous, pointed ear.
And every drop of blood I own freezes to my bones.
“Noooooo!” Colin’s yell echoes out over the pass, blending into the clanging metal and falling bombs. He grabs a sword from the ground and charges the beast, lunging for its stomach.
The beast dodges with a snarling chuckle. “Didn’t you think your sister a little strange lately, boy? Or did you not care enough to notice? Too busy wanting to save the world, and yet you missed saving your own sister. So pathetic.”
A half-choked cry and Colin thrusts again, but his sword strikes air and then ground.
Draewulf’s foot comes down on the blade, snapping it at the hilt, while his other shoves up to gut Colin with those long, spindly claws. I snap down a lightning stream, causing Draewulf to lurch away, and King Sedric is there with a strike that slices the monster’s leg open.
The beast roars.
Colin scrambles away, flips over, and places both hands to the ground. A crack shreds through the courtyard and almost rips open beneath the animal.
Draewulf jumps, his grin widening as if it’s a game. “She didn’t even cry that day in the Elemental girl’s room. When she sensed what I was right before I took over. Just swore and punched me a good one. Might’ve landed it too if Adora hadn’t stopped her.”
I shut his words out. He’s sick. He’s insane. It’s not my fault what he did.
I launch three icicles that barely miss impaling the beast, and then King Sedric’s lunging in again just as something wraps around my throat.
I’m yanked back. I can’t breathe. Gagging, I kick and scratch, but whoever’s got me is bigger and stronger and my thigh is hurting like blazes.
Hands shove me to the ground and my face tastes stone and blood, and my warped fingers are being crushed by the man whose voice sounds so much like Eogan’s. “Touch another one of my ships, girl, and I’ll rip your arm from its socket.”
He flips me over.
I gasp and choke. And then spit in his face.
He slams his fist into me and I taste more blood.