I would do this.
The first Adlin launched himself through the gap and slashed wildly with his claws. I sidestepped quickly and swung the blade. Its sharp tip sliced across the creature’s torso, opening him up from underarm to hip. As his blood sprayed through the air, he hit the ground, rolled back to his feet, and came at me again. At the same damn time, another Adlin came through the opening. I swung the blade at the first one, forcing him to twist in midair and fall away to avoid having his head chopped off, then grabbed a fistful of air and threw it at the other. As he was punched backward, knocking the third Adlin off its feet, I ran at the first, raised the sword high above my head, and chopped it down. The Adlin twisted away, but he wasn’t fast enough. The blade hit his skull, slicing through bone and brain as easily as butter, and swept down, cleaving him from head to stomach before the momentum of his desperate leap had his body falling away from the blade’s touch. A roar of sheer fury had me instinctively ducking. The claws that would have taken my head off instead sailed over the top of it. I swung the sword again; the side of the blade hit the Adlin’s arm and cut it clean away. Blood spurted across my face, momentarily blinding me, and the wind screamed. I threw myself sideways, hitting the ground so hard that the air was forced from my lungs. I gasped, struggling to breathe, struggling to see, and all too aware that death in the form of an Adlin’s claw would be my fate if I didn’t damn well move. I twisted around. Saw, through the blood and gore matting my eyelashes, an Adlin high in the air above me. Its companion was running through the gap and had death in his eyes. I tried to get up, to scramble away, but my strength, it seemed, had fled me just when I needed it the most.
Death might be damnably close, but it didn’t have its claws in me yet, and there was no way known I’d go down without fighting to my very last breath.
I again called on the air and flung it at the running Adlin. Pain tore through my head, making my eyes water and momentarily blurring my vision. Which was probably a good thing because it meant I couldn’t see the face of the Adlin above me. But I could feel its fury and sense of triumph.
I raised the sword.
The Adlin saw it and twisted in midair, trying to avoid it. At the same time, a gunshot rang out. The Adlin’s head exploded even as the sword skewered him. His remains thumped down on me, forcing the air from my lungs a second time. This time, the pain was a blanket that all but smothered me. Darkness closed in and I knew no more.
I woke to the itch of wool against my skin and the brightness of sunshine flooding the room. For a minute, confusion stirred, but I’d barely opened my eyes when Trey stepped into view.
“How are you feeling?” He pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. His warm, rich scent teased my senses, filling every breath and stirring to life a fierce awareness.
I did my best to ignore it and lifted the blanket instead. It appeared I’d escaped both the explosion and the Adlin with little more than a smattering of bruises and a few healing cuts. “I’m good, considering I should probably be dead.”
“Mace thinks you’ve charmed the gods, because there’s no other possible explanation for you surviving two Adlin attacks and a wall being blasted out from underneath you.” He reached over to the small table sitting against the wall and picked up the glass oft murky-looking liquid. “He also said you have to drink all of this.”
I pushed up into a sitting position. The various muscle groups twinged in protest, but all in all, I’d come out of the whole thing better than I should have. I accepted the glass Trey offered, but the slight brush of his fingertips against mine had delight skipping through me. That weird hypersensitivity seemed to be back, and yet it lacked the overwhelming power of before. Was that because I’d gone through the ceremony of Gaia with Trey? Or was something else happening this time?
I frowned and sipped the drink; it was warm rather than cold, and tasted faintly of lemon, ginger, and an earthy but slightly bitter dash of ginseng. “I take it this is one of his potions?”
“It’s just a few herbs to boost your immunity and strength.” He scanned me briefly. While there was absolutely nothing immediately sexual in that look, desire stirred through me and found an echo in his eyes. “Blacklake might have suffered greater losses if not for you. We owe you, Neve March. I owe you.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Hardly, given I was only doing my job. What happened to the Adlin and the children?”
“The one carrying the children escaped, but we tracked down and killed the rest.”
Because the rest had been sacrificed to save their leader and the children. “And the wall?”
“Is already under repair. We’ve called in the earth witches from both Farsprings and West Range to help with the rebuild.”
I frowned again. “Why not just call in witches from Winterborne?”
“Because the masque celebrations can’t be interrupted for anything less than an attack—”
“Which is exactly what has happened—”
“Yes, but it went no further than the outer bailey in either Winterborne or here, and therefore it gives them no reason to pause or stop.” A bitter edge touched his smile. “They’ll never allow the day-to-day trials of the rest of us to interfere with the machinations and alliances the masque and equinox celebrations bring.”
“The rest of us?” I raised an eyebrow. “You, my dear commander, are one of them.”
“Just because I was born one of them doesn’t mean I remain so. Not in spirit or in heart, anyway, and that’s all that counts these days.” He leaned forward and caught my hand in his. His fingers were warm, and filled with a strength I found oddly arresting, even in my hyperaware state. “My daughter was wearing that bracelet, Neve. If you hadn’t caught on to what the Adlin were up to—”
He stopped, but I saw the fear flash through his eyes. “Why wasn’t she in the raid shelter with everyone else?”
A wry smile tugged at his lips. “She had been, but she came out with Leon, our earth witch, when I called for his help with the wall.”
So the woman who’d stood on his right while he’d battled to preserve the integrity of the wall hadn’t been just another earth witch, but rather his daughter. The long sleeves she’d been wearing had obviously hidden the bracelet.
“Were you drawing on their strength to reinforce the wall, or was it more a combining?”
“The latter. I doubt the former is even possible.”
“Oh, it is, because that’s what was happening with the three children.”
He frowned. “Three?”
I nodded. “The other child must have come in with the Adlin. The small girl with the air witch coloring and the other boy were gripping the older lad; neither of them were touching the wall, so he had to have been drawing on their strength.”
Trey sat back, and in doing so broke the connection of our fingers. And yet the heat of his touch remained, a beat of warmth that seemed to flow sweetly through my body.
“It still doesn’t explain how two small children could not only draw and control enough power to blast open the curtain wall, but do so without going insane. They couldn’t have undergone committal ceremonies, not at that age.”
“I suspect whoever is behind this plot really wouldn’t care whether his or her weapons were sane or not. And we stained don’t appear to need the ceremony to be able to use either magic, remember.” I paused and flexed my fingers, trying to keep my mind on the matter at hand rather than the man who was so close and yet so far away. “When your men were chasing the Adlin, did they notice anything unusual?”
“No.” He leaned forward again, but didn’t touch me. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or frustrated. “Why?”