And then both our heads jerked up as a barrage of spells exploded against the wall behind us and the dirt in front of us, throwing the latter up like a curtain. One that a group of Svarestri burst through a second later, in a less-than-orderly fashion, yelling orders to pull back, pull back. Which was kind of unnecessary, since my companion and I were already double-timing it into the tunnel along with everyone else.
“We’re outnumbered!” one of the fey yelled—an officer, judging by his fancier outfit. “Open the gate!”
“Tell him,” my companion said, nodding at me. “I don’t have the password.”
Everyone looked at me.
“I— We have orders,” I heard myself say. “The reinforcements—”
A spell crashed against the top of the archway, sending a gust of fire through the opening, like a bellow out of hell. Shields bloomed, my companion’s covering both of us, just in time. Yet I could still feel the flames, hot and bright—and wrong. Unnatural, like the creatures who cast them.
“By the time they show up, we’ll be dead!” the officer thundered. “Open it now!”
“You should do what he says,” my companion advised.
“I can’t open it now! You know what—”
My voice cut off when another spell hit the archway, a glancing blow this time. And then rattled around inside the tunnel before smashing against our shields. My eyes lifted to see that the night outside the arch had turned smoky bright with spell-fire and loud with curses and screams.
And busy with what looked like hundreds of dark figures dashing through the smoke, headed this way.
“Open it!” the officer yelled—needlessly. Because my hands had already started fumbling at my belt for a set of keys. They were clumsy with panic and slick with sweat, and for a second, I didn’t think—
There!
The lock turned; a muttered phrase dropped the shield. And a second later, we were surging through the opening. Only instead of a troop of Svarestri warriors, I was suddenly surrounded by a flood of dirty, ragged, wild-haired—
“Witches,” I hissed, right before what felt like a red-hot poker bisected my ribs.
“To answer your previous question,” my companion said, his silver eyes flooding green. “Especially me.”
And then the world exploded in fire.
*
I scrambled back, panting and clawing desperately at my side—
For a big-ass knife . . . that wasn’t there.
For a moment, I just sat there in flickering darkness, shaking and disoriented, which was starting to feel like my default. Only this time, it was worse, because at least I’d known where I was before. Now . . .
I had no freaking clue.
I should have been looking out through the fey’s eyes, at my body sprawled on the ice. Instead, I was seeing something that looked like the view from many eyes, hundreds of them, spotting the darkness. All showing me different scenes and angles of Arthur’s city.
It reminded me of a surveillance setup in a high-rise or a jail, with cameras on multiple locations being projected onto rows of TV monitors. Only instead of TV, these were free-floating images that drifted in the air all around me. And showed a city descending into chaos.
I saw people sloshing through swamped roads, heading for the woods, bags of their possessions thrown over their backs. I saw others huddled in their homes, looking fearfully out of gaps in the shutters. I saw still more fighting alongside the covens, which had arrived in force, with hundreds of witches flooding into the city.
All of whom seemed to have decided that Arthur didn’t really need an amphitheater, after all, because they were trying to burn it down.
The wooden lattice of seats above the great stone base caught fire as I watched. And a moment later, half the arena was engulfed in a roaring blaze that defied the rain. The wind was blowing strongly to the left, and banners of flame three or four stories high started blowing with it, scattering sparks onto the fleeing crowd.
And onto the phalanx of Svarestri reinforcements double-timing it from the direction of the wharf, looking a thousand strong, maybe more. It was hard to tell because of the darkness, and because the scenes weren’t like movies shot with a steady cam. They were rolling and shaking and running, crisscrossed with spell-fire and lightning, and slashed at by rain.
And then I was moving, too, as the space around me suddenly convulsed, sending me rolling across the floor.
And straight into—
*
“Round them up! Don’t let them scatter!”
My borrowed neck twisted, but I couldn’t tell who had spoken. A gust of wind had just slapped me in the face, carrying enough rain to blind me. All I could see were a bunch of running, panicked faces, scrambling around the rocky ground near the docks.
“Who?” my current avatar asked, his voice sounding as confused as I was. “The humans?”
“No! Not the damn humans! Our own!”
I turned to the side, pulling up a hood to shield my eyes, while I searched the crowd. Their frightened faces were highlighted by the inferno in the distance, by the spells exploding here and there, and by the lightning gathering in force over the arena. While rain continued to bucket down, not as hard as before, but hard enough to cause the torch I was carrying to sputter and hiss.
And then this body spied a fellow fey on the ground, a little distance off. He had a local girl beneath him, her skirts up around her waist, her face set in horror. Until I ran over and pulled him off. “Get back in formation!”
He shrugged off my hold. “For what? We’ll never get through that.” He gestured at the open plain before us, where what looked like an army of witches were battling to protect the fleeing humans, and to bar our approach to the arena.
It had turned the open ground between the cities into a hell pit of smoke and blood and fire, and drifting clouds of steam that formed whenever a spell hit one of the many puddles of water. The women’s shadows darted among the clouds, concealed one minute, and splashed grotesquely large onto the side of the haze the next, like the field was full of misshapen giants. They looked like the shadow puppets I’d laughed at as a child, only no one was laughing now.
Including the fey on the ground, who had grabbed the frightened girl as she tried to flee, jerking her back. “We may as well amuse ourselves until reinforcements arrive,” he said as I stared down at him. And felt a wash of borrowed anger spread through me.
Borrowed because it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t in response to the girl’s terrified screams as the fey fell on her again. Wasn’t at seeing him rip open her clothes, spreading her naked in the mud. Wasn’t in sympathy as her hands grasped the dirt beneath her, desperately seeking some grounding as her body shook from his renewed thrusts.
No, it was anger that he’d soil himself with such a creature, fury that he’d neglect his duty to do it, and cold determination to stop him.
My right hand jerked him up a second time, throwing him to the side, while my left—