Gold burst at the corner of his eye. He whirled, pulling Atheria up from the battlefield, and looked back over the Flats, past the lake and the towering wall, and across the city toward Baingarde.
From the castle rooftops sprouted light so radiant, so sharp in its purity, that even Illumenor seemed to dim. The light shot into the night sky, volcanic, and then assumed a shape—two massive wings in flight, bold and familiar. The same symbol stamped on every angelic chest now hovering in the air above Baingarde, tall as storm clouds. A declaration: Here I am.
Audric’s mind told him to ignore the bait. But a fierce clean anger shot through him, jolting his bones like cracks of lightning, and his mind’s warnings were easy to ignore.
“Go!” he roared, leaning hard toward the city, and Atheria obeyed. Angels raced after him, their wings blazing. He hardly noticed them, knocked them easily from the air with his brilliant sword. Ludivine, wherever she was, was still helping him, or else it was Corien allowing him passage, toying with him for entertainment. Audric cared nothing for the reason. The angels’ mental attacks bounced off him, useless as tiny pebbles thrown at a mountain. His power raced hot through his body, irradiating his vision. Illumenor moved without his command. He thought only of Baingarde, the wings incandescent above it. The woman standing within it.
Atheria sped over the lake, dodging winged beasts. Soon they were at the city wall—its parapets burning, the elementals atop it in desperate combat. Beasts clambered up out of the lake and up the stone. The angelic army’s elemental children had created bridges to provide easy passage over the lake. Gray-eyed soldiers raced across with huge black ladders, hissing beasts guarding their passage; hundreds of others had reached the great stone wall and began to batter it with a huge fat beam of steel and wood. Each impact exploded like thunder.
Audric looked over his shoulder, tempted to circle back and use Illumenor to blind every angelic soldier on the new bridges, give his own people time to demolish them. But the light over Baingarde pulled at him, and he turned back toward the wall with fury in his heart.
Just as Atheria reached the wall, a swarm of black birds flew at Audric with tiny claws like needles and jabbing beaks. Their cries were hoarse, strange, more canine than avian. Atheria faltered, tried to shake her head and wings free of them, but they clung to her like drops of oil.
Audric scanned the ground beyond the wall. He knew these birds. They weren’t trying to attack him; they were trying to turn him away from the city. When he found the blue glow of Sloane’s scepter, he hissed her name in fury. Atheria dove fast; the birds made of shadow peeled off of her. By the time they landed, she was clean. At the doors inside the wall, soldiers hurried to make barricades. Elementals on the ground aimed their castings at every climbing beast. The enormous wings hovering over Baingarde washed everything in a hundred shades of gold.
Sloane hurried over, her pale face streaked with blood, eyes snapping as blue as her casting.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted.
Audric dismounted. Atheria tossed her head and stomped on the fading remnants of Sloane’s birds.
“I’m doing exactly as we agreed,” he told her, his voice as angry as her own. “Find Rielle. Win her help if I can. Stop her if I must.” He flung his hand at the castle, the wings shining above it. “There she is. So I’m going to her.”
“You won’t defeat her alone, Audric. At least if you met her on the battlefield, you would have help, a chance to speak to her while the rest of us provided cover.” Sloane grasped his arm, her face desperate. Her drenched black hair carved harsh lines across her pale cheeks. “Let us come with you.”
He looked past her. There was Miren, hurrying down from the wall, red hair pulled back into a messy knot. Evyline and two of the Sun Guard were at her heels, their cloaks dripping. Kamayin arrived just behind them, riding a wave of water over the wall. She had carried them all across the lake from the battlefield. The tails of her long leather coat whipped around her like tongues. She landed with a splash, crossed her wrists in front of her chest like a shield. Her castings flashed; the water subsided, shrinking into twin orbs of rushing foam in her palms. On her shining brown face beamed a triumphant smile.
Evyline reached Audric first. Panting, she knelt before him. “We saw the wings, my king. We knew you would fly for them. We could not let you face her alone.”
“You’ll have a better chance with us at your side,” Miren added grimly, standing a little apart from them. She tightened her grip on her double-headed ax. A tight cloud of metal spun to life around her—shattered dagger blades and tiny metal stars with deadly sharp tips.
“Or any chance at all,” added Kamayin dryly. She pushed through the others, flung an arm around Audric’s shoulders. Her face half-buried in his collar, she said quietly, “Don’t be an idiot, you idiot.”
Audric gently detached himself from her. “Rielle might want to keep me alive, or Corien might, long enough to talk to me.”
“Taunt you,” Miren corrected. “Gloat and preen.”
“Perhaps. But you… Why would they care about any of you? She could burn you to ashes the moment she sees you.”
“Maybe that’ll give you enough time to stab her,” Kamayin said cheerfully. But her eyes were hard, and her jaw was set.
Audric turned away from them, dragged a hand through his sweat-soaked curls. He didn’t know what to say to them. He wished they hadn’t stopped him. He could have ridden that tide of rage all the way to the castle, faced Rielle without a moment to think about it. No time to remember her, no time to feel fear. Now, that wildness was gone. His body ached with bruises, reminding him of his own fragility.
A few paces to his left, a light began to spin. A ring formed fast, sparking white, and out of it stepped four people. Two Audric didn’t recognize—a thin woman, fair of skin and hair, with angry blue eyes, and another woman, tall and plump and copper-skinned with graying black hair in a crown of braids around her head. The sight reminded him of Ludivine, how she had popularized that very hairstyle in the north. His throat tightened painfully.
Two more people emerged from the ring of threads. A man with pale brown skin, dark brown hair and eyes—and a girl with white hair, her skin a similar light brown, her own eyes alight with power.
Audric stepped back in shock. “Obritsa.” The man was her bodyguard, the silent, stoic Artem.
The queen of Kirvaya nodded sharply, her face a grim mask of determination. “What do you need us to do?”
Audric glanced at all of them. The pale woman’s fingers glowed, as if she too were ready to summon threads. Two marques, then. Clearly, they all had a story to tell, but there was no time to ask for it.
A chorus of battle cries made them all look up. Another regiment of winged angels had reached the city, joining those that had already made it past the elemental chaos of the Flats. They flew over the wall and darted up the winding streets. Elementals chased after them—windsingers gliding atop the currents of their own power, earthshakers burrowing up through the ground. A formation of dragons raced over the wall in pursuit, black-robed Kammerat riding atop them.