We run to the courtyard, my father’s armor clanking around him. I try to cut toward my and Ellie’s quarters, but my father informs me that Ellie and Cecilia have already reached the bunker, much to my relief. My heart aches to go to them, but I can’t very well leave the city undefended while my family is safe.
On the way, my father murmurs concern that I have very little by way of armor on, but he doesn’t encourage me to turn back.
There’s no wasting time, not when these awful creatures are descending upon us.
“That Azrael wishes to punish me for refusing to ally with him,” my father says as we hurry.
“You refused him?” I ask, a bit shocked. I would have thought that, had Azrael offered my father the power of a host of Others at his disposal, the king would have gladly accepted and claimed his duty was to his people, not the rest of Alondria.
My father grunts. “I’ll be dead before I support an illegitimate sitting on a throne.”
Ah. So it seems my father hasn’t been overcome with some drastic personality change, after all.
Well, at least this feels like familiar footing again.
On the way, I grab an abandoned sword from the rubble and sheath it. The blood on its hilt stains my palm.
We reach the courtyard, the steps of which lead down to the closed South Gate. Residents crowd around the gates, begging to be let in, thinking the castle will provide them shelter.
They don’t know it’s just as dangerous inside.
Three wyverns circle overhead, picking off the archers stationed at the walls. Arrows ricochet off the wyverns’ scales, showering a host of arrows upon the soldiers and crowds.
“Tell the archers to stand down. Have them search the castle for servants and children and lead them into the bunkers,” I yell at a nearby soldier, who looks back and forth between me and my father, unsure.
“Well, did you hear him or not?” my father bellows.
The boy doesn’t need to be told again; he sprints through the courtyards and toward the archery towers.
My father unsheathes his sword, as do I, and we throw ourselves into battle.
I come to regret sending the archers away once the pack of mere arrive. Silver blood sprays as I slice the head off a mere that my vines caught just before it devoured me.
I cut down several mere who dug holes underneath the gates, their venom-soaked teeth often gleaming at my neck before my vines wrap around them and force them to the ground, allowing me time to stab them through.
I don’t particularly like how slow my magic remains, but it’s more in my control than it’s ever been.
I suppose I’ll have to thank Orion for that, assuming both of us survive this battle, which seems unlikely at this point.
That’s fine. I don’t really want to endure Orion’s smug refusal to accept my thanks, anyway.
My father and I slip into a rhythm. We’ve never communicated well, never found a medium by which we could understand one another, but on the battlefield we come together as one. As if we’re simply extensions of one another.
A mere lunges, and my vines wrap around it just in time for my father to slit its throat. Another pounces toward a child whose mother sent him scurrying under the gates, and I scoop the child into my arms and out of the way while my father cuts the beast down.
Once the child is passed off to a soldier, my father and I turn, backs facing, guarding each other.
The words we exchange are short, simple battle commands, but they might as well comprise an ardent conversation compared to the exchanges we’re used to.
Because, for once, I’ve found something my father and I have in common, and it’s not a thirst for blood or the thrill of the battle or anything I might have expected from a male so hardened.
It’s that we’ll do anything to protect the city we love, even if that means cooperating. Or dying.
That sentiment is cut short as a wyvern swoops over the crowd. I redirect my vines toward the rogue beast.
And miss.
Time stills, almost to a halt, as the barb of the wyvern’s tail punctures my father’s chest.
Shock ripples across my father’s hardened features, and for the first time in my life, I witness fear in his eyes.
Buzzing swarms my ears as my father’s knees buckle.
He hits the ground.
And then, in that moment of quiet, my father looks at me.
Our eyes lock; he tilts his chin downward, just slightly.
Then my father thrusts his sword upward at the same moment the wyvern’s jaws encompass him.
A horrible crunching sound pierces through the fog in my ears, followed shortly by a female’s screams.
My mother’s screams.
They snap me back to the present, out of that horrific moment where time itself hadn’t existed.
To my left, my mother cries out in anguish. She’s screaming my father’s name, clutching her stomach, even as swarms of vines burst out around her, strangling mere and wyverns in their fury, dashing their bodies against the stairs.
