Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

Light shafted down suddenly through the clouds, and Emma saw the shadows on the ground before her shift; there was someone behind her. She spun away just as a blade came down, barely missing her shoulder. She spun around to find Ethna behind her: Fal was leaning over Airmed on the ground, helping haul him to his feet. For a moment it was just Emma and the faerie woman, and Emma grabbed the hilt of Cortana with both hands and swung.

Ethna darted back, but she was laughing. “You Nephilim,” she sneered. “You call yourselves warriors, ringed round with your protective runes, your angel blades! Without them you would be nothing—and you will be without them soon enough! You will be nothing, and we will take everything from you! Everything you have! Everything!”

“Did you want to say that again?” Emma asked, evading a slice of Ethna’s sword with a twist of her body. She leaped up onto a boulder, looking down. “The everything part? I don’t think I got it the first time.”

Ethna snarled and leaped for her. And for a long series of moments it was only the battle, the glowing vapor of the rain, the sea crashing and thundering in the pools below the cliff, and everything slowing down as Emma knocked Ethna to the side and leaped for Airmed and Fal, her sword clanging against theirs.

They were good: better than good, fast and blindingly strong. But Cortana was like a live thing in Emma’s hands. Rage powered her, an electric current that shot through her veins, driving the sword in her hand, hammering the blade against those raised against hers, the clang of metal drowning out the sea. She tasted salt in her mouth, blood or ocean spray, she didn’t know. Her wet hair whipped around her as she spun, Cortana meeting the other swords of the faeries, blow after blow.

An ugly laugh cut through the violent dream that gripped her. She looked up to see that Fal had Julian backed up to the edge of the cliff. It fell away sheer behind him; he stood framed against the gray sky, his hair plastered darkly to his head.

Panic blasted through her. She pushed off from the side of a granite facing with a kick that connected solidly against Airmed’s body. The faerie fell back with a grunt, and Emma was racing, seeing Julian in her mind’s eye run through with a sword or toppled from the cliff’s edge to shatter on the rocks or drown in the maelstrom below.

Fal was still laughing. He had his sword out. Julian took another step backward—and ducked down, swift and nimble, to catch up a crossbow from where it had been hidden behind a tumble of rocks. He lifted it to his shoulder just as Emma collided with Fal, her sword out; she didn’t slow, didn’t pause, just slammed Cortana point-first between Fal’s shoulder blades.

It pierced his armor and slid home. She felt the point burst out of the other side of his body, slicing through the metal breastplate.

There was a shriek from behind Emma. It was Ethna. She had her head thrown back, her hands clawing at her hair. She was wailing in a language Emma didn’t know, but she could hear that Ethna was shrieking her brother’s name. Fal, Fal.

Ethna began to sink to her knees. Delan reach to catch her, his own face bone-white and shocked. With a roar, Airmed lifted his sword and lunged toward Emma, who was struggling to free Cortana from Fal’s limp body. She tensed and pulled; the sword came free in a gout of blood, but she had no time to turn—

Julian released the bolt from his crossbow. It whistled through the air, a softer sound than the rain, and struck the sword in Airmed’s hand, knocking it out of his grip. Airmed howled. His hand was scarlet.

Emma turned, planted her feet, raised her sword. Blood and rain ran down Cortana’s blade. “Who wants to try me?” she shouted, her words half-torn out of her mouth by wind and water. “Who wants to be next?”

“Let me kill her!” Ethna struggled in Delan’s grip. “She slew Fal! Let me cut her throat!”

But Delan was shaking his head, he was saying something, something about Cortana. Emma took a step forward—if they wouldn’t come to her to be killed, she would be happy enough to go to them.

Airmed raised his hand; she saw light flicker from his fingers, pale green in the gray air. His face was twisted into a sneer of concentration.

“Emma!” Jules caught her from behind before she could take another step, hauling her back and against him just as the rain exploded into the shapes of three horses, swirling creatures of wind and spray, snorting and pawing at the air between Emma and the rest of the Riders. Fal lay with his blood soaking into the Cornwall dirt as his brothers and sister vaulted onto the bare backs of their steeds.

Emma began to shiver violently. Only one of the Riders paused long enough to look back at her before their horses shot forward into the sky, losing themselves among the clouds and rain. It was Ethna. Her eyes were murderous, disbelieving.