Shadows naturally began to fester around my feet. Safety in darkness.
Ozias rubbed his hand over cropped hair, back to front. “Leena might have strength in numbers, but Calem doesn’t like to lose. Ever.”
Calem crept through the dark, visible only to us. Her serpents hissed and groaned as they failed to flush him out. Leena only smiled, occasionally encouraging them with a soft clucking. Kost shifted into a low crouch, muscles tense, and waited for me to give the command—only I didn’t know if he’d be targeting Calem or Leena.
Calem moved before I could think. Leaping from the shadows and barreling toward her with unmatched swiftness, he had a clear shot on her unprotected neck. The world slowed as I remembered the way purplish bruises had immediately swelled against her skin when I’d held her suspended above the ground.
As Calem’s hands sliced through the air, an invisible, bubble-like shield rippled to life. He smashed into it, ricocheted off, and landed on the ground a few feet away from Leena. One of the cow beast’s eyes closed.
“Kinana, now,” Leena said. The blue serpent sped toward Calem, flying over the grass with the fluidity and grace of liquid. Dislocating her jaw, she opened her mouth wide, and an ocean of water blasted Calem deep into the ground. Leena flicked her wrist. “Kapro.” Kinana peeled off, and the snow-white serpent bulleted toward Calem. Snowflakes and tiny crystals trailed behind it, frosting the blades of grass beneath its underbelly. Like Kinana, Kapro unhinged his jaw.
Calem was spurred into motion and leaped away just as Kapro unleashed a blizzard of frosty air. The droplets of water in the grass cracked and froze, an icy imprint in the ground where Calem had landed. He bounded out of reach onto a nearby branch, dusting icicles off the edges of his trousers. He laughed, a croak from the back of his throat. Flashes of oily black blades winked in his palms. “Missed me.”
“Calem.” We needed her alive. I needed to know more about the Gyss and the wishes it could grant. Only after… I flexed my hand, and the binding oath on my wrist seemed to smirk at me.
He flinched, but didn’t acknowledge me. He’d certainly heard me, but the drive that made him so unbelievably lethal had started to take hold. He was by no means an old member of our guild, and yet he’d completed more jobs than any assassin. Including me.
Calem sped forward again, and a barrage of jet-black shadow blades cascaded from his hands. Crafted from darkness by the god of death, those blades could pierce almost anything. They careened right toward Leena’s unmoving body. One by one, they crashed into her shield.
The beast by her feet closed six more eyes.
Leena shuddered as another blade smashed against the dome. A sweat broke out across her forehead, and the beast closed yet another eye. Two milky orbs left. What would happen when all lids sealed shut? Was that good? Or bad?
“Calem!” This couldn’t go on. A dead Charmer was only good once we got our beasts. More than that, I couldn’t stand the thought of her hurt or, worse, gone.
No. That wasn’t it. That couldn’t be it. It was about responsibility. I’d promised that my men wouldn’t hurt her. That was all. The fingernails along my left hand sharpened to fine points, and my fingers trembled.
Kost’s gaze dropped to my hand for a flash. Grimacing, he turned back to the fight. “Are you sure?”
No. I wasn’t sure at all. My nails sharpened further, and my pulse throbbed in my empty palm. Beckoning. I didn’t want to answer it, but if Calem couldn’t follow an order, if he was too lost in the thrill of the hunt to obey…
I already had to keep my comrades at arm’s length. Something like this would only push Calem further away. I needed this delicate balance I’d found—a leader, but not quite a friend, close and yet not close enough—to survive. If I destroyed his trust, I’d lose him. There wasn’t enough between us to keep him around. I had made sure of that, if only to keep him safe.
His dark laugh floated in the air and coaxed my fingers to move. He wouldn’t stop. Not until he won. If he killed her, I’d never have the chance to close that distance, anyway.
With daggerlike nails, I slit a thin line across the palm of my right hand. Blood pooled in my heart line, waiting to