Audric’s skin. A voice drifted toward him as if carried on the wind, only he knew at once that no one else could hear it.
Audric, it whispered.
Sweating, breathless from the use of his power, Audric shivered on Atheria’s back, for it was her voice calling to him, and it trembled with something he could not name.
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