run off like a fool to chase glory on the stage, but even his direst warnings had never placed her in a situation quite this grim.
Soaked with royal blood, she stumbled out of the tunnels of Coward’s Silence, into the open air and pouring rain.
The scene below was worse than the bloodiest histories she’d enacted onstage.
So many Queensguard, she couldn’t see past them at first to what they’d surrounded. A handful of kids, all of them glowing faintly. Fae.
Einan strained but didn’t see Sil. Didn’t see Hope, either, though now and then a yowl rose from a tighter knot of Queensguard, which might’ve been where the enemy swarmed him. And there was the girl they’d met, pretty in an angry way, on the ground: her silver beast half melted next to her, the sorcerer standing over her, all of them royally fucked.
If ever there was a time for a grand entrance, this was it.
But someone needed to stay behind and help Prince Laisrean, who was on his last legs. Their group was too badly injured already. And sure, they had two silver beasties of their own, but would that be enough?
It wasn’t enough, but it was all they had. Einan balled her fists.
Cab at her side, his bruises still fresh. He’d been so stupidly brave that Einan had forgotten how much she hated the Queensguard. She couldn’t ask him for more. He’d given all.
Prince Somhairle, who’d visited her theater years ago, sweet thing, stood beside the fae named Shining Talon. Laisrean sagged, propped against the wall. Having a prince in the Resistance was always bound to be dangerous. I’ll pay the price, he’d told them, when the bill arrives.
They hadn’t protested. They’d needed their man on the inside, chosen not to dwell on his personal risk.
Einan wiped rain out of her eyes. White-hot energy crackled around the sorcerer, gathering, narrowing to a point, heading straight for Inis. Behind her, the kids. He’d tear them apart next. No question.
Einan started forward and shouted something brave like “Over here, you shitting son of a donkey’s rear end!” Not that it’d distract a seasoned sorcerer, or do a thing to stop the countless Queensguard from getting to her before she got to him, but.
Didn’t matter. It was the attempt that counted.
As Einan ran, the air around her changed, charged with new energy. She guessed it was part of Morien’s sorcery, but it was so warm. So friendly. It shocked her from fingertips to chest, and when it hit her heart, the Queensguard swords flew out of their hands and rose into the air.
Shooting straight toward her.
Einan froze, though she wasn’t frightened. She should have winced, ducked, run, anything to keep the blades from impaling her—only she was certain they wouldn’t harm her. The swords cut a song out of the air. It sounded like her father’s flute music, like the tinkle of her old jewelry before it had been taken from her and melted down into brutish Queensguard murder tools.
The swords formed into a single glittering shape as they flew.
A silver beast. A hound. Chipped and dented from years of practice, his hackles up, his eyes wild with stormlight.
Hey there, master! His voice, had to be his voice, lanced through her. Let’s cause some trouble, yeah?
Despite how very fucked they were, Einan threw her head back and laughed. Then, taking advantage of the general shock and the sudden lack of weapons in the Queensguard’s hands, she dove forward into the fray.
The hound moved like river water, fierce and drowning-fast. He jumped the first Queensguard with no hesitation or hint of his former existence, but then, a sword had no allegiance to its wielder, could switch hands and sides as easily as a tossed coin. The silver hound barreled over the first Queensguard, then the next, buffeting this way and that, landing on chests, knocking legs at the knees. Wherever he went, when the Queensguard went down, they stayed down.
Hope emerged from where he’d been mobbed, battered and bleeding. On his knees. Morien’s attention spun from Inis to the silver hound and the chaos he was sowing. Einan rushed into the opening, kneeling to drag Inis up.
“I’m dead.” Inis sounded matter-of-fact, like she couldn’t find a reason to mourn the thing once it had happened.
“If that’s true, then you’ve spawned a nightmare of an afterlife,” Einan replied.
She stopped short of touching the half-melted creature at Inis’s side, not sure what she could do for him, not wanting to harm him further.