split the courtyard. Annoyance followed a flare of pain.
Her dog yipped. Einan stood, Inis next to her.
This Lying One has got to go, the dog said.
Einan turned, not sure how to agree with him other than to act.
But it was Shining Talon who moved into position in a blur of gold, streaking toward the sorcerer. Einan’s hound broke away to join him, as did Prince Somhairle’s enormous one-eyed owl, missing feathers and a section of her beak. Cab’s lizard creature shot forward along the ground, and Inis’s silver companion coalesced, if vaguely, his limbs loose and limping but functional, in order to follow.
Been a long time coming, Einan’s dog said.
White heat scorched the ground where Morien stood. He’d erected a barrier around himself, a cocoon of living lightning. Shining Talon didn’t slow before he struck it. A ferocious crack. The stench of sizzling metal. Black burns ran up both the fae’s arms, but he kept his palms to the barrier.
He was moving through it.
The little thief fellow cried out from where the fae children had gathered. Something dirty sounding. Einan didn’t know whether the knowledge was hers or the hound’s, but his name suddenly appeared in her head: Rags.
“That shiny idiot’s going to get himself killed!” Rags shouted.
His words galvanized Hope. One moment the fae was kneeling, panting, bleeding; the next he was on his feet, thrusting his hands through Morien’s barrier with Shining Talon. The silver animals threw themselves against it one after another. Each time, it crackled and flashed, a little less bright than the time before.
Einan held her breath, prayed to whoever was listening. Got no answer, except a silvery snort in the back of her head.
Not—enough—to make it, her dog snarled.
Einan started forward.
She wasn’t a fae. She was barely a decent actor. She didn’t know what she could do, only that she’d have to do it. Give her life to bring that barrier down, sure. Her greatest role yet. Her last one.
But someone grabbed her by the back of her shirt and pulled her out of the way. Stepped in front of her and blocked her path.
Sil, hair whiter than ever, so white it was practically translucent, skin thinner than wet paper, every vein showing beneath. No, those were her black bones. As Sil lurched forward, Einan understood that whatever she was about to do, she didn’t have the strength to do it. Not after performing two of those heart-saving maneuvers in a row. Not when she’d been so drained to begin with.
A human life is a short little thing compared to ours. Sil’s voice in Einan’s head. She’d never done that before. It had to be because of the dog creature that she could, borrowing their shared connection. But that does not mean it holds no value.
“No!” Einan jumped after her, had to stop her. Sil was exhausted and talking nonsense. Of course Einan’s life didn’t matter. Not compared to hers.
Thank you, Einan Remington, Master of Four. Sil’s smile, gentle as spring rain. With you at my side, I have seen more than I ever imagined.
Einan shouted, but Sil pushed her back a final time and took her place between Hope and Shining Talon.
I would not have this be your final performance. Goodbye, my friend.
Sil’s hands set against the barrier, Einan hollering, Rags hollering with her, and the Queensguard brought low not by their lack of weapons or the fresh assault, but by the blinding, endless, incinerating light—
It filled Einan’s vision. She had to throw up her arm to keep from going blind.
And then Morien was gone, and with him the burning light. The air stank of melted metal. Her dog growled at a black streak on the ground where Morien had previously stood, sniffing at it like he could find the sorcerer by scent alone, follow him wherever he’d escaped to.
The Queensguard around them were groaning, crying out, clutching themselves where metal armor had fused to their skin from the intensity of the blast.
None of that mattered.
Sil collapsed into Hope’s arms. Inis leaned against Einan for support, must have grabbed her sometime between Sil’s stupid, crazy, awful decision to sacrifice herself and Morien’s lightning burst. Einan realized she was sobbing and Inis was holding her back, Hope was howling, and—
And Sil was unmoving.
“Now,” Inis whispered hoarsely.
Einan shook her head, took a trembling step forward. Reached out for Sil, but Hope wouldn’t let go of her, bared his teeth at Einan and growled. Tears stained Shining Talon’s cheeks like the blood staining his injured arm.
“Now,”