thump, grateful that Chivalry hadn’t been down with the horses. My eyes closed, shutting out the sound of slurping as the wraiths sucked the marrow from the horses’ bones.
We were fucked, and not in the fun, delicious way I’d hoped to be. I had a feeling we were walking into a hornet’s nest and about to be thrown into something dark and twisted, which meant I wasn’t any closer to finding my brother or the library.
Torrin leaned over my body, staring at the door as his men built a wall in front of us. The temperature began dropping, and scraping sounded before something exploded, and the entire house shook violently. I stared up at Torrin in abject horror as the floor beneath me crumbled.
“Fuck,” he snapped, grabbing me to envelop me with his heavy frame. No sooner had he rolled me, trading positions, the floor caved in, and everyone went sailing toward the ground, which was covered with wraiths.
Chapter Thirteen
There were times when you knew how bad things are about to get. And then there were those rare times when you realized exactly how fucked you were about to be. I knew it would be terrible as we dropped toward the ground with the house crashing down with us.
When we’d landed, Torrin took the hit against the ground and then rolled me beneath him to protect me from falling debris. Once the house had finished crumbling around us, Torrin left me on my back before he withdrew his blade, igniting the weapon with his magic. His men moved into action, fighting the wraiths that swarmed us immediately, drawn by the scent of our blood.
I stared up into the darkness, my body filling with terror from the nearness of the monsters surrounding us. My eyes were frozen open as frost covered my thick lashes, and air refused to fill my lungs, creating a ragged breath that stuck in my throat. Something slammed against my side, and I jolted. The soulless, silver eyes of a wraith met mine before he lowered, sinking his teeth into my arm. Pain sliced through me, but I couldn’t cry out to alert Torrin.
I was going to die, and that realization sucked.
Something slammed into the wraith, making the pain lessen a fraction. Torrin peered down at me, sending his blade back between the creature’s torso and body. Then something shattered close to us, sending shards of glass raining down on me, or worse, shards of the wraith. I watched it move to the side where my eyes couldn’t follow. Pain shot through my thigh before a loud slurping noise filled the air. More pain sliced into my side but stopped as the blood turned to sludge within my veins.
The iciness in the air promised rest as the wraiths fed upon my body painlessly. Strangely enough, I felt at peace, knowing the end was near. Blinding light shot through the rubble of the house, and I sensed my sluggishly beating heart tighten with the pain of the loss. The wraiths howled, screeching against the light that momentarily blinded them.
Consciousness began to slip away, and I smiled inside as nothingness entered my vision. Something liquid gushed from my side, and a sliver of pain pierced my breast before swords were slamming into the wraiths feasting on me.
“Bloody hell, get them up!” Torrin shouted, but the sound was muted.
Everything was muted.
The pain I’d had.
The fear I’d felt.
The fact that we were dying.
The peace was—nice.
I’d expected to feel it all, but nothing came. There was just calmness in accepting what was happening and that I held no control over it anymore.
Hands grabbed my arms, and I was dragged away with wraiths still feasting on my body. Torrin dropped me, sending his blade through them as more light exploded around us. I was picked up, and then Torrin rushed me away from the howling wraiths as more light ignited, a telltale sign that another one of my sisters had died. He cradled me carefully, staring into my frozen eyes while he issued sharp commands, and then he rushed toward a house that had a light glowing from within the dwelling.
Inside, he shouted for a healer, but no one answered. His eyes looked around in a panic, cussing violently while he moved me to the fireplace, abandoning me next to it. Igniting the flames, Torrin withdrew his blade, turning to rush back into the fighting.
My eyes thawed first, and I turned my head to stare into Amo’s sightless, cloudy green eyes. I crawled