Palace of Silver (The Nissera Chronicles #3) - Hannah West Page 0,136
with iron bars and wooden slats rolled alongside her, pulled by two black horses with wild, frightened eyes, steered by an even more frightened soldier.
Was this some kind of beast Ambrosine planned to unleash? A prisoner she would use to manipulate us? Land of light—what if she had somehow caught and trapped Navara?
Ambrosine signaled two fingers at the driver. He dismounted from the carriage seat and unlocked the peg latch of the iron cage.
The door swung open.
FORTY
GLISETTE
THE creature that crawled out of the shadows of the cage was far more frightening than the edifice murals could ever convey.
Its flesh looked like what should lie underneath flesh—red, raw, sinewy, stripped down. Short, sharp teeth lined an unnaturally wide mouth and longer, tusklike teeth jutted from its skull and knotty knuckles.
Somehow both gaunt and muscular, the monster crept out of the cage on four limbs…and lunged to devour the man who had set it free.
I shut my eyes to the horrible sight, but I couldn’t shut out the screams.
Robivoros.
When I opened them, the beast had consumed its fill, leaving nothing but picked bones. It stood on its hind legs, revealing an open maw in the middle of its belly, lined with two rows of needle-sharp teeth.
There was only one person Ambrosine could have convinced to become a vessel for this being, just by flaunting the promise of power. The vague similarities—the height, the stride, the stray fair hairs clinging to the red scalp—proved that this was, or used to be, Uncle Mathis.
My stomach heaved and I bent double, but I managed to swallow back the sickness. I had no choice.
Ambrosine had set her sights on me.
She dismounted, trudging through the snow, trampling over the bodies of her fallen soldiers.
Mercer and Tilmorn charged to fight Mathis while Kadri took several clean shots at him, lodging arrows in his chest and even one in his forehead to no avail.
Devorian drew even with me, his magenta elicrin stone glowing, ready to unleash an arsenal of spells on Ambrosine.
“Her armor can deflect spells,” I told him.
“Lovely,” he muttered. “Our odds are excellent. Think we can appeal to her sense of familial affection?”
“I’d say it’s a bit late for that. I’m going to try something. If it doesn’t work, we’re only stalling the inevitable.”
“I like your optimism. If you survive and I don’t, do you promise to take care of Larabelle?”
“Better than you ever could.” I managed to smile at him. “If you survive and I don’t, will you care for Sev’s family?”
“They’ll be drowning in wealth. Suffocating.”
“Let’s see if this works.”
I stretched out my arms, inhaled a sense of calm, and summoned my elicrin power.
The rain fell in a continuous mist, but my wind made the drops change directions and swirl into a funnel. The temperature plummeted and I drove the freezing water at Ambrosine, encasing her in a column of ice as high and thick as a tower.
But after a few beats of quiet, her silver-plated fists broke through the ice, shattering it as I had shattered her mirrors.
This would be the end. Kadri’s gift and mine were the only ones suited for the battlefield. If Ambrosine could deflect every spell, then Devorian, Mercer, and Tilmorn couldn’t do much. Even Kadri and I would only be able to slow Ambrosine and Mathis down.
As Ambrosine gained ground, I readied the shielding spell on my tongue. But Devorian panicked and uttered the thrusting spell first in an effort to keep her at bay. She raised an arm to deflect it and it rebounded, striking me hard in the chest.
I flew back and crashed through the snow, landing hard. The brutal fall beat the breath out of my lungs. I was fortunate that I hadn’t smacked into a tree or an armored corpse, but the pain was agonizing.
I told Devorian it wouldn’t work.
With a groan, I coaxed myself up and found Devorian erecting a shield. But Ambrosine, swiftly approaching, bared her teeth and punched the barrier. Instead of breaking her hand, as it would anyone else’s, the barrier became flexible, bending with her force. She struck Devorian hard across the jaw and he collapsed where he stood, knocked unconscious, maybe even…
No.
The rage I felt nested so deep in my soul that my entire body shook with the need to destroy her.
“Pull back!” I heard the commander call to whoever was still fighting in the woods.
Now it was only us—the elicromancers who had allowed this to happen. The elicromancers who had to finish this or die trying.