Saion grabbed me by the waist, hauling me back.
“No!” My eyes went wide as the essence flickered over Ector and faded. “Let me go!”
“There’s no time.” Saion pulled me back as muscled bodies slick like midnight oil charged the courtyard, jaws snapping and claws digging into soil. Their snarls fell upon me like daggers.
I struggled against Saion. “I can bring him back. I just need—”
“No.” Saion twisted, shoving me back several feet. His eyes flashed with essence as my boots slid on the blood. “You do that, and they’ll swamp you. You’ll die.”
I was going to die anyway.
I started toward Ector as arrows pounded into the courtyard, striking the dakkais.
But I…I couldn’t die yet. Because the embers were important. More so than Ector. Than me.
And I knew that.
Gods.
I knew that.
And I hated that I did.
Saion shouted, twisting as he drew the swords from the sheaths at his back and side. A dakkai launched at him, and another veered past him. I screamed in fury and anguish as I bent quickly, swiping up a fallen shadowstone sword instead of going for my dagger.
Spinning, I brought the sword down on the neck of the faceless beast, severing its head. I dipped, grabbing another sword. I thrust forward, shoving it deep into a dakkai’s chest. Foul-smelling blood coated the blades as I spun, dragging the sword through the air. Lightning rippled across the sky.
A dakkai veered past Saion, past the guards now in the courtyard. Then another. And another. I whirled, horror knocking the wind out of me as they went for the power—the eather.
Ector.
“No!” I screamed, launching across the slippery ground and driving the sword into the dakkais, into any part of them I could as they swarmed Ector’s body in a nightmare of claws and teeth. I lost all sense of skill. I simply hacked away at the beasts.
Saion was there. Then Rhain. Another guard—a god—used eather, firing at the dakkais, but it only drew more, and they keptcoming, crowding the pikes. They kept coming, even as we struck them down, their mouths and claws coated with shimmery reddish-blue blood.
The embers inside me throbbed wildly. Pained-filled shouts filled the courtyard and the Rise as Rhain kicked a fallen dakkai aside, off to where Ector had been laid out—
The god staggered back from…from what was left behind. He turned, vomiting. The sword slipped from my fingers. A mess. That was all that remained of Ector. Amess. My hand shook. I shuddered, and deep within the cavern inside me, the essence of the Primal of Liferoared. My skin hummed. A metallic taste coated the inside of my mouth as dull pain lanced my jaw. A whirling motion swept through me as my lips parted.
A scream of rage, of ruin tore from me as the corners of my vision turned white—pure white.
All across the courtyard, the dakkais reared, jerking their heads toward me. And the power inside me built and swelled until nothing could hold it back.
I didn’t even try as the other sword shattered in my hand. A pulse of power rolled out from me, leaving me dizzy as it swept into a wave of dakkais, knocking them away from Saion and Rhain and into the air, where they simply vanished.
Were obliterated.
A bone-deep exhaustion sank in, the kind I’d never felt before as the wave of power retracted. I stumbled a step forward, panting. Something warm and wet dripped from my nose, hitting my arm. Blood. My blood. I looked down and saw the silvery sheen fade from my hands as a swarm of dakkais crested the wall.
I heard my name being called, heard calls for retreat, but the voices were dull as Rhain ran for me. He grabbed my arm, my waist, but I couldn’t feel his touch. I didn’t feel connected to my body at all. It was like I was floating. I blinked slowly, my vision going out…
And then coming back in.
“Sera!” Rhain shouted, his voice loud enough to cause me to wince. “Are you all right?”
“I-I don’t know.” Sensation returned to my body as Rhain turned my head to his. Some strength filled me, but not a lot. I swallowed the blood that had gathered in my mouth. “I think so.”
He didn’t look like he believed me as he quickly wiped the blood from my nose.