Page 103 of Court of Talons
Icrumple as the air snaps around me, and the sun blazes down on my body once more.
“Tal—Talia.” Caleb’s voice is frantic in my ear, and I flail back to consciousness, worry surging up in my throat along with my own blood. Someone stands beyond him, tall and straight. Someone…almost familiar.
“Go,” I gasp, as my mind grapples with what he’d called me. What had he said—it seems wrong now—wrong. “Caleb, leave, they’ll come to finish me. You must get away.”
“No.” He flops down at my side and wraps his right arm around me, firmly pulling me into his embrace. “No, Talia, youcan’t die.”
His words strike an impossible echo with what I’d just told Gent, what I told Merritt weeks ago, then I piece together what he’s said. My skin seems to crack with the effort it takes to smile. “Talia,” I mutter. “Did you call me Talia on the open field?”
“You’re an idiot,” Caleb groans as he rocks me, protecting me with his body. “You should have run, you could have run...” I struggle to meet his gaze, and see those eyes are filled with anguish now. “But Gentleftyou. How can he have left? He could have protected you?—”
“I let him go.” The pain is somehow lessening now, everything blurring into one sensation as blood drains out of me and onto the open field. I open my hand, and the sentient band pulses there, shimmering with life.
Caleb gasps. “You didn’t.”
“I’m going to die.” The words fill me with a peace I hadn’t expected. “He shouldn’t.”
“Youcan’t.” Caleb looks to the west and the bright sun, and I let a little more of the world back into my awareness. With it comes a wash of pain, but I struggle up, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
“What’s happening?” I whisper.
Shuddering Divhs and dying warriors, still scrabbling to hold onto life, and horses and soldiers lie everywhere on the field. But the battle still rages on in pockets. The marauder women are in the thick of it, and a few of them have come to surround me on horseback, their blades and axes pulled. No one else is close.
“I don’t know,” moans Caleb. “It was a melee, a fight, then Rihad’s winged monster showed up and everything…shifted. The men of the First and Eighth Houses turned in earnest on the others, whether they were on their official side or no. They fought not to best or pin, but to kill.” He grimaces. “They succeeded.”
“They can’t—” I wince as I try to sit up further, and taste more of the bright coppery tang of blood. Gent is gone, and my heart surges with relief. But everywhere else, there’s carnage. Nearest to me is Hantor’s bone creature, its eyes wide and glassy, a line of blue blood trailing from his mouth. Even as I stare, it disappears, and my breath stops.Hantor… “This cannot be.”
Suddenly, Rihad’s winged scorpion screeches in earsplitting fury, and Caleb jerks around, jostling every wound open on my body. I nearly swoon, and darkness rushes in, narrowing my vision to pinpricks.
“What in the…”
Pulling his arm from me, Caleb grabs the glass around his neck and fixes it to his eye. I can’t see anything in the roiling dust.
“Rihad is down,” Caleb cries. “The guards are fighting with Fortiss!”
I sag back, my heart twisting anew. That’s why Rihad’s Divh screamed. Fortiss must’ve finally realized that what was happening on the tournament field was not the result of crazed monsters and men, but the careful plan of the Lord Protector.
He’d seen the truth of Rihad, and he’d driven his blade into the man. It’s too late—far too late, but…
The air around Caleb and me shudders again, and my squire collapses back to the ground, dragging me with him. With a resounding boom, the sky turns black, the sun completely blotted out. I roll into a ball with Caleb, certain this is the end.
“Go,” I scream, but my words barely come out as a whimper. “You must go.”
“Watchout—” Caleb throws his body over me as the ground shakes violently enough to bounce us up a few inches, and then we crash suddenly down.
It happens again, and again.
I blink, trying to see through the dust, but there’s nothing but Divhs in a wide circle around us—upright Divhs this time, ones I’ve never seen before. Enormous clawed and taloned, leathered and furred, feathered and scaled Divhs, each of their thunderous feet pounding hard into the ground, loud enough to bring the very heavens down.
Life.The earth seems to cry out with every stomp.Life.
“Ahh!” I jerk rigid. An immense bolt of fire rips through me, and I scream as salt and dust assault us in a whipping gale. The warrior band I’m still gripping splits in my hand, tearing straight down the middle. I blink at it blearily, trying desperately tounderstand. But…how? Only the Lord Protector has the power to split his band! It is Law!
Law or not, one half of the sentient band falls away from my fingers, while the other half races back up my injured arm, leaving a searing trail of pain in its wake, to wrap tightly around my bicep once more. And before my eyes I see it return to its full, untorn size—exactly as the Lord Protector’s has done since the dawn of the Protectorate.
“No.” I cough blood and seem to burn from the inside out, even as Caleb shrieks in agony beside me.
“Get it off me!” he bellows, dropping me to the ground to claw at what remains of his left arm. There’s a burning trail across the front of his clothes and my hand is now empty. I know what’s happened before he does, but I can’t speak, dizzy with pain, blood loss, and confusion as the stomping continues and the mighty beasts around us roar. How is it I’m still alive? How is it I’m?—