Cole didn’t look up. The creatures were hunting, and they had plenty to feast on down here. Instead, he used his enemy’s distraction to throw the sword that had impaled him into the fire and retrieve his father’s sword. He’d secured Nissa’s dagger in the sheath for his sword by plunging it into the side to keep it in place.
When one of the craz plummeted from the sky and streaked toward them, the fae closest to him turned and ran. Behind them, Durin mounted his horse as more fae turned and started to flee from the malicious birds.
With his weapons secured, Cole finally looked up to discover nearly a hundred craz crowding the sky and choking out the moonlight. Nissa turned and started to run too.
Cole shifted his hold on his sword and pulled the dagger from his sheath. Once it was free, he sheathed his sword.
He could not let her and Durin escape. They would only try to regroup and continue the rebellion if they did. Without them as leaders, this uprising would come to a fast and bloody end. If one of them survived to lead, it could continue for weeks or months.
There was no way he would allow the loss of life that would result.
A craz dove at him as he sprinted after his enemies. When it landed before him and opened its mouth, he shifted the dagger into his other hand. The feeling was starting to return, and his fingers closed around the dagger’s hilt.
Without missing a step, Cole lifted a lost sword from the ground and plunged it straight down the craz’s gullet. The animal choked, but he didn’t see what it did next as he sprinted past it.
Nissa climbed onto her horse and gathered her reins. Most of her guards had fled from the craz, but some remained. A few turned toward him as he approached.
Cole ducked beneath the first sword arcing toward him and swung up with the dagger. It plunged into the man’s solar plexus before Cole ripped it free. The fae grasped at the wound as he staggered back, but more fell in to take his place. And they all wielded weapons made of fae metal.
When another swung a sword at him, Cole blocked the arc with the forearm of his still-healing arm. The metal sliced through his flesh and embedded in muscle. He bit back a shout as he used his arm to keep the fae from tearing his sword free.
Cole stuck the dagger into the fae’s belly, grasped the sword's handle, and jerked it free. He swung the blade out in time to clash with the swords of more rebels. Over their shoulders, he saw Niall thundering across the ground with his sword raised high.
Behind him, more of the king’s army closed in on the others, but as they encircled the leaders, the craz descended. Some of the king’s men were plucked straight from their horse’s backs; others managed to avoid the creatures as they clashed with the rebels.
Cole yanked the dagger free of the fae’s gut and, lowering his shoulder, attempted to charge through the ten fae who remained. He used the sword to block their lethal blows, elbowed them out of the way, pushed them aside, and punched to the best of his ability.
They swarmed over him like locusts, kicking and stabbing as he deflected one sword after another. He was determined to make it through this even if he couldn’t see beyond their barricade.
And as he was about to break free, fiery pain lanced across his nerve endings.
One blade had gotten through to find its mark.
Throughout all his battles, he’d endured countless blows, cuts, gashes, and slices to his body. He’d been stabbed, burned, and buried alive beneath the sand of the trials.
But he’d never felt pain like that of fae metal piercing through his muscle and bone to embed deep in his heart. The organ lumbered to beat around the intrusive blade as the fae who stabbed him bared his teeth in a twisted smile.
“That was a short reign, milord,” he spit the word “milord” as if it were a foul taste on his tongue.
Cole grinned back at him as he leaned forward and plunged the dagger into the fae’s heart. The man’s eyes widened; a gurgled sound issued from him as blood bubbled out of his mouth.
Cole punched the man in the face, knocking him away from the sword. He didn’t grasp the handle to rip the blade out as he staggered forward and went down.
Chapter Seven
“Oh no,” Amaris whispered before gripping Lexi’s arm. “Come, we must get you out of here.”
Lexi pulled her arm free of Amaris’s hold. “No.”
“Miss… Lexi. You shouldn’t be here when the council arrives to claim the palace. They won’t… they won’t appreciate your presence here.”
Becca really wouldn’t appreciate it, but Lexi didn’t care what they wanted as she watched Cole go down. She’d never experienced such terror and sorrow as a steel vice gripped her heart and squeezed until she was sure she’d go to her knees as Cole had.
But she couldn’t do that. He needed her to remain strong, and she would.
“The council is not coming in here,” Lexi stated.
“With the king dead, the council has a right to the palace.”
“He’s not dead!” Lexi retorted.
When Amaris recoiled, Lexi regretted the harshness of her words. But he wasn’t dead. He would not die.
“Lexi,” Amaris said tenderly. “I know you aren’t of our world, but a dark fae cannot survive fae metal through the heart. And that sword was fae metal.”
But a lycan can. Or at least she hoped they could. Brokk was half vampire, and he’d survived when he took a fae sword through the heart; Cole would too.
If she could get him off the battlefield. The others would all think him as good as dead. Some might try to retrieve his body, but with everything going on out there, not many of them would risk their lives for what they believed was a dead man.
Amaris rested her hand on Lexi’s arm again. “Lexi—”
“I have to go.”
Except she didn’t turn and flee into the palace like Amaris wanted. Instead, she ran out the door and into the courtyard. If she somehow survived this, Cole would kill her, but she couldn’t leave him out there.
The others would all count him out, but not her.
Sprinting across the open courtyard, Lexi grasped the reins of a large, gray horse that had trotted back in with some of the other riderless animals. She’d homed in on the one least covered with blood, grasped its reins, and vaulted onto its back as her mind raced and her heart hammered.
Cole has a blade through his heart!
And so did Brokk.
She kept reminding herself of this as time crawled by. If Cole survived the blade through his heart, the longer he was out there, the more vulnerable he was and the more likely he was to die.
Seconds became hours as all the minute details around her stood starkly out. The earth and blood scent of the battle became so acute, she could taste them both. The screams of the dying faded as the rapid beat of her pulse drowned them out.
She turned the horse toward the open side door that the horses, and some of the injured had returned through. The main gates remained locked, and she suspected the palace wouldn’t open them for her or the council.
She didn’t want them to open anyway. She would get to Cole, but she couldn’t leave those inside the palace vulnerable to an attack. That side door was her only way out.
“Lexi, no!” Amaris shouted after her as she dug her heels into the horse’s side.