Page 15 of Vicious Is My Throne

“Miracle of fucking miracles, I found them all. The gods haven’t fucked us completely today.”

“There’s definitely at least one god who’s fucked us today,” I reminded my husband as he tied the horses off on a fallen limb. I dragged every extra blanket and fur off the back of my mare and wrapped them around Zorander, then began laving water over Tristan’s golden scales until every last speck of black was gone.

The wyvern’s scales were cool to the touch, no hint of the fire that burned inside him as if it had gone out.

“Tristan’s unconscious.” I climbed to my feet, scrubbed my frozen hands down my face, then erected another shield over us, enough to block the rain.

“How are we going to get them out of here, Tav? Night’s right around the corner.”

“We’re not far from Nightcairn.” Tavion eyed the unconscious wyvern, wings folded beneath his limp body. “He could fly us there in a matter of minutes.”

“Not if he doesn’t wake up.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “We’re too exposed. There could be more monsters. And that”—I nodded to the encroaching pestilence—“will overtake us within the hour.”

5

ANARIA

Tavion tried rousting the wyvern as I kept my eyes on the darkness devouring everything in its path, sparing nothing.

There was no stopping Corvus now.

Nothing standing between a monster hungry to destroy our world and the people I’d sworn to protect. Caladrius was empty of Fae and humans, but…I looked around.

I’d promised to protect everything in these realms, including these sentient, magical forests filled with magic and light and life. And once Corvus reached Caladrius, everything would be devoured by this pestilence.

I laid down another heavy layer of magic, cutting a furrow deep into the soil. A line in the sand and one that did not hold, the blackness slithering over until I hit those creeping tendrils with a blast of raw power that sent Corvus’s magic skittering back.

As always, I braced myself for something to come barreling out of that impenetrable darkness, but the Night Crawlers, it seemed, were spent.

Maybe Corvus was busy making more.

Tavion had propped Raz and Zor beside Tristan, but the godsdamned wyvern was too heavy for us to budge, though I’d managed to wrap his long, deadly tail around him, keeping it out of the blight for now.

He hadn’t cracked so much as an eye, so here we were.

We’d sent the horses racing back to Blackcastle, a good thing since that route had been cut off by the festering rot a few minutes ago. All we’d kept from our saddlebags were weapons and my extra set of leathers, bound up in a tight bundle beside Tristan.

At Tavion’s urging, I’d begun blasting away at the encroaching edge with short bursts of my magic, while overhead my shield held the rain at bay so we were relatively dry. A small miracle considering it had never let up.

The festering carcasses of the Night Crawlers had only hastened the blight, sending out roots of black from the moldering piles until I was forced to concentrate my efforts there.

But I was running low on magic.

Dangerously low, my arms so stiff I could barely keep them raised. Barely keep the magic flowing. Barely keep the godsdamned shield in place.

We were completely screwed, marooned on a shrinking island, surrounded by a blackened, rotting forest, dripping, diseased trunks rising above us like ruined sentinels, while the shadowy air that had put Zor, Raz, and Tristan into comas grew chokingly strong despite my shield.

“Wake up, you stubborn git,” Tavion warned Tristan with a glint in his eye, knife clenched in one hand, a look of determination on his face. “We’re dead in the water if you don’t.”

I scowled at the knife. “Stabbing a wyvern might be one way to die, but I’ll take my chances with this blight, thank you very much. I have no desire to be ripped apart by those teeth.”

“Just a little prick to bring him out of this.” Tavion cocked his head as I laid down another line of magic. “You can’t keep this up, Anaria.”

“I’ll can keep this up as long as I have to,” I panted, racing to the other side to blast a channel through the dirt. Corvus’s corruption crept up to the freshly churned soil, still glowing with stars and shadow, then shrank back, hesitating.

But the retreat never lasted long, and Tavion was right. I was running out of magic and our safe zone was shrinking by the minute. We were down to only bad choices.

“You pulled yourself out of the Oracle’s dream by stabbing yourself.” Tavion’s eyes darkened. “I’m only following your lead, princess.”

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