Page 101 of Iridian

Suddenly, they started to cheer. Suddenly, they started to call Taland’s name and raise their fists in the air, and Radock and Zachary were laughing where they stood, and Aurelia was looking at me. Just as terrified as I was.

Every instinct in my body came alive. To push them down again was torture.

“We will only fight the Council!”said the soldiers together with Taland one more time, and then the crowd continued—fight, fight, fight, fight!—in unison, like they were all being controlled by the same mind, too.

I held my breath, fisted my hands, looked at Helen Paine as she stood in the shadows of the building, watching…

Goddess, the whole thing was surreal, a scene from a movie or a book—not real life. All those people—and more were coming. So many cars behind us—like riots. Like a true fucking battle. Eleven Laetus soldiers were around our bus, and the rest were there, waiting…

Helen stepped forward and waved her hand around, and a sword appeared between her fingers.

The crowd stopped screaming all at once.

“Very well,” her magically enhanced voice echoed. “We shall fight.”

We were all waiting for it, yet it still took us by surprise when she moved. When all of them moved. Everything went to shit so quickly, yet it would take us all a while to actually believe in what our eyes were telling us.

I let go of Taland and went to the edge of the bus’s rooftop and watched, with my heart in my throat and my breath held, as Helen and Flora and George ran forward with swords in their hands and met three Laetus soldiers halfway. They’d drawn their own swords, too, and they were indeed bigger than those of the Council.

The sound of metal hitting metal took over the air. The first raindrop fell on my cheek as if the sky had begun to cry.

People moved away from the front of that house—including the IDD soldiers. They made room for the Council members and the three soldiers—no,two.The one in the middle was on hisknees while Helen touched the top of his helmet with her hand covered in white flames and ran her sword across his neck.

Taland sucked in a deep breath. I turned to him, terrified, to find his eyes were rimmed red and he was holding onto his own neck, lips parted while he drew in air in short gasps. By the time I was beside him, and I looked out at the fight again, the body of the soldier had turned to a skeleton right there on the concrete in front of Helen’s feet, while she, gripping her sword with both hands now, waited for the other two who were aiming for her.

“Goddess, help them,” I whispered, my hands over my chest to keep my heart from exploding out of me, and I watched how the other Council members joined the fight, and how the IDD soldiers kept moving farther and farther back to give them more space.

Nobody wanted to die here today. Not the IDD and not the people who’d had enough of the Council’s twisted ways. Nobody wanted to die, and so it was no surprise to me that they were all standing back, moving,hopingthat they didn’t have to engage.

Who could really blame them? After all, what we were witnessing here today was something beyond our wildest imaginations. The way the Council members fought, and the way the soldiers who’d been dead for seven centuries fought—none of us could compare.

They moved like they had lightning in their veins. They called for magic like they were the gods of it. They endured so much more than they should, and whether it was wards or their own persons, I had no idea, but they weren’t immune to one another forever.

Though details were lost to me, probably blocked by my own brain to protect my sanity, I still saw how they hit the ground when they did—Ferid first, holding his neck with both hands, before a soldier grabbed him and tore him apart by the shoulders like he was made out of paper.

Three more soldiers turned to skeletons, their flesh and skin and blood becoming dust on the concrete while the others fought around them, and another three from the ones who’d been standing guard around the bus joined them as well.

Then Natasha with her fiery red hair hit the ground on her knees, and a soldier tried to kick her on the side of her face, which would have undoubtedly decapitated her, but at the last moment Flora with a golden sword in her hand cut off the soldier’s leg completely. He fell, and she failed to see the other behind him, who had already raised his hand toward Natasha’s face. His magic, bright and colorful, consumed her, made her skull explode in the next minute. Her blood and brains decorated the ground while Flora screamed, and swung her sword harder, and chanted even more furiously as her Redfire charged at the soldiers again and again.

Then she killed the one whose leg she’d cut off, driving her sword right through his mouth, if I could see correctly, while at the same time both George and Nicholas attacked a soldier who was on his knees, one with his magic, the other with his katana.

The soldier fell to the ground—and Taland’s leg gave up. He hit the rooftop of the bus on one knee, as if he was calling for my attention.

Goddess, he lookedawful.His every muscle was strained, eyes wide open like they were about to pop out of his skull, skin slick with sweat and so pale, every vein in his forehead and his neck protruding while his hands shook and he tried to straighten his fingers but couldn’t. They seemed to be stuck like that, curved like hooks, paralyzed.

I grabbed him and pulled him to his feet, carried half his weight as well as I could. I called out his name, and I tried to get him to look at me, to focus on me, but he didn’t.

Because if he did, if he lost track of his soldiers, they were all going to die at the hands of the Council.

The crowd screamed. I turned just in time to see Flora hit the ground on her side, while two soldiers pulled her apart—one had her by a leg, the other by her head. They tore her apart and Helen screamed as she cut off the head of yet another soldier, and every muscle in Taland’s body clenched.

He could feel it.

Every time his soldiers’ physical bodies were destroyed, he felt it.

“We’re close,” I told him, though I didn’t know if he could hear me over the screams of the people. They were trying to break through now, to get in the fight.

And they were right.Nowwas the time.

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