Page 54 of Iridian

Except…Taland wasn’t by the edge of the landing anymore, looking down at us.

My heart leaped, and another scream left my lips when I imagined they’d gotten him, too. The panic, the fear gave me energy, and I tried to stand, tried to jump to my feet and run all the way to him, except the guards holding me down didn’t let me. They put their hands on the back of my neck, pressed the warm tip of a wand against my right cheek, and a gun barrel on my left.

Over-over-over,my mind insisted, and my Goddess, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to. Irefused.

Then…

“Madam Paine!”

A soldier called her name before she’d made it out of the valley together with the rest of the Council. He was already by her side and he was pointing up the mountain, and she raised her head to see.

He was pointing up the mountain where Taland had been just a moment ago.

My heart paused again, this time for longer.

And just like that, the entire world changed once more right in front of my eyes.

Taland was still there on that landing, and even though I couldn’t see him well enough because he’d stepped back a bit, I could still see his raised arms.

“Stop him!” someone called—Helen and Flora and Ferid—all of them.

Stop him, stop him, stop him!

Then a rainbow burst out from the landing, and it was coming from Taland’s hands. He was wearing the bracelet and he must have been chanting, must have been trying to attack these soldiers holding us down.

I wanted to tell him not to bother—we were too far, and his magic couldn’t reach us in time.Save yourself, Taland! Run!

Except his magic, all those bright colors that looked even brighter now that the sun was getting ready to set, weren’t coming forus. No—they moved toward the other side of the valley, toward the edge of the mountain across from where he stood. Toward the ground on its other side, lightning fast.

Screams erupted all at once. Guns fired. All kinds of magics took over the sky, aimed at that landing, at Taland.

Thenhismagic, all the colors,fellover the motionless soldiers of the Delaetus Army.

The ground groaned. The sky darkened. The mountains seemed to be screaming, too, but none of it made any difference.

The soldiers opened their eyes.

My mind was empty. The screaming and the chanting, and the protest of the ground and the mountains stopped for a short second.

Everything just…stopped.Watched. Waited.

Then Taland stepped to the very edge of that landing again, and it was dark now, so I barely saw the shape of him against the grey sky. I barely saw his hand outstretched, the colorful flames dancing on his fingers—and I barely saw it when he moved it up.

The screams started again.

The soldiers of the Delaetus Army moved.

“Attack!” called someone—could have been Helen or Flora or whoever, but every single soldier who’d been holding us down, who’d been in that valley or by the edges of it, was already running.

Running to meet the seven-hundred-year-old men who had been just brought back from the dead and who were marching in unison toward them.

I could hardly believe my eyes, and I’d have thought I’d lost my mind, had gone insane, or maybe that this was onlyhappening in my imagination, except everybody else was seeing this, too. Everybody else was reacting the same way. I risked a glance at Radock, where he had been kneeling with his brothers, laughing like a maniac, and our eyes locked for a moment.

He saw, too. They all did.

Then there was magic. Colors of it, bright and beautiful and fuckingdeadly,this time coming from the soldiers. The soldiers who were moving together still, raising their hands at the same time, not with weapons but with magic.

IDD soldiersfell.Like their strings had been cut, they fell all over the ground, and there was no blood and no wounds that the eye could see, but none of them moved again. I couldn’t really tell if they were breathing because the more of them fell, the better I saw the soldiers—thedeadsoldiers who were alive. The dead soldiers whose eyes were white spheres without a pupil or an iris, but who saw just fine as they broke formation and started to move in either direction as IDD soldiers kept attacking them with their magic—bullets were useless against them, it seemed. Whatever wards they wore on their skins couldn’t be penetrated by them.

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