Page 55 of Iridian

The magic hardly worked, too. The soldiers spread and fought those who attacked them, and more were coming, possibly over a hundred IDD men running into the valley while they shot their magic, but it wasn’t enough. Itwouldn’t beenough, I realized.

And then I noticed four of them were coming toward me from all around the massacre going on right in front of my eyes. I was too shocked to speak, or to even make sense of this thing, but I somehow stood up, like my instincts insisted that I needed to protect myself from these creatures. I needed to move, to do something, run or fight—because they were coming for me.

Except they didn’t.

Needless to say, I was too weak to even call up a spell, even if I’d had my father’s ring on my finger. So, all I did was stand there as the soldiers—four of them wearing helmets, white marbles for eyes, and bracelets around their wrists—came for me, surrounded me on all sides, then…

Turned their backs to me.

Tears spilled from my eyes, though I’d been sure that I was too shocked to cry. The soldiers wereright therewithin my reach if I had enough control of my body to raise a hand right now. Their backs were turned to me and their hands were raised in front of them as they waited, completely motionless, for any IDD soldier who wanted to come and attack them.

Attackme.

My knees shook and I looked up at the sky, at Taland still standing there at the very edge of the landing, looking down at us. He saw everything and he stood there and waited, and I had no voice left in me to even whisper, let alone to call out his name again.

Goddess, this couldn’t be happening, yet my eyes insisted that it was. My eyes insisted that the IDD soldiers wereretreatingand that at least fifty of them were on the ground, dead now, motionless. The rest who had tried to fight the Delaetus Army were moving back, out of the valley, around the mountain where we came from.

There, atop the edge was Helen Paine and the rest of the Council, and I could have sworn her eyes were on me. A part of me wished I had enough energy to give her my middle fingers. That fucking bitch!Kill them all,she’d said, and with such ease.Kill them all,after we’d risked our lives in this fight. After we’d almost died to stop Hill.

Look at us now.

She’d made Taland raise the dead fucking army himself.

She’d made Taland bring the Delaetus Army to life, and now four of them were around me like fucking robots, ready to kill anyone who dared to come close. Another dozen of them were practicallychasingthe IDD soldiers who were moving back up the incline of the valley as fast as they could, while the rest just stood there in the middle, in perfect formation, motionless, watching with their colorless eyes.

Too much.

Radock, Kaid, Seth—Zach was with them now, too, with Aurelia in his arms—and they were all smiling. Laughing. No soldiers had created walls aroundthem,but they were surrounded by the bodies of the IDD ones who’d been keeping them down, had been about to kill them just moments ago.

Too much!my mind screamed, and I looked up again, hoping to see Taland, but the sky was almost completely black.

The soldier to my right turned toward me, and his face—my Goddess, his face.It shocked me and wiped my mind clean, and by the time he grabbed my arm, my legs had let go of me.

Whether I died right now or didn’t made no difference to me in those moments. The darkness was pulling me under faster the better I felt those hands around my body—the hands of a man who’d been dead for seven hundred years.

In my mind, I screamed and thrashed and cried and ran.

In reality, I just let go again.

Chapter 14

Rosabel La Rouge

Birds sang—what a nice sound to wake up to, I thought.

The air was light going down my throat, and I could have sworn there was sunlight falling on the side of my face and on my shoulder, all the way down to my hip. I felt it, felt the heat like a soft, fuzzy blanket, and I wished I could move a little to my right just to feel it everywhere on my body as well. Except I was too lazy. Too tired. I just wanted to listen to the birds singing and sleep a little longer.

Or a lot.

I could really, really use this break, but even so, the memories started to come back to me slowly.

I remember how Taland had come through the doors in Madeline’s office at the mansion, and how I’d thought for sure I was dreaming. How he’d sat there and basically saved me from the Council by bargaining what he knew.

I remembered him in my room, in my bed, naked and delicious and smiling at me, his eyes full of light just like always when he was looking at me. When he was happy.

And I remembered him fighting beside me in that awful place, too, that looked like a construction site in a valley between mountains but wasn’t. Nobody had constructed anything there—David Hill had dug up the ground to search for the skeletons of a dead army, and he’d actually found them.

I’d seen them, had fought him, had tasted the magic, his blood on my tongue, and dirt, dirt—all that dirt.

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