Page 78 of Court of Wolves

“She… nailed me… to the floor?” Ark asked haltingly, his face covered in sweat, breathing fast.

“Yeah,” Vawn confirmed weakly, blinking fast, trying to unhear Ark’s screams. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

Even if he couldn’t save Kheir, even if he’d failed Maia, even if after all this, after every sacrifice and touch he’d endured, he never evenmetMaia, he could do this. He could get Ark to safety.

“Come here, hold onto me, I’ll help you up.” He reached for Ark’s shoulders, his stomach cramping at the veil of pain across his eyes. Standing would be agony for Ark. He might pass out again. And Vawn’s shoulder was definitely wrecked. But he had to try. He could do this. The Eversky was busy, and the other saints were occupied. He could do this.

Ark clenched his jaw as Vawn helped him up, trying in vain to hold back a scream. When it burst free it was deeper, full of a growl that made Vawn flinch. He ignored it, ignored the tightness cinched around his chest.

“There’s a portal on this side of the court,” he explained, desperate to give Ark hope, to givehimselfhope. “All we have to do is reach it, and you’ll be out of here.”

“Not… without Maia,” Ark argued, her name scaling into a sharp cry as Vawn began to walk, pulling him along. He couldn’t afford to be gentle. He didn’t have much energy left, didn’t haveany magic, and he needed to reach the portal before everything went to shit. Before they were caught again.

Maia’s name was like a stake driven through Vawn’s chest. His eyes blurred, but he blinked them clear and forced himself onwards, Ark panting as he tried to walk on the tips of his toes.

“Can’t leave her,” Ark rasped, leaning heavily on Vawn. “Mate.”

“Yeah,” Vawn said thickly, his throat tight and choked. “I know.”

But if Ark was taken to safety, it was one less mate that could be used to control Maia. One less threat to her. One less way to kill her.

“Yours,” Ark slurred, his left foot slipping, pitching them dangerously close to the wall before Vawn managed to readjust their balance. The pressure on his fucked arm was so bad that his eyes stung.

He wanted to ask how Ark had guessed, but they didn’t have time and Ark couldn’t explain anyway. He could barely speak. So Vawn just blinked a burning tear free, ignored the pain ripping apart his chest, the memories of everything he’d done poisoning him, promising she would never want a mate like him. He shook his head and immediately regretted it when dizziness gripped his head.

“Window,” Ark croaked, his foot slipping again, sending Vawn into a panicked scramble to keep them upright. His knee buckled but they stayed on their feet, for now.

“Window?” Vawn rasped, his breathing laboured, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose. What the hell did that mean?Whatwindow? He stumbled forward another step—and shrieked when glass exploded inward, a huge, scaly white head appearing through the abrupt hole in the wall ahead of them. Right.Thatwindow.

Vawn flinched back a step, violent trembles threatening to drop them both to the floor as membranous wings appeared, hooked claws at the edge of each rope of muscle, gouging the stone windowsill as… as adrakehauled itself through the broken tooth of the window and into the hallway.

“Nice drakey,” Vawn whispered, backing up on legs that felt like jelly.“Nicedrakey.”

Smoke-grey eyes met Vawn’s, then Ark’s, a striking intelligence in them. The creature of myth halted there in the hallway, its massive body half hanging out the window. Vawn went cold all over, air scraping up his throat as he stumbled back another step.

Ark passed out in Vawn’s arms, the sudden shift of weight enough to send Vawn to the ground. The general’s body landed across his legs, pinning him to the floor as the drake clawed itself through the window, an enormous tail swinging across the hall, sending a mess of dangerous fractures shooting through the walls. Above, the roof shook with impact as the drake shifted around.

Vawn stopped breathing entirely when it advanced towards him and Ark, its jaws open to reveal two rows of razor-sharp teeth.

CHAPTER FORTY

Isak sat stiffly in the rickety wooden cart as it crested a hill towards the huge, crystalline walls around Saintsgarde, the whole city behind them. Smoke spiralled in thick towers from the port, the tell-tale orange glow of fire crawling across the towers and wooden warehouses. Isak had landed there only days ago. His stomach cramped.

“The darkness will come next,” Rassicus murmured, the youngest of Harth’s guards sitting beside Isak with his hand on the hilt of his sword and a tense expression on his young face. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, or maybe not even that. “That’s how it goes. The people are slaughtered, homes and businesses sacked, and then the darkness comes.”

Yeah, Isak remembered the stories Anzhelika told him. Pure, endless dark that devoured the stars and blotted out the moon, followed by funnels of black magic that caught up any survivors, dropping monsters in their place. He knew the saints’ magic when he heard it. He scanned the sky as the cart rattled closer to the gate in the wall, searching for pockets of darkness, for a void sweeping in to shut out the sun. There was nothing yet, but even from here he could see the ships that approached the bay, blackand skeletal and big enough to dwarf every other vessel in the port.

“I’ve never seen ships like those before,” Harth murmured, the general enforcer’s gold eyes fixed the port, too. “What kingdom do they belong to?”

“None I’ve seen,” his father, Kaladeir, remarked. Isak wasn’t too happy to have Maia’s dickhead father in tow, but they didn’t have time for arguments so he’d simply climbed onto the cart and given the bastard a filthy look. Who sacrificed their daughter to a court they knew would hurt her,tortureher? Who fucking did that? If Isak had a daughter, and the whole realm’s peace depended on her sacrifice, he’d let the realm burn. Blood and family were the most important thing in any kingdom, and Isak looked forward to one day spilling Kaladeir’s blood in revenge for how he’d treated his own.

Fucking prick.

“What direction are they coming from?” Arna, a.k.a. Grumpiest, demanded, the silver-haired woman rounding out their little expedition. Wylnarren. FuckingWylnarren.The box and sword couldn’t have been in some cute little glade in the middle of a harmless forest? It had to be at the sight of a massacre so bloody people still spoke of it in whispers.

“Every direction,” Kaladeir bit out, his jaw clenched as he watched more and more ships convene on Saintsgarde. Theyallwatched, only the driver of the cart keeping her eyes on the upcoming wall. “It’s an ambush. The first ships arrived from Port Crystellion, carrying only the dead.”

“It was full of corpses?” Isak asked, his stomach turning. He white-knuckled his new walking stick.

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