Page 96 of The Myths of Ophelia
I scoured the shelves as we ducked between aisles. Ahead, Lancaster fought to get his injured sister away, winding through the rows and finally setting her down to lean against the wall.
“It’s not any of these,” I called back to Rina over the howls and growls of the dead. Something beat beneath my skin. Greater than only my second pulse.
The dead were getting closer, their rattling breaths slinking around the chamber.
Lancaster hurtled past Rina and me, into the center aisle. He didn’t look at me as he asked, “Can you find it?”
There was a tug in my gut, that beat solidifying into a steady, demanding pulse. “Yes!” I yelled.
In answer, he summoned a long sword—one of the largest and most ostentatious I’d ever seen—out of thin air and faced the corpses flooding the main aisle.
“Go with her.” Lancaster nodded at Rina. He took a few steps forward, positioning himself firmly between where his sister was crouched and the enemy.
“You can’t face all of them on your own!” As Rina said it, the first dead warrior reached Lancaster with a bumbling, childlike run, and the fae sliced clean through its neck.
“Want to say that again?” Lancaster asked, fury limning his body as he kicked aside the crumbling corpse. “You’re more help to her. The quicker we find that emblem, the quicker we can get my sister help.”
“Come on.” I tugged Rina up the aisle toward the head of the cavern.
Lancaster stood as a wall against the catacombs’ defense. But?—
The dead didn’t storm toward him as the hive-minded horde we’d expected.
“Shit,” Lancaster muttered, bracing himself.
Splitting down the rows, the corpses wound with the uniform actions of a group who had practiced this routine many times, shrieking as they pursued all four of us.
They were a team trained to defend this place and what it contained.
Mora fired off daggers with her good arm—grunting in pain with each—but all they did was slow down the creatures, cause them to stumble. It wasn’t enough to kill them.
I skidded to a stop. Rina gripped my arm, trying to push me ahead, to force me after the emblem.
“We have to take care of them first!” I snapped, magic bubbling to the surface of my skin, rebelling against its cage.
A corpse leapt from the nearest aisle, raising a rusted old sword preserved about as well as its body toward Rina’s back.
“Move!” I shouted.
Rina dodged to the right, and without thinking, I blasted a burst of hungry magic at the corpse, withering it to ash along with the ancient blade.
“Holy gods,” Rina swore.
“Nope,” I panted. “Just me.” And I dove at the next corpse. Our blades met repeatedly between us as it cornered me down the aisle.
Rina slashed at another, letting it close enough to grab her before she sank a blade through where its eye would have been. Its screech was silent as she dragged a larger knife through its throat, severing right down to the bone so the creature collapsed before her.
“Smart tactic, Bounty,” Lancaster called.
“I’m not—” Rina’s words cut off in a gasp, and I whirled, dodging my opponent.
Lancaster was hunched over, a wooden staff protruding from his side. Blood oozed around it, the fae barely able to stand.
With some immortal and almighty will—or perhaps merely sheer determination—he lifted his sword with one hand, the other pressed to his side. And the male sliced through the neck of the warrior grinning a yellowed smile down at him.
Then, Lancaster toppled into a shelf, sending silvered artifacts clanging to the stone floor. With a sharp inhale, he wrenched the staff from his side. It wasn’t jammed deep, not even an inch coated in blood. Not enough that he should be so weak and pale.
“It’s made from a cypher,” he wheezed. “There are splinters…”
