Page 72 of Shadow Weaver
My blood crystalized to ice. “Hyde …” I drew my blade. I had to fight. I had to defend myself. “Please, don’t make me hurt you.”
He attacked.
As I defended, as I fought to survive, I realized for the first time that no matter what he’d said during training, he’d been holding back then. This was the true force of Hyde’s ability, the full force of each blow. I was strong. I was skilled, but Hyde was a cut above.
They called him a legend, and now I realized why.
His blade caught my shoulder but was deflected by my armor. Where there should have been a cut, there would be a nasty bruise. I stumbled, righted myself, and brought my sword up just in time to block another blow. But the force of the attack knocked me to my knees.
I was still weak from using the weave. I needed more time.
As Hyde raised his axe and swung, I realized it was time I didn’t have, and a yawning pit opened inside me. This was it. The end.
And then Hyde was swept off his feet by a roaring, angry hound.
Hope flared hot and potent inside me. Athos had come back for me.
The hound landed on Hyde, jaws ready to bite.
“No!” I rushed forward. “Don’t hurt him. We have to save him.”
Athos roared in Hyde’s face and then slammed a huge paw into the side of his head, knocking him out cold.
Shit. I couldn’t leave him out in the open. Another infected might find him and attack him. The infection was only spread by the touch of the wisps, not by physical contact. Otherwise, all the knights at the fortress would have been infected by Brady.
It was safe to take him with me.
“Athos, help me.” I hauled Hyde up, and Athos growled, backing away. “We have to get him help like we helped Brady. The weavers at the Academy can help.” I adjusted my grip on Hyde. Shit, he was heavy. “Please.”
Athos’s chest rumbled, and his ears perked up as if sensing danger. He walked closer and lowered himself enough for me to shove Hyde onto his back and climb on behind him.
I grabbed hold of the ridges on Athos’s back, and we were off.
The mist was thinning. We were almost there.
Shit, how was I going to get a fomorian hound into the Academy?
* * *
Turnedout I didn’t have to try. Brunner and Madam Garnet met me at the entrance to the Academy. They were pale and shaken, and they weren’t alone. Two knights sat on the step behind them, bloody but uninfected.
I slid off Athos’s back and ran toward them. “Hyde is hurt. You have to help me.”
Brunner climbed down the steps. “Is he infected?”
“Yes, but we can cleanse him. I just need the weavers. I need Madam Latrou.”
Brunner’s gaze traveled over my shoulder to where Athos was standing with Hyde thrown over his back.
“You have to get him off the grounds,” she said.
“Athos won’t hurt you. He helped me. He’s a trained hound.”
“Not the hound. Hyde. You need to get him off the grounds, now.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
An inhuman scream ripped the air, and then Athos was snarling and backing up toward me, his huge body vibrating with the need to act. Hyde had fallen off the hound and lay on the ground, his body contorting and convulsing.
