Page 119 of Master of Storms
The world vanished. She blinked and came to, her fingers curled into the leafy loam beneath her and her cheek pressed into moss. Shoving to her knees felt like a hot poker was dragging through her gut. One of her hands curled around the arrow there. Gritting her teeth, she broke it in two, shaking with sweat and trying not to vomit.
Just needed to… push it… through….
If she could shift shapes, she’d be able to heal herself to some degree.
But thedrekiwithin her was elusive, and every time she reached for her heart, her soul, it was like trying to capture mist in her hands.
It had to be the arrows. Something… on them. Goddess, had he painted them with leviathan blood?
A boot came out of nowhere, driving hard into her abdomen.
Solveig flipped and landed flat on her back, screaming again as the two arrows ground against bone. She saw stars and tried to… roll….
A foot ground into the side of her face, shoving her cheek into the dirt again. “Can’t reach yourdreki, can you?” Tyndyr crooned as he set another arrow to his bow. “I’d love to stay and play a little longer, but alas, my friend does plead a good case. Goodbye, my sweet, sweet morsel.”
And then he drew the bow back again, and Solveig could see the point of that arrow, barely a foot from her temple.
No. No. Not like this.
She grabbed his boot, but trying to move it was like trying to shift solid rock. “Get… off…”
Tyndyr ground his boot down harder, and Solveig screamed in rage and impotent fury—
And then the world exploded in a clash of raging green fire that filled her with a lightness of being she’d never expected.
Tyndyr was gone.
The bow was gone.
Solveig managed to make it back to her knees, freezing when she saw an insubstantialdrekicarved of pure green fire tearing at the elf.
Chaos magic.
Her heart leapt. Ishtar? Or Árdís?
And then she froze as she saw the curve of those familiar wings. It was superimposed over Marduk’s mortal body, moving him as though he was a puppet.
Amadea’s eyes widened, and she bolted into the trees. Tyndyr scrambled through the undergrowth after her.
Marduk bellowed, the sound so high-pitched, it echoed as if the earth was tearing apart.
And then thedrekispirit-form collapsed in upon itself, dumping his mortal body on the ground in a dispersing cloud of green vapor.
“Marduk?” She hauled herself toward him, but he was screaming, his ragged fingers torn and bloody as he pressed them to his eyes. “Marduk!”
They weren’t safe out here.
What was wrong with him?
She couldn’t see any obvious signs of injury, though her own vision was blinking in and out of blackness.
A branch broke somewhere to her left. Solveig froze. Not alone. Tyndyr and Elin might have run for cover, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still dangerous.
Hauling him toward the cave, she used her last ounce of physical energy to create a shield of pure Air over the cave mouth.
And then she collapsed back against the walls, Marduk in her lap.
He’d stopped screaming, but the sobs that wracked him almost made her shudder. Solveig tipped her head back. He’d come for her. She didn’t know how he’d done it, but just when she’d been thinking this life was over, he’d come for her.
