Page 63 of Untempered
I tripped on my skirt, but Isolde held me up until I could recover to the sound of ripping fabric as my skirt gave way.
The younger brother screamed—rage and terror and grief all blurring into a blood-chilling war cry—as he launched himself toward me. A split second later, the older brother’s wail, thick with tears, joined in.
He was scrambling over the table. He was furious.
I’d been trying to help.
I’d just wanted tohelp.
“Don’t let them touch her,” Isolde ordered, her voice cracking like a whip as she shoved me behind her.
Thomas grabbed the oldest by his shirt and pulled him down off the table, but he scrambled under. Isolde planted her foot squarely in the youngest’s face, kicking him away. Black blood oozed out of his nose as he staggered.
My heart was as dead as the mage. I put my hand to my own face, tasting the blood, feeling the hot, burning agony. Through my tears, I saw Chay grab the eldest around the waist as he lunged at me.
Tiny arms clawed at the air. Tiny feet flailed. He’d clambered through the spilled soup. Some of it was on his breeches.
Stop,I wanted to say, but the words got all tangled up in my throat.We want to help.
“You killed my da! You killed my ma!” the younger brother shouted at us, sobbing, blood dribbling slowly down his chin.
Either the child in Chay’s arms broke free, or he let him go. He came toward me, and Isolde shoved him back, too, her kick hitting him in the chest and making him sprawl into his younger, bloodied brother.
I took a step back, away from the horror almost involuntarily. I couldn’t breathe around the sobs, screams, or useless regret tangled up in selfish terror.
The eldest boy gathered himself for another leap, and the world was spinning around me, tilting, crashing down. Isolde’s hand on my arm wasn’t there to keep me up. The straw didn’t soften my fall as my knees hit the ground. The eldest, who’d accepted his tiny sibling, who’d amused his little brothers, who would holdmeresponsible. My hand crushed my mouth, tried to hold my own agony in. It didn’t belong here.
I didn’t belong here.
He jumped at me, and Chay stepped between us, sword drawn. He said something, a warning. I couldn’t look away as the child speared himself on the blade.
Thomas stood, shaking, frozen in place, but Isolde stepped in front of me and settled into a stance I knew was defensive.
The younger child was running at me. I heard Isolde shout, heard my own wail as if from far away. At the last moment, some instinct kicked in, and I tried to scramble to my feet through the tears. There was violence around me. So much. I couldn’t make sense of it, of the lurching, spinning world or the words tumbling around the air nearby.
And then it was quiet, finally. And the last child’s head had been separated from his body.
Chay dropped his sword like it burned and turned his eyes on me, disgust in every line of his face.
I couldn’t make sense of that much hatred. I couldn’t carry it.
So I didn’t try.
But I shed tears for him, anyway. He, and the other innocents.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
ISOLDE
“Allow no good deed to pass without consequence.” ~ La’Angi saying
Iheld my tongue until Thomas dropped the bar on the external tower door, locking the whole city out and separating us from what had happened in that hall, and then I rounded on them. Fury pounded through my veins. “How are you still alive?” I demanded, going straight for the throat. “How have your oaths not burned you both to a crisp for taking so long to act?”
Thomas looked at me like he wasn’t really there, but Chay offered me his sword, the blood thick and still gleaming black. “I suppose this doesn’t need cleaning, then.”
Audrey stepped forward. “I’ll?—”
I stepped between her and that fouled blade even as Chay twitched it away. Rage poured through me, barely held within the banks of my will. “No, you willnot.”I thrust a pointed finger toward her rooms without thinking, and the stubborn child dug her heels in, her long mouth thin with displeasure.
