Dart shook her head. “Once the blood dried from him, he became a ghost again.”
Yaellin spoke from the door. “My father, Ser Henri, knew of Pupp. Dart used to speak of her ghostly pet, before others ridiculed and chided her into silence and secrets. My father believed her companion might be some amalgam of Dart’s naethryn and aethryn selves. Born whole, Dart was not stripped of these parts. Yet they remain not fully of this world either. They cling to her.”
Dart listened, balanced between horror and understanding. She and Pupp had always been one, but she never suspected how much of a one they were. If the others were right, Pupp was as much a part of her as her leg or arm.
Gerrod nodded. “And her blood has the Grace to pull this part of her fully into our world.”
“Not just her blood,” Yaellin countered. Dart had already told him about the drop of Chrism’s blood striking Pupp, and the blood roots down in the subterranean passage. “ Any blood rich enough with Grace. Pupp just needs fuel to cross the barrier into substance.”
“Such strangeness abounds,” Gerrod concluded.
The castellan rose from the cot. “Which does not settle the matter of Chrism and what we might do about this Cabal. We cannot hide forever in this cell.”
Dart listened with half an ear as more discussions and plans were weighed, balanced, and discarded. She found tears coming again to her eyes. She could not say why. They rose from the hollowness inside her. She did not fully know who she was any more: girl, god, or monster.
She stared at her hands, blurred by her tears. They seemed a stranger’s now.
A second pair of hands covered hers, grasping. She lifted her gaze to find Laurelle close to her, staring back at her. “It doesn’t matter,” her friend said. There was no horror in her eyes. “None of this matters. I know you.” She squeezed her fingers. “This is the Dart I know. You’ve shown your heart in the past and now. The rest is just shadow and light.”
Dart sniffed and took Laurelle’s hand in her own. She so wanted it to be true. But she had only to hear the others discuss slaying a god to know that there were matters greater than flesh… even her own. And she had a role to play. Dart had no say in her birth, even her years in the Conclave were ordered and orchestrated by others. But no longer. From here, she would have to forge her own path. It was for her to decide.
Girl, god, or monster.
Kathryn shook her head. “This is madness. We must wait on others. Bring full forces to bear. We can’t lay siege on the castillion with just the handful here.”
Tylar stood. Kathryn noted the wobble in his knees, though Tylar tried to hide it with a wave of his arm.
“Chrism will not wait,” he argued. “He knows he’s been exposed. If he has not found us by sunset, there is no accounting of what he might do. He could unleash all manner of horror in the city. Or he could merely escape with his Cabal, hiding away, disappearing with the Godsword. He’d be a thousandfold more difficult to root out.”
“You propose going in on our own?” she said. “With no knowledge of what may lay in wait?”
“If we could only find the Godsword…” Tylar grumbled.
Yaellin spoke from the doorway. “I’ve searched everywhere for the weapon. It’s nowhere to be-”
Distant shouts silenced the man. All eyes turned to the door.
Yaellin swung to the spy hole. “It’s coming from down the stairs. I’ll check.” He lifted the bar and pulled the latch. He vanished in a whirl of cloak and shadow.
With the door cracked, the heavy tread of boots on stone echoed up from below. Surely it was the castillion guard. Orders were shouted to search every floor. This was no random search.
“We’ve been found,” Tylar said.
Kathryn slid free her sword. Others did the same. There was no escape up the tower. They’d have to fight their way to the streets.
Kathryn called up the power in her cloak, billowing darkness around her form. They had to get Tylar safely away… and the girl. The child could not be captured, returned to Chrism’s reach. With such a source of blood, the Godsword would be Chrism’s to wield. That must not happen.
Glancing over a shoulder, Kathryn spotted the girl crouched with her friend. She had a dagger in hand and a fierce set to her eyes.
Shadows suddenly shifted behind the girl’s shoulders.
Oh no…
Darkness fell across Dart, drawing her eye to the sunlit window nearby. She had left the window open after watching the flippercraft crash earlier. A naked shape crept over the sill, claws digging into stone, eyes glowing with grace. Smoke steamed its form.
An ilk-beast.
The creature leaped into the room-toward Laurelle, the closest to the window.
Dart screamed as the creature struck her friend, knocking her to the bed. Another pair of creatures filled the window, crawling in from either side, misshapen horrors. At the same time, windows shattered around the room. More ilk-beasts boiled in from all sides.
Dart lunged toward the nearest, the one tangled with Laurelle. Her friend kicked and bit, turning as feral as the creature that attacked her. But a swipe of claws ripped her robe and drew bloody furrows across her chest. Laurelle cried out.
Dart already had her cursed dagger in hand. She plunged it to the hilt in the monster’s back. It reared up, tearing the blade from Dart’s grasp. The beast struggled for the impaled dagger, writhing to reach it. It screamed, but all that came out was fire. Its body stiffened with pain, a statue of agony.
Laurelle kicked out at it from the bed. Her heel struck its form and it shattered to ash, blowing outward. A reek of charred flesh whelmed over them.
Dart joined Laurelle, dropping behind the edge of the bed, ducking almost under it.
Around the room, a dance of blades held the ilk-beasts in check. The castellan swirled in and out of shadow, dealing death with swift skill. The tall Wyr-mistress had a sword in each fist, lunging and stabbing in all directions, seeming to have eyes in the back of her head. Even the godslayer wielded a blade in one hand and a dagger in the other, his back to the bearded man who fought with a broken chair leg, sharp as a spear.
But more and more beasts crawled and scrambled into the chamber.
Dart blindly searched the hot ash pile for her dagger. Despite her terror, she dug with care. It would not do to prick her finger on its black tip.
“Make for the door!” Master Gerrod called to them. His bronze form had sprouted sharp blades at elbows and knees. He held the legion at bay from Dart’s corner.
Laurelle grabbed Dart’s arm. She pointed under the bed.
Dart abandoned her search and belly-crawled with Laurelle beneath the bed to its other side. They waited for a clear moment, then shoved across the open space to the next cot, diving beneath it and crawling toward the far door. They waited until the fighting ebbed away from the entry.
“Now,” Dart urged.
The two girls rolled out and to their feet. Hand in hand, they raced for the door and through it. The hallway echoed with the fighting, but it was thankfully empty. They fled down its length, realizing that the clash of swords grew louder again only as they neared the stairwell.
Their feet slowed.
More fighting ahead. Yaellin must be holding the stairs. The scrape of claw on stone drew their attention behind them. Laurelle let out a small whimper.
Climbing down the corridor, a lone ilk-beast had followed them into the hallway, a cat chasing two fleeing mice. On all fours, it was massively muscled, naked of all clothing. Its skin ran with black mottles. Its muzzled face held a fixed snarl, revealing daggered fangs. Fiery eyes stared at them.
Trapped between the two battles-stair and chamber-there was nowhere to run. Dart pawed her belted sheath. They had no weapons.
The beast let out a growl and stalked toward them.
Tylar stabbed a beast through the eye. From the bared breasts, it was once a woman. But her skin had hardened to scale, her fingers to bony claws. Oil cast the nails in a poisonous sheen. But the worst was her face: slitted eyes aglow with a yellowish flame, nostrils flared for scenting, jaws shaped like an adder, full of fangs.
