A Betrayal of Storms by Ben Alderson

Chapter 20

My body was frozen in shock, unable to move or speak, not as the pool of ruby spread beneath Orion's downturned face, seeping around in a halo of death.

A shift in the air caught my attention. I looked up to watch Erix lung forward, sword outstretched for the Hunter. Gyah moved too, hands like claws as she cleared the space, feet not touching the floor.

They were both screaming but it was hard to fathom if they made sense with words or just angered noises. All I could think about was the blood, dark and thick as it spread across the ground towards me.

I looked to Althea and my heart cracked clean in two. Her eyes were wide, both brows raised high and mouth parted in a small, unignorable o-shape. Surprise softened her face, whereas the burning of disbelief drained the colour from her cheeks and the glow from her eyes.

Then she snapped out of her daze, swinging an axe without barely making a sound. She caught Erix's blade with the curve of her own weapon, one large twist of her arm and the momentum tore the sword from his grasp and sent it surging off into the darkness. Gyah was next, stopped dead in her tracks by a flash of burning hot fire that exploded from the skin of Althea's outstretched palm. Both warriors stumbled away, missing the wild swing of the axe, as she spun to meet the Hunter who was caught in manic laughter.

Her cry split the night like thunder. The axe was the lightning, warning of what was to come as it turned on the Hunter. The murderer. I winced, expecting to see more blood, deserving blood, spill alongside Orion's, but I was wrong.

In a blink she had turned her wrist, angling the flat edge of the axe's body toward the Hunter's head. Metal connected with bone and flesh, the crack deafening as though the very mountains we had seen on our journey had fractured.

His head snaped back, eyes rolling to whites as a gash poured angrily over his left brow. The dagger, Erix's dagger, fell from his hand, embedding to the hilt in the bloodied ground.

The Hunter fell, alive, but unconscious, evident from the heavy rise and fall of his chest.

"Althea," I croaked, reaching a hand for her shoulder. Her back was to me, facing the Hunter, shoulders moving rapidly beneath her breaths. "I am so sorry."

It was all I could say. What else was there? I did not know Orion, nor like him, but death was death, and he was her family. She did not have to like him, but through blood and time she had loved him as her kin.

She was warm beneath my touch, or perhaps I was just cold now, having hosted untamed power of the Icethorn Court.

I waited for her to speak, giving her the time she needed as she regarded the unconscious Hunter beneath her. She had not once looked back to her brother, dead and bleeding. Instead her entire focus was on the human boy as though he held coveted answers to the universe and he was about to reveal them all.

Althea shrugged out of my hold. When she finally spoke her voice was rough like that of stormy oceans, harsh like winds through forests. "We need to return to Aurelia. Immediately."

Erix was beside us now, sword back in his hand, and the point held upon the unconscious human. "Then we kill him here. Now."

"No." Althea's answer was final, her voice void of negotiation or options. "I will not allow that."

"But he-" I wanted to reach a hand over Erix's mouth but Althea's retort silenced him before I could waste a second imagining it.

"I am well aware what has occurred, Erix," Althea snapped, eyes ablaze with the fire she held internally. "If we return, with my brother dead, and no proof of what had happened, then nothing is stopping Lady Kelsey from suggesting that his blood is on our hands. I do not know what she has planned, nor what collateral she is prepared for, but the Hunter comes with us. If Orion's death is questioned, they can rip his mind open and see for themselves what happened here."