Quill of Thieves

Chapter 22

Her progress stopped entirely when a strong grip fisted into her elbow and swung her around.

Captain Matthias Soiree, the captain of the royal guard, glared at her. They were almost at eye-level with one another.

"What did you know of this?" His voice was low amidst the shouts and cries and snaps of ice, but Abel heard every intonation of the accusation all the same.

She gritted her teeth at him. "Let me go!"

"You claimed to have heard it before anything happened!"

Abel scowled and twisted her arm from his grip, but he held fast. How had the daft brute even heard her conversation with Melvin? He'd been cursing after a much-too pleased princess only seconds earlier. The two of them struggled, Abel craning to catch a glimpse of Sebastian, hoping Melvin had made it to him. She swung out an arm to punch the captain, but he grabbed her fist, throwing it back at her. She felt useless without her bow, and was just about to resort to kneeing him straight in the groin when a new sound forced both Abel and the insufferable captain to freeze.

This time, Abel knew she wasn't the only one who had heard it.

A guttural scream broke through all the other chaotic sounds right before an unfathomable flash of light seared against her eyelids.

The party stuttered to a stunned halt. Even the breeze itself held its breath as the fires in the cauldrons extinguished, one by one, with a foreboding hiss. Like the sudden flash had sucked all other light to fuel it.

Captain Matthias, limbs frozen, dropped her arm. "Solar flare," he swore. "Astrid."

The emptiness of the noise settled thickly around the two figures remaining on the shattered floor.

Astrid stood with one hand pressed to Sebastian's abdomen, the other stretched out above her head, fingers splayed towards the sky. A golden, shimmering orb hovered over them like a shield she had conjured from the stars themselves. Blood, as crimson as wine, seeped around the outskirts of the magical shield, the body it slipped from cut nearly cleanly in two from chest to navel.

"By the Scribes," Abel muttered.

It wasn't until she pushed past a stunned Matthias that she noticed the spilled blood was not, in fact, red. Like it had been a mere trick of the light, the blood shimmered now, like a puddle of silver mercury poured over the dead female warrior. Because this body had once been warrior, clad in thick fighting leathers, knives strapped at her waist, muscled arms and legs now limp in death, her head covered in a moss-colored wrap to conceal her features. As Abel stared at the body, brain whirring to figure out from who or what the silver substance bled, Abel heard the others and realized they could see it, too. Part of her was thankful she hadn't imagined it like the cracking sounds that had only sounded in her own ears, but a smaller part of her shivered in fear at what this could mean.

Whispers erupted around the courtyard.

"Elvish kin from Galandréal," the more senior guests gasped, those who had been alive prior to the Purge to remember such things.

Shocked cries followed these hushed memories. Queen Davina called for her Iced Guards, and then the constantly stoic, blond brute beside Abel nearly fell to his knees.

That was, perhaps, more shocking than anything else.

"An Elder," Mathias hissed. "Astrid murdered an Elder."

O O O

"Do not leave him," a voice cooed in her mind. "It is not yet safe, child."