Daybreak (8 page)

She clutched her blackened dragonscale armor to her chest as she entered. “It was brilliant out there tonight. You’re lucky I came home at all.”

His throat tightened as he watched her drop the armor onto the desk; his heart began to race. “What?” he croaked, even though when he saw how fiercely her gaze burned, he knew full well
what
.

“I warned you that I planned to finish what I started,” she murmured as she sauntered towards him.

He sprang to his feet and caught her hands in his, bracing himself for the coiling strength that surged across her limbs. “One game,” he pleaded, holding her back.

“No.”

“You can’t just keep beating me!”

“Apparently, I can,” she said, thrusting forward. But just when it looked as if he would lose, she finally relented. “Fine. One game.”

Something about the way she held him reminded him of the night before. The memories flared up behind the backs of his eyes and he pulled away quickly. “White or black?” he said, hoping Kyleigh hadn’t noticed his look.

Though judging by the growl in her voice, she had: “White, of course.”

It was difficult to concentrate with Kyleigh sitting across from him. He loved to watch how her eyes moved across the pieces. She kept her finger propped against her lips as she studied the board. But every once in a while, the edges of her mouth would slip into a smirk — usually just before she wreaked havoc on his pieces.

It took Kael ages to decide which way to turn, but Kyleigh moved in a blink. Soon, the numbers of his blackened army had dwindled considerably — and he honestly couldn’t remember how half of them had been taken.

“How do you do it?” he grumbled, sliding his knight to a position he was certain wouldn’t get him mauled.

Kyleigh didn’t answer. When he looked up, she snared him in her gaze. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

She raised a brow at the hesitation in his voice. Then she leaned forward, propped her elbows upon the table, and whispered: “You’ll need to watch me, then … very,
very
closely. Are you watching?”

He was — or at least he
had
been. Something about the way her lips moved around her words made him forget what he was supposed to be doing. He stared until they bent, ever so slightly, into a triumphant smirk.

“You weren’t watching closely.”

“I was,” he insisted, forcing his eyes away from her lips.

Her brows arced high. “Oh? Then what became of your poor knight?”

Kael looked down, and was shocked to see that his knight had vanished from the board — the knight he’d been certain was safe. No, he
had
been safe. There was no possible way any of Kyleigh’s pieces could’ve gotten near him.

He glared at her.

She propped one fist pensively beneath her chin. “Well, whisperer? What have you got to say for yourself?”

He glanced across the table for his missing knight, while Kyleigh looked on with a mocking grin. But it wasn’t until he thought to check the floor that he finally discovered it: his knight lay slain beneath Kyleigh’s chair — along with a host of other blackened pieces.
 

He couldn’t believe it. “You’ve been cheating this whole time, haven’t you?”

“How
dare
you accuse me of cheating!” Kyleigh roared. She flung out her arm and hurled the table from between them.

And while Kael was still gaping at the scattered pieces, she tackled him.

*******

With their game ruined, Kyleigh made good on her word. “It’s not fair,” she moaned, half-laughing. She buried her head against his neck before she punched him weakly in the chest. “It isn’t fair at all.”

Kael thought she’d been pretty
unfair
, herself.

While she trailed a slow line of kisses down his neck, he craned his head back to survey the damage — and groaned at what he saw.

One of the cushioned chairs had been completely torn apart. The other was missing a leg. Once the world stopped spinning, he could probably seal them back together. But there would be no salvaging the table: it’d toppled over and fallen into the hearth. Now it lay half-out of the fire, with the flames already eating their way down its legs.

Kyleigh reached up and shoved it the rest of the way in before the fire could leap onto the hide rug. “I’m afraid there’ll be no returning from that.”

Kael agreed. “I’ll make a new one tomorrow.” Sometime during the scuffle, one of the bear pelts had gotten trapped beneath him. It was missing a paw, but he still thought it ought do nicely.

“I’m not cold —”

“I don’t care,” Kael said firmly as he draped the hide over them. “Your people are always bursting into places without knocking. I’m not going to leave you stark naked on the floor for everybody to see.”

“You’re assuming they haven’t already seen it?”

“Come off it, Kyleigh. You wouldn’t wander around the castle naked … would you?”

“I suppose you’ll never know.”

He wasn’t sure he
wanted
to know. “Speaking of maids — Mandy was looking for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. And she wasn’t very happy.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Goodnight.”

She tried to roll away, but Kael grabbed her by the shoulder. “You can’t keep threatening Gerald with a gruesome death every time he comes near her. It isn’t fair.”

“I didn’t tell him not to come near her. I simply warned him not to hurt her.”

Kael frowned. “He thinks you’re going to drop him from the clouds.”

“Well, I felt I ought to at least give him fair warning.”

“
Well
, Mandy wants you to stop.”

Kyleigh shrugged. “All right. Noted.” Then she pulled out of his grasp and rolled aside, turning her back to him.

It took Kael a moment to realize that she hadn’t exactly agreed. “Does that mean you’ll stop?”

“I said it was
noted
,” was her growling reply.

Though he should’ve been cross with her, Kael couldn’t help but smile. This was one of the few times when her dragon half showed through.
 

Granted, there hadn’t been much in the dragon books he’d found in the library. Most were simply legends. But there
had
been a passage about lady dragons, and how fiercely they guarded their nests. As protective as they were of their skies, the book had warned that it was nothing compared to the fury with which they would defend their brood.
 

With Roost very firmly under the shadow of her wings, Kyleigh must’ve felt the need to protect Mandy. And he couldn’t fault her for it.
 

But he’d seen enough pictures of armies being roasted alive to know that Kyleigh
would
drop Gerald from the clouds if he ever hurt Mandy. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Kael wrapped himself around her carefully; he pulled her close. His arms dipped into the curves of her waist. He pressed his chest into her back until he could feel the steady beating of her heart. She fit against him perfectly. She made him whole.

Her breathing slowed to a murmur and her heart slowed to match. The hand she’d had clutched against his arm loosed its grip and trailed softly to the floor. Only when he was certain she’d fallen asleep did Kael dare to whisper:

“I love you, Kyleigh.”

Something startled Kael awake. The storm still growled outside the window, but the hearth fire had gone dark. Cool air glanced across his chest and his arms were empty. He heard the patter of feet and rushed to blink the sleep from his eyes.

Kyleigh was standing before the desk, tugging on her boots. She already wore her leggings and her jerkin hung open at her chest. Her hands moved in a blur as they sealed every buckle and clasp in a swift, practiced motion. Her eyes stayed fixed upon the window.

Even by the fire’s embers, he could see that she was glaring.

“What is it?” Kael said hoarsely.

She didn’t reply. She glanced at the desk for half a blink to snatch Harbinger up before her eyes flicked back to the window.

It took Kael several moments of digging through the shambles of the room before he finally came up with his trousers. They were ripped straight down the middle — torn beyond repair. He didn’t remember what had happened, exactly … but he could guess.

Fortunately, the pair Kyleigh had been wearing was still intact. He found the trousers beneath a pile of broken chair and slipped them on as quickly as he could. “What’s out there?” he hissed as he worked the laces.

When she replied, her voice was hardly a whisper: “Something’s happened … something’s wrong.”

Her voice sounded strange — as if she spoke from sleep, though her eyes were opened. “Are you certain it wasn’t a dream?”

She’d woken him before with worries that something was after them. She would spring from bed and go tearing off down the hall if he didn’t stop her. While she was awake, she assured him that they were safe. But her heart must’ve felt differently in sleep.

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” Kyleigh said, backing away from the window.

Kael jogged over to take her place. He tried to peer through the warped lines of the glass and the steady, trickling path of the rain, but it was no use. Not even the guards’ braziers had survived the wet. All he could see was darkness.

He turned at a creak of the door. “No, don’t go out there — there’s no point in it.”

She stopped in the doorway and watched him from over her shoulder. “I feel I should. I’ll feel better if I know for certain.”

Kael sighed. “All right. Let me find my boots, and I’ll …”

His words trailed off as a bright orange glow filled the room. The arc of its edge stretched quickly across the broken furniture, growing more furiously bright until it touched his boots — launched into two separate corners of the room. Finally, the light flooded up the doorframe, to the ceiling … and he saw every perfect line of Kyleigh’s face twist in horror.

“Kael!”

He didn’t have time to look back. He charged across the room and didn’t stop — not even when the wall behind him exploded. He felt the pressure of the rattling
boom
against his ears, felt the wind shove him forward. He dove for Kyleigh at full tilt.

She clamped an arm across his back; his weight knocked her down. She managed to kick the door shut as they fell — only to have it ripped off its hinges a second later.

Kael’s elbows bit the ground hard, but he managed not to flatten Kyleigh beneath him. He grunted when the door slapped across his back and nearly lost his grip when a shower of heavy bits of wall thudded on top of it. He likely would have been crushed to death, had Kyleigh not braced it with her hands.

“Go!” she grunted.

He slid out the gap between her arms and the door. Once he had his feet under him, he tore the rubble aside and pulled her free. “Are you —?”

Another explosion sounded overhead. The floor shook beneath them. Kyleigh’s head whipped around at the noise of terrified screams. “You take the bottom floor — I’ll take the top.”

She tore off down the hallway, and Kael followed on her heels.

They split at the main room: Kyleigh charged down the passageway that would lead to the stairs while Kael tried to manage his way through a crush of castle folk.

They were red-eyed and half-dressed. Many of them were already wounded by debris. There were too many bodies packed inside the hall — and each and every one of them scrambled madly for the keep’s one small door.

Kael was trying to shove his way through without hurting anybody when someone bellowed from behind him: “Make way! Let the Witchslayer get to the door!”

Gerald’s voice rose above the panicked shouts. Several of the guards took up his cry. The castle folk parted out of his way. They shoved him on. When he reached the door, he saw it’d been caved in.

“Bloody trapped,” Gerald hissed from behind him. “We’d better turn around and make for the back.”

There wasn’t time for that. The back led to a narrow walk that dangled over the edge of a cliff. Kael didn’t think the villagers would be able to make it in the dark.

So he shoved his hands into the wall, molding the stone and mortar aside like clay. People began slipping through the hole the moment it was wide enough. He dragged its sides until the hole resembled something like the slit in an iron helmet.

“Keep moving,” Gerald said as he urged the last of them outside. “Head straight for the village!”

“What’s out there?” Kael panted. His head was still spinning from the shock, his ears still ringing from the blast. But he tried to force himself to be calm.

Gerald, on the other hand, looked as if he’d just lost a bucket’s worth of blood. “I haven’t got a clue! I was about to take my turn at the watch when the castle started blasting apart. We’ve been hit in the back and the shanks. Looks like forward’s our only option.”

Before Kael could wonder how on earth someone had managed to get behind Roost, a loud
clang
drew his eyes down the hallway towards the library.

A handful of guards tumbled out of the back room, running like Death snapped at their heels. White ringed their eyes and their arms swung madly at Gerald. “Move! Get out of here!”

Before he could ask, Kael saw it: a red light glowed softly in the doorway. It filled the castle from ceiling to floor, like a sheet of glass that changed its shape along the curves of the hall.

It blackened the guards’ armor and made their flailing shadows look like wraiths. The man at the back of the sprint tripped over his boots. He managed to crawl a few paces, but the red light didn’t slow. Kael was running to help when a thick, moldy tang struck his nose.

Magic.

In the second he realized this, the guard was overtaken. He screamed and writhed upon the ground as the red light scraped across him. Kael managed to grab his hand just as the spell enveloped them. He was so focused on holding his breath against the tang of magic that he moved the guard a foot before he realized that he was dragging a skeleton.

The magic had stripped the guard’s skin away, peeling his flesh aside until all that remained was shining bone. Kael dropped him, and the guard’s helmet rolled away — revealing a smooth, grinning skull.