Donati—not stone, but flesh and blood—materializes out of the shadows to slit the throat of a poor Clare soldier thirty paces away. The woman collapses backward, and Donati shoots a vicious grin in Jaylie’s direction. Immediately, he disappears again.
Within heartbeats, he blinks back into existence, this time closer. Shoving his extended palm into the chest of a half-orc wielding a dagger, he sends pulses of dark energy into the man’s body until he collapses, dead, into the dirt.
And again, shadows take him.
“On guard, everyone!” Jaylie shouts, a note of panic in her voice. “He’s close.”
Alora’s jaw clenches, and Loren summons motes of fire to his palms.
An awful quiet settles around Jaylie as each of her companions holds their breath. But it’s Alora’s pained gasp that breaks the silence.
“Hello, my dear,” Donati purrs, materializing behind her.
Jaylie turns in a rush, but she’s too late. Donati has the tip of a serrated dagger pressed to Alora’s throat, his hand wrapped tightly around her forearm where he’s already sliced through her skin from wrist to elbow. Blood pools around his fist where he digs his thumb into the cut. It’s not enough to kill her, Jaylie realizes with relief.
But he doesn’t need her dead.
He just needs her blood.
A laugh starts low in the back of the dark wizard’s throat. It’s a terrible, grating sound, and it grows louder with each moment that passes. The blood coating Donati’s palms glows a deep red as he claps his hands together and begins to chant in a language Jaylie does not recognize.
Suddenly, the rosebuds serving as eyes for the dragon-hedge catch fire. Every leaf rustles at once and then, as if in a great wind, lies flat against the hedge’s form.
Just like scales.
Roots creak and branches screech as the dragon begins to move. The thorns elongate into talons just as tiny branches weave together to form the webbing between its wings. As the blood spilling from Donati’s palms flows into the earth, the dragon becomes more real, shedding the fragile leaves in favor of hard green scales. As it lifts its head to the sky, it lets out a roar that pierces through the garden.
“No.”
Jaylie does not recognize the voice—but she sees Loren’s lips move.
Loren’s green eyes disappear as flames pour out from the sockets. Fire wreaths his wrists and hands as he raises his arms to the clouds, his lute forgotten where it hangs from his shoulder. As he tilts his head backward, a column of fire erupts from his mouth, and he screams into the sky.
Horrified, Jaylie watches as he summons an inferno between his blackened palms. What starts as the size of a marble soon grows, swelling until it’s a meteoric sphere twice the size of the dragon crouching ahead. Just as Donati and the monster leap forward, Loren hurls the fireball in a great, burning arc.
Jaylie’s world turns red. The last thing she hears is Donati’s cry before she blacks out.
“We did it. Gods, we actually did it.”
Marlana?
No. Morgana squeezes Jaylie’s hand as the priestess blinks back to life.
She lies on the edge of a crater. Steam rises from the gaping hole in the earth, spiraling upward. The hole is so deep that even as Jaylie arches her neck, she can’t see the bottom of it.
“Donati’s dead?” Jaylie asks. Her voice cracks, dry in the heat.
“No, even better. Loren wounded him—gravely—but Shira captured him in the end. She’s taking him to the Assembly now. They’ll deal with him there.” Morgana barks out a low laugh. “Painfully, I hope.”
“Where’s Loren?”
“I’m right here, Jay.”Good. His voice is normal again.The bard leans forward, and Jaylie can see his sparkling green eyes upside down from where he kneels above her, her head in his lap.
“Your eyes were on fire,” she croaks.
“Were they?” he says mildly, his smile crooked. “I don’t remember.”
Jaylie casts a gaze at her surroundings. Within her direct vicinity, trees and roses and shrubs still burn. But farther than that, the garden looks intact—as do most of her allies, which she is grateful for. She doesn’t have the energy to heal even if she wanted to.
