I grabbed a small bag of things—more useful than the gemstones I’d sent Jelena off with—and then she and I ran outside and into the general chaos, with Finx at our feet.
“I still want you to go,” I told her.
“Where?”
“North. Where it’s safer. ”
“And where will you go?”
“It is better that you don’t know,” I said, and squatted down. “And Finx—I want you to go with her. ”
He looked up at her, then back at me. “Why?” he asked, the first word he’d ever spoken in her presence. She gasped and threw a hand across her mouth.
“I’m going to go do magic. I’ll be in enough danger—I won’t be able to protect you. ”
“I am me!” he huffed, throwing his arms up again, and showing me his claws and fangs and underbelly.
“And you are my best friend. You both are,” I said, looking up at Jelena. “I can’t have anything happen to either of you. ”
“But what if you get trapped again?” Finx protested.
“There are plenty of things in this world that want to hurt me. I’ll make do. Stay with her. Please. ”
Finx reluctantly walked over to her feet, while Jelena looked nervously at him. “And what will you do?” she asked me.
I rose, looking back at the tent that had trapped me for almost a month. “First. . . I’m going to give this thing windows. ”
I turned and ignored them then, hoping that they would do as they’d been told—and knew my doubt about them doing so, which must’ve been a familiar refrain for Rhaim while he was training me. But I concentrated all of my attention on a spot on the wall, imagining the point of my stare burning like the sun, feeling my own eyes almost go blind for a time while I was staring at it, until the magic caught and the fabric flared.
“Yes,” I hissed, and then turned, to run to the center of camp.
I was buffeted by the chaos, which was a good thing. A man’s bag caught me in the shoulder, a woman’s basket hit me in the stomach, and a small child ran into my knee. I paused at that and wanted to make sure they knew where they were going, until another adult picked them up, hopefully their mother.
I used the cacophony of all these much smaller blows to let magic build in me, one slight at a time until I encroached the area where soldiers were grappling with the undead things.
“Get back!” one of them shouted at me in warning—and I was sure he didn’t know who I was.
How would he?
He’d likely never seen my face.
After this, though. . .
I spotted the tattered remains of my unicorn tent in the background, as a Deathless turned toward me. I angled around it, running through a group of them, dodging their reach, until I got inside.
There was a hole rent into the earth where the table had been, like a giant had reached down and clawed the soil up, and it was out of this gaping gash that the Deathless were somehow both forming and emerging from.
I didn’t have much in the way to personally compare them to, only things that I had read about in some of Rhaim’s books: they were like underground rats being pulled up into daylight, or maybe like the ants of a nest that someone had kicked. Their foul presence made a mockery of the unicorn paintings on the walls. I drew to a halt, thinking quickly.
When I’d stopped the Deathless with Rhaim, I’d had a vast bank of power inside of me from his bite. I’d demanded that the ground flatten, and it’d done so, just as I’d told it—flattening me, along with it.
But now. . . I quickly scanned the environment for something I could use, as many of the things drew near and—I found it.
My unicorn throne.
It was still here—likely meant to come with me as part of my dowry, so I could sit on it, horns agleam, one last time, as I was presented as a queen to my new people before my pledge ceremony finished and I was in chambers and it would never shine again.
It would do.
I put my hands out, focusing all my concentration upon it, as the Deathless blocked me, the ones I’d run past returning for me, fresh and easy meat, and new ones focusing upon me the second they’d left their grave.
The throne was mine and it would give and do as I asked of it.
I heard the sound of something snapping, like twisted wood, as I felt the claws of a Deathless on my back. I gasped in pain but did not lose my concentration—because that gasp would be my last inhale.
The throne shattered, pulled apart by my will and my desires, until all the horns that had comprised it were hovering aloft, where my magic could send them out like arrowshot.
The Deathless in front of me were pierced first, a unicorn horn drilling them through, the twisted alabaster length spiraling between ribs to come out the other side, now stained black, as the creature fell to the ground.
Yes.
I envisioned it happening. . . everywhere. All of the Deathless in this tent with me—and all of the ones outside too. I heard the wet sounds of their flesh being punctured, and the pink silk of my dress was spattered with their dark ichor.
And the cost of this magic was my breath.
I felt it leaving me, as each horn sought Deathless out, performing aerial turns like ivory hummingbirds—like I was blowing them along. I knew I couldn’t stop—if I did, I didn’t have enough magic in me to start up again.
A horn slammed through a bleary eye and out the back of one’s skull, another was railed through its chest, and I didn’t even know what was happening to the Deathless outside, only that I willed their destruction.
Fighting them opened up a vault in me to memories long since hidden—my mother’s surprised shouts, her herding me into my room, and then her terrified screams.
Answered by mine, from behind my locked door.
What I would have given to have a skill like this then, when I was fourteen.
So I didn’t care if I suffocated now, as I sank down to hands and knees on the floor of the tent.
All I needed was for all of them to die.
I heard cheers from outside, just before I imagined myself turning blue. Then the ground shuddered and the hole into the earth that’d been torn through the tent’s floor went away, leaving only a small seam of mounded dirt behind.
My magic stopped, unicorn horns dropped out of the air, all around me, and I could breathe anew.
Panting, I slowly rocked back, and looked behind me to the tent’s entrance, where the same guard who’d told me to get back earlier was standing in awe.
I had no idea how much he’d witnessed—but he knew I was here, alone, now.
Alive.
“Tell everyone who asks that I truly am the unicorn queen,” I told him, and collapsed.