That unleashed a magical firestorm. Dorian threw a shield around himself and Jenine. A fire missile made it through before the shield formed and scored his ribs. He hunched and almost lost the shield. Jenine grabbed him and held him upright.

The hall filled with magic, stroke and counterstroke, gouts of fire, lightning bolts that smote the rocks as shields diverted them, the rocks cascading from the ceiling turned into missiles themselves and hurled down the hall. Most of the attacks weren’t directed at Dorian and Jenine, but they were in the line of fire.

Dorian’s shield thinned, layer after layer snapping, melting, withering. The aethelings were all fresh. This battle would last long after Dorian’s shields finally gave way. He was going to die, and worse, he was going to let Jenine die. He had failed her.

No, not while I have breath. God, forgive me for what I’m about to do. It was no true prayer to beg forgiveness while choosing to sin—but he meant it fervently all the same.

Dorian reached to the vir. It came, joyfully.

Someone was screaming, a terrible scream compounded a hundred times by the vir to shake every hall and tunnel of the Citadel. Dorian stood and flung his arms out. As they passed in front of him, he saw that his skin had totally disappeared beneath the all-absorbing, wriggling blackness. Nor did the vir stop at the bounds of his body. They lashed out from his arms—out farther and farther, like great wings—and came down on either side, barely registering the aethelings’ last desperate attacks.

He felt the boys crunch beneath those mighty wings like beetles popping under his boot. Their shields broke like shells and the softness within was ground to gory smears on the rock.

The vir sang power and hatred and strength. It is vile, and I love it.

He stopped screaming, and it was long seconds before the sound stopped echoing back from the Citadel’s halls. Dorian quieted the vir from his skin with effort. “Are you all right?”

Jenine’s big, beautiful eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them. She tried to speak, couldn’t, and nodded instead.

“I’m sorry,” Dorian said. “It was that or die. We’re almost there.”

But as they stepped through the now-smoking gate, Dorian saw that he was wrong. Halfway across the glowing spans of Luxbridge was a man in a majestic white ermine cloak like Garoth Ursuul had worn. He wore the gold chains of a Godking around his neck and vir swam on his skin.

Dorian’s brother Paerik Ursuul had come to claim his throne, and blocking the bridge with him stood six full Vürdmeisters.

17

On the third night, after they made it through Forglin’s Pass and set up camp, Dehvi finally spoke to Vi. “Let us train together, wetboy.”

“I’m not a wetboy,” Vi said quickly.

“You were Hu Gibbet’s apprentice.”