Diaspor Aspenwind's Arc

Chapter 9 of 11

The arch pulsed again, faster than he had counted on. Diaspor planted his feet on the scorched moss, golden sword raised, flames still licking the blade from the burning hive at his back. Knees bent, shoulders square, every line of him aimed at the trembling gate. He had wanted minutes. He was getting seconds. She stepped through with a dark sphere already cradled in her free hand, amethyst light coiling inside it like smoke caught in glass. Her dagger hung loose. Her eyes found the wreckage, then him, and her mouth went thin. "You burned it," she said. "I felt every cell of it go." He did not answer. He charged. She lifted the sphere and crushed it against her palm. The amethyst smoke poured out in a low wave, and where it touched the ground, ferns blackened and curled. It caught his legs below the knee. Cold bit through his boots. His charge stuttered. He swung anyway. The golden blade clipped her sleeve, drew a thin line of blood along her forearm, and her dagger answered, opening his shoulder to the bone. He staggered back through the smoke and ran. The trees closed around him, the hive roaring behind, her voice rising after him calm and certain: "I know what you did now, Diaspor. I will take it out of you piece by piece." He pressed his good hand to the wound and kept moving. The hive was ash. She was wounded. He was bleeding and named and hunted in full daylight, and the kill was further away than it had been at dawn.