The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (howl and other poems TXT) 📗

There was open fury in his expression, offense mixed with honest grief, but he didn’t strike recklessly or push too far forward.

She hated it when they were intelligent.

Dodging the next blow from the poker, she started to flick a cut at the footman’s unprotected arm when the earth moved.

Branwyn stumbled backwards, catching herself on the wall. Both of her opponents reeled with the quake too, and both looked stunned, which was some comfort.

“What—” the footman started.

“Kill her,” said Gedomir. “One thing at a time.”

Branwyn regained her footing quickly enough to meet the next strike with steel, not flesh. A punch to the stomach left the man doubled over. She saw steel flash from the corner of her eye and shifted her weight backwards.

Gedomir’s sword sliced a shallow line from her shoulder down her side, neatly splitting her tunic. The skin beneath only opened a little, a scratch rather than any kind of significant wound. In another fight, Branwyn wouldn’t even have noticed the sting, or the hot kiss of blood.

The problem was that both existed. Gedomir had cut her, and that meant her transformation had worn off. From now on, it would be flesh against flesh.

* * *

Zelen ran.

He’d do no good if he arrived exhausted, or if he tripped on a footstool and brained himself. He hated knowing that. Restraint chafed him. Caution bound him, just at the moment when no turn of speed would have been enough. He silently cursed every inch of the floor that he had to cross, every turn of the corridors and door that took a second to open.

The dark house would’ve been eerie under any circumstances. As Zelen ran, it was a nightmare landscape around him. Every doorway was a yawning mouth, every chair a misformed ghost.

From the study to the main hall, his path led into the back of the house. A right turn took him to an old door, which he’d been prepared to open and which he found already ajar. That was no real surprise, but the sight dismayed him—though it did save him a moment or two, as he dashed through without pausing.

Below him, the floor changed from smooth wood to stone, only slightly rougher after generations of residents and the efforts of many servants. The walls had no ornaments, and the light was much dimmer.

Up ahead, around a corner, that light became dull orange. Something about its color, or the way it flickered, raised Zelen’s hackles right off, but he had no opportunity to think it over. He was running, and then the earth shook beneath him.

He stumbled, fell roughly to his knees, and managed to hold onto his sword without cutting himself in half as a result. Solid rock shook like a frightened horse beneath him. What in all the hells have they done? He was already getting to his feet while he framed the question, pushing himself up despite the world’s unsteadiness.

Zelen went slower for the brief time that the shaking lasted, and so it stretched out much longer in his heart and gut. In a way, it was no more than he’d expected. He’d never been in the old wing, and particularly knowing what he did, he was not surprised to find it a dark place, where even the ground was untrustworthy.

Soon after, he began to hear the noises of combat and to smell blood in the air.

Gedomir’s order echoed through the hall, cold and furious. Their father had often sounded that way, and nothing good had ever followed. “Kill her. One thing at a time.”

The insults he’d tossed at Branwyn earlier had left Zelen unmoved. They were tiresomely typical of Gedomir: of course he’d pick at how many beds he thought she frequented. Of course he’d think that mattered. Zelen hadn’t felt any urge to defend her honor, only to roll his eyes.

The command sent a flood of red across his vision. When he rounded the corner into the long hallway and finally caught sight of his brother, the metal on Zelen’s sword hilt was etching bloody patterns in his palm.

“You’re going to regret that,” he snarled, and didn’t recognize his own voice.

Gedomir did. He didn’t turn away from Branwyn, as Zelen had been hoping he would, but he looked back for a breath, disbelief warring with spite. Never one to let an opportunity get past her, Branwyn thrust past his guard, but the footman next to Gedomir knocked Yathana to the side with his poker.

The unnerving light didn’t reveal very much about anybody in the hallway. One of the guards was slumped against the wall, cradling his bleeding side. He was still breathing. It was harder to tell about the groom, who lay faceup between Zelen and Gedomir, but eventually his chest did move. Branwyn knew about the compulsion, then; he couldn’t imagine her sparing their lives otherwise.

For the second occasion in his life, tending to others’ wounds wasn’t Zelen’s priority. He dashed past both wounded men with a muttered apology, similar to the one he’d used for the guards in the study, seeing them only dimly. Gedomir and Branwyn were the center of his vision.

She wasn’t metal, which suggested either careful hoarding of resources or that she’d been fighting for a while. She also wasn’t moving with the normal superhuman speed she demonstrated in a fight. That and a slight favoring of her left side made Zelen think she was flesh out of necessity, not tactics. Gedomir, fresh from trying to have his brother killed, was moving nearly as quickly and using the footman’s amateur-but-desperate efforts with the poker to decent advantage. Zelen picked a spot with anatomical exactness and lunged forward.

Gedomir spun, catching the strike on his blade, and uttered three words Zelen didn’t understand.

Branwyn, who had just laid the footman low with a sweeping kick to the ankles, staggered back, clutching her neck. Gedomir actually smirked as he advanced on Zelen.

Their swords met again. Zelen blocked his brother’s strike that time. He disengaged and stepped sideways, seeking an opening and