A Storm of Blossoms

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was a smaller group, now, that was pushing on through the forest. One of the wolves was dead, and as I understood it the escorts watching our collective back had also suffered losses, a wolf to a silver bullet and two of Audgrim’s people to constructs. Richard’s shoulder was cut badly, and also dislocated. He had to retreat; there was just no point in dragging him onward, he’d get killed without accomplishing much. Similarly, Melissa was in no state to be fighting, and while the wolf who took two silver bullets in the chest was still alive, they’d be lucky to stay that way even with treatment and rest.

So, we were down people. Losing Richard, in particular, was an issue; the pyromancer was our biggest single threat after Jack, I was pretty sure. At least against groups. I wouldn’t bet on him in single combat against, say, Andrew or Capinera, but when it came to wiping out whole swathes of people in an instant, it was hard to beat fire magic. It was going to be harder to get through the swarms of constructs without him.

Andrew and Cassie conferred briefly, then had another two wolves join us. That left the rear guard rather sparse, particularly given that the group of wounded needed an escort to get out of the forest safely. Audgrim had wanted to have them chance it, arguing that Richard was still capable of defending them and most of the constructs behind us were already destroyed. Then he saw the wolves, Jack, Capinera, and me all just staring at him in a very unimpressed way. He knew better than to keep pushing at that point.…

Chapter Twenty-Six

I was not prepared for what came next.

In some ways, I had been overconfident, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my opinion of myself had been lower than was warranted. It was true that I had been around violence a lot of times. It was true that there were periods of my life where it felt normal. It was even true that some of those fights had escalated far enough that I’d seen people getting killed.

But what I was discovering now was that those had been, well, fights. Many had been pretty much just brawls between vanilla humans. Some had involved other creatures—werewolves a few times, Audgrim and once another dvergr, mages—but they were still relatively small in scale. They had been solidly something you would call a fight.

What I discovered now was that this had not remotely prepared me for what I had to imagine counted as a small battle, or at the very least a skirmish.…

Chapter Twenty-Five

While I was talking with Cassie, the last few people had arrived. One was a woman on a motorcycle I recognized from Softened Dreams, but hadn’t ever spoken with. I wasn’t sure what she was; her magic smelled cold, like snow and wind and the polar night where the sun doesn’t rise for weeks and the only light is that of stars and aurora. Definitely not human, but no clue what she actually was.

The last to arrive was a bit more of a surprise. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting there, but it definitely wasn’t Melissa driving a beat-up old jeep. The fact that she had Capinera in the passenger seat was really just icing on the cake.

I walked over to where they were getting out and grabbing their stuff. “What are you doing out here?” I asked. I was legitimately confused by their presence; I just wouldn’t have expected to see either of them out here, wasn’t sure who would have even asked them.…

Chapter Twenty-Four

Martin. The guy who was so casual, so relaxed and unobtrusive that I had forgotten he was even present, the one time we met. He had felt peaceful, even. When I found him sitting next to Chris’s dead body, there wasn’t even a flicker of concern that he was a threat. And I’d basically forgotten him entirely since then.

But he was the one who had been pestering Maddie about magic and plants and how they intersected. He was the one who had known that Saori was in contact with Chris and where to find her, and why she had been briefly implicated in his murder. Now that I thought about it, he was also the person who had told Jack that Capinera was linked to the Midnight Court. Which wasn’t false, but it sure as hell was misleading.

It was always the quiet ones you had to watch out for. Someone who was loud and aggressive was usually someone who felt the need to prove something. They were insecure on some level. In my experience, really dangerous people tended not to make threats at all. They didn’t use fancy titles or dramatic pseudonyms. They didn’t get aggressive. It was just…understood by all parties what they could do to you if you gave them a reason to, without them needing to say a word.…