Chapter 69. I Held the Blades Back So Elsbeth Could Do What She Couldn’t Do Before

Chapter 69: 69. I Held the Blades Back So Elsbeth Could Do What She Couldn’t Do Before

When I got back to my feet, Velora was standing a few paces away, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read.

She didn’t say anything either. She just stood there, silent, until I was done.

The gate held, but not for long.

The Chosen reached the wall in a single, flowing surge, scrambling up ladders with their blades in their teeth and their faces still bright with joy.

We pushed them back. But they kept coming.

And somewhere in the middle of the second wave, a hole opened in the line, and a lone figure walked through it, unhurried, as if out for a stroll.

She was tall, and she was a Wolfkin, and she had silver hair cropped short at the nape of her neck. She wore a suit of gleaming gold plate that had been fitted to her perfectly, and she carried two long, curved swords, one in each hand.

She was smiling, a warm, loving, radiant smile, and her eyes were the same deep red as the woman standing on the rampart above me.

"Sister!" she called, in a bright, happy voice. "Sister Elsbeth, you finally came home!"

Elsbeth went absolutely still.

I’d seen her in the canyon with her blade pointed at the ground. I’d seen her kneel beside Torunn’s body.

I’d seen her stand on a wall under the moon and tell me she was afraid. But I had never seen her look the way she did in that moment, as if somebody had reached inside her chest and stopped her heart.

"Ylva..." she whispered.

"Master will be so happy!" the woman in the golden armor said, beaming.

She put her head to one side. "He talks about you all the time~! He says you are the bravest of us all!"

On the battlements above us, the Warmother made a sound I will not forget. It was a small, rough noise, like a plank splitting.

She gripped the parapet so hard that I saw the stone crack under her hand.

And then I saw Elsbeth dropped from the wall.

She landed lightly in front of the gate, with her pale cloak settling around her and her sword hanging loose at her side, pointing at the ground. She walked toward her sister, one slow step at a time, with her hands open.

"Ylva," she said. "Little ember... Look at me."

"I am looking at you!" Ylva laughed.

She raised her swords. "Come on, Elsbeth!"

"We should spar! You always say you will teach me the flank guard!"

She came in fast.

I’ve watched a lot of fights, and I want to tell you that Ylva was beautiful. She moved like water, quick and silent and perfectly controlled, and every strike flowed into the next with no wasted motion.

Elsbeth blocked the first cut with her sword flat, parried the second, and gave ground on the third, her face white.

She wasn’t attacking. She was only defending, and her sister was driving her backward.

I ran down the stairs and into the courtyard before I had decided to, and I got Gate Junior up just in time to catch a curved blade an inch from Elsbeth’s throat.

The impact nearly tore my arm off. But thank god... Bulwark flickered.

My feet skidded in the snow. "Shit... that was close..."

Ylva smiled at me over the crossed blades, bright and friendly, and said, "Oh! Are you the human?!"

"Master said you would be clever!"

"I really hate that he keeps saying that," I gasped. "Some complete context, please?!"

I couldn’t use my hands. I couldn’t reach for her the way I’d reached for Bryn, because I knew, deep in my bones, that nobody was going to reach back.

She wasn’t struggling. And she wasn’t trapped.

All she was feeling is happiness. There was no wall to break and no person to coax out from behind it.

All I could do was hold her blades and keep her from killing her sister.

"Leon," Elsbeth said, behind me, in a voice that was barely there.

"I’ve got her! I’ve got her; don’t worry, just do whatever you need to do right now!"

She didn’t move.

She stood with her sword hanging at her side and her face stripped bare, staring at the woman I was holding off, and I realized that she was not going to fight.

She was going to do the one thing she’d been unable to do for Torunn.

She sheathed her sword.

Then, in a low, unsteady voice, she began to hum.

It was a simple tune, slow and rocking, like a lullaby sung by a tired mother in front of a hearth.

It had no words. I didn’t know it, but I could tell it was old, a fireside song that had been passed from mother to daughter for generations.

It wobbled on the high notes, and Elsbeth’s voice cracked twice.

She didn’t stop.

"Little ember," she said, between the notes. "Do you remember...?"

"Mother used to sing it when the wind was too loud, and you... always asked for it twice."

The sword in my crossguard trembled.

Ylva’s smile flickered.

It was only for a heartbeat, a thin crack running across a mask, but I saw it. Her eyes went unfocused, and the pressure on my blades eased the tiniest bit.

"Why are you... crying?" she said, slowly, in a puzzled voice. "Master says crying is unnecessary!"

It was Elsbeth who moved, and I’ll never be certain how she did it.

She stepped past my sword. She put her bare hand on her sister’s face.

And she let the cold go.

Ice poured out of her palm in a bright, soundless rush. It ran down Ylva’s arms and wrapped around her wrists, laced across her legs, and bloomed up her armor in a delicate crust of frost.

Ylva’s lips parted. She looked down at the ice, then up at her sister, with a bewildered, childlike expression.

"Elsbeth...?" she said.

Then her eyes rolled back and she sagged, and Elsbeth caught her in both arms.

They stood there for a moment in the cold, a tall woman holding a tall woman, while the roar of battle went on around them.

The gold crystal at Ylva’s throat still pulsed, warm and slow and steady. She wasn’t free, but she was only asleep.

And for now... that’s the best solution to handle it.

"Take her inside," the Warmother said from above.

Her voice was dangerously unsteady. "Gently."

Two Hearth Guard hurried down to carry Ylva away. Elsbeth let them take her, standing with her empty arms still half raised, and I thought she might collapse.

But instead she turned her head, slowly, and looked at me.

"Thank you," she said.

That was all. She didn’t tell me not to make it a joke, and I didn’t.

I just nodded, and she drew her sword and went back up the stairs to the wall.

The rest of the gate fight is a blur.

I remember that Velora and I ended up side by side, almost without noticing it. We’d stopped talking, and we didn’t need to.

She’d slash, I’d cover, and she’d step in behind me the moment Bulwark started to flicker.

I’d feel her presence at my shoulder before I heard her footsteps. We moved like two parts of one machine.

At some point in the middle of it, I did something I didn’t expect.

A chain of light snapped out of the gray mists and wrapped itself around a Nightclaw rider, dragging her off her horse.

I didn’t think because... I just drew.

My left hand found the sheath at my hip, my breath settled low and slow into my belly, and the sword came out in one clean motion, the way Velora had taught me in the pines.

The blade cut through the chain like a hot wire through butter. I flicked it back into the sheath with a soft click and turned around to find the next one.

It was the best draw I had ever done. I knew it in my bones.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Velora glance at me.

She didn’t say a word. But the corner of her mouth lifted, only a little, and for a second she looked almost her age, a young woman who’d just seen someone do something right.

Then a beast I hadn’t seen slammed into my side.

I didn’t even have time to cry out. Bulwark shattered like a window.

I flew across the courtyard and hit the stones on my back, and the sky wheeled.

A shadow fell across me, huge and furred and blue-eyed, and a claw the size of a plow came down.

A white blur hit me from the side and rolled me out of the way. Claws raked the stones where I’d been.

Then there was a flash of steel, a thin bright line, and the beast’s foreleg fell off.

Velora crouched over me, breathing hard, her white coat shredded at the shoulder and her golden eyes blazing. She had both hands wrapped in the front of my armor, and her face was a few inches from mine.

"That," she said, in a low, shaking voice, "was your only warning."

"Thanks," I wheezed.

"Do not thank me."

"Okay... got it."