The Shattered City Read Online Free PDF Page B

can drain your powers.’
    â€˜Good to know,’ Velody said, shivering in her thin dress. Animor usually heated her from within, but right now she couldn’t imagine ever feeling warm again. ‘What else do I need to look out for?’
    There was a cracking sound, and ice blossomed out of thin air. The sky splintered around them, and Warlord cried out nearby as white spikes burst through his chest. Velody saw his courtesi cluster to him, a cloud of cats and brocks and bats swirling around his agonised figure, but it was Livilla who blasted the ice spikes out of him, liquid heat pouring from her hands and through his ribs.
    Velody was certain that would have killed him, but Warlord shook it off. He seized one of the nearest brocks and bit hard into its body, taking enough of a draught of blood from his courteso to return his strength. He kissed Livilla with his messy mouth before they flew their separate ways, hurling bursts of heat into the icy cracks in the fractured sky.
    â€˜Mind the frostiels; they hurt like hells,’ Priest said in a grave voice. ‘Oh, and stay warm.’ He glowed white and Velody could feel a moment of heat rolling off him before he, too, plunged into the battle.
    Velody concentrated, summoning her animor with as much heat as she could manage. She called to mind the balmy days they had enjoyed this summer, of sunshine on the side of the Vittorine, bubbling onion soup and flatbread baking on hot bricks. Her nest of blankets and quilts tangled around her as she dreamed of Garnet and battles and little brown mice.
    When the sky broke into bursts of frostiels near her,Velody fought them back, forcing heat from her skin to seal every crack and chip. She ducked and wove, avoiding the stabbing spikes of ice.
    Every attack drained more warmth from her skin, and she fell back, the darkness and cold overwhelming her. She could hear that laughter again, and she was briefly confused, unsure which dead man was mocking her — Garnet or Dhynar.
    Oh, there was a potential source of heat. Anger. Velody flared up with it, letting all her resentment at what had been done to her flood through her entire body. Garnet had stolen her powers, had prevented her from learning what she needed to defend the city against the sky, had used Velody’s own animor to fuel his reign of terror over the Creature Court. He had tricked her into giving up a part of herself. Dhynar had been so sure of her weakness, challenging her again and again, and ultimately destroyed himself, leaving her to deal with the guilt that she had not saved him, had not redeemed him, had not done enough …
    Ashiol had thrown her to the wolves and was having a party, in his cups while Velody and the rest of the Court risked their lives to keep Aufleur safe.
    Heat bloomed out of her skin, striking the nearest crack in the sky before it could shoot forth with frostiels or nodules. Velody’s animor was so fierce that the crack melted into nothingness, sealing the sky closed. She turned on the next and the next, animor whirling from her fingertips. Somewhere along the way her body shaped and reshaped, into chimaera and then mice and then Lord form again. The only thing unchanged was the fire and steam of her animor. The sky boiled around them, and was still.
    Finally, Velody realised that the last of the cracks had sealed. The sky was silent and dark, and stars twinkled as if there had been no battle here this nox. She breathed, and no steam came from between her lips. She slowly became aware that everything hurt — her spine and ribs and skull — as if someone had been pounding her bones with a mallet. Somewhere along the way, she had lost her dress.
    They were all looking at her, the Lords and Court, hovering in an uneven circle around her, in their naked ‘people’ bodies. They seemed impressed with her. Some of them were wounded, their skin scratched and punctured in places by those spikes of ice. Livilla