by Mary Weber
The first wave of ships has made it through the pass.
CHAPTER 34
THE SKY DIMS BRIEFLY, THEN THE CLOUDS ERUPT into what looks like a mirrored image of the ground. They light up and explode in orange bursts and angry heat, their thunderous noise rocking the valley.
With a flick at those clouds, I rip a lightning streak through one of the airships, taking it down before a renewed war cry rings out and the Bron soldiers rush us.
Colin snaps the stones underfoot, effectively knocking the men over before launching himself toward Breck just as Rolf and the king charge Adora. I swerve my hand to aim at her, but she’s suddenly slipped away and somehow Breck’s hands are free and the serving girl is lunging for the captain of the guard.
What the—?
She flips him in front of her, and Adora’s knife is now glinting in her fingers. Breck raises the blade to Rolf’s neck and smiles, and then it hits me: Breck’s smirk.
Breck’s smirk is toothy.
Oh good-mother-of-Faelen.
I drop my hand as my friend’s face flinches and twitches and for a moment takes on the persona of a wolf. Her body lengthens and mutates, until she looks taller and older. Sharp teeth and a flat snout sneer down at us from an ancient man’s fearsome face before she shivers and relents back into the form of Breck. Complete with those brown eyes set above freckled, rosy cheeks.
The boots of thousands of marching soldiers rise up on the wind.
The drone of the airships.
From somewhere King Odion laughs. Rich. Deep. So like his brother’s. “Well, this is an interesting twist!”
But all I can see is Breck with her bruised and disjointed face, cleaning up a pool of her own blood on my bedroom floor. A half-hidden gash on her back. Not just a gash, a clawed incision.
Adora didn’t just betray us. She’s condemned us.
Colin shakes his head and takes a step toward his sister, as if not fully comprehending.
Breck’s body gives a final, eerie shudder, causing her to drop the knife and release her grip on Rolf as her skin shimmers and tears at the seams, her flesh becoming a diaphanous wisp that dissolves into a thin pile of skin and clothes on the ground. She leaves behind a monstrous half-man, half-wolf with fur and claws and teeth as dark as the demonic atmosphere that owns this place. Draewulf.
I hold back a brokenhearted gag as black air eeks up from the stones beneath Breck’s remains and swirls like ghostly guards around the monster. Slowly, he lifts a claw and tucks a chunk of straggly hair behind a hideous, pointed ear.
And every drop of blood I own freezes to my bones.
“Noooooo!” Colin’s yell echoes out over the pass, blending into the clanging metal and falling bombs. He grabs a sword from the ground and charges the beast, lunging for its stomach.
The beast dodges with a snarling chuckle. “Didn’t you think your sister a little strange lately, boy? Or did you not care enough to notice? Too busy wanting to save the world, and yet you missed saving your own sister. So pathetic.”
A half-choked cry and Colin thrusts again, but his sword strikes air and then ground.
Draewulf’s foot comes down on the blade, snapping it at the hilt, while his other shoves up to gut Colin with those long, spindly claws. I snap down a lightning stream, causing Draewulf to lurch away, and King Sedric is there with a strike that slices the monster’s leg open.
The beast roars.
Colin scrambles away, flips over, and places both hands to the ground. A crack shreds through the courtyard and almost rips open beneath the animal.
Draewulf jumps, his grin widening as if it’s a game. “She didn’t even cry that day in the Elemental girl’s room. When she sensed what I was right before I took over. Just swore and punched me a good one. Might’ve landed it too if Adora hadn’t stopped her.”
I shut his words out. He’s sick. He’s insane. It’s not my fault what he did.
I launch three icicles that barely miss impaling the beast, and then King Sedric’s lunging in again just as something wraps around my throat.
I’m yanked back. I can’t breathe. Gagging, I kick and scratch, but whoever’s got me is bigger and stronger and my thigh is hurting like blazes.
Hands shove me to the ground and my face tastes stone and blood, and my warped fingers are being crushed by the man whose voice sounds so much like Eogan’s. “Touch another one of my ships, girl, and I’ll rip your arm from its socket.”
He flips me over.
I gasp and choke. And then spit in his face.
He slams his fist into me and I taste more blood.
“I wonder what it would take to break you enough to work for me, hmm? Watch Draewulf kill your friends? Kill your precious king?” Odion glances up. “Or maybe kill my brother?”
My eyes narrow. He laughs as if he knows his words hit home. I twist my wrist beneath him. Bend my fingers just enough to grab his hand. If I can just . . .
I let loose liquid fire straight into his veins.
He jerks back, eyes widening in shock, in horror, at the impossible realization that I can reach through his block and kill him. And he can’t let go.
Abruptly, there’s a blade in his other hand and he’s bringing it toward my chest. But I can’t release him and his body’s too heavy to push away.
The knife hesitates.
His mouth falls open.
He utters a curse followed by a gurgle, then slumps on top of me, and the blade clatters to the ground.
Eogan’s standing over us, sword in hand, stained with his own brother’s blood.
He shoves Odion aside and pulls me up. I shriek as the pain in my leg rushes in and nearly cripples me. I limp forward, but Eogan’s warm hands are sliding along my arms, my shoulders, my throat. My bruised face.
“I’m fine,” I say, trembling more from his touch than my pain. I push his hands off. I don’t want to feel him. I don’t want to pretend he cares for anything more than winning this battle. “He’s going to kill them,” I say, swerving my attention back to Colin, Draewulf, and King Sedric.
They’re still locked in a fight, and Rolf and the other knights are now working to hold off the Bron soldiers along with Princess Rasha, who’s swinging a sword more skillfully than I’ve ever seen a woman do.
Eogan nods once, grimly. “I’ll go around behind him. Distract him from the front?”
Oh, I’ll do more than distract him.
With a hitch of my leg, I step forward, refusing to allow my gaze to fall on Odion because something tells me if I look I’ll lose it, and then the backstabbing, the betrayals, Breck’s death—they’ll all become real. And right now, Colin and Faelen need me.
“Nym.” Eogan’s voice dips. “This isn’t like the airships or the wolves. Draewulf . . . he’s more dangerou—”
“I know,” I say coldly and keep walking. Let’s just get this whole sick thing finished so I can go home. To wherever home is now. I glance over and hurl an angry blast of ice at the Bron soldiers, half blinding them, before I focus my energy on Draewulf just as he backhands King Sedric into the turret wall.
Colin’s creating fissure after fissure beneath the monster’s feet at the same time he’s yanking rocks from the cliff and throwing them at the beast’s head. It’s a wonder the whole fortress is not falling down under us.
I bend low and focus on releasing another flash of ice, this time along the ground to create a slick surface on Colin’s already-uneven stones. It works, and Draewulf’s claws clack and clatter on the frozen bricks. He scuttles forward, and I bring down a lightning bolt, which he dodges before shifting his enormous body to face me.
His eyes zero in on mine over his flat, disgusting, part-man, part-animal snout.
He growls.
With one bat of his hand, he’s knocked Colin aside like a leaf and is crawling this way.
My stomach drops. He’s just been playing with them.
It’s me he wants.
Draewulf slips and claws his way toward me,
with an expression wavering between hate and mockery, as I send ice picks, followed by lightning, followed by thick chunks of hail, followed by everything I think I am capable of.
It’s as if he’s a ghost walking—the way he avoids them, his movements so fluid. His glare never falters as he approaches with those thick lips and pointed teeth.
I swallow. Images of Breck fill my mind—what he did to her. What he’ll do to the rest of us.
“The prized slave who just couldn’t do what she was told,” he snarls. “All you had to do was take down the fortress and you and Colin would’ve survived.”
“While you hid like a pathetic weakling beneath the skin of a blind girl.”
His eyes flash. “Why stoop to the dirty work of taking over two kingdoms when I can have slaves do it? And as far as the blind girl—what better way to know another’s weaknesses than to serve right under her Elemental nose.”
He erupts with a roar and springs for me.
I shove forth a wall of fire between us that I’m not sure is from the sky or my hand. He leaps through just as my knees are kicked out from behind. I drop and Adora’s insane laugh fills my head along with the stench of Draewulf’s smoldering flesh. I look up in time to see his claws coming down to rip my chest into a million colorful shreds.
I lash a hand out, except suddenly Colin is standing in front of me.
Abruptly. Horrifically.
He screams as the sharp nails pierce his flesh, carving through the muscle and bone before he falls.
I slash another lightning bolt at the beast, cracking it through his arm.
A howl erupts, and then Eogan is behind him and has landed his broadsword directly into Draewulf’s back. The monster staggers and roars, rips the sword from his wound, then jumps and grips the side of the turret.
He scampers up it, leaving a bloody trail as he climbs to the parapet and disappears into black shadow.
And then I’m hovering over Colin. To shield. To help.
Except there’s no amount of helping to fix the torn boy in front of me. I let loose a moan that becomes a yell so loud it shatters the sky, fracturing the clouds above into a hundred ignited thunder bellows.
Colin. The precious bald boy. My friend.
The life pulses out of him in red ribbons, and I’m pressing on his chest, covering the wounds with my hands, trying to stop the flow as the thump thump thump of his beautiful heart weakens and drains.
“What have you done?” I whimper to him, and I am both horrified and wrecked. My tears drip down to mix in his blood. “You should’ve let him take me. Why didn’t you let him take me?”
Rain begins to fall. It patters his face with caresses and misty wishes I can hardly see because my tears are pouring so thick.
His hand slides over mine. “They need you.”
“I need you. You and me—this was ours to do. Oh hulls—someone do something! Someone help him!”
“I never did this for Faelen, Nym,” he gasps. His body shivers.
“No no no no. I can’t lose you. You’re my friend.” My voice is crumbling into broken shudders, like the bones and skin from his chest now barely holding together as it heaves beneath my fingers. “We need you.”
“For me it was never ’bout them,” he whispers. “It was . . . for Breck. For givin’ her a better life.” He inhales and coughs. Quivers. “You an’ her deserved to be free.”
I’m crying harder now. “Don’t talk. It’s fine. You’ll be fine. Just don’t go. Don’t leave.”
His eyes are growing hazy. He’s looking around as if trying to focus.
I move closer, and his gaze latches on mine. His breath is thinning.
My world is thinning.
“It was for you, Nym.”
He’s slipping. Becoming incoherent. “I couldn’t let him take you.” Another cough.
“Colin . . .”
“Don’t let him take you, Nym. Don’t let him take who you are. Make him . . .” His head jerks, his lips forming and reforming the words he’s trying to get out. “Make him fear who you’ll become.”
I can’t breathe. I don’t know how to breathe, and I’m losing him, losing him—oh please no—I’m losing him.
His pupils widen and his brown eyes deepen, as rich as the Faelen earth, as his hand slips up to my heart. He presses in, and suddenly I swear I can feel my insides trembling as he’s carving, creating one last fracture.
He’s inscribing my soul with his beautiful name.
Then his hand slides from me.
His chest shudders beneath my fingers as the last breath leaves his body and drifts hot across my cheeks. A kiss of warmth as his last good-bye.
And I am left. Alone.
In the rain.
Covered in the bald boy’s blood.
CHAPTER 35
COLIN’S EYES STARE UP AT THE STORM-cloaked sky.
Clashing swords. Bombing airships. King Sedric’s voice. They emerge and fade with the wind, only to be replaced by the death cries of the soldiers also departing from this place. To join Colin and Breck and my parents.
Everyone dies.
Everyone is betrayed.
“Take me with you,” I whisper to them, as a wisp of the black, demonic air slithers from where Draewulf was and tumbles around me like a thick strand of ink. It roils and stirs the rain, rustling over my skin, a thousand teeth from ghostly mouths, gnawing. As if the evil contained in it could feed off my living heart. Burning and boring into my flesh with the insinuation that there is nothing of worth left in this world.
I swipe it away and reach down to shut Colin’s eyes.
Press a kiss to his rain-spattered brow.
You should have let him take me.
My shoulders begin to shudder. The evil mist presses harder.
This time I don’t push it back as it comes scalding in to smother me in black folds, crowding over my eyes with a darkness that is full of plagues and loss and hopelessness.
The clouds won’t stop pouring. My tears won’t stop pouring. Even the rain on my lips tastes salty, as if the sky’s given way to the sea, like in the minstrels’ “The Monster and the Sea of Elisedd’s Sadness” ballad. “And the big sea, she roared and spit up her foam at the shape-shifter’s trickery and our foolish king . . . Begging for blood that will set our children free.”
“Except there is no freedom, is there?” I scream at the sea. Because the innocence that exists in this world gets stolen by the same sickness that’s claimed my parents, my Elemental race, my friends, and now . . .
Perhaps it will claim me too.
Because I don’t want this anymore. Redemption. Atonement. Empty hopes promised by a manipulative owner.
I swallow.
A hand touches my shoulder, evoking a soothing that can only be Eogan’s.
I jerk away.
I don’t want his fake comfort. There is no comfort. “Leave me.”
He hunches beside me, staring at Colin. Eogan wants me to get up. Wants me to fix this.
“Our world is unfixabl—” I start to tell him, but when I turn, his expression says he’s all too aware of the depth of brokenness that exists. His hand is stained red with the blood of his brother.
His fingers go to the side of Colin’s head. “You were a good man, mate.” Then slowly they move to my chin to tip my face up. Forcing my eyes to look in his. “He didn’t do this so you could fix things, Nym.” And for a second, I swear I see a teardrop mix with the rain flecks on his cheek.
Then another.
They drip off and land on my skin.
I glance away. “So says the man who’s incapable of anything but using people.”
But as soon as I say it, I know I’m wrong. Because suddenly it’s not calmness flowing through his fingers but jagged emotions that are grieving and messy and completely his own. Telling me his heart is growing perfectly capable of becoming undone. I feel it the same way I can feel the rain and the rhythm of the war, and Draewulf roaring. And Adora laughing in lun
acy from wherever she’s hiding.
Eogan’s voice is husky as he holds my face. “He gave his life to protect who you are. Not because of what you’ve done or might do.”
Don’t let him take who you are.
His words . . . they blend in with Colin’s and settle like heat within me, soothing, scorching, touching my core. Wooing my battered heart with the truth of Colin’s one simple offering that encompassed everything: Love. Freely given. For someone he believed could also be free.
Abruptly, the heat of that truth grows sharper, like static, forcing clarity through my veins, carrying with it an illumination of Colin’s statement back at the meadow. That this tragic war that’s been waged in and around each of us, this battle that’s gone on in our souls—that’s ravaged us and beaten us down and clawed away our humanity—has simply been evil trying to destroy who we are.
Because evil knows what we will become: Stronger. Wiser. Unstoppable.
Don’t let him take who you are. Make him fear who you will become.
Somewhere beneath my skin, the melody from the Valley of Origin begins singing—louder, sweeter. Clearer. Until it’s yelling. Then it’s shouting its refrain to the siren in my bones to awaken the real me that is not a curse, but a true Elemental.
I look over at the bloodied wall by which Draewulf escaped. At Colin and the bodies around me. At the airships bombing the hulls out of Faelen. And I know exactly what this world is capable of.
But I also know what I am capable of.
I glance at Eogan.
What we are capable of.
I’m trembling when I touch his hand with my deformed one and, for a second, watch the rain spill off my pale fingers to his black ones in the same way forgiveness spills from my soul. He knows what it is to rise above evil perhaps more than any of us.
His breath clouds through the rain like a wild summer storm. I lean against him and inhale as my whole body shudders. Something’s shattering and being set free. As if the melody thrashing about inside of me is breaking me apart in the process.