Last Stand (The Black Mage Book 4)

by Rachel E. Carter

  “You never had time to grieve.” Desperation was seeping into my voice. “You were all alone in a role you were never meant to have.”

  “You can’t make excuses for a king, Ryiah. That’s not how it works.”

  Silence followed. I was desperately running through a trail of words to make him believe, searching for something I could do to show him he was wrong, that he deserved to be here.

  He made a mistake.

  A terrible choice. One that would haunt him forever.

  But so many good ones too.

  I knew who Darren was. He was the little boy who fought monsters in the dark. The arrogant non-heir who saw a first-year struggle and chose to help despite all of his training to walk away. The person who believed in me before I believed in myself.

  He was the second-year who fought off enemies in the desert without a second thought to himself. The apprentice who risked his life for a few soldiers in Ferren’s Keep. The young man who loved a girl, but was strong enough to push her away until he secured a treaty first.

  He was a prince who fought for his brother in a darkness too deep to be saved, and then, in a moment of weakness, a young king who gave into the madness, the kind only brought on by grief.

  Darren did a terrible thing.

  But so did I. I ran.

  Blayne… I would have stayed if I’d known. But I didn’t and I hadn’t.

  Was it too late for both of us? Was Darren right?

  But what about regret, did it mean nothing?

  What about all of the good things we’d done?

  What about the people we wanted to be? The amends we desired to make?

  Did our actions make us the hero or the villain in the end?

  “Please.” Darren’s whisper was broken. “Take me back.”

  I knew what he wanted. I knew he believed it would bring him peace.

  But, gods, I couldn’t give him up.

  The gods had the cruelest intentions of all.

  They’d allowed me to bring Darren back from the brink, twice, only to subject us to this. They were toying with me, dangling the boy I loved on a string. How hard would I fight? How many times before I stopped trying? Would it ever end? Was this what it meant to live?

  I spent that night on the deck, pacing, staring up at the indigo sky and telling myself a thousand different ways I would convince Darren to live.

  But each one ended the same.

  “It’s my choice.” Darren’s fists clenched at his sides. He was still too weak to reach the cabin door or he would have found the captain himself. “Take me back to Jerar and let me pay for my crimes.”

  “Priscilla wanted you to live.”

  His eyes flashed crimson. “She made a mistake.”

  “You can’t just decide to give up!” I slammed my palm against the door. The sting brought with it an odd sense of relief. “You want to make amends for your past? Execution won’t solve anything.” I slammed my palm again for the sake of feeling a different kind of pain. It was numbing. “You could help people. You are just too afraid to try!”

  “Let me go, Ryiah.”

  “I can’t.” There was a hole in the center of my chest. It was growing into an abyss and my heart was breaking with every plea.

  “You can.”

  I collapsed to my knees in front of him. “Please.” I didn’t even try to fight the tears; I was too blind to read his face. “I need you to fight.”

  His voice was so quiet I almost missed his reply. “I wish you didn’t.”

  Two days later, I went to collect the evening meal for Darren and myself, but when I arrived, I was informed the other passenger had already come and gone.

  For a moment, I was relieved. Darren barely had enough strength to walk, but if he was hungry and had found his way to the galley on his own, that meant he was no longer refusing to eat…

  But then I noticed the rations spread out on the table were next to a set of knives. “The salted pork was tough to cut.” The man followed my line of sight. “I offered to do it before he left, seeing how he could barely stand, but he insisted he would do just fine on his own.”

  The pit of my stomach dropped. And I knew.

  That morning, when I’d told him there was no way we’d ever return to Jerar, he’d been so furious.

  I should have known.

  My feet took off against the floor.

  I raced across the deck, staggering into the hatch and into the passage below.

  I ripped the door off its hinges.

  And I stopped.

  Darren was on his knees, shaking violently, his hands across his face.

  His whole body convulsed with sobs.

  The knife was on the ground. Unblemished. No blood.

  He didn’t… He wasn’t…

  I collapsed to the floor next to him without saying a word. My arms went around Darren’s neck, and I held on as tightly as I could. I felt every single beat of his pulse.

  It matched my own.

  I held onto him the entire night.

  And hours later, he held onto me too.

  The next morning, I helped transfer Darren to the bed. He had stopped shaking, but his eyes were bloodshot and his skin as cold as ice.

  I settled the blankets around him and forced myself to wait.

  I wasn’t sure what he wanted. I wasn’t sure who I needed to be.

  The knife was still on the floor.

  I stared at it, hating the object the way I had never hated anything before.

  More than anything, I wanted to take it and every sharp object and throw them all out to sea.

  But this had to be Darren’s decision. After last night, no matter how much I wanted him to live, he had to choose for himself.

  I finally found the courage to speak.

  “Do you… want it?”

  Darren swallowed and a lump rose and fell several times in his throat. “No, I…” He forced himself to look away from the blade. “I… want to fight.”

  Warmth exploded across my chest, seeping into every inch of my skin.

  “I-I can’t promise… that it will be…”

  My fingers shot to his, and I clenched them as hard as I could. It didn’t matter how hard it got. If he was willing to fight, I was willing to wait.

  To stand by his side and take on whatever darkness awaited. Forever.

  “We’ll do it together.”

  It was two more weeks before we finally approached Borean shore.

  The days were still hard. The nights were worse. Sometimes all I could hear were his screams… Sometimes all he saw were my tears. But we had something worth fighting for.

  And nothing would take that away.

  I knew it could be months, years, for the old Darren to emerge.

  Perhaps when he did, he would be someone new. Perhaps I would be, too.

  The sea here was green. I leaned across the rail, taking in the unfamiliar breeze. The air was musky and cloyingly sweet. From where I stood, I could see small specks of traders carrying loads along the sandy shore, crates of spice and bottles of rum. Trees towered just beyond the beach, and there were huts as far as the eye could see.

  I had always wondered what the islands looked like. The descriptions in the Academy’s scrolls had hardly done them justice.

  The one before me was breathtaking.

  There was the soft creak of wood as someone took his place next to me at the rail. And even though it made no sense, even though we were miles from Jerar, he still smelled like cinnamon and pine and cloves.

  Darren was still my home.

  His garnet eyes were on the tree line ahead. “The Borea Isles.”

  “Our second ship departs in two days.” I sucked in an unsteady breath. “Somewhere east.”

  This was it, a chance for us to amend the wrongs of our past. A chance to find out the people we could be, past the magic and pride that had cost us so much.

  “Our… new start.”

  I turned.

  He was sm
iling. It wasn’t a big smile. It barely raised the corners of his mouth, but it was still real.

  It had been so long since I saw something other than pain. For a moment I forgot to breathe.

  Then my hand found his and I squeezed.

  “Our new start,” I whispered.

  Outside, I was shaking.

  But inside, I was soaring. And despite everything, in that moment, I knew we would finally be okay.

  The boy and the girl could still have their happily ever after.

  It wasn’t too late.

  Epilogue

  Eight Years Later

  Darren

  He stood silently in place, his limbs locked with his breath caught in his lungs. Blood pulsed underneath his skin, thundering violently as fear drilled deep inside his chest. Darren heard the murmur of voices just beyond the door.

  His eyes clenched shut. It was an involuntary reaction, even eight years after the event.

  Almost a decade had passed, but their screams still plagued his dreams. He still felt the bite of those shackles on his wrists and the terrible jolt as the guards let him fall. His neck should have snapped. It was only fool’s luck that it hadn’t.

  For just a moment, he was numb, paralyzed with indecision and regret. Was this a mistake? He’d spent so much time away that he’d almost, but not quite, forgotten that broken boy on the ship, the one who’d been willing to forsake everyone and everything—even her—to make the pain stop.

  And now he was here, and it was a fresh blade to his throat. His strength was ebbing away, hope fraying under the cut of a serrated edge.

  Everything was wrong.

  Darren didn’t belong here. The walls were too constricting. Even after all these years, he still felt that faint ache in his palm. It was a call to magic that would never return. Especially here, in this place. Magic and his fists had kept the darkness at bay as a child, but what happened when the shadows remained?

  What happened when the monster you were running from was yourself?

  No. He clenched his fists. He would enter that room, no matter the cost.

  Darren had broken once, shattered to bits of rubble, and that should’ve been the end. But it wasn’t. She’d urged him to fight. It’d taken that final moment—when the choice was solely his and the knife was pressing down on his wrists—to finally understand.

  Amends.

  It was her plea and a promise that had brought him back from the brink: amends. He hadn’t just owed amends to the world, he’d owed it to her, and it was there at that moment he’d finally laid down his blade.

  When a second ship had deposited Darren and Ryiah in Kuador, that vow never left…

  Kuador was an island overflowing with trees. Miles and miles of green canopy spread as far as the eye could see. The sun was sweltering as the Borean ship docked.

  Darren and Ryiah disembarked and set forth into a damp jungle teeming with creatures that slipped in and out of the brush like the sea’s tide. There were great cats that hunted like wolves, snakes as long as a man, and flowers and plants without a name.

  A week later, they discovered a small village following a beaten trail. The people didn’t speak the same tongue, but they were kind. Darren and Ryiah traded labor for shelter until they were able to fend for themselves.

  On quiet nights, Darren sat among the tribe, watching the elders tend to maladies that came and went. No one ever suffered long. Aches and pains, even illnesses, were gone in a matter of days.

  The people didn’t have magic, but they didn’t need it. From what Darren had gathered, the eastern gods embedded it in their land. The jungle reaped more bounty for the people than any market back home.

  Darren took to recording those plants and the ways they were used. At first it was nothing more than a distraction, a way to ease the restless roving of his mind. But months later, a band of the men departed with half of the village stores and returned bearing Borean wares.

  Darren and Ryiah finally discovered the Kuadian term for “ship,” and they came up with a plan: he’d send his work back to her parents in Jerar.

  Having spent a lifetime around the healers in his father’s infirmary, Darren had almost forgotten not everyone could afford magic. Darren wasn’t a healer, but to imagine that a lowborn might suffer less from his account…

  Amends.

  That was the first night bloodied faces and a village square didn’t haunt his dreams. It was also the first night Darren took Ryiah into his arms, the first night he allowed himself to feel something other than broken. He was able to give his wife the parts he locked away and lose himself in something other than grief.

  Afterward, it’d only been a matter of communication. He and Ryiah spent weeks conferring with the village council, learning all there was to know of Kuador. From what the elders indicated, certain plants were native to different territories and there were twelve villages bordering the island’s rim to specialize in certain treatments and salves.

  They set out on foot the next month, walking for weeks. They studied a village for months at a time. Darren took notes as Ryiah traded labor for necessities and a small sachet of seeds to send back home to Jerar.

  For three years, they were almost content. And then, visiting the sixth village, Ryiah took ill.

  Any dreams Darren entertained had vanished.

  It took the midwife five tries before she was able to calm him enough to explain.

  Pregnant.

  For a second, Darren was too stunned to move.

  Then he dropped to his knees, cradling Ryiah’s face in his hands as he kissed her and choked out her name.

  That moment had been everything.

  She’d been everything; she always was.

  Ryiah refused to quit their work; she was far too stubborn. She labored alongside the tribe until the day she finally collapsed.

  That night, her hand never left his, squeezing until both of their palms were ready to crack. She squeezed as the midwife came and she cried as she brought their beautiful child into the early island dawn.

  Until that moment, Darren had never understood his loss. The king had always been a monster, a merciless tyrant with an even colder heart. But at that moment, clutching a little girl to his chest… Darren felt it. An unconditional bond that would grip him to the ends of time. With it came the knowledge that he’d give up everything for that woman and the child. He was a father.

  They named her Eve.

  Even now, that moment brought fire to the back of his throat.

  Two more years came and went. Darren and Ryiah visited villages and finished archiving the island’s plants. Their little girl grew into an unstoppable force, stubborn like her parents, challenging their limits and getting into trouble whenever they looked away. And then, a Borean trader brought word…

  After years of slow-building peace, a new treaty had been signed in Jerar. The alliance between Jerar and Caltoth was forever sealed.

  Their seventh year came to a close when a ship arrived, bearing an envelope with a waxen seal. The captain claimed a Crown envoy had paid him well to carry it to the bearer of the Kuadian letters. They’d opened it with trembling hands:

  “Queen Priscilla of Jerar and King Horrace of Caltoth grant fugitives Ryiah of Demsh’aa and former Prince Darren pardon from their previous crimes. In accordance with our two nations’ treatise. The two may return with a formal renunciation of the throne.”

  Darren wasn’t ready to return. But one look to his wife and he knew he couldn’t refuse.

  Not after she’d sacrificed everything for him. Not when she still had people waiting for her in Jerar.

  Ryiah deserved to return home.

  And so now they stood outside the great doors of the palace throne room, waiting for the guards to summon them forward.

  Ryiah cleared her throat, her face pale as she took a shaky breath. Darren had been so lost in his thoughts, he’d almost forgotten she was present.

  “I know you think you don’t belong�
�—she stepped away from the wall and twined her fingers with his—“but you do.”

  Ryiah wasn’t a fool. She knew what his silence meant.

  There were phantoms roaming these halls; Darren felt their glares on the back of his neck.

  Traitor. Villain. The pressure mounted in his lungs.

  Ryiah thrust her chin forward as her grip tightened on his hand. She regretted parts of her past too, but Darren could see the challenge in her stance.

  Whatever the Crown proclaimed, she would fight for them both.

  A guard summoned them forward.

  Darren swallowed hard as they entered the room.

  There was no turning back.

  When the herald declared their names, Darren and Ryiah knelt before the queen of Jerar. They renounced their claim to the throne and that of their heirs. They swore to spend the rest of their lives atoning for their past.

  They would always be in the people’s debt.

  Priscilla cleared her throat. “You’ve already begun.”

  She proceeded to explain everything she’d learned in the past couple of years.

  It’d started with Jerar’s trade. A booming surge of product along the King’s Road. New treatments and salves had spread across the nation’s merchants like wildfire, even into Caltoth, Pythus, and the Borea Isles.

  After years, Crown advisors had finally traced the treatments’ origin to a small apothecary in Demsh’aa and a plot overflowing with unfamiliar plants. And then they’d found the letters. “I should have known.” Priscilla snorted. “You two never could leave well enough alone.”

  She continued, “There’s been a steady decline of fever since we received those Kuadian records. It’s not something any of the rulers can overlook. Even Horrace.”

  Hesitation made Darren stiff. “What do you require of us?”

  He couldn’t fight in a regiment. Even for peace. If Priscilla had called them back to serve Jerar’s army, he would be forced to walk away.

  Freedom wasn’t worth the price of his soul. Not again.

  Ryiah cleared her throat and added, “We’ve seen enough blood.”