Chapter 24
Chapter 24
T he nearest beast is suddenly wrenched backward.
Then the next.
The air above me rapidly clears, only to fill with black threads, each one arcing through the space above me like living ribbons as they wrap around every beast near me.
The spiderweb of razor-sharp ribbons rips backward, and the creatures are torn apart.
I try to focus on the male silhouette standing nearby, his arms raised, but a female figure rushes to my side, demanding my attention.
The golden light around them both is so bright that I can’t see more than their outlines.
“Asha!” The woman’s face comes into view. Silver hair frames her face, and her pale green eyes are filled with worry as she rapidly assesses me, quickly focusing on my wound. “You’re hurt!”
My lips part as I try to breathe. “Tamra?”
My sister presses her right hand to my cheek. “Lie still. I’m going to heal your leg. Then we need to move.”
I can’t seem to form coherent speech. I don’t understand how she’s here. “Tamra…”
There’s a flash of silver metal. It’s the medallion wrapped around her right hand as she leans toward my leg. Hurriedly, she rips the material, peeling it away before pressing her palm to my skin.
The pain stops instantly, allowing me to focus more clearly on the man in the background.
He weaves his metal in the air like threads, forming a perfect pattern. Just like my mother used to do. Shredding, cutting, creating deadly spiderwebs…
He must be Gallium. I will him to be my brother, even though I know Gallium’s metal isn’t black.
“Tamra?”
Her right hand remains pressed to my leg. The pain may have stopped, but I sense the wound isn’t healed yet. Blood still leaks from it.
It takes time for flesh to knit.
“We don’t have much time,” she says. “I need you to listen. This land has turned, Asha. Something triggered it. We felt it all the way in the east. There’s no saving this city now. Do you understand?”
I shake my head. I don’t understand at all. “How are you here?”
She slows down. “I’m sorry, it’s a lot…” She glances at the man, who remains nothing more than a golden silhouette in my vision. “You saw the darkness in the east. That’s what’s happening here now. This land will be consumed soon. There’s no stopping it.”
I only saw the eastern blight from a distance, but it was a darkness that filled me with dread.
“The humans.” I gasp. “This city?—”
“The dragons will help them.” Tamra’s voice is earnest, but again, she pauses, pressing her lips together, her forehead creasing. “Asha… Whatever you did to trigger this event—and I’m certain it was you—every supernatural within hundreds of miles will have felt it. The fae, the dragons, the Valkyries, even the Einherjar in the north. They will have all felt it.”
Wake up.
Three Valkyries were present when I used my hammer to bring Erik back. So was Graviter Rex. And even a Celestial Star?—
The Celestial Star! I can only hope she flew clear of the storm up in the mountain.
I struggle to rise, but Tamra presses her left hand to my shoulder. “Don’t move. You’re not healed yet. Just listen.” Her eyes bore into me, compelling me to lie back down. “They all felt it, do you understand? It’s the kind of power that can start wars. Do you understand?”
“What…” My brow furrows as I try to straighten my thoughts. “No, I don’t understand…”
She glances up at the man, and I’m suddenly aware that the air around us has fallen silent. The cries of dying creatures that I’ve been desperately blocking out have finally stopped.
The black, metal ribbons that were dancing across the air and delivering swift death finally retract. They slip back to the man’s right hand before he steps out of the golden light.
His features come into view, and there’s no mistaking who he is.
Thaden Kane Ironmeld.
His right arm is covered in bronze scales that spread across the right side of his chest and halfway up the side of his neck. They’re fully visible since he’s bare-chested.
The first time he came to me in a blast of energy that mimicked lightning, he swayed and stumbled within the crater he’d created in the earth, seeming disoriented, but this time, his footsteps are certain.
I recoil at the sight of him, flinching backward, seeking the location of my hammer. It’s only a short distance away from me behind my head, which is why I couldn’t see it before.
At my reaction, Thaden stops moving, maintaining his distance. His lips press together for a moment, but he sounds resigned when he murmurs to my sister, “Asha must have spoken with Milena.”
“Or the dragons,” Tamra replies quietly.
My brow furrows deeply, confusion swirling within me.
Before I can demand answers, my sister turns back to me. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, Asha. I don’t know what has happened to you since we were separated. But there are things you need to know, and we don’t have time to tell you. If you believe nothing else, please know that I love you, and I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
My eyes are wide as she lifts her hand from my leg. I can finally move without pain, lifting myself enough to see that the skin across my thigh is perfectly knitted. I’m certain there won’t even be a scar. But it isn’t my wound that concerns me.
Before I can speak, Thaden raises both of his hands. “You don’t trust me. That’s okay. But please, trust your sister.”
His expression is so fucking sincere.
Far more sincere than he has any right to be.
“You lied about who you are,” I snarl at him. “You lied about the dragon you killed.”
His lips press together, but he appears far less concerned about my accusation than I thought he might. I expected him to freeze or react aggressively or, at the very least, exhibit some guilt, but he doesn’t.
“This metal is mine,” he says, his expression clear and open as he closes his fingers around his medallion. Then he taps the hammer at his belt. “This hammer is mine. I’m Malak Ironmeld’s son. And yes, Graviter Rex’s son was killed. I wish I had time to explain everything to you, but I don’t. So all I’m going to do is ask you a question, Asha.”
I consider him warily. More so when Tamra rises to her feet and steps toward him, as if she trusts him completely.
I, too, lift myself to my feet, inching back toward my hammer. “What question?”
His bronze eyes search mine. “If someone you loved was about to die, is there any darkness you wouldn’t embrace to save them?”
I already know the answer.
On the night the Blacksmith race was annihilated, I offered my life in exchange for the lives of my little brother and sister. Every time I wore Malak’s metal, it was because I had vowed to keep my siblings alive. When that dark metal was fused to my hand, it was because I was trying to save Erik’s life. I used that same dark power to remove the device from his heart and give him back his life.
And then, when I refused to accept Erik’s death, I used my power to bring him back.
It isn’t a dark power.
But it seems the consequences might have been far more severe than I ever anticipated.
“There isn’t,” I say.
There is no darkness I wouldn’t embrace to save the ones I love.
“Then you know my heart,” he says. “And that’s what matters.”
I stumble back a step, shaking my head at how simple he makes it sound.
How can I possibly know Thaden’s heart?
I know Erik’s heart. I know my own heart. I know that I’m terrified right now because I can’t see Erik anywhere. He hasn’t jumped to the ground. There’s still a swarm of creatures in the sky—I’m certain they will descend on us soon—but I can’t see Erik among them.
I don’t know where Blackbird is, either.
Now Thaden Kane, the man I’m certain is my enemy, is standing right in front of me, and he’s asking me to come with him as if I wouldn’t fear and distrust him.
I take another step back from them both. “Where’s Gallium?”
Tamra takes a deep breath. “He’s in trouble, Asha. But no worse than the danger we’re in if we don’t move quickly.”
Her focus shifts to the sky—but not in the direction of the boiling clouds and the monsters spilling from them.
She looks northwest, her face rapidly paling and her voice suddenly a whisper. “The dragons are coming.”
Without my power, I can’t yet see what she can see, but in the next moment, dots appear in the distant sky.
Many dots. Rapidly growing larger.
I’ve only met two dragons: the dragon king, Graviter Rex, and a forest dragon named Torva Viridia, but judging by the number of creatures flying toward us, I’m about to meet at least ten more.
Tamra’s focus flashes up to Thaden. “They’ll kill you. We need to leave. Now.”
Despite Tamra’s urgency, Thaden’s studying me quietly, remaining at a non-confrontational distance where I could easily get to my hammer before he could stop me.
Even now that I know who he is, the pull toward him is as strong as it always was.
Power attracts power.
More specifically, Blacksmith’s power attracts itself.
What I can’t reconcile are all the different accounts of him…
His own presentation of himself as a human when I first met him. Graviter Rex’s hatred of him over the death of his son. Milena Ironmeld’s account of how she fought him on the clifftop and her admission that she’d once lied to him.
And Torva Viridia, who said that before all of this happened, Thaden Kane had been peaceful .
Then there’s Torva’s puzzling account of the fight she’d witnessed between Thaden and Milena in which he had claimed that Graviter’s son had given him no choice. He’d told Milena he would find me and free me from the Vandawolf. He’d said that I would listen to him, even if nobody else would.
And finally, there is the Valkyrie, General Glass, who asked me to protect him.
As Thaden watches me watch him , a resigned expression settles onto his features.
“Tamra,” he says softly. “It took a lot for you to trust me. It will take more for Asha to believe that I’m not her enemy. Maybe, if I’d been honest with her from the start, things would be different.” He shakes his head. “She won’t come with us now.”
“I’m not giving up!” Tamra cries so earnestly that it tugs at my heart and makes me doubt my own judgment.
She spins to me, reaching out for me. “Asha, we need you. I need you. Gallium needs you. I know I pushed you away. I hurt you. Badly.” Her eyes brim with tears. “I was trying to protect you, but I got it wrong! Please, will you come with us?”
She swallows hard as she stretches out her hand to me. “Please, sister, will you take up your hammer and come with us? Will you stand beside me? Will you trust me ?”
It’s the fact that she asked me to pick up my hammer that freezes me to the spot. Neither of them has tried to stop me from retrieving it. Quite the opposite.
I take a beat too long to answer her.
In the distance, the dragons cross the mountains, only minutes away from us now.
I recognize Graviter Rex even from this far away. He’s a powerful golden figure at the front. When I look at the others, I’m surprised to see that they appear to have riders. The Fae Queen Karasi spoke of human riders and the alliance between dragons and humans, so I assume these riders must be human, too.
Tamra’s outstretched hand has dropped to her side.
With a dismayed cry, she turns to Thaden. “We need to go!”
He moves fast, lifting his right hand into the air, his medallion instantly splitting into multiple ribbons again.
I tense and snatch up my hammer, preparing to defend myself, but the ribbons don’t appear sharp this time. His hands move through the air, both of them, the metal forming threads that he quickly weaves, using his left hand to nudge them this way or that, to form floating symbols, one after the other.
The golden light that was fading around him intensifies again, little flickers of it turning into streams. Then all of the streams pull toward his metal, somehow attracted to the changing shape of it.
It’s so bright that my own power merely adds to it, two golden energies merging together.
While Thaden works, Tamra looks to the sky, her fear palpable.
I may not trust Thaden, and I don’t understand why my sister would ask me to go with him, but her fear is warranted.
Graviter Rex has vowed to kill Thaden Kane.
I have no issues with Thaden being taken into custody, but I can’t allow my sister to be hurt in the process.
Graviter knows how much I care about her. He understands I need to keep her safe.
I move out in front of her and Thaden.
The dragons are still far enough away that I have time to plan.
Or so I thought.
A moment later, Graviter’s roar breaks across the distance, a roar so loud that it feels as if he could be standing right in front of me.
“Thaden Kane!” he cries. “You will pay for the death of my son!”
I freeze, shocked, when flames billow from Graviter’s mouth, a hot stream that scorches the air even from a mile away—a gap that’s closing fast.
It’s a warning shot.
He’s going to stop. I’m certain he is.
But then Graviter’s fire continues to stream across the sky, a deadly heat that billows across the plain, obscuring everything in its path.
I can’t imagine that he can sustain his fire for long, but to my shock, its heat only increases.
He’s coming straight for Thaden. But Tamra’s also in his path.
So am I.
“Graviter!”
He’s going to stop. Surely, he is. This dragon has seen my memories. He knows what must come to pass. He talked of my death, but this can’t be it. Not at his doing. I still have a chance to jump free of the flames, but a single glance back at Tamra, the way she stands resolutely at Thaden’s side, tells me she won’t leave him to save herself.
Surely, the future that Graviter saw doesn’t involve my sister’s death?
Please, not my sister’s death.
My voice becomes a scream. “Graviter Rex! Stop! ”
Thaden’s voice sounds quietly behind me. “There is no beast more capable of mindless rage than a fire dragon.”
When I turn to him, his concentration hasn’t wavered, his focus remaining on his symbols, but still, he speaks to me.
“Graviter Rex doesn’t see you right now, Asha,” Thaden says. “He doesn’t see Tamra, either. All he sees is me.”
Another symbol forms in the air, even more intricate than the one before.
“This is the last one we need,” he murmurs, but he’s still crafting it, and the beads of sweat on his brow tell me he needs heartbeats longer than he’s going to get.
Tamra throws her arms around his waist, her face upturned to his, her chest rising and falling with her rapid inhalations.
Graviter Rex is only two hundred paces away and closing fast.
I have a choice.
I can grab Tamra and pull her away from Thaden. I can force her to save herself. After all, Graviter wants Thaden dead, not her. She is simply collateral damage.
But I can’t shake the Valkyrie’s plea.
“Protect him.”
I cast a downward glance at my hammer, this powerful conduit that refuses to kill.
Death is final.
Life… well… it carries hope.
I exhale my doubts and fix my resolution in my mind. Then I adjust my grip on my hammer and prepare to jump—this time at Graviter Rex.
I may not be able to hurt him, and I certainly can’t and won’t kill him with this hammer, but I sure as fuck can whack him across the side of his head and force him to change course.
I can make him miss his mark.
But I will need to time it perfectly. If I jump too soon, I’ll miss his head and fall into his flames.
If I leap too late, well, I might jump clear of the flames, but I won’t save my sister.
The heat is unbearable now. The wall of fire raging toward us, tearing up the ashen ground and flooding it with lava, is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced or even imagined.
But still, I stand my ground, counting down the final heartbeats as the distance between me and Graviter closes.
Now.
My muscles bunch, and I prepare to jump.
Just then, a flying creature hurtles in from my right.
Blackbird!
He soars over Graviter’s head, and from his back, Erik leaps.
Erik’s black claws are fully extended, and he’s shouting, but I can’t hear what he’s saying above the roar of Graviter’s flames.
In that instant, I take in the way he’s covered in blood, the tears in his clothing, the fact that he’s badly wounded, the gashes across his chest and arms and legs.
Despite that, the ferocity of his attack stops my heart.
I may not be able to kill a dragon, but Erik can.
His claws can cut through anything.
As he lands on Graviter’s neck, he rams both sets of his claws down through the dragon’s scales and into his neck.
Graviter jolts, his eyes fly wide, and his head snaps to the side. Whatever nerve Erik must have hit along Graviter’s neck, it seems to have forced Graviter’s body to respond reflexively.
The wall of fire rushes toward me?—
And then off to the left.
The edge of it is so close to my position that its heat beats into me, stealing the breath from my chest and making it nearly impossible to draw air.
Too hot. So hot.
I use my already-coiled muscles to jump back from the edge of the fire, every hint of moisture on my body evaporating in the heat, my skin burning like a hundred suns are beating down on me.
Every rational thought leaves my mind.
All I have at this moment is the instinct to escape and survive.
I thump into a warm body behind me.
I recognize Thaden’s scaled right arm as he wraps it around me, pulling me close.
My head was tipped back, my focus on Erik, but I caught only the barest glimpse of him as Graviter veered away from us. The briefest moment to take in Erik’s anger and fear before golden magic blasts around me.
Around us .
Thaden, Tamra, and me.
A cascade of runes forms within the wash of light, every symbol Thaden was creating somehow appearing in front of me before they’re consumed within the rush of magic he created.
It grips my body, tearing at my chest, and then everything goes black.