Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
L ife at the rebel camp—for me, at least—meant long hours of waiting, wondering, and imagining the worst-case scenarios that my loved ones might be enduring.
Though I rarely saw the mortals emerge from the circle of trees, I knew their camp must be close. I had expected to face interrogations—some effort to wrench from me what little information I had been given. Instead, I was left alone to simmer in my gloomy thoughts.
Each day brought a delivery of a flameroot-infused meal that I ignored until sunset, then carefully disposed of under cover of darkness.
I knew from my training as a healer that I could survive for weeks without food, but the lack of access to water was a fast-growing concern. Though my Descended healing was slowing the process, my dry, cracked lips and pounding headache warned me that the consequences were setting in. I was locked in a race between my magic and my death, wondering which one would catch up to me first.
Growing up, my mother had claimed that missing even a single day’s dose of flameroot might bring my “visions” roaring back. I was learning the hard way that her warnings had been grossly exaggerated. After several days, I was still unable to summon a single spark.
I could feel something , though. As dawn rose over a brisk winter morning, dragging me from sleep into a woozy fog of thirst, hunger, and exhaustion, the hollow void in my chest tingled with a whisper of energy.
I didn’t dare test it. Being chained to the lone tree in a meadow bathed in sunlight left me far too exposed, especially in my weakened state. I would have to wait until sundown, when I could more safely call on the shadows under cover of darkness.
I had nearly dozed off under the midday sun when a group of men, led by Vance, emerged from the foliage and headed my direction. Each of them carried glittering black blades and crossbows notched with black-tipped arrows that had my spine straightening.
“Up,” one of the men barked. “You’re coming with us.”
I eyed them warily. “Coming where?”
He flashed me an acidic smirk. “Don’t you want to relieve yourself in private?”
This was... unusual.
The only relief they’d been willing to give me thus far was a dirty bucket that my short chains forced me to keep only a foot or two away—a choice that I suspected was humiliating by design.
“Up,” he snapped again. He reached down and grabbed my wrist, hauling me to my feet.
I swallowed down a yelp of pain as my stiff joints screamed at the harsh movement. After days without food or water and little opportunity to stretch my muscles, it was all I could do to stay upright.
Two men went to work unlatching my shackles from the chains. The others raised their weapons, their brown eyes loaded with trepidation.
I should probably have been more scared, but lightheadedness had the world tilting and turning. My legs were one strong breeze from collapsing, and the effects of dehydration made me feel like I’d drunk a barrel of wine. I woozily giggled at how absurdly un intimidated of me these men should really be.
From the nervy glances they threw each other and the way their hands tightened on their weapons, my laughter seemed to be having the opposite effect.
My chains unlocked and dropped to the ground. Vance leaned in with a glare. “No running from me this time. Try anything, and you’re dead.”
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of an acknowledgment—mostly because I was struggling to focus my dizzied vision on his face—and he didn’t bother waiting for it. He grabbed my shackles and began tugging me toward the forest.
I staggered behind him, nearly tripping over my soiled gown in an effort to keep up. Ten Guardians accompanied him—all of them male, several tall and laden with muscles. Each carried a godstone weapon and watched me like I was the incarnation of evil itself.
This was not the kind of group you sent for a simple escort to the latrine.
I dug my heels into the ground, trying to force Vance to a stop, but my energy was too drained. One quick yank from him sent me tumbling down to my knees.
“Get up,” he ordered.
“Where are you really taking me?” I croaked through a bone-dry throat.
He smiled. “I guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”
A chuckle rippled through the group of men, setting alarm bells ringing in my head.
I was fairly sure Cordellia didn’t want me dead—not yet, anyway. But if Vance got me alone and claimed that I’d lashed out and attacked him, that he’d had no choice but to put me down to save himself...
Deep inside my soul, the godhood stirred from its forced slumber.
“Get up,” Vance repeated.
“No,” I said quietly.
His smile vanished. “I said get up .”
“No,” I said again, stronger this time. I raised my chin and returned his scowl. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to do it right here, where everyone can see it.”
Vance snatched a godstone dagger from the hands of one of the men and held the blade out, mere inches from my throat. “Get up now, or that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
I swallowed my panic and forced myself to arch my neck toward the weapon. “Then do it.”
It was a pathetically empty challenge. His men could toss me over their shoulder and carry me off wherever they wanted, and I’d be far too weak to fight them off. I prayed they were all too afraid of me to test that theory.
Vance’s knuckles turned white where his grip squeezed the dagger’s handle. He had been warm and welcoming— kind , even—when I had first met him, desperate for his approval as a novice Guardian. The second I’d challenged his authority, he had become a different person entirely. Even when he believed me a mortal, his compassion had always been contingent on my obedience to his control.
But I was the Queen of Lumnos.
And I would be controlled by no man.
“Better hurry up, Vance,” I taunted him. “Wouldn’t want Mother Cordellia showing up and putting you back in your place.”
His nostrils flared. “Fine,” he seethed between gritted teeth. “We’ll do it here.”
For a moment, terror swept through me as I wondered whether my mouth had really, truly gotten me killed this time.
But instead of jabbing the godstone knife into my neck and silencing me for good, he handed it back to the man he’d stolen it from and pulled a penknife from his pocket.
“Who’s got the vials?” he asked.
One of the group stepped forward and pulled out a handful of empty glass jars. He was young, perhaps a year or two behind Teller, and though he was trying to mimic the same look of revulsion the other men wore, I could spot the waver of uncertainty on his face.
Vance turned back to me with a bone-chilling smile. “The rest of you, hold her in place.”
The men rushed in to surround me. They pulled me back to my feet, their hands grabbing at my arms, my shoulders, my waist. My attempts to fight them off went nowhere, my energy reserves too low and my movements too sluggish. Within seconds, they had me pinned in place.
Fight .
The voice ’s call was barely more than a breath. I could feel it now, twitching and trembling as it strained to overcome the flameroot’s lingering effects.
I wanted to answer. Gods , did I want to.
But there were too many mortals around me, too many glittering black weapons inches from my face. Without knowing how quickly or strongly my weakened magic could react, one miscalculation and I would be riddled with godstone arrowheads that even my Descended healing couldn’t overcome.
And, despite it all, I did not want these men dead. Their hatred for me was born of an oppression I understood too well. I knew firsthand the injustices and the tragedies that had driven them here, and I could not blame them for craving vengeance for all the loved ones the Descended had taken from them. If my father’s killer were standing in front of me, I wasn’t sure I could hold myself back from taking my revenge, either.
Two of the men gripped my wrists and held them out to Vance. He flipped out the blade of the penknife, the dark grey metal marking it as Fortosian steel.
“This is probably going to hurt,” he said.
He reached forward and slashed the blade’s edge across both of my palms. I flinched at the sharp bite of pain as a line of dark red blood sprung up on my skin.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
Vance ignored me and jerked his chin toward the Guardian with the vials. “Start filling them.”
The boy’s moon-round eyes jumped nervously between my face and my bleeding wounds as he uncorked two vials and held them beneath my palms to catch the falling liquid. His hands began shaking, and a few droplets of my blood missed the vials and spilled onto his own skin.
He violently recoiled, yanking his hands back with a yelp and dropping the jars. From the frantic way he scrubbed at the red liquid, I almost wondered if my blood had burned him.
After all, a few drops had cracked the supposedly indestructible heartstone—who knew what else it was capable of destroying?
Vance smacked the back of the boy’s head. “It’s blood, you fool, not poison. It’s not going to hurt you. In fact...” He turned his eerie smile back on me. “...it seems her blood is quite the useful substance.”
I tried in vain to jerk my wrists away. “Why do you want my blood?”
The boy whimpered, his face flushing pink. He picked up the fallen jars and hesitantly moved them back in place, though with the tremble in his hands and my own struggling against the Guardians’ grip, very little blood was making it inside.
Another of the men grunted in irritation and snatched the jars from the boy’s hands. “I’ll do it,” he sneered. “I’ve got no problem painting myself red with Descended blood.”
Instead of holding the jars low to catch the falling droplets, he shoved them up against my wounds, pushing the gashes open further. I cried out at the sharp spear of pain that bolted up my arms as several men chuckled smugly.
Fight , the voice begged, its hushed tone growing louder.
No , I warned it. Not yet .
“Why do you want my blood, Vance?” I said again through gritted teeth.
He shrugged. “You said it so well yourself. The Descended of Lumnos are already plotting to kill the mortals, and we don’t have the luxury of waiting months for you to stop them. I’m simply collecting what I need to take matters into my own hands.”
“How is my blood going to help you with that?”
“When we tried to sneak into the palace the night of the Ascension Ball, we discovered that someone —” His eyes sharpened on me. “—had tipped off the guards to close up the hidden entrance in the gardens.”
I breathed out a thankful exhale. I had learned about the secret entrance on my first visit to the palace as a healer, and revealing it to the Guardians had meant breaking my sacred vows of secrecy. My regret over that bad decision had weighed heavily on me these past months. Discovering that no harm would ever come of it was a much-needed solace.
“Thankfully,” Vance continued, “the priceless information you provided gave us a second path into the palace. There’s just one small obstacle.”
Every shred of relief I’d just felt rushed out of me as I realized what was coming next—and why he wanted my blood.
“No,” I breathed.
“The bloodlocks in the hidden canal,” Vance finished. “You were so kind to tell me that they only open for your blood. Now that won’t be a problem.”
“Vance, please,” I begged. “There are children in that palace. Innocent people. Good people who want to help the mortals. My brother—”
“Then let’s hope for their sakes that the other Crowns respond to our letter soon.”
“No—don’t do this. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t—”
“Cut her again,” the man with the vials interrupted. “The wounds are already closing up.”
Vance flipped his switchblade back open.
Fight , the voice hissed.
I looked around frantically, taking in the men, their weapons, the archers in the trees, the distance to the forest.
If I unleashed my magic, could I run away faster than their godstone weapons could find me? Vance already had my blood—could I beat him back to Lumnos before he attacked the palace?
The painful prick of Vance’s blade sent panic searing through me. All my conflicted thoughts burned away, and I reacted on pure instinct.
But I was not some full-blooded Descended elite, trained from infancy to wield lethal magic at a moment’s notice. I was raised as a mortal, trained by the great war hero Andrei Bellator.
When pushed to my limit, it wasn’t Lumnos’s burns and barbs I turned to—it was blades and brawls.
With a burst of adrenaline-fueled strength, I yanked my hands free and threw my elbows into the faces of the men clutching my arms. I let my body go slack, becoming dead weight in the hold of the man whose arms crisscrossed my ribcage. He grunted and stumbled forward at the sudden shift, and I used his momentum against him, twisting my body until he was tumbling toward the ground.
I heard the twang of a crossbow, and a flash of black whizzed past my face. I froze for a split second, panting at the near-miss, then a lunge from another man had me moving again to avoid his godstone dagger’s direct course for my chest.
“Don’t kill her,” Vance snapped, shoving the man away. “We need her alive for the blood to work.”
Any relief his words gave me faded fast as four of his men sheathed their blades and launched at me. As I turned to run, a man with a crossbow stepped into my path. Two heavy bodies crashed into my back and pinned me down with their weight. Then the rest of the group was on me, crushing my spine with their knees and shoving my face into the cold soil until I could barely breathe, let alone move.
“Flip her over,” Vance ordered.
The men roughly hauled me onto my back and sat on my limbs to hold me in place. My vision went wobbly and unfocused as the days without food and water finally caught up with me.
Vance squatted at my side. “I tried to do this the nice way, but you just can’t seem to do what you’re told.” He leaned forward until his knee dug low into my ribs. “You have only yourself to blame.”
I whimpered in between gasps for air. “Please—Vance, no—don’t—”
He picked up an empty vial that had fallen during the scuffle and pulled out the cork stopper with his teeth. “Auralie told me once that head wounds bleed fastest. I hope those Descended healing abilities of yours work quickly.”
I screamed as his blade sank into the flesh of my cheek. Rivulets of warm liquid gushed across my face and down my neck. As Vance pressed the vials into the wounds and filled them one by one, a trickle of blood spilled into my eyes and tinged the world in a crimson haze.
For a moment, my mind flashed back to Forging Day, the ominous blood sun blanketing the dark alleys of Paradise Row in its scarlet glow while Luther and my mother argued over a choice that would change my life in unimaginable ways.
“What’s going on here?” a voice called out.
Vance jerked upright. “Cordellia—I... uh...”
“Vance, is that the Bellator girl?”
“ Help! ” I screamed. “Cordellia, help m—”
Vance clamped a hand over my mouth. “Everything’s fine,” he rushed out. “I had some business to address with her. Lumnos business—nothing for you to worry about.”
Cordellia came into view as she approached. “We’ve discussed this, Vance. You’re not in Lumnos, you’re in Arboros. I gave orders not to remove her from that tree for any reason.” She peered down at me with a deep frown. “Why is she covered in blood?”
I caught Cordellia’s eyes and let out a muffled shriek against the suffocating clinch of Vance’s hand, hoping she could see the desperation in my face, praying she would intervene.
Vance shifted his weight so his knee dropped sharply into my chest, punching the air from my lungs and silencing my protests. “I need her blood for a mission in Lumnos. When I’m done collecting it, you can do whatever you like with her.”
“She’s my prisoner,” Cordellia said archly. “I’ll do whatever I like with her right now.”
Their bickering faded to the recesses of my mind as a different voice stole my focus.
Fight .
The urge to use my magic was steadily growing to a pull that I now had to struggle to hold back. After days without release, my godhood was restless and angry, made worse by the fear throbbing through my pounding heart and the pain splintering across my wounded body.
Still, I resisted. If I used my magic now, there would be no turning back. I had to wait until just the right moment, until I was absolutely certain that I—
The blare of distant horns rolled through the clearing. The mortals froze in unison, their eyes turning skyward.
Another horn blast rang out, this one nearer.
“ Incoming ,” an archer shouted from high in a nearby tree. “Man your posts!”
Cordellia pointed at Vance. “Get her back to the tree and chain her up.” She shot him an uncompromising glare, then walked away as she began barking a stream of orders at the growing crowd of Guardians.
One of the men began to rise from where he kneeled on my arm. Vance raised a hand to stop him. “Stay there.”
“But, sir... Mother Dell said to take her—”
“I’m almost done here. I’ll chain her up when I’m finished.”
The men shared unsure looks, but Vance gave them no time for debate. He slashed two more gashes on my wrists, then nudged the vials toward the men. “Fill those up.”
As the horns grew louder and the meadow filled with a swarm of armed Guardians, the men exchanged a glance, then hurried to finish the deed.
Vance cut a fresh slice along my jaw, alarmingly close to where I knew crucial veins lay beneath the delicate skin. He muttered to himself as the ruby red liquid spilled out into a vial. “Come on, come on, fill up already...” His own hand had begun to quiver, his eyes darting to the sky.
“Incoming,” the archers cried in an echoing chorus. “Attack incoming!”
The clearing devolved into a cacophony of shouting voices, running footsteps, weapons sliding from their sheaths, and the creak of catapults wheeling into place. Though I was still trapped in place, the voice inside me had joined in the frenzied orchestra, humming with excitement over the promise of violence.
In the midst of the chaos, my ears caught on a very different noise. A soft, rhythmic beat—far away, but quickly approaching. Familiar in a way that went deeper than memory.
Thump, thump, thump.
Wings.
My heart sang.
“Oh gods,” one of the men at my side breathed. “Is that a...?”
“Incoming,” the archers screamed. “ Gryvern incoming! ”