Chapter 41
Chapter
Forty-One
F alling in love is an interesting metaphor.
I was never Emarion’s foremost expert on love. With Henri, it felt a lot more like running. Running to him, then from him, then beside him, though on different paths.
But recently— very recently—I had become pretty acquainted with falling.
Most people would say to fall is to give up. To accept total helplessness to one’s predicament. For those fleeting, frightening moments in the air, both time and your heart stand still, and you’re at the mercy of gravity’s pull—and whatever awaits you on the ground.
But that’s only what happens when you’re pushed.
When you jump—when you stand on the ledge, look down, and embrace what you see with arms wide open—there’s nothing helpless about it at all. Instead of terrifying, it’s liberating. You’re not in freefall... you’re in flight .
And when I stepped off Yrselle’s balcony and began my rapid descent to the canyon floor, the beautiful, scarred man I loved was exactly who I had in my mind.
My body twisted in the air to face the ground, my snow-white waves whipping in a trail behind me.
I held my breath.
Closed my eyes.
And when three clawed talons closed around my ribs and snatched me into their grasp... I smiled.
“ Are you out of your fucking mind? ” Luther shouted from Sorae’s back. “Two more seconds and you would have been dead.”
I looked up and guiltily bit back my grin at the worry etched so deeply in his features it might now be permanent. “I knew Sorae would catch me. She’s the best gryvern there is.”
She purred proudly, but even her reptilian face looked as ashen as my companions.
“You could have warned us,” Taran grumbled, grabbing my hand to haul me upward.
I threw a leg over Sorae’s back and settled into place just behind her wings. “I couldn’t risk one of them reading your minds and seeing my plan.”
Luther’s arms locked around me with bruising force, the thump of his heartbeat vibrating into my back. He lowered his lips to the curve of my neck and lingered there, breathing in deep, as if needing the smell and taste of me to assure himself I was safe.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” I said softly, curling a hand over his. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until you’re healed.”
He tensed, and my grip on him tightened.
“Why didn’t you come with us?” he asked.
“I had to at least try convincing Yrselle to let me go without a fight, for my mother’s sake.”
A silent moment passed. I felt the guilt roll off him. “Did it work?”
I glanced over my shoulder at a dark spot in the distance. “No. Everyone—hold on tight.”
I shot an order out to Sorae. She immediately pulled up, and we disappeared into a blinding mass of clouds.
For a single, peaceful minute, total silence ruled the sky. Sorae angled her outstretched wings, allowing us to glide on the wind as both the sea and the sky disappeared from sight. Other than the breeze through our hair, I might have thought we were hovering, suspended in time and space, a serene harbor where trouble could not find us.
But find us, she did.
A piercing shriek rang out from below as Yrselle and her gryvern appeared at our flank. Sorae felt the fear stab through me and slammed her wings downward, shooting us above the cloud layer and pitching Yrselle in our turbulent wake.
The dense muscles beneath Sorae’s skin bunched and pulled. On a normal day, she could outrun any gryvern with little effort, but this was no normal day. She was overloaded with too much weight and already worn down from her urgent sprint across the sea. Just getting home without resting would be an effort—if we couldn’t shake Yrselle, we’d be ground-bound in no time.
“Use your illusions,” I yelled back at Alixe and Zalaric, who I was relieved to find back in control of his mind. They each threw out a palm, and we melted into the star-flecked night just as Yrselle and her gryvern smashed through the clouds.
Her dark gaze swept over the seemingly empty sky. “I know you’re up here,” she shouted. “Return to Umbros, and no one will get hurt.”
Sorae slipped back into a glide to hide the sound of her wings, though the air current had shifted, now pressing us lower.
A ball of churning dragonfyre hurtled past and missed us by inches.
“You’re not the only Queen who will do whatever it takes to save her people,” Yrselle called out. “Do not make me force your hand.”
I conjured a flock of shadow-crafted beasts and threw them out in a swarm behind us. With my still-untrained magic, their forms were wispy and grotesque, but they did the job. Yrselle shrieked as they tangled in her hair and the fabric of her dress, and her gryvern bobbled with each smack against its wings.
“Now you’re just pissing me off,” she snarled.
Sorae’s body shuddered beneath me. We exchanged a mutual jolt of panic at the cloud line quickly edging nearer.
I sent another volley, but Yrselle’s gryvern was savvy, and this time it dodged them with ease. Its golden eyes sharpened on the sky just above us as it pinpointed the origin of the attack.
Its jaw yawed open with a plume of onyx fire. We flattened against Sorae’s back to duck the lick of the flames, their blistering heat searing our skin.
And they didn’t stop coming. Again and again, Yrselle’s gryvern renewed its attacks. Sorae zig-zagged in evasive maneuvers, leaving us digging our nails into her skin—and each other’s—in a desperate fight to stay mounted.
“There!” Yrselle shouted, pointing.
I looked down. We’d dropped too low, and Sorae’s talons had carved a revealing groove in the clouds. With a triumphant howl, the Umbros gryvern unleashed its dark inferno.
Fight , my godhood growled.
I spun in place, Luther holding me steady, and thrust my palms forward. A glittering crystal wall slammed into the fire, then vaporized into steam.
Alixe gaped at me. “Was that ice? ”
Luther squeezed my hip to snag my attention. “Diem—you’ve been to Meros?”
I frowned briefly at him, then looked back at Yrselle. Her lips had curled upward, like my defense had not bothered but pleased her.
“Not just the port,” he prodded. “You’ve touched Meros soil? You’re sure?”
I barely had time to nod before twin streams of flame shot for Sorae’s wings, which I hurriedly met with glistening frost.
“The wind,” Luther shouted. “Use the wind .”
I frowned at him, not understanding.
He pulled me closer, his glacial eyes boring into mine. “The day we first met, you healed Lily. That’s Fortos magic. Just now, the ice—Montios magic. The flames in Ignios, and in Umbros—you heard Zalaric’s thoughts, didn’t you? That’s how you knew he betrayed us?”
Old instincts rose in me to deny it, to hide from the hard truths that scared me, even as I stared them right in the face.
“All of it,” Luther murmured. “I knew it. You can wield all the Kindred’s magic.”
“This isn’t possible,” I said, sounding like I was pleading. Feeling like I was pleading. Because if this was true, then everything I thought I knew about myself was even more uncertain than I thought. Who even was I? What was I?
Sorae’s wings slumped. She flapped wildly to recover, stirring the clouds and revealing our position. Yrselle’s gryvern yipped and dove to intercept us.
“You can do this, Diem,” Luther yelled over the melee. “Have faith in yourself. This is what you were born to do.”
My body betrayed me, my hands rising even though my head shook in pointless denial. My hair danced over my shoulders in a gust of warm, whirling wind as shimmering magic flowed from my palms. The dark panels of my dress billowed slowly like ribbons in the sea. Air filled Sorae’s wings, relieving the strain on her overtaxed muscles and lifting us forward.
Though the others gawked in confusion and more than a little alarm, Luther beamed, his eyes bright with fiery affection.
He loved me.
He loved me.
How could I ever have questioned it? It was as sure as the sunset, as steady as the dawn. Even now, even hurt, even dying, the strength of his heart was a force to behold. He believed in me, right down to his marrow, in a way I’d never believed in myself.
He was my rock. My cove.
My sword and my shield.
My guiding light and my calming dark.
My Prince. My love .
He was my everything.
And he was dying.
A sharp, desperate anger took hold of me, borne of the loss I refused to accept. I offered up my rage to my magic, and my godhood accepted with violent glee. A cry ripped from my throat, broken and vicious, as the wind bowed to my will.
Air slammed into Yrselle’s gryvern with the force of a marble wall. The beast toppled sideways, sending Yrselle airborne and screeching. Both figures disappeared in a freefall through the clouds.
The others gaped, muttered, frowned, twisted to watch for Yrselle’s return—save for Luther, whose gaze never left my face.
His fingers swept tenderly over my cheekbone. As his hand fell, I spied the glisten of my tears on his skin. My anger crumbled, and so did I.
He cradled me into his chest, and the others fell quiet as I wept in his arms.
“You are the greatest gift,” he murmured in my ear. “To everyone you meet, and to this continent and all its people.” He placed a kiss on my shoulder. “But especially to me. I only wish...”
His voice fractured, and I pulled back to look at him. He cupped my face between his rough, protective palms, his eyes gleaming. “I only wish I could be there to see all that you will become.”
He let out a long exhale, and with it seemed to go his turmoil. A calm acceptance settled over his weary features. His muscles softened, his jaw relaxed.
A better woman might have been glad to see him finally find the peace he so deserved.
I was not a better woman.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I hissed. “I am not doing this without you. It’s us, or it’s nothing.”
His lips parted, his desire to convince me dancing on his tongue.
So I gave them something better to do. I grabbed his lapels and smothered his protests with a kiss—not a desperate prayer, but a declaration of war. An echo of his vow to the gods at my Challenging: Take him from me, and I will come for you, too.
“You should know better than to argue with a Bellator,” I panted against his lips.
His expression heated, revealing a spark of the warrior still fighting inside him. “I can’t help myself. You Bellators are stunning when you’re angry.”
“I’ll pass that along to Teller on your behalf.”
He laughed, and the sound filled my heart with the most exquisite joy. Sorrow and rage were pacing monsters at the gates, but at least for now, we held them both at bay.
I pulled more wind into Sorae’s wings to propel us forward, anxious to put distance between us and Umbros.
“Do you think she’s coming back?” Taran asked.
“I think she’s learned her lesson.” I gestured for Alixe and Zalaric to drop their illusions, then reluctantly spun in Luther’s grasp to face forward. “But if she does come back, this time I’ll be read—”
One second, I was talking.
The next, I was flying.
Through the bond, Sorae’s pain and panic commingled with my own. The world was spinning, bodies soaring, voices shouting. Something firm hit my palm. I grabbed it, clutching with all my might, barely keeping hold as my body crashed against a wall of muscle and bone. The flash of a dark-scaled gryvern whizzed past my face, along with the sound of Yrselle’s cackles. Somewhere, someone was screaming, the sound getting further and further away.
“Diem!”
Luther’s voice sliced through the chaos. My head jerked around until I spotted him—dangling below me, along with Taran, the belt connecting them hooked on Sorae’s claw. My body swayed erratically as I clung to the thick cartilage edging her wing. She listed to one side, fighting to stay airborne under the lopsided pull of my weight.
A hand closed around my wrist.
“Yrselle hit us,” Zalaric shouted as he dragged me onto Sorae’s back. “Alixe fell off.”
My gaze snapped downward—to the flailing figure growing smaller by the second.
“Hold on,” I yelled to Luther and Taran. “Sorae— go! ”
She arched her head, and we dropped like a stone through the sky. Sorae flew at impossible speed, but Alixe was already so far away, her body falling so fast. Even my magic couldn’t reach her as I tried and failed to coax the wind into slowing her descent.
“ Faster , Sorae,” I pleaded.
Her frantic heartbeat drummed beneath my hands—not for her own life, or even Alixe’s, but for me. For my happiness. A fraught desire to please me at any cost.
Before these past few weeks, I might have thought that a sad thing—something superficial, manufactured by the spell that bound her life in service. But I’d now seen the heart of a gryvern whose obedience was built on enslavement alone. Unlike Tybold, Sorae’s affection for me was as real as mine for her.
Faster we dove as Alixe grew nearer. She threw out a tendril of her magic, but it was still well short of our reach.
Yrselle circled above us in leisurely pursuit. “I tried to warn you,” she chided. “Come back with me now, or you’ll lose them all.”
I ignored her and stroked Sorae’s neck. “Almost there, girl—go, go! ”
The sea’s surface grew alarmingly close. My gaze locked with Alixe’s, and in it, I saw the same sad defeat I’d seen in Luther’s eyes.
She was making peace. Accepting her fate.
“No,” I screamed at the gods. “I will not let you have them! Not any of them, do you hear me?”
I hurled my magic out. Alixe jerked sharply, and I felt the wind curl beneath her like an extension of my palms.
“Got her!” Taran cried, his hand wrapped around her wrist. Her boot skimmed the water’s surface as Sorae banked hard and shot us back into the sky.
With help from Zalaric, Alixe grappled her way onto Sorae’s back. Her face was chalk white and her hands were trembling, but true to her nature, she jumped right back into battle.
“Luther and Taran are stuck,” she warned. “Their strap is tangled. We’ll have to cut them fr— watch out! ”
Yrselle’s gryvern rammed into our side. I smashed forward into Sorae’s neck, my vision going woozy. Alixe grabbed me with one hand and Zalaric with the other, miraculously managing to keep us both astride.
My satchel jostled loose at the impact and spilled its contents into the air. I watched helplessly as my jar of lavender flame plummeted toward the Sacred Sea, then shattered against its ink-dark surface.
My heart stung with unexpected sadness. I forced myself to look away with a reminder that gryvern was long dead and beyond saving—unlike the one who needed me now.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” Yrselle called out. Her gryvern fell into pace beside us. “Turn back now if you want your friends to live.”
Fight , the voice of the godhood seethed, its timbre lower, angrier, more savage.
This time, it wasn’t a mystery what it planned. The wolf in the forest, the man at my Challenging, the godstone bolt in the Arboros clearing—I’d wiped from existence with a single silvery flash.
I could do it again now. A Queen and her gryvern, dead without a trace.
I shivered at the thought.
“Give it up, Yrselle,” I shouted back. “I’m going home.”
She sighed. “Very well. If it’s Luther you insist on returning for, it’s Luther I’ll get out of the way.”
Her fingers twitched, and my stomach filled with dread.
“Taran, no! ” Alixe screamed.
I followed her horrified stare down to Sorae’s talons. Both men had gone slack-jawed and stiff, arms limp at their sides—except for Taran, whose right arm had crooked around Luther’s throat. Though their expressions were vacant, both sets of eyes blazed with terror as Taran’s hold involuntarily tightened.
Alixe threw a tendril of light around Taran’s arm and yanked. It sizzled and blistered welts against his skin, but his chokehold was unrelenting.
Luther gasped for air. His face turned pink, then red.
“Let them go or I swear on all the gods, Yrselle, your reign will end tonight .” I raised a palm in her direction, and she wagged a single finger.
“Might want to rethink that, dear. You’ve got your hands full.” She winked and jerked her chin to the space behind me.
I looked back to find Alixe and Zalaric wearing the same glassy-eyed expression. They began to lean, then slide, then fall .
I grabbed Alixe’s arm with one hand and called a gust of wind to push Zalaric upright with the other, but one look down had my heart in my throat. Luther’s eyes were rolling back, his lips turning blue.
A chill of terror paralyzed me. Sorae felt it, letting out an anguished trill. Her talons tightened around Taran, one claw dimpling into his chest, just above his heart. An offer from my devoted gryvern—Taran’s death for Luther’s life.
“ No ,” I yelled, but her grip did not loosen.
Taran’s eyes locked with mine. In them, I saw his plea to let her do it. He would rather die than live with the knowledge he had murdered his best friend.
Fight , my godhood demanded again.
“I’m not a murderer,” I cried. “Don’t make me do this.”
Zalaric jerked sharply and tilted backward. I lunged and managed to snag the edge of his robe, but just as I did, Alixe nearly took me with her as she pitched herself over the edge.
Help , I begged to anyone and no one as I fought to hold them both, though I knew my prayers was futile. There was no way out without destroying some vital part of me in the process.
How much of your soul are you willing to set ablaze?
I gave one final look at Luther as the last embers of my ruined heart curled to ash.
Suddenly, a blinding flash of light filled the sky, followed by a wave of sweltering heat. The smell of burnt skin singed my nose.
I blinked. Unlike before, I hadn’t felt the magic work. Had I used it without realizing what I’d done?
But Yrselle and her gryvern were still there. They dropped into freefall and hurtled toward the sea. They were screaming, wailing, tumbling... burning. Bright, roaring flames coated them both.
Lavender flames.
Alixe and Zalaric blinked rapidly and shook their heads, now free of the Queen’s control. Zalaric helped me pull her up, then I slumped forward in relief as Luther gulped in air and Sorae’s claw eased from Taran’s chest. With a bit of wrangling, we cut them free and managed to haul them up to safety.
Once everyone was secure, the five of us collapsed in an exhausted, breathless heap.
Alixe pulled an illusion around Sorae to conceal us, and I called forth a swift westbound wind. Luther’s arms slid around my waist as my head thumped back against his chest.
“Home,” I sighed heavily. “Let’s go home.”