Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
LYRA
Iwander the mosaic walkway toward the Abdites’ living area, my eyes red and swollen, cheeks slicked with tears.
My mind is full and hollow at once, leaving me to feel something akin to a carcass.
A ghost. Yet right as I round the corner leading to the spread of circular stone buildings, I slam back into myself with a force so jarring, my knees buckle.
A man kneels at the center of the path, his undone headdress covered in sand and something which appears black and sticky. His brown hair is half-drawn. Eyes filled with moss and gold.
“Gray?” I press the heels of my palms into my eyes and rub, convinced that somehow between all the magic and grief, I am hallucinating. Yet when I pull my hands back, he is still there. Only, now he is standing, shoulders squared to me.
“Lyra.” He doesn’t waste a second, taking long strides to me, pulling me into his chest and consuming me with his arms as he embraces me. His hold tightens as he nestles his cheek against the side of my head. “Thank the gods,” he whispers against my temple, pressing a kiss to it after.
As he holds me, it’s like everything I have been holding falls free, and before I can even say a word to him, I instead sob into his chest, my fist clutching at his shirt while my knees weaken.
“You’re okay,” he soothes, cradling the back of my head with one hand and steadying me at the waist with his other. “It’s alright. I’ve got you. I’m here.” He drops his voice. “I’m here, Lyra.”
I cry until it seems my eyes are no longer capable, my pores tight from all the salt they’ve just swallowed. I finally pull back from him, my chest tightened to the point of pain. “How is this possible? How–how did you find me?”
He studies me with soft eyes. “You left a dagger behind in Talderine, at Sagamon. It was like an Arellian blade, but forged differently. That, paired with the materials on the hilt, allowed me to work out your location pretty quickly.”
“Which is?”
“The Arid Wastelands.”
Shock rattles me—I never was told where this place is located—but the detail seems so unimportant now.
I choke on a manic, disbelieving laugh. “Only you, Gray Nightenjoy.”
His smile is weak, seeming only capable of withstanding a second or two of use.
“Lyra,” he says, features sobering in a way that frightens me.
“I didn’t come alone. Draven is here. And his sister.
And Captain Fjolla. We worked together to break the ward locking you in.
” He pauses, lips thinning. “I think there was a sort of mechanism built into it which forced someone attempting to destroy it to hallucinate with their worst nightmares.”
My heart stops beating. The air dies in my chest. A terrifying, bone-clattering cold sweeps along my skin and down my spine. There is a gnawing in my gut, like an intuition of sorts.
The screams. There were so many screams in that blanket of darkness.
And suddenly, I know what he’s about to tell me.
I was wrong before—it seems I am capable of more tears. My eyes are already blurring, warm fluids hot and raw as they brim over my lower lash line. “Tell me.”
His face falls, and he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. “I’m afraid I have to show you.”
My brows pinch together, but before I can even get a word out, Gray lifts a trembling hand and twirls his wrist. Everything around us ripples and shatters, taking my surroundings from a garden of dreams to a destruction site of nightmares.
The rounded stone buildings are decimated, rubble strewn about the ground, glass from their domed roofs scattered in the mess. Trees have been knocked over. The mosaic walkways shattered and destroyed, the stone bridges connecting them blown away into the streams they once arched above.
Streams which are now black.
Bodies are littered around me, the condition of them entirely the same as Neilina’s had been. I know the names of all of them. Recognize each and every one of their faces. So many unseeing eyes. So many paralyzed lungs.
Are there even any survivors?
“The moment I saw you, I threw up an illusion over everything. I just wanted to have a few seconds reunited without the stain of blood all over it.”
My body seems incapable of fully processing what I’m seeing. “Did…” My voice breaks, and I swallow against the tremble in my voice. “Draven did this, didn’t he?”
Gray’s eyes wander behind my shoulder before refocusing on me. He nods. “Even in his own madness, he was attempting to save you from them.”
“Save me?”
His eyes fill with confusion. “Yes,” he answers, that one word slow and filled with a thousand questions. “They were mad, Lyra. Attacking us with corrupted magic.”
“You invaded their home!” I shout. “Of course they attacked you.” My hands ball into fists at my sides. “And they weren’t mad,” I whisper harshly. “I mean they were, at that moment. But not always.”
He looks at me as though I am speaking another language. “I don’t understand.”
“The wards kept them sane, Gray. This was the one place they could be free—could live without their madness. And you tore that down, ripped it apart at its seams, then blamed them for how they were forced to react.”
“I…we…” Gray’s eyes again look over my shoulder, prompting me to finally turn around.
“What are you looking—”
My words die in my throat. There, slumped awkwardly against a tree, lies Draven.
I can’t even describe the sound that gurgles from my lips. I’m not sure if such an ugly, fractured thing has a name.
I race to him, dropping to my knees by his side. A thin steam permeates from his clothes, with one arm stripped of any fabric completely. His skin nurses veins black as tar. They run through his arm, up his neck, spreading over his jaw and into his eyes.
“Draven,” I murmur, the tears now spilling down my cheeks as I trace his veins with my fingertips.
Too much. I’m feeling way too much. Anger. Relief. Guilt. Grief.
His eyes flutter, head lolling in my direction.
I nearly jerk back at the sight of his black eyes, so different from their usual brightness.
Yet they seem to sharpen on my face, if only for a moment.
A small smile tips his lips. “I came for you.” He sounds tired. Like his mind is in a different world.
“I know,” I whisper.
His brows furrow while his eyes fade in and out of focus. “I will always come for you.” He reaches a hand out, but it falls short, plopping in his lap instead. He goes unconscious.
I sweep a thumb along his cheek. “I know,” I whisper again, this time even quieter than the last.
“His eyes get like that sometimes,” Gray offers from behind me. “It’s what happened when he fought against Casimir Vivaldri as well. It’s like his dark magic swallows him. It’s…frightening, honestly.”
I’m only halfway listening, my mind snagging on the name he just used.
Oh gods.
Casimir.
As the emotions continue piling in my chest, I can’t even discern what they’re for.
Fear for what Casimir will do? Grief for what he’s lost?
Guilt because I’m basically the cause of all this?
Shame because though my heart is breaking, though I’m staring into atrocity, I still can’t help but feel a flutter of warmth at seeing Draven?
Which of course leads to more guilt. More shame.
So. Many. Emotions.
“How did this happen?” I ask, dropping my hand from Draven’s face and leaning back to put my weight on my heels. My low voice is a broken thing. “Why did he do this?”
“He thought he was protecting you,” Gray answers. When I don’t respond, he takes a step forward, crouching down beside me and resting a hand on my shoulder. “Tell me what is going on, Lyra.”
Two figures suddenly emerge from the southern path. Hope blooms in my chest for all of a second, until I realize it is Finlay Fjolla and a girl I don’t recognize. She must be Draven’s sister.
I have no warm greetings to offer her.
“We finally found you,” Finlay says, assessing the scene with cold vigilance.
He merely arches a brow at all the bodies surrounding them.
“What in the gods were so many Abdites doing all the way out here?” He asks the question with such detached curiosity.
Like these bodies—people—are nothing more than curious specimens.
I want to spit fire in his icy face.
Draven’s sister studies me, then steps forward and crouches down on the opposite side of Draven. “Is he okay?” She presses two fingers against his neck, feeling his pulse.
“He’s fine,” Gray answers for me. “Unconscious, but alive.”
“We saw him lose control,” she murmurs, gazing at her brother through tender eyes. “Well, we saw the consequences of him losing control, I should say.”
“We watched his magic…” Finlay stops, searching for a word. “Well, truthfully I’m not even sure what to call it. Was anyone hurt?”
My swollen eyes whip to him. “Look around you,” I say, disbelief coating my words. “How can you even ask that?”
He cocks his head at me, frowning. “All I see are Abdites.”
I scoff, incredulous and disbelieving. Though, is it really so hard to believe, given what we are taught to think and believe about any and all Abdites?
“Lyra.” Gray’s voice beckons my attention, providing me with new focus. “Talk to me. What do you know that we don’t?”
I shake my head, a weight sinking in my stomach on a repeated loop. “Later,” I manage. “But for now, can you just…” I swallow against the swell of emotion in my words. “Can you all just go? Please?”
Gray’s face is the only one I’m capable of looking at. It looks conflicted. Is filled with its own sort of pain.
“Please,” I say again.
He sighs through his nose, nodding. “Alright,” he agrees gently. “We’ll take Draven and go up to the northern perimeter. I saw some plants there that might be useful.”