64. Tempest
64
TEMPEST
“ S orry, love,” Vexxion said softly. “I’ll never sacrifice you to survive.”
We were both too eager to die for the other, but while I wanted to curse him for not taking the chance he’d find with my death, I understood.
Love you, I sent out, hoping it reached him.
Warmth coasted across my soul, telling me it had.
“Aren’t you two sweet?” Kerune’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Both willing to die for each other. Too bad the king wants her alive.” A flick of his hand sent Vexxion against the wall, pinning him in place with bands like the ones holding me away from my magic. He kicked Vexxion’s dagger, and it clattered when it hit the wall.
Advancing on Vexxion, Kerune snaked his knife through the air. “You, however, I’ve been told to eliminate. ”
“No,” someone snarled.
My breath jerked in at the word, and my eyes widened as Airia appeared in the cell with us.
It was her—yet it wasn’t.
The voice was right, but her form had morphed into a thing of grotesque elegance, a being made up of carmine-red scaly skin. Her hollow eyes bored into my soul with an eternal hunger that made me shiver despite knowing she was a friend. Her hair, once lustrous and dark, now fell in gorgeous, red-tinged misty shadows around her face. Her skin stretched thin over her muscular limbs, and her fingers ended in long claws capable of unspeakable harm. Wisps of her dress clung to her frame. She was a glorious, monstrous princess.
No, the regal slant to her head told me this was a queen of all she surveyed.
“A wraith,” I hissed. “You’re the wraith.” From the board, the one hovering near the high lady.
I suspected the Airia I’d worked with in the castle aerie had died and the wraith took her place. Had she come to defend us, or would she strike the final blow?
“High lady,” she said in a voice cut through with shards of glass. She floated across the floor and stopped beneath me.
Kerune continued to snarl about all the things he’d soon do to me.
Do you see her? I asked Vexxion, and he frowned, shaking his head.
My friend had loosened my magic enough that I could speak with him.
She was darkness herself, and while I should cringe from her, I smiled .
“Welcome, Airia.” I shoved the words up my throat, making them burst through Kerune’s binding magic. “Have you come to play?”
“I am the spell. I am the answer. I am the wraith.”
A shiver rippled across my skin.
Life was mirroring the game of Wraithweave, and I suspected the fates were playing their own game.
No one played the wraith; the wraith played itself.
In Ember’s Shadow , it said that if the rules of the treaty were broken, a spell would be activated. Kerune killed most of the Lieges. Had that activated the spell?
“Tell me what you need, High Lady.” Airia’s voice was a harsh shriek. A whisper capable of fracturing bones. A slice made with the sharpest of blades.
“End this,” I said.
Magic spun around her in reddish gray and white bands, tightening and expanding until it blurred into a pulverizing mass. With a smile that would still the heart of the most brutal fae king, she flung the magic at Kerune.
His body incinerated.
Wind burst through the room, removing the pall of his death with it.
She morphed into the deep red, scaled creature I’d freed from a small painting in the foyer not long after I’d released the marscapoles. Rising onto wonderfully thick hind legs, she extended her delicate, spike-tipped wings and dipped her head, almost placing her chin on the floor. “My debt is paid.”
A pop, and she disappeared from the room.
My chains released, as did Vexxion’s, and we fell to the floor .
Rising, we staggered, meeting in the middle of the room, wrapping our arms around each other.
His kiss took away my fear and horror, and when he lifted his head, he stroked my face with his threads and stared into my eyes. Are you injured?
I shook my head. I’m fine.
Good, he said grimly.
We flitted to Lydel.