Chapter 51 - Glory
Glory
LI
I hovered over the wall, watching the battle before me. Hardly a battle at all. A massacre. What should have been an easy win for the mutts had turned into a slaughter of their kind.
And in the centre of them was Cammon.
I’d found him on his knees, staring up at what looked like another demon, ready to accept his death.
The sight had crushed whatever barriers had remained around my magic.
My power crashed through me like the waves that slammed across the promontory and the ship, cresting higher, rolling in white-capped bursts across more and more land where the mutts had gathered.
Cammon tore the demon down and threw himself at the mutts.
The earth rocked beneath them, sending him off balance again, but he caught himself and continued his fight while the mutts scrambled to keep up.
Trees toppled. The rain came down in such a thick, heavy torrent that I barely made out the ship as it drifted away from the harbour and headed farther out to sea.
The crew’s mages were hard at work protecting the vessel, being no stranger to magical storms, but they were leaving us behind, and I knew they wouldn’t be back.
As far as they were concerned, our mission had failed.
I accepted it. Consumed as I was by magic and rage, I experienced no guilt that I had chosen the man I loved over my country. Over whatever future Evaniel had promised me. Because my future was right here, whatever came next.
Rain pelted my face, wind grabbed my hair and clothes, but I didn’t feel any of it.
With my gaze fixed on Cammon, I floated over the army, bringing with me every last drop of fury against those who’d set out to hurt him.
My power churned within me, as intense as the storm, and I embraced it for the first time in my life, aware of how much damage I could do and wanting to inflict it.
I sank my magic into the earth and tapped into the natural currents of the world, throwing the energy off balance.
As I did, another tremor rocked the ground.
I had no idea what I was doing, but that didn’t stop me.
My magic had taken control; I was simply its medium.
I grabbed hold of the raging wind and sent it spiralling towards the mutts on the outskirts of the battle, farthest from the coast. Some of them retreated into the forest, thinking the trees would save them, but I sent my magic into the roots and raised them from the earth to trip the mutts and bind their legs in place.
The trees responded easily, as if used to shifting, and I acknowledged the stories, grateful the ancient sentinels chose to fight with me.
There would be no mercy. Not for those who had hounded us across the country determined to destroy us.
Closer to the sea, the waves came harder, faster, foam-capped surges catching the outliers and sweeping them into the water.
Space opened around Cammon, and I landed behind him, my back to his.
Mud squelched under my feet, the rising rainwater pooling at my ankles.
Cammon’s poor, damaged wings hung loosely against his spine, and the golden notes of his skin were hidden under a thick layer of blood, which dripped black in the darkness.
I smelled enough of it to know he was badly wounded, and as he continued to fight, his steps grew slower, more halting.
I bared my fangs and drew on my vampirism as much as my magic, winding the two together in a way I never had. The wind lifted me off the ground, allowing me to barrel into our enemies from above, and with tooth and talon, I sliced through one after another.
Sending my power deep into the world around me, I forced the trees closest to the water to move out of the way, shifted the dirt to create pathways towards us, and channelled the sea over the steep shores.
The approaching roar warned the mutts of what I’d done, and they screeched and bellowed and howled with terror as the water swept around us and over them, washing them away with tree, brush, corpse.
I was destruction.
I was terror.
Cammon stumbled again, leaving him open to a coyote mutt that rose on canine legs. It punched him with one human hand and slashed across his chest with the claws on the other. I leapt over Cammon’s falling body and ripped out the coyote’s throat. Its tainted blood sprayed across my face.
I whirled around to face the next… to find none.
With their demon commander dead, the surviving creatures were fleeing, and only Cammon and I existed in the mass of devastation.
I sucked in breath after breath, fighting to gain control of my magic now that the threat was gone.
It struggled against me, not wanting to be tamped down after tasting freedom, but I closed my eyes and imagined it settling in my blood along with my vampirism.
It was there. It was reachable. It was closer than I’d let it be in thirteen years.
As my power ebbed, the storm let up. The rain eased to a gentle patter, and the clouds lightened to a soft grey, coating the blood-soaked valley in an oddly cozy light.
The water rolled back towards the sea, but the rest of the damage I’d caused remained.
So many fallen trees, gaping fissures, flooded alcoves.
The wall where Cammon had left me had crumbled in places, no longer a protective guardian around the harbour beyond.
I turned again to face Cammon, to sound our victory, but my heart cracked when I found him on his back staring up at me.
Blood pumped from a deep wound in his abdomen with every ebb and flow of his pulse.
It bubbled from his lips and spilled from dozens of other injuries across his battered form.
His leather breeches were in tatters, and his battered wings stretched out beneath him.
I fell to his side and grabbed his hand.
“Buttons,” he rasped, and a sob broke through my attempt at restraint. When had his name for me come to mean so much more than the taunt it had started as? Now I couldn’t imagine never hearing it again. “You need to leave.”
“I won’t,” I argued. “I’m not going anywhere without you. You have to know that by now. Don’t you?”
My tears spattered on his chest, and he raised his hand to cup my face. His thumb rolled across my cheek, and despite the agony he had to be in, his lips curled with smugness. “I knew I’d grow on you.”
“And you did,” I agreed. “Like a fungus. Like one of those parasites that consumes its host, and without you…”
I couldn’t consider it. My gaze jumped from one injury to the next, seeking some solution, some way to fix this.
I didn’t have healing magic, had never wanted it because it would mean I’d need to get too close to people, but now I resented the limits of my massive power.
I could control nature, create storms and wash away entire valleys, but I couldn’t save the demon I loved.
Another sob choked me. I bowed my head to hide my face from him, not wanting him to see that, like him, I understood the end was here. As I leaned over him, the amulet slipped from my shirt, the chain striking my chin.
My body stilled, my heartbeat skipped, and I wrapped my fingers around it.
I might not have the magic required to save him, but the amulet did. One last use, that’s what Tersey had said. The ship had already left. We had already failed.
Cammon’s gaze travelled to my hand and his eyes widened. “Glory, you can’t.” More blood pooled in the corner of his mouth, and his body tensed with pain. “You have to get home. One way or another—you have to make it back. If Evaniel found out…”
He wasn’t wrong. Even if I’d missed the ship, there were other ways to reach the city.
I could use the messaging crystal—if I could find it—and let the king know what had happened.
Maybe he could delay the war, give me a few extra days to get home.
If I returned to Golth with a useless amulet and Evaniel discovered what I’d done, my life would be forfeit even if the secret of my vampirism remained hidden.
“I don’t care.” It was shockingly easy to admit what I’d worked so hard to deny these past few days. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you alive. I’ll risk anything. Accept any consequence.”
He blurred behind my tears, and I wrapped his weak hand around the amulet.
“Wait.” He sucked in a choking breath, pulled his hand free from the gold setting, and looped his fingers through mine. “You say ‘anything.’ Do you mean that?”
What was that look in his eyes and the emotion running through our bond? Not pain. Not regret, or fear, or remorse. If anything, I recognized it as hope.
“Can you doubt it? After everything, do you not know how much you mean to me?”
If he wouldn’t do it, I would do it for him. I lifted the amulet and set it against his chest, but he gripped my wrist with more strength than I’d believed was left in him.
“Not like that,” he said.
“There is no other way, Cammon. Even if I found a dozen healing kits, they wouldn’t be enough.
” Could I use my blood somehow? I would open my veins if I thought it would save him.
But the healing properties of my vampiric heritage would only draw him so far from the brink of death.
It might be potent enough to close some of the minor injuries, but that fatal wound would never seal before his heart beat its last.
“Would bonding with me be the worst choice?”
His question, hoarse and tentative, jerked me out of my thoughts and left me speechless. I sat back on my heels to stare at him. Incredulous. Dazed.
It was an echo of what he’d asked when I’d suffered my bloodlust, and at that time, I’d had no doubts about my answer. In fact, my greatest disappointment was that the bond would be one-sided. What he was suggesting now…
His lungs wheezed with the strain of another breath, and I blinked away the tears obscuring my vision.
“Would that save you?”
He nodded. “You would—” A cough. More blood sprayed from between his lips. “It might—it might hurt you. But we’d both be able to get out of here.”
I looked around the empty landscape. I wasn’t sure where he thought we’d go, but we could deal with that later. If…
I dropped my gaze back to his. “You can’t really want this. We have the amulet. You want your freedom. We’re already bound through my bloodlust. If you bonded with me… You told me it would mean shared power. Shared lives.”
As I described it, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more.
Cammon guided my hand to his lips. His crimson eyes were so full of earnestness, open and determined, that there was no room for doubt when he said, “Shared everything, Buttons. I’d have it no other way.”
My damned tears erased his beautiful face again, and I blinked them away as I nodded. Come what may, this was the future I chose.
He raised his hand to my face and pulled me down to him. His lips brushed against mine, his sinfully delicious blood smearing across my mouth and dancing over my tongue like the smoothest brandy. And then his kisses travelled down to my pulse—and he bit.
Unlike a vampire bite, there was no venom to heighten the pleasure.
There were no fangs to pave the way. All his teeth were sharp, and they sank deep into my flesh.
It should have been terrifying. A few weeks ago, I would have struggled against him, hating the way he clasped me to his chest and left me no room to manoeuvre.
I would have thought the entire offer of a bond was a ploy to consume my emotions and leave me a drained husk for the sake of his own survival.
But it never occurred to me now, even as the pain made me gasp and tense against him.
Soon, the pain faded, replaced by a different sensation that ran deeper, like a thick cable piercing my chest and securing itself to my soul.
Hooks latched on to my heart, looped into my skull and bound me there too.
Every part of me connected to Cammon, and with every passing moment, my strength grew.
Tempest mage, vampire, bonded to a demon prince.
Power filled my muscles, my blood. I tasted his desire, his love, his gratitude, all mixed with the flavour of his made-for-me lifeblood.
The pleasure was immense. Not sexual—not only sexual—but like every good memory wrapped up and served in one giant helping.
Every good experience, every sweet moment.
Girls’ nights with Ashara over bottles of wine.
Cracking open a new book in my favourite armchair.
The smell of old books. The rustle of leaves on a summer day.
Bonding with Cammon was bliss. It was perfection. And as the bond settled, his strength grew as well. I felt the healing wounds on his torso, the flex of his muscles, the ease of his tremors, each step leading him farther away from the river of Death.
He drew one last mouthful of blood between his lips, and my world shifted again.
The sense of power faded, and in its place, the pain returned.
Not the same as before—that radiating pinch of puncturing teeth—but greater.
All over. I screamed as slices opened on my body, spilling blood from wounds that hadn’t been there moments ago, as fatigue weighed down my muscles, as bruises flowered across my skin.
As Cammon’s injuries passed to me.