Chapter 36 #2
“Modok is dead. Nyraxes too. The Fae are finished here.” Her eyes flick past me to the Golden Son, bent over a water barrel, washing salt and grime from his face. “The Legion will be the danger here.”
My jaw locks, teeth grinding. “And you’re certain you want to hand him over to them?”
“He’s the only leverage we have. Their commander. They’ll bend if he tells them to.”
“And what if that command is to shred us to ribbons?” I say. “That human owes us no loyalty.”
Zyphoro only gives a languid shrug, shrugs, as if the thought doesn’t stir her blood in the slightest. “Then I’ll take him apart. Piece by screaming piece. Until his little soldiers do as they’re told. Makes no difference to me. So long as it spares us a battle.”
A bitter laugh slips from me, low and humorless. “Never thought I’d see the day you’d speak of avoiding a fight.”
The corner of her mouth lifts, but her gaze stays on the land.
“Amara saved me,” she says, her voice carried on the warm breeze curling over the waves.
“I owe her a debt. Stilling my blade for a day is the least I can do.” Then her eyes cut to mine, sharp as the dagger she toys with. “But the moment she is well…”
“Yes, yes.” I roll my eyes and sigh. “Then the oceans will run red with the blood of your enemies.”
Her hand snaps out, gripping my forearm. The unexpected weight of it startles me, but what unsettles me more is the sheen in her eyes.
“I will keep the Legion occupied while you get Amara to the Grove.”
My shoulders sag, the truth unraveling itself between us. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? You’re planning to be the distraction. The bait.” I shake my head, voice dropping low. “Sister, I cannot let you. It should be me.”
Her fingers shift, softness turning to steel, before she thumps my shoulder with a playful blow. I wince, though it’s nothing more than a nudge.
“You can’t be everywhere at once,” she says, almost gently. “Amara. The Legion. All the wars you insist on fighting. Lucky for you, you’ve a twin who can stand where you cannot. Besides, it may not even come to that. Ronin may still control them.”
Her words are meant as comfort, but they strike something deeper. A reminder of all the places I cannot be. Of all I’ve already failed. Estra’s face rises unbidden in my mind, my daughter swallowed by the void, lost to me.
Without speaking, my sister steps closer, as if she can feel the dread gathering inside me, strangling me from within.
“What if this doesn’t work, Zyphoro?” I murmur, hating the fracture in my voice. “What if I lose them both?”
She exhales, steady as ever. “We have never known defeat, brother. That truth will not change today.”
And in that moment, I see her more clearly than ever. The other half of my coin. Where I am steel, she is fire. Where I falter, she stands unshaken. When the weight drags one of us down, the other rises to bear it. Together, we are unbreakable.
How many centuries have been stolen from us? Stolen from her, her name struck from memory, her face erased. Yet now, with Zyphoro Phaedren restored, what wonders, what terrors, might we unleash?
I will hold my wife and daughter again with my sister at my side.
Orios’ heavy strides upon the deck shift my thoughts, the clang of his steel boots thunderous.
He stands a mountain beside us, his armor so black its sheen reflects nothing, spiked pauldrons and flowing leather cloak at his back, his fists hidden beneath sharp gauntlets.
Behind him, Solena appears, her dark hair slicked back and braided intricately down the middle of her head, trailing like a whip down her back, her fingertips stained now forever with black ink.
With one hand she carries Orios’ helm, while her other nestles inside his.
“Rook,” Orios says. “Reon is fading. We must move now.”
My eyes flick to the cabin door, and a weight like iron pools in my gut. Nerves crawl through my veins, strange and unwelcome. I’ve longed for this moment, yet dreaded it all the same. There is no turning back. Not now.
The heavy tread of boots on timber reaches me before the Golden Son himself steps into view, wearing a mismatch of whatever scraps of armor we found lying around the ship.
Our gazes collide, no words needed. Hatred and malice simmer there, stitched together by duty.
Amara’s fragile, stubborn threads the only thing binding us from bloodshed.
Zyphoro steps forward with a predatory smile. “It is time, darling.” She reaches to brush a stray blond lock from his eye. He bats her hand away, glaring.
She laughs. “Oh, we’ll have to get much closer than that if you want an escort to your army.”
The runes carved into her skin flare to life, pulsing with light as her vast black wings unfurl in a thunderous snap. The wind catches their span before she folds them into a lethal, elegant bloom. She opens her arms.
“The only way you’re getting there is in my embrace, lover,” she smirks.
The Golden Son drops his head, shaking it as disbelief flickers over his face.
Yet he doesn’t resist. Instead, he steps forward, reluctant but resigned, as Zyphoro smiles victoriously.
She seizes his waist, yanking him tight with a force that wrenches a gasp from his chest. He grumbles in frustration, but she only laughs and launches from the deck, their bodies swallowed by cloud, her cackle echoing like a banshee on the wind.
“I almost pity him,” Solena muses with a sly grin. It draws the faintest curve of one from Orios and, despite myself, from me.
The levity dies quickly. Orios turns grave. “We cannot carry Reon and Amara as easily. We risk breaking the time loop…” His voice falters when he meets my eyes. “We could lose her.”
“Gather the Blades. Meet me at the Grove. I will get Reon and Amara there.”
They exchange a questioning glance, but I offer no explanation. There is no time, no strength for words.
“Go. Now,” I order, clipped and final.
Solena’s lips part, ready to spill concern, but Orios stills her. He tightens his grip on her hand, lifts it, and presses his lips to her knuckles with quiet reverence. It silences her doubts.
“Yes, Rook,” he says.
He bends, allowing Solena to pull his helm into place.
His face vanishes beneath its shroud, smoke curling over his armor until he is no longer just a male but a Reaper, born of shadow and war.
Solena’s runes flare, black wings bursting from her back in a sleek, deadly unfurl.
Orios follows suit, his wings spanning so wide she is nearly swallowed whole in their shadow.
“We will meet you in the Grove,” Solena says, and then they soar together, their forms climbing higher, two streaks of shadow slicing across the perfect blue sky.
I stand motionless, and though it lasts only a breath, in that breath lies an eternity, an eternity where doubt knots my limbs, where fear threatens to rip me apart.
Before it can burrow deeper, I turn sharply, boots pounding across the deck.
The cabin door groans under my hand as I throw it open so hard it nearly shatters against its hinges.
They are exactly as I left them. My friend.
My love.Reon’s skin is almost as pale as Amara’s now, his very life bleeding away to feed the loop that holds her tethered to this world.
Orios was right: I cannot carry them both.
And I cannot risk pulling them apart, not when Amara clings to that fragile thread of existence.
So I must call on the only thing left to me.
My power. My curse.
The darkness that whispers in my blood.
With a flick of my hand, the air rends open.
A jagged wound tears through the cabin, a slice of reality itself unspooling.
Beyond it yawns the void, endless, silent, grave-dark.
Reon does not stir, too bound to the loop.
Amara does not move, frozen in her fragile stasis, and from the void, something comes.
Two figures emerge. Insubstantial, smoke and shadow barely given form. Wisps trailing, they still carry the unmistakable shape of arms, of grasping fingers, of cowled heads and long, drifting robes. They glide in eerie unison, their gestures mirrored, their movements in perfect, unnatural accord.
They break from the void and stop before me, faceless heads bowed.
My heart thunders, but I force my steps toward the bed where Amara lies. My hand trembles as I reach for her, and sparks lash across my skin from the barrier that holds her. I hiss, withdrawing. No time to waste. No room for failure.
I turn to the specters and nod once.
They bow, still faceless, still insubstantial. Then their bodies unravel.
The edges of their shadowy robes shred into streamers of smoke, each strand twisting and lengthening as though caught on some unseen wind.
Their arms contort, fingers elongating, fusing into skeletal limbs that snap and bend until they resemble legs, not Fae or human legs, but the spindly, bone-thin forelimbs of some nightmare beast. Their torsos split, stretching impossibly, their hoods collapsing inward as the shadow pours forward, reshaping into the outline of elongated skulls.
Hollow sockets gape where eyes should be, burning faintly with ash-pale light.
A low, unnatural sound escapes them, not quite a neigh, not quite a scream, but both at once.
The resonance vibrates through the cabin, rattling its beams. Their chests heave as ribs force themselves into existence, formed of shadow one moment, skeletal the next, then gone again in a swirl of smoke.
Veins of darkness ripple down their sides, hardening into flanks that glisten like oil in starlight.
Their tails writhe first as tendrils, then snap into lashing whips of smoke.
Their hooves take form last, slabs of black fire solidifying with a sound like cracking stone.
Each stomp splinters the deck beneath them, though when I glance, the wood bears no mark, as though reality itself refuses to acknowledge their weight.