Chapter 49
ARIEL
I clutched my sides and steadied myself as the world took shape around me.
Salty mist assaulted my face as I looked out over the raging sea once again; Shayfer had whisked me back to the cliff’s edge where Hemming had died. I turned to ask him why when something blackened and curled up on the ground in my periphery caught my eye. My heart sank when I recognized small patches of azure amid the char.
“No,” I whispered against the punishing winds. “Eldrien…” Careful not to disturb him, I crouched down beside his ruined body. My shaking hands reached toward him to see if there was still a life left to be saved. A faint, shallow heartbeat met my palm as I placed it gently on his chest. Tears welled in my eyes as I turned them to where Shayfer loomed over us. A wave of nausea roiled my gut. “I did this…this is my fault.”
Shayfer’s empty eyes turned to me. They refuted nothing. “He shielded me from your vengeant rage,” he said, his voice thick with sadness as he slowly knelt down next to the unmoving male. “He protected me…”
Guilt washed over me as an unholy sound from deep within the castle rent the air, and I knew Shayfer would be the next to fall if he didn’t leave. I grabbed him by the shoulders and thrust my face in his. “Shayfer, listen to me. You have to get Eldrien out of here. Take him to the shack along the coast and wait for me there.” Something crashed through the roof of the castle, sending debris raining down upon the estate, and I knew it was only a matter of time before Thallen found us. “Go now,” I hissed at him.
“I will not leave you!” he insisted as he reached for my arm, but I recoiled just out of his grasp.
“You will,” I said as the painful reality of our situation played out in my expression, “because we will never make it out of here if I don’t stop him, and you know it. He’ll track us down before we can escape. And even if, by some miracle, we did make it off this island and back to Kaplyn, it would only be a matter of time before he showed up to slaughter everyone there, and I will not endanger anyone else I love just to save myself.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We'll find a way, but we have to leave.”
“ You must leave.” Tears streamed down my face as I held his terrified gaze and forced a smile. “Who else will tell everyone back home that I’m sorry if I fail?”
“I won’t have to if you come with me now!”
“Shayfer, I will not disgrace my father’s heritage, nor his brother who raised me, by running from this fight. And I will have my vengeance for my parents…and for Hemming.” I swallowed back my rising emotions. “By my victory or my death, I swear this ends here.”
His warm eyes grew glassy. “I will never forgive you if you don’t return to us,” he said, sadness heavy in his voice.
“And I will never forgive you if you don’t take Eldrien and go now. Wait for ten minutes. If I don’t arrive, leave without me. The Minyades will need Eldrien more than ever if I fall. And you will need to warn Kaplyn.”
His gaze fell to the badly wounded male at his side, then lifted to me. “Ten minutes...”
I nodded, shaking tears from my eyes. “Ten minutes.”
He stared at me in silent hesitation for a moment, then grabbed me and hugged me tightly. “Do not make me live to regret this moment,” he whispered softly against my ear before he pulled away to pin a murderous look on me. “And make that bastard pay—for Hemming.”
Before I could reply, he let me go, then gently grabbed hold of Eldrien’s arm and disappeared from sight.
I rose from the ground and wiped any trace of sadness from my face. There would be time for tears later, when Thallen—my grandfather —was cold and dead. And if it was I who fell, my grief would die along with my body. Either way, he had to be faced first.
“Your companion’s parlor tricks will not save any of you,” his booming voice called as he strode toward me through the mouth of the gardens into the clearing by the cliff, wearing the guise of my father once again.
“Parlor tricks?” I scoffed. “That seems more your specialty, doesn’t it?” His satisfied smile made me shudder. “You pretended to be my father to get free,” I said as I circled to the left, away from the steep rock face. “You used us…”
He shrugged with maddening ambivalence as he matched my movement. “You can hardly blame me. If I’d had my full power when I was banished to this island, I never could have been contained by Vesstan’s magic collar. Once he bound what power I did have, I had no way to escape and reclaim what your mother had taken from me. But then you showed up…so yes, I used you to attack Vesstan and render him vulnerable enough for the magic fueling my collar to fail.”
“But not kill him in the process?”
“Precisely.”
“Because you wanted your revenge?”
He smiled like a feral beast. “Something like that.”
My mind reeled as it played over every event since we’d arrived on the island—since we’d met my ‘father’. We’d been like game pieces on a board, oblivious to the game itself as Thallen maneuvered us expertly to meet his goal.
Fire blazed around me.
“You’re the one who cursed the Minyades.” His smile widened, and dark realization settled upon me. “All of this…” I said, trying to piece together the cascade of events that had led to this moment, “...the wanderer, the curse, the Oracle…that was all you .”
He spread his hands wide. “I had little time and did what I could to achieve this end.”
“So it was all just a grand scheme to get me here—to force me into accessing this god-power so you could eliminate Vesstan and take it back?”
The self-satisfied nod he gave in response was infuriating. “I needed to find someone quickly and give them a reason to hunt you down and lead you to me before my inconvenient banishment, unwittingly, of course. The Minyades were merely a means to an end. And it worked beautifully—at least once you blundered into Anemosia, since they proved unable to find you on their own. The only problem with my plan was your apparent inability to access that stolen power—one you clearly had never knowingly used. It took some time to decipher the best way to draw it out of you. Once I realized that it was your emotions that made you vulnerable, I manipulated events to draw them out.”
“By killing Hemming,” I said, choking on the words as they escaped me.
“And blaming Vesstan for his death,” he added with a vicious smirk.
Fire roared around me as my sadness blazed to anger, and I shot into the air, fiery wings beating a trail of flames in my wake. I spewed a wall of molten flames at him, then dove into it, the obsidian blade drawn back to strike. Even blinded by the thick cloud of smoke, my aim was true, and the dagger bit into flesh. A horrible cry rang out as Thallen thrashed me away. Cast out of the haze, I righted myself and poised to attack again, but he was already upon me.
He struck me hard, knocking me back, driving me toward the cliff. My heels dug in as the rocks and gravel around me fell to the sea below. I scrambled to my feet as he emerged from the smoke and ash no longer wearing the illusion of my father—and in his hand was a smoldering blade long enough to impale a trio of enemies.
My scales snapped into place as he dove toward me, but the fiery blade sliced through them as it would through normal flesh. The tip bit into bone, and I couldn’t hold back the cry of agony clawing up my throat. A kick to the gut dislodged me from Thallen’s sword, and I crashed back to the ground.
“It was genius, really,” he continued as he admired the way my blood sizzled on his blade. “I should have thought of it earlier and saved us all so much time.” I moved to get up, but his boot crashed into my jaw and snapped my head to the side. The world swam around me as I tried to stagger to my feet, vision blurry and ears ringing from the blow.
Pain raged in my gut, and I looked down to see red spilling from the gaping wound that should have been cauterized by the fire.
“I used my ability to wear the visages of those I’d slain—magic Vesstan hadn’t known I possessed and therefore did not contain when I arrived here—and disguised myself as your fallen father. I gambled that you had known him well enough to recognize him; it was a piece of luck that your friends recognized him too, and I used that to my advantage. I thought using his plight might have been enough to force your power out, but it seemed you didn’t love your precious Baba enough for that. Those three, on the other hand...” My chest heaved with heavy breaths as I tried to steady myself. While Thallen watched, I cauterized the wound to staunch the bleeding. His disappointment was immediate. “I assumed the power would come to you when you attacked Vesstan in the storage room, but you seem to lack any sense of self-preservation,” he said with disgust. “However, I learned something important from that failure: you care for others far more than yourself. A trait you share with your mother.” Amusement crept back into his expression. “I suppose that means you’re to blame for both their deaths…”
Pain and anger surged inside of me, and fire exploded around my body, scorching the ground. Thallen dove out of its path, and I used his retreat to attack. I shot into the air, obsidian clutched tightly in my hand, and crashed into him. Knocking him to the ground, I pinned him down with blazing hands so I could bury that dagger deep in his heart. I felt the tip pierce his skin, and I thrust my weight atop it to force it down as a guttural cry ripped from my chest.
But the blade went no further.
“You shouldn’t be angry with me, Ariel,” he said as he drove his palm into my chest. I tumbled backward off him as he jumped to his feet and stormed toward me. “None of this would have ever happened if your mother hadn’t taken what was not rightfully hers in the first place. If you surrender now, I will be merciful.”
I will be merciful…
Those words rang through my mind like a death knell. I’d heard them once before—as a child. A child who’d watched her mother slain by a faceless being. But this time, the cloudy memory was clear. Disjointed visions flashed in my mind: my mother’s charred body, a gaping hole in her chest, and Thallen staring me dead in the eyes as fire engulfed me.
Fury raged in my veins at the images I’d been too young to fully comprehend. But I was a child no longer, and I now understood the truth of things all too well.
“I remember now,” I whispered, the heartbreak I’d felt that night seizing my chest all over again and igniting the power my mother had passed on to me. “You promised her that, too.” I drew myself up and pointed the obsidian blade he’d used to kill Hemming at him as I stared him down. “I will never surrender to you.”
He stopped only yards away and smiled. “Your mother wouldn’t either, and you know how that ended for her.”
“I know that you attacked her when she was distracted, like the honorless coward you are,” I said, the fury I’d felt as a child bubbling up within me “That you were choking her when I ran outside, right before you burned her alive and took her heart.”
“Is that what you think happened?” he asked, genuine surprise in his eyes. Laughter slowly built until it filled the clearing, nearly drowning out the roaring sea. “Then you really don't remember that night at all.” As quickly as his raucous outburst had come, it stopped altogether, leaving a seething war god in its wake. With impossible speed, he launched himself over me to land at my back. I tried to fly away, but he caught my wings at their base and wrenched them down. A horrid cracking sound echoed through me as they snapped. “I was not the one who burned her alive, Ariel,” he whispered in my ear as pain paralyzed me. “ You did…right after she told you to run.”
I struggled against his hold and the memory growing clearer by the second, but I couldn’t get free of either. Visions of the fire played over and over in my mind, the direction of the flames slowly crystallizing until it was plain that they hadn’t originated from Thallen—or my mother. The truth I wished I could deny gripped me far tighter than Thallen, and tears of guilt streamed down my face.
The power that Thallen had come to claim that night was to blame for the inferno that had consumed my mother.
Intentionally or not, I was the one who’d caused her death.
“Would you like to know what your precious Hemming’s final words were as he plummeted to his death before I send you to meet him?” he asked as he turned me to face him. Delight sparkled in his eyes as he saw the anguish in mine. “ Nothing . He was too busy choking on blood and regret.” His blade that smoldered like burning embers appeared once again, and fear sparked in my heart. “Something you will understand soon enough.”
He buried his sword of dragon flame hilt-deep in my belly. I buckled forward, hands scrabbling for the blade to try to pull it out as the pain ripping through my body blinded me. Thallen grinned as he twisted the blade with a jerk of his wrist, then wrenched it free. I staggered on my feet as my insides burned, barely able to stand, and raised my blade.
He knocked the obsidian away with ease. “I have worked too hard and waited too long for this moment to endure your feeble attempts to defeat me,” Thallen seethed.
With a final culmination of energy, I forced every ounce of fire I had left in me at him, but he choked it off with a hand around my throat and hoisted me high off the ground. I kicked and struggled against his hold, blood raining down upon the rocky ground beneath me, but his grip was like an iron manacle around my neck, strangling the fight and the life out of me as his free hand pressed over my heart. “There it is...” The desire in his distant voice was terrifying. “This power was never meant to be yours. And you should never have been allowed to exist.”
Angry fingertips dug into my flesh as they burrowed their way into my body. No matter how hard I tried to pull away, they held fast to their course. “This could have been so much simpler if you’d just surrendered. Instead, you chose to suffer—and that suffering is far from over. Because once I’ve taken back what she stole, I will punish all those who crossed me. Your little friends. Kaplyn. Even your precious Minyades. None will be safe from my wrath, Ariel. I will destroy them all…”
Tears slid down my cheeks as I fought for air, gurgling, garbled sounds escaping me as I lost that battle with every passing second. Then a silent wail twisted my features as his fingers pushed through my ribs, snapping them slowly.
Wicked delight flared in his stare, and it was in that moment that I knew I had lost.
I closed my eyes and prayed that Shayfer would make it to Kaplyn—that he would tell him of all that had happened. That the lord of the Midlands would realize the danger about to hunt him, and that he’d warn Kade of the impending threat as well.
And in my final moments, I thought of Hemming. The way he’d taken my hand to guide me as a child. The way he’d smiled for me and no one else. The way he’d looked at me when I stood before him naked for the first and only time.
The way he’d be waiting for me, arms open, when I met him in the Afterworld.
Even as pain lanced my chest, I felt a warm, comforting sensation wash over me. I opened my eyes to find the shadows creeping in; and there, in the center of them, was a black, flying figure, blocking out the glowing sun on the horizon. A beast of death coming to usher me into the Afterworld—to take me to Hemming. Piercing green eyes fixed on me as it neared the cliff’s edge, coming to claim me.
A spark of joy lit my heart before Thallen’s fingers wrapped around it.
I would see Hemming soon.
The harbinger of death approached as victory gleamed in my grandfather’s eyes, and I focused on the beast coming to take me away.
My heart slowed as my enemy’s grip tightened around it.
A fiery glow surrounded the beast flying toward me.
And as my eyes grew tired and heavy, the life I’d led about to be ripped from my chest, a familiar silhouette launched off the back of the beast as it burst into flames, a golden shield clutched tightly in his hands and a battle cry on his lips.
I realized fate had not yet betrayed me.
Because it was not death who’d come for me at all.