Chapter 16 #2
My magic answered. It roared awake, wild and furious, exploding outward—and with every ounce of will I had, I seized it, forcing it into shape, driving it toward Aedric, toward his mind, riding the wave of power as it broke free to defend him.
The world dropped out from beneath me and darkness swallowed me whole. I hurtled through it, images tearing past too quickly to grasp, until silver split the void open in violent arcs of lightning that lashed again and again, merciless in their force.
Rìan.
I recognized it—the shape of his power. I’d seen it once before, suspended like a web, frozen in place when the Veil had held him fast. Now it was unleashed, striking without pause, relentless and precise, its control and ferocity utterly terrifying.
I hurled myself against it, my magic colliding with that presence, trying to force him out, shoving with all my might—
I couldn’t.
He was too strong, the breadth of his power staggering—my magic couldn’t hold him back, couldn’t push him out.
I turned.
Reached.
Aedric.
A dimming presence in the dark, slipping.
I caught hold of him. Awareness flickered. A weak pressure, and then an image flashed before me, bright and startling, gone almost as soon as it came.
White ridges. The stark, gleaming line of exposed spine, his back torn open, slumped over a fallen log. Dead.
Neeken.
The lightning crashed down again, and my magic strained beneath it, splitting between shielding Aedric and resisting Rìan. It could do neither fully. The effort burned through me from the inside out.
And then something inside me moved.
A strange fragment of power, foreign and immense, untouched by whatever war raged around it. My magic caught upon it instinctively, wrapping around it, drawing it upward.
I screamed and hurled it in a blinding surge, desperate to tear Aedric free—
It slammed between them.
The world snapped back.
I hit the floor hard, pain flaring through my skull as my head struck the tile. The chamber tilted, split—two, three versions of the room sliding over each other—and in all of them Hamish was there, grappling with Rìan, their bodies blurring together.
Hamish?
The room slid back into place at the same moment Veylan’s shadows released me. They coiled around Levinica’s waist and shoulders before wrenching her backward, pulling her swiftly out of harm’s way.
I didn’t hesitate. I scrambled to Aedric’s side, the edge of my vision smeared with the warmth of blood trailing down my face. Aedric’s eyes were vacant. Fixed on nothing.
“Aedric!” I shook him. No response.
Hamish slashed for Rìan, his blade a blur. Silver flared in Rìan's eyes. He slipped effortlessly beneath the strike, already moving before Hamish's sword had even completed its arc.
Veylan watched with a faint smirk, his shadows curling around him. Layne leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a hungry gleam in her eyes. Neither of them tried to interfere.
“Aedric!” I shook him again, harder. He just stared, hollow and unseeing.
I reached for my magic—but it wouldn’t come. It sank deep, tight and unresponsive, leaving only an angry, burning absence in its wake.
Rìan's eyes flashed again. Hamish's blade cut through empty air. A heartbeat later, Hamish was on his back, pinned beneath Rìan, his own blade poised above his face. Hamish seized Rìan's wrist, every muscle straining to keep the point from descending.
I was moving before I realized it. I snatched the knife from Aedric's belt, the iron whispering free of its sheath.
The blade inched lower, Rìan's strength slowly overpowering Hamish's. The tip hovered a hair's breadth from his eye.
“Enough!” My voice rang out. Levinica screamed.
Rìan froze the moment he saw the dark blade I held to my own throat.
My father’s face—the swift slash, the spray of blood, his body crumpling—darkness blooming across the snow, staining it, staining it…
Veylan straightened in his corner, the shadows billowing threateningly around him.
Segolayne pushed off the wall at once, her own knife tight in her palm.
But Rìan thrust out his free hand in their direction and they both stopped at once.
They were fast—but too far away to stop me. And Rìan knew it.
“Let them go,” I said as steadily as I could, “Or I’ll open my throat and end us both.”
The silver in his eyes flicked toward Aedric and then back to me. But still, he didn’t move.
Anger flared through me hard enough to cut through the fear.
I drove the tip into my skin and bit back a gasp as the hot iron kissed my throat.
The blade was so sharp I barely felt the cut itself at first, only the searing heat of the metal, the terrible burning that swallowed everything else.
Somewhere beneath it, warmth slid down my skin.
“Stop.” His voice cracked through the room like a lash.
I dragged the blade back a hair’s breadth, enough for the agony to ease into a savage sting.
“Release him,” I growled.
Slowly he retracted the blade, inch by inch from Hamish’s eye. He rose smoothly and stepped back, every line of him taut with barely leashed fury.
“Aedric too.” I kept my eyes on him, not daring to look away, not even for a second.
Slowly, Veylan’s shadows loosened, slipping from Aedric and drifting back toward their master.
“I meant his mind.”
Rìan’s face didn’t change, but his eyes did. The silver there brightened, almost blinding in the dark. His gaze slid to Aedric’s empty face, then back to me. “That is your doing. Not mine.”
A cold dread swept through me. “What do you mean?” I lowered the knife a fraction without meaning to. A mistake.
Veylan’s shadow struck at once, whipping outward and slamming into my wrist hard enough to send the blade flying. It clattered across the stone, skidding to the wall, where Layne stopped it with a boot. Rìan snarled, and before I could even draw breath he was in front of me.
His face angled down toward mine, luminous eyes fixed on me, unblinking, leaving nowhere to look but back at him.
This close, I could see the thin scar cutting across his cheekbone, missing his eye by the narrowest margin, the hard line of his mouth, the brutal perfection of features made harsher still by whatever darkness lived inside him.
He smelled faintly of wind and leather, something dark and charged beneath it, like a storm given skin.
The bond twisted in my chest, hot and wrong. I hated him—hated the closeness, hated the pull that tethered me to him, hated the way my magic stirred in response even as every other part of me recoiled.
“That piece you took from me,” he leaned closer, so near I felt the warmth of his breath against my mouth. I fought the urge to turn my head away. “Is lodged inside his mind.”
I froze. The words didn’t make sense.
“That day you siphoned from me, Eidra—you stole a kernel of my power. It’s that kernel—the one you drove into him—that’s wrapped there now. Sealing him far from reach.”
A low whine filled my ears.
No. It couldn’t be true.
I reached deeper for our bond.
It was there—barely. Faint. Slack. A ghost of what it had been.
The realization tore through me, my heart splintering into a thousand jagged pieces. Horror detonated inside me, so violent it felt as though my soul were coming apart. What I’d done—what I’d done…
Rìan shifted in front of me, a half-step back, a hand lifting briefly to his chest. I didn’t register it. I didn’t care. Something flickered in his expression.
Aedric…
Close enough to touch. Still there, still beside me. Still kneeling. Still breathing, but—gone.
“Take it back,” I pleaded. “Please.”
His silence lasted only a moment, but it stretched on, unbearable.
“It’s sunk too deep, bound too tightly.” His teeth ground together. “Our bond is tangled through it.”
I dragged in a breath, trying to steady myself—trying to think, to find something, anything that could fix this.
But the sight of Aedric made something inside me lurch. His face was slack in a way that looked horribly wrong, stripped of all expression, his gaze utterly empty.
“Dannis…” Levinica whimpered, despair breaking through the word. Then she began to sob. “Dannis…” She grew more panicked, more disoriented, confusion clouding her expression once more.
Through the bond, it hit me suddenly—pain.
My head snapped to Aedric, something wild and desperate surging up—he was there, he had to be—
It vanished as suddenly as I’d felt it.
The magic in Rìan’s eyes wavered as he beckoned. “Segolayne.”
Layne pushed off from the wall at once and crossed to Levinica, taking her gently by the arm, murmuring low, steady reassurances as she guided her from the chamber. He watched her go until the door swung shut behind them.
“Well, Eidra,” Rìan said, every line of his face drawn tight with burning hatred, “the magic inside him can be freed in one of two ways—death, or the breaking of our bond. And seeing as there are other High Lords and Ladies whose minds I can pry open to find what I need…” He beckoned with two fingers. “Veylan.”
Veylan smirked as he strode forward, unhurried, as if there were nothing in the room that could threaten him, his shadows trailing behind him like a long black train.
Rìan turned toward the terrace doors, already dismissing the matter with a careless wave of his hand. “Kill him.”
“No!” I cried, but before I could move, Hamish lurched in front of Aedric. One eye was nearly swollen shut, his face bloodied and barely recognizable, yet nothing had dulled his courage.
Rìan didn’t look back.
“It's almost amusing,” Veylan drawled, his boots clicking lazily across the marble. “That when the time came for the Flame-Lord's dog to choose who to protect, it wasn't his master he leapt to defend—but his whore. A little late to remember your loyalties now, don't you think?”
Hamish widened his stance, squaring his massive shoulders.
Veylan’ eyes glittered with delight. “You’ll fight to the death, I hope?”
“Yes,” Hamish growled. “Yours.”
“Excellent,” Veylan’s smile sharpened. “A dog fight, then.”