24. Briar
brIAR
M y breath catches at the thought, but the awe of it lasts only a heartbeat, because the moment that hope flares, the world answers back.
The chop of the helicopters veers closer after the lights of the portal spill through the dark of night.
They’re no longer distant sounds but whirring loudly nearly overhead, the beams of their spotlights sweeping through the area.
Engines rumble from the other side of the treeline before crashing through the ranch gates with a metallic scream that echoes across the field.
Headlights bloom in a violent sweep of white, pinning us under their glare like prey cornered in the open.
Any relief I felt is cut off by the knowledge burning in the back of my mind–whoever anchors the portal cannot step through until the end. If I go through, the portal will collapse in on itself and seal shut, leaving everyone else stranded.
Father’s voice is a roar over the cacophony of machinery closing in. “Fine! We will discuss this at home.” His focus sweeps from Mom, to Papa and Dad, yelling, “Let’s get them through. Now.”
I see the hesitation in all of my fathers as their gazes linger between Mom and me. They have to get the guys through the portal, because someone needs to be a guide for the humans to arrive at the intended location on the other side. No human would be able to picture our home and anchor to it.
Sure, one of my fathers could double up with a hand on two humans, but it’s clear each of them refuses to put their weapon away, leaving them one free hand.
Part of me holds my breath, almost anticipating them to shove all three guys in and be done with them, allowing the void to rip them apart within the portal with no anchor.
They surge into motion, heading toward the portal. The guys stagger, protesting under their breath that they won’t leave me behind, but they have no choice. My parents’ hands on them are the only anchors that can drag them through intact.
Father keeps his weapon pressed to Dante’s temple, shoving him forward with merciless efficiency, his broad frame blocking half the light as he guides them into the glowing mouth of the portal.
“No, I–” Dante’s shout is swallowed as he is ripped through dimensions.
“Briar!” Papa shouts over the whirring and rumbling, his usual hazel eyes flashing bright red in the portal’s light. “The second we’re through, you follow with your mother. Don’t you dare hesitate, young lady.”
I nod once, throat thick with my growing fear as the hunters begin to close in. Every instinct in me screams to bolt after them, to throw myself through the blinding glow, but I hold steady. My mother and I will be right behind them the moment they clear the threshold.
Her soul weapon ignites then, a blaze of crimson roaring into existence. The energy spilling off of it is so violent I feel the heat in my heart. Devere . Her name pulses through me with every beat of its glow, the weapon humming like she’s hungry for blood.
“We can’t leave her!” Callum cries out, desperate eyes meeting mine. “Please!”
Papa shoves him forward with ease, his strength far superior despite Callum digging his heels into the ground with all of his strength and weight. They disappear within the portal and my chest squeezes as the helicopter spotlight beams down on me.
Dad whirls on Mom as she begins to slice through the hunters drawing near on foot with guns raised, his words saturated with panic and fury. “You better get your ass through this portal with our daughter, Alina!”
The portal light flares brighter, wind whipping through the field as though the magic itself senses the danger.
“Worry about yourself!” Mom shouts back as she seems to glide on top of the fallen hunters beneath her, taking out wave after wave with practiced ease.
She’s never looked more glorious to me. Not in her expensive dresses, not with the gleaming crown on her head, and not in her chair at the end of the table during council meetings as she commands the room.
The sight of her snarling and smirking with each life she takes has my own bloodlust rising up.
Beneath the fear I feel at the thought of being taken back, an overwhelming anger surges. Fury and desperation to claw back the pieces of myself this organization took from me, one slice of my daggers at a time, fills me.
Maybe if I take them all out, I’ll chase away the nightmares.
Maybe I’ll finally be safe from the memories that suffocate me.
“Don’t play hero, Briar!” Elias growls out, eyes pinning me as he’s shoved forward, seeming to sense the bloodlust within me. “And don’t think of yourself as invincible. This isn’t the time for revenge.”
My nostrils flare with a sharp inhale, agitated by his easy way of reading me but also trying to tell me what to do. I’m over it. This is my life to live and my decision to make.
No one seems to get that.
Dad drags a snarling Elias into the portal, with a tight hand on the back of his shirt.
As soon as the last glimpse of Elias’s frame vanishes into the portal, the white light swallowing him as Dad pulls him through behind him, I feel a lightness in my chest.
They’re safe from Terrance…My promise was kept.
Then, the night truly erupts.
Mechanical shrieks of guns unloading from the sky above begin, bullets shredding the night with a metallic hail that strikes the ground around me.
“Mom!” I shout, hardly able to track her movements despite my own enhanced vision. She’s had to have taken out over fifty hunters already, pushing them back toward the entrance to the ranch. “They’re all through. Let’s go!”
I dodge and roll, trying to stay ahead of the chopper’s guns as they track me, but then the thundering sound overhead deepens into a roar as I watch the helicopters tip their noses down. Cannons flare to life in twin bursts that streak across the sky toward my mother.
My head whips toward her as she emerges from the shadowed area near the gate and I scream, “Mom!”
A heartbeat later they slam into the earth and detonate, exploding with a green mist.
The chemical mist.
My gut churns, threatening to hurl up my stomach contents as the memories rise.
The same chemical that flayed the skin from my bones, that burned my throat raw and drowned me in agony until the world went black for a week.
“No!” The scream tears out of me as I lurch toward my mother, the portal blazing at my back, but the cloud has already consumed her and she staggers.
The red blaze of Devere flies around through the vapor, streaking arcs of light with every swing as if she can cut it away. The scream that comes next is a sound I will never forget.
It’s hardly a scream, but a howl of agony, vibrating through my chest as it tears my heart apart.
My feet want to carry me forward and to drag her from the mist, but I know that the second it touches me, I’ll be just as helpless. I need to be strong enough to get us to the portal. I just need her to clear it.
Desperation claws at my throat as the mist slowly creeps toward me, and I have to take agonizing steps back.
Tears spill down my cheeks as I shout, “Mom! Please just get through the mist. I will carry you through the portal.”
The pounding of more boots on the ground spills from the new vehicles screeching through the gates.
They enter the mist in a flood, but they aren’t bare-faced this time.
They’re sealed inside protective suits that sheath them head to toe, as if built to withstand the chemical storm swirling across the field.
They move fast and unflinching, prepared for the poison they unleashed, rifles raised as they surge through the haze.
It feels like I’m living inside of a nightmare worse than anything I ever experienced at Terrance’s hands as I’m forced to watch helplessly.
She meets them in a frenzy of steel and rage, Devere still swinging, crimson light flashing through the mist in sluggish arcs. The mist coils closer to me, searing the air until my eyes water and my skin prickles, and still she stands inside it, defiance blazing even as the poison eats at her.
“Mom,” I sob, my voice breaking as I think of the pain she’s in.
The agony I know it is.
Her body draws closer and even stumbling she swings Devere in wide, blazing arcs that cut down two more guards.
She’s a warrior.
Then, the crimson light of Devere begins to falter and I know she’s losing her connection to her soul sword, her consciousness fading.
“No!” My scream rips my throat raw as I whirl toward the portal, its light still blazing.
I want to shout for help. I want to cry to any god that’s listening to fix this.
But my fathers are already gone, the boys with them, and no matter how hard I shout, no sound will cross the divide. They can’t see me. They can’t hear me. They can’t come back through.
My body shakes with tremors as my sobs come in quick, frantic gasps. I’m paralyzed by what to do.
I can’t leave her. I can’t.
“Briar!” My mother’s voice lashes out, somehow still strong enough to strike me like a command. Her red eyes blaze through the haze as she slashes another suited guard aside, her body trembling but unyielding. “Get through the portal. Now.”
I shake my head violently, tears streaming hot down my face.
“I ca…can’t.” My sobs splinter my voice, my body convulsing with the horror clawing at my chest. “I can’t leave you. I know what they’ll do to you!”
Still, my body is driven back toward the portal as a gust of wind sends the mist closer.
My mother staggers to one knee, still hacking at the guards pressing in on her, but the blade’s light splutters in and out, crimson dying to nothing in her grip.
I see rough hands seize her arms, armored gloves wrenching her forward. She thrashes once, a sound tearing from her throat that rattles my bones, but another guard drives her to the ground.
“Mom!” My scream fractures as they shove her onto her knees, her body buckling under the weight of the suits closing in on her, steel cuffs snapping shut around her wrists with a finality that makes my vision blur with tears.
“No!” I cry, my own fury bursting loose with the sound, and I fling my hands wide. The familiar weight of my soul daggers solidify, their dark edges gleaming.
The ring around my finger pulses with my conscious split between holding the portal open and my connection to my weapons.
I know the portal could close, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
She lifts her face toward me even as her body trembles. “You are my life, Briar.” Her voice cracks, “I can survive anything as long as you are safe.”
The world wavers around me, everything in me pulling to run to her, to fight beside her, to burn with her, but then a soft voice threads through the chaos.
“Briar.”
Lyra's presence coils warm and certain at the base of my skull. “Drop us and go through the portal. Make a plan with your fathers and the humans. We know where they’ll keep her. We know how to break her free.”
I wait for Kael to tell me to stay and to fight, to bleed every single human to death, but he doesn’t, and there’s something about his silence that threatens to drive me to my knees.
They both think I can’t do this.
My whole body shakes, sobs racking my chest as I back toward the fractured portal’s glow as it crumbles behind me.
The suits are closing in on me fast, faceless and relentless, rifles raised, their heavy boots drumming against the ground as the mist coils outward toward me. The mist begins to claw at my lungs and prickles my skin.
“Go,” Kael whispers urgently. “ We will come back and fight.”
I force my hands to release their grip on my weapons and drag my focus to the ring searing into my skin, burning the flesh beneath it. I think of home and the glow of the portal behind me pulsates with a blast of white light.
“I’ll come back for you,” I choke out, though I don’t know if she can hear me, or if she’ll ever hear me again. “I love you, Mom.”
The words batter against the walls of my chest, but it’s my mother’s face that rips me open, the skin peeling from her cheeks as her red eyes begin to close.
My legs feel carved from stone as I wrench them backward toward the portal I feel prickling at my back. By the time I feel the magic dragging my body through dimensions, my sobs choke me–violent, ugly sounds clawing out of my lungs.
My body screams at me to turn back, to claw through the veil and fight still, but my mother’s last words cut sharply through my mind: I can survive anything as long as you are safe.
The portal drops me onto my knees in the grass of our gardens outside the castle, sealing with a violent snap behind me.
My chest heaves as I hear my fathers’ voices crying out around me, every breath wracked with sobs as they ask where she is.
“Mom,” is the only word that makes it through the raw mess of my throat from breathing in the mist.
It escapes as a broken cry as I fall to my side and curl into a ball.
It’s all my fault. She wouldn’t have been there if I didn’t insist on forging my own path in the human world despite her warnings of the danger.
I wasn’t strong enough to save myself, and I wasn’t strong enough to save her.