Chapter 114
CHAPTER 114
Rosalina
A s soon as we start descending into the arena, Wrenley stops shooting at us. Was she even trying to hit us before, or was it all just a challenge?
I see the wildness in her gaze, even from up here. It’s different than the fierce look she has as the Nightingale. Dressed in soaking wet, torn acolyte robes, her hair a mess, her face visible without the mask, she appears even more frightening than in her armor. Her mouth twitches between a smile and a frown, and her pupils are needle points.
I pull on the reins when we’re a few feet above the flooded ground. Dayton slips off, splashing in the water, and I follow suit. My feet sink into mud: the once sacred sand of the arena now turned to muck. Clicking my tongue like Delphia taught me to on the airship, I direct our steed to circle above us. There’s nowhere for it to safely land here.
“The gilded flower has come at last to look upon the weed!” Wrenley throws her head back and laughs. “Well, this weed wields the ultimate ethereal power!” She draws back the string of light on the bow. A huge arc of radiance shoots out, smashing into the stands. The seats erupt in white flame.
“You need to put that down,” I say calmly. “It could hurt you.”
She cradles it, staring down adoringly. “That’s what they always wanted me to believe. That I wasn’t strong enough. Caspian. Kairyn. They didn’t believe in me.” Her blue gaze flicks up to mine. “But my blood is just as worthy as yours.”
Dayton’s sidestepped to her right. “We get it, Wrenley. You got your fancy bow. Good for you. But you’ve lost. Summer’s Blessing will never belong to you!”
Wrenley’s lip curls, and she gives Dayton a scathing look. “I had to endure months of your senseless rambling. Vex me further, and I’ll shut your mouth for good.”
Dayton responds with his thousand-watt smile. “Ah, come on, Wren. They weren’t all bad times, were they?”
Don’t provoke the unstable woman with a deadly weapon , I snap in my mind.
Instead, he tries to turn that smile on me. Hey, this is fun! Your voice is just as sexy in my mind.
Focus!
Dayton sighs, then draws his dual blades. “Enough’s enough. Drop the bow, Wren.”
“Never!” She smacks the bow down upon the water, sending up a spray.
“Listen to me.” I chance a step forward. “You don’t have to do this. I know how Sira treats people down Below. I know how she treats Caspian. If that’s what you’ve experienced, I’m so sorry. We can work together—”
“You stupid, vain idiot!” she shrieks. Another blast of the bow shoots off into the stands. A rumble sounds: the breaking of wood and stone. “How easy the world has been for you, hasn’t it, Princess? Coddled from birth like a kept dog! You know nothing of suffering!”
My heart thunders at her tight grip on the bow, but I dare another step closer to her. “Actually, my life hasn’t always been easy. I’ve always known I was missing something. Missing part of my family.” Steeling my heart, I close the final gap between us. She shivers at my proximity, every muscle in her body twitching as if she can’t stay still. Her eyes waver like a stormy sea. “I was missing my sister.”
Our eyes connect. I see Papa in her: in her tenacity, her stubbornness, in the horizon of her eyes, and I see our mother too, in the wave of her hair, the resilience of her spirit.
Her shriek splits the air between us. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Cradling the bow again, she sprints away from me before falling to her knees in the water.
“Wrenley!” I step toward her, but Dayton grabs my shoulder and holds me back.
My sister sits up, bow in her lap, and cries, “Summer is lost! Everything I worked for! Do you know what she’ll do to me? I could have done it. I could have had it all.” Her body stills, gaze flickering with inner fire. “Except you ruined it. Again .”
With a roar, she gets to her feet and draws back the bow. Blinding light after blinding light bombards the stands. Explosions of rock smash into the water. Dayton shields my body with his own.
“Are you insane?” he yells at her. “You hit the walls, and this place will be underwater in minutes! You hit a keystone, and we’ll be trapped under rubble!”
Wrenley doesn’t hear him. She shoots bolt after bolt, tears flinging from her eyes. “I have no sister! No brother! I have only myself!”
Water starts to flood faster into the arena, drenching me up to my waist. The breath comes ragged from my throat. I push away from Dayton and surge toward her.
She’s facing away from me now, screeching and crying, fingers raw from shooting the bow. A chunk of the stands collapses inward, crumbling to the water. Still, she doesn’t stop firing.
“Rosalina!” Dayton calls. “The foundation is falling apart. We have to go. Now!”
I can’t go yet. Each step is an effort, but I don’t stop. She doesn’t even notice as I come up behind her. “You have me,” I breathe. Then I wrap my arms around her waist and hug her to my body.
She stills. The bow lowers, dipping into the water.
“They left me,” she whispers. “All of them. Kairyn chose his brother. Caspian chose you. It’s so easy for them.”
“I’m choosing you,” I say into her shoulder. “I choose you, Wrenley. You’re my sister by blood, but more than that, I want to know you.”
“Why?” she breathes. “I … I hate you.”
“I know. But trust me, you’re not the first person I’ve had to win over.”
She shakes slightly in my arms, and I wonder if it’s the beginning of a laugh.
“Come with me,” I say.
“I can’t.”
“You can . I know it’s hard, but—”
Wrenley growls, then tears free of my grip. Her words are a pained shriek: “ I CAN’T! ”
I back up, afraid of the pure anger in her voice.
The colosseum groans around us.
“Rosalina, we have to go now!” Dayton calls, hand in a fist above his head: the signal for our steed to retrieve us. We’ll have to find another way to get the bow. She’s damaged the integrity of the structure. This whole place is going to come down in a minute , he says in my mind.
No, no, I was so close to getting through to her. I just need another moment, another piece of connection—
But it’s as if she’s descended back into that darkness, hands wringing around the glowing grip of the bow. “I need to kill you,” she whispers. “It’s the only way to fix this.”
Rosalina! Dayton shouts in my mind at the same time as another voice echoes out across the arena: “Wrenley!”
I look behind me to see a dark silhouette peering out from the Emperor’s Box above the arena. Kairyn’s hand is outstretched, as if reaching for her.
Wrenley looks up at him, pain melting off her face. “Kai. You came back.”
“Fucking great,” Dayton groans. “Just what we need. Him.”
But I don’t think he even notices Dayton or me. His visor’s gaze is entirely on Wrenley. Tendrils of seagrass spurt up from the water and wrap around his arms, carrying him down into the arena. The water has now drained in so deeply, it’s up to his chest. He doesn’t seem to care, wading toward her.
“I just got back to Hadria,” he calls. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”
Wrenley only manages a pathetic sob. “Kai!” She turns away from us and starts pushing through the water toward him, slinging the bow across her body.
“Now’s our chance to escape!” Dayton calls. Our winged steed rushes down, and Dayton grabs its neck, hauling himself onto its back. I turn to move closer to them—
A thunderous roar shakes the arena as my feet go out from under me. I’m swept into the water, which is suddenly rushing. Kicking to the surface, I look in horror to see part of the arena has completely collapsed. The stands have fallen inward, and a yawning abyss has opened in the ground. Water and broken stone pour into the massive hole.
“Kairyn!” Wrenley screams, and I watch as his black armor drags him down under the water. All I see is his cape rising to the surface as he spills down into the hole.
My sister fights for purchase, but the current is too strong, the hole acting like a drain. With a panicked cry, she shoots an iridescent briar upward. It wraps around a pillar, but it’s too weak from the explosion, crumbling under the force.
Her face breaks. “Mother! Help me!”
“Rosalina!” Dayton cries. His steed beats its powerful wings above me, and Dayton reaches down. I fling my arm up, and he snags me by the wrist.
“Mother!” Wrenley screams again.
Dark shadows materialize into the form of a woman: she has no features, only a shadowy, floating thing, but I recognize the Queen of the Below from feel alone. “Pity. You turned out to be such a disappointment, daughter,” she says softly, but reaches her shadow hand down toward Wrenley, who surges closer to the hole.
Wrenley stretches her hand to grab her mother’s … but the shadow snags the bow instead. It envelops the sacred weapon in darkness, smothering even its shine.
“Mother?” Wrenley cries.
“How many failures must I endure?” the shadow creature sighs. “We’ll discuss this when you’re home, daughter. If you make it home.”
In a burst of darkness, the shadow figure and my bow disappear.
Wrenley lets out a wretched cry before careening down into the hole.
“I got you,” Dayton says and begins to pull me up onto our horse.
I look up at him, my beautiful mate. How lucky I am to have had so much love in my life. Then, I look back toward the hole, filling faster and faster with more water.
“I’m sorry, Dayton,” I say. “I have to save my sister.”
I let go of his hand and fall.