Chapter 35
Chapter
Thirty-Five
- LORA -
A shriek wails through the great hall as blood rains across Lora’s face. Bronwen calls her name, drowned by Yris’s roar of “Loraphne!” Lora ignores them all and digs the tooth deeper into Marcellus’s neck. His gurgling silences as she hits something more vital. She rips the tooth back and more blood sprays as Marcellus crumples to the ground, his wide eyes staring at the ceiling above. Red pools on the dais beneath him and forms a river down the steps.
“Not a god, after all,” Lora seethes through her teeth. “Just a pathetic man.”
A dead man, now.
Screams and scrambling of feet sound behind her.
“She’s killed the future Sovereign!”
“Bitch!”
“Traitor!”
“Villain!”
None of them are wrong.
Both Wylder and Sterling have stumbled away, as though afraid the divine will strike Lora down and they'll be in the crossfire. She looks beyond the victors, to her Five. Bronwen’s hand presses over her mouth. Tavish’s eyes are wide as he clutches Saga’s leash. Xylie’s hands flutter around her face. Peregrin gazes around the room with a grim seriousness, but Ayc looks steadily at Lora.
She knows she has crossed a line now, one they can't follow her over. She will face this on her own.
The chaos fades and turns to stunned silence. The crowd stares at her, and she can only imagine how she looks, her face painted in blood. Guards rush in from the front and side doors, weapons drawn. Lora recognizes many of them, including Irving. She hates that he must be a part of this, knowing he’ll bear unnecessary guilt in his heart for it. He’s only a few steps away when Yris holds up a hand. “Wait!”
The guards halt, looking toward their Sovereign, confused.
“What do you mean, wait?” bellows a familiar voice. Erech storms from the crowd, his face red with rage. “She has murdered the Sovereign! She deserves to die where she stands.”
“ I am Sovereign,” Yris corrects, her voice cold and sharp as steel. “And as you can see, I'm very much alive.”
“Her treachery cannot stand!” another Lux Aester says, stepping to Erech’s side, hands balled into fists.
“If you won't deliver justice, then I will,” Erech roars, stalking toward Lora.
The entire crowd shies back, gasping. Yris does nothing—doesn’t signal the guards, doesn’t order Erech to stop, and doesn’t even look at Lora. She can't bring herself to order Lora's death, but she won't intervene either.
Lora raises her chin. She knew, before she walked into this room, that by choosing this action, she is forfeiting her life. No one will come to her defense. Not any of the crowd. Not Yris's Five who are near the front. Not Wylder who sends Yris a frantic look. Not even Lora's grandmother whom she can’t bring herself to locate in the crowd.
Lora will be punished for this. She can fight back, but she won't. If she does, the guards, like Irving, will intervene, and she won't risk harming them. She’ll accept her punishment and her fate with dignity. The Everadyn people will condemn her. Her remains will be cast into a watery grave, not even worthy to bury on Everadyn soil. But she'll be content, knowing her friends and her people, are safe.
“I will tear you apart with my bare hands,” Erech says. The second male follows on his heels. Both of their eyes gleam silver.
Lora catches movement in the corner of her eye: Peregrin has shifted their weight and taken a grasp of their cane; Bronwen lifts a hand, the air pulsing around her; Xylie reaches into her bag. Tavish gives a command to Saga, and the dog curls back his lips to show his teeth. And Ayc— her Ayc—smiles at her as he removes his leather bracelets.
She shakes her head at all of them, silently begging them not to act. They won't suffer for her crime. She will face this alone.
Peregrin and Xylie still their movements. Ayc leans to whisper something in Bronwen’s ear. She jerks her head to look at him, her mouth parting. Lora will never know what caused the shock on her best friend’s face.
Because Erech surges forward .
And Ayc—foolish, reckless, ridiculous Ayc—steps in his way.
- AYC -
All Ayc’s life he has been unsure where he belongs, unsure what to do next, unsure sometimes even who to be—and he’s always had far too few choices to be able to sort it out. But as he chooses to step between his villain and the Lux Aester fae, he feels it like a puzzle piece clicking together deep in his soul. He is exactly where he belongs.
“Ayc,” Lora hisses behind him, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the fae as they both pull themselves to a halt.
Erech's silver gaze sweeps over Ayc. Recognition plays at the edges of his lips as he smiles. “Get out of the way.”
“No,” Ayc says, smiling wider. “If you take one more step toward her, I’ll—how did it go, Lora? Rip out your heart and shove it up your asses?”
“Ayc!” Lora barks. “Get back!”
The fae throw back their heads and laugh at him, a full, hearty laugh.
Ayc’s eyes flutter closed, and he reaches deep, to that dam he has so carefully built within himself. That he has put up to hide all his truth and fear and rage. The wall he fought to keep up every single day when Yris ensnared him and when children tormented him and when Lora crawled beneath his skin and refused to leave. Now, he lets it crumble. It turns to dust deep in his soul. The power— his power—surges, gusting over his skin like a biting winter wind, so cold it burns.
Ayc lets his smile fall.
“And what are you going to do?” Erech’s companion says, still laughing. “You’re a weak, pathetic human.”
When Ayc opens his eyes, the fae’s laughter dies in his throat. Red consumes Ayc’s vision, but this time Ayc doesn’t try to hide it. This time, he lets it burn. The crowd utters a cry as they stumble back. Saga whines, as Bronwen swears, “Holy shit!"
And Ayc knows what they see.
His eyes are red.
His voice growls, deep and monstrous. “Who says I’m human?”
Someone in the crowd screams it, while someone else says it like a curse: “Drakr!”
Lora whispers, “Ayc.”
He doesn't dare glance behind him. He doesn’t want to watch that one flicker of affection he saw grow in her eyes extinguish. But he will bear her hatred, if it means saving her.
“I almost didn’t believe it. Marcellus was right about you,” Erech says, visibly shaking off his surprise. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll be dead soon enough!”
“Let’s not be foolish,” Ayc says, though it isn’t his voice. It’s the voice of the monster that lives within him.
But of course, the two fae are very, very foolish. They charge forward as one.
“Bronwen!” Ayc yells. “The lights!”
The sorcerer raises her hands, and every candle in the room snuffs out. The storm building outside has already blocked all the light from the windows. The world goes black. And Ayc doesn’t just become invisible—he becomes one with the shadow .
And then there is nothing but screams.
By the time someone manages to relight the candles, the two faes’ bodies lay at Ayc’s feet. A sword drapes from his hand– the sword he ripped from Irving’s grasp after disappearing. Red, shimmering blood drips down the metal and onto the floor. It trails down Ayc’s cheeks, and as he looks to the crowd, he tries to appear more fierce and less like he wants to throw up. He tries to look like he doesn’t want to scrub his blood-soaked skin until its raw.
“Who’s next?” Ayc growls.
The crowd withdraws once more. Monster, they seem to whisper. Ayc already knows.
It’s the one thing he always feared he’d become, the thing that his own mother must have feared too when she buckled the bracelets on his wrists when he was a tiny boy. But here he is, becoming that thing. Willingly. For Lora .
A laugh—familiar and cold—barks through the air. He fixes his red-tinged gaze on Yris, and she grins back at him like she’s won some sort of prize. Another bolt of lightning illuminates the room, and he looks back to the crowd. As the thunder follows, he avoids his friends’ faces, not wanting to know what expressions they wear. Especially Xylie, whose own parents were murdered by Drakr. Ayc's breath trembles past his lips. How will she ever speak to him again?
A hand touches his shoulder, light as a butterfly’s wing as it flutters by. Ayc braces himself for the impact of Lora’s hatred and disgust. But when he faces her, he doesn’t find it. Lora’s eyes shine a brilliant blue, and in that blue, he discovers something deep and unfathomable, something he can’t begin to name.
She extends a hand, and as her fingertips brushes his blood-streaked cheek, he almost jerks away in surprise. Her touch feels like forgiveness. Like salvation. But her smile—the small upturn of her lips? That feels like acceptance. And that is a balm that reaches deep into his soul.
“I see you, Ayc,” she says softly. “I see you.”
He desires to do foolish things, like kiss her here in front of everyone. Especially because he knows they both will likely soon be slaughtered, for this treason that was his idea to begin with.
The crowd mutters amongst themselves, and Ayc’s sharp hearing catches a word on Sterling’s lips. “Her chronicler.”
He looks to Lora’s wrist. A laugh flies from his mouth. Lora jumps.
“Lora, look.” He catches her arm gently and raises it to show her.
All seven stones are glowing.