Chapter 64
Chapter Sixty-Four
M aalikai’s hand snaked behind my back, the other slipping beneath my knees. In one smooth motion, he lifted me from the wreckage—carrying me away from the destruction. Away from the ruin.
"It's okay. I've got you."
For a moment, I let myself believe it.
Let myself lean into the warmth of his arms, the steady beat of his heart, the lie that I didn’t have to move. That I could stay there—tucked into him, fragile, broken, carried.
But I wasn’t fragile.
Not anymore.
The fire was still inside me—burning low but alive.
“Put me down,”I said quietly.
He hesitated. “Princess?—”
“I’m not done.”
I slid from his arms, legs shaking, breath uneven—but I stood.
Because my mother was still out there.
Because I was still breathing.
Because I was not finished.
Hooves thundered across the dying earth, dust and ash billowing in the horses' wake as they sprinted toward us—braving the fire, the smoke, the stench of death.
For us.
Without hesitation.
They were fearless. Loyal. Undeserving of being dragged into the ruin of our fate.
I didn’t waste a second. As Stormfire barreled past, I caught the saddle horn and vaulted into position before her hooves had even stilled.
Maalikai stood right beside me—steady, solid—but he made no move to mount. His eyes darkened, something in them so heavy it punched straight through my chest. I knew what was coming.
He was going to send me away. Push me toward safety. Away from him.
But when his labradorite eyes locked onto mine, the question he asked was something else entirely.
"Are you ready?"
A sharp breath whooshed from me, dragging a thousand feelings with it. “You’re not going to order me to run?” I rasped, daring him.
“No," he said, voice low and certain. "There’s nowhere safer for you than at my side—except maybe behind your mother’s ward. Sending you away would only make it easier for death to find you.”
He stepped closer, the smoke weaving around him, wrapping him in the ruins of a world he refused to surrender.
"Besides... there's no one I'd rather fight beside."
My throat burned.
Gods, after everything—after everyone—we'd lost—he still chose me.
Not out of desperation.
Out of belief.
“Have I told you I love you?” I managed, the words splitting against the grief lodged in my chest.
"You could tell me a million times," he murmured, brushing his knuckles along my thigh like a vow. "I'd never tire of it."
Tears blurred the wreckage behind him—the smoldering sky, the broken earth, the hollowed-out future.
I gritted my teeth, feeling the fire claw up my throat.
"Then let’s go kill some fuckers."
With a furious cry, Stormfire leapt forward, her hooves tearing into the bloodstained ground. The breath of the dead rose behind us—thick, clinging, relentless—pushing us into the jaws of war.
Only fifteen minutes had passed before something caught my eye in the rocky terrain ahead.
“Maalik!” I yelled over my shoulder.
“I see it,” he called back.
Boulders of color lay strewn across the field. As we neared, my stomach turned.
They weren’t boulders.
They were bodies.
Dead bodies.
Pulling Stormfire to a brutal halt, I flung myself from the saddle, hitting the ground at a run.
I sprinted forward, my boots slipping in the blood-slick grass. Scarlet clung to the blades like dew, beading along the green tips, turning the earth into a battlefield of gore.
I dropped to my knees, a strangled sound tearing from my throat. I couldn’t ignore the motionless bodies of my family scattered across the grass like discarded rubbish—couldn’t block out the all-consuming stench of death saturating the air.
Gritting my teeth, I forced my eyes open, crawling toward one of the tangled shapes collapsed in a heap of bright red chaos.
It was Rebekah.
A lump of dread climbed up my throat, suffocating me. I reached out—shaking so hard it felt like my own body might betray me—but I managed to roll her gently toward me.
One painful second dripped by as I tried to summon the courage to examine her body.
A firm hand clamped down on my shoulder. "You don't have to do this. I can do it for you,"Maalikai said.
It would be so easy to accept his offer.
I didn’t want to look.
I didn’t want to know.
But I had to.
Only I could do this.
My gaze collided with hers.
Chestnut eyes stared up at me—blank, pale, wrong. The color had been stripped from her skin, her freckles practically popping against the ghost-white canvas of death.
Blood soaked her shirt. A gaping slash carved across her throat, so deep and brutal there was no question how her life had been taken.
My mind, trained by years of hunting, recognized it instantly: critical. Instant death.
But my heart... my heart begged for a lie.
Trembling, I pressed two fingers to her neck, praying for anything—a flutter, a heartbeat, a miracle.
Nothing.
No pulse. No breath. No life.
She had died with no one to defend her.
A scream ripped through my chest—silent but deadly—shattering something vital inside me. Hunched over, gasping for air that wouldn’t fill my lungs, I rocked back, the ground swaying beneath me.
I didn’t know which feeling was worse—the devastating, soul-crushing fury, or the kind of sorrow that made me want to curl up and never move again.
But standing there, surrounded by the blood of everyone I loved, I made a silent vow.
I wouldn’t burnnor break—I would not fall without making them pay.
I rose to my feet, breath snagging on the silence. Then I saw it.
Another silhouette.
Another body.
Frozen. Still.
My heart stopped–not like a skip. Not like a stutter.
It stopped.
Cold. Hollow.
A chasm cracked open inside me, wide enough to swallow air, thought, time.
Aunty Triska.
Without thinking, I sprinted to her. I needed her to be alive. I needed at least one of them to survive this fate.
Blood was all I could see—so much blood it drowned out the world.
With a trembling breath, I pressed two fingers to her neck, praying, pleading—but the final thread of hope abandoned me.
The moment my fingers brushed Triska’s bloodied skin, it was like a dagger driving straight through my chest.
I crumbled. A mournful cry tore from my throat, raw and broken, filling the air with grief too thick to swallow. I surrendered to it, welcoming the agony like an old, familiar companion.
The image of Triska—of her daughters—slaughtered by the blades of a bloodthirsty enemy, seared itself into my soul.
A brand I would carry for the rest of my life.
"Emylia," Maalika’is voice pierced through the fog. "I'm sorry. But we can't stay here."
The words sliced through me, sharp and brutal.
I wanted to fight him.
I wanted to fall to my knees and wail until the world crumbled with me.
But deep down, I knew.
If my family had been killed on the road to my home—and we hadn’t encountered a single soul along the way—then the warriors were already there.
Waiting.
We didn’t even have the mercy of sending my family to Elinthia.
The earth would have to claim them instead.