Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Livvy dropped in slow motion, her shoulder hitting first. Her head rebounded after first contact, blood blooming from the slash of her mouth and her neck at an odd angle.
She was gone before her body hit the ground. Open eyes stared at nothing and horror surged in me. But fury quickly overtook everything else.
My mother.
Dorian Jade killed my mother.
I’d just found her, and he took her from me before we’d had a chance to do anything but survive. And in the end, she hadn’t.
Magic exploded out of me, my vision going black, then white. All three pieces twined together in pure rage, my wolf, my Fae magic, and witch heritage providing the firepower despite the poison.
This was the third time the mixture of magic rose, a product of emotions instead of control. And every time, it tore a hole through the world, this one worst than the last.
But my mother was dead and someone had to pay for taking her from me.
I screamed and kept screaming. As though the sound powered the magic, it spread, taking down any and every enemy in the blast radius, vaporizing Dorian’s living soldiers and undead alike.
All my suffering had to go somewhere but the poison from the spell snapped the spell in two the same as any bone.
Like a broken neck.
When finally my scream died for lack of oxygen, Dorian dropped the shield he’d raised to prevent a direct hit. His gaze flicked to me, stunned shock narrowing his eyes instead of widening them.
Concerned lines furrowed his brow. And then I saw why. His shield had a single yawning crack in it.
His stunned surprise rippled between his soldiers, and somehow united them all, with him at the center. He said nothing for a long moment, just stood there as if in shock. Then…
“Retreat!”
The order to retreat echoed multiple times before the wave of bodies began to move away. They retreated like they hadn’t just taken two of the most precious things from me.
Mom. Noren.
The direwolf was a weapon like nothing else in the Unseelie court, but I’d made him vulnerable. I’d used my powers to turn him into something he wasn’t.
“Don’t let them get away!” I yelled. Not this time.
I gritted my teeth against the pain of my wounded leg. Whatever magical poison had been attached to the sword was powerful. It disrupted circuits inside me, leaking magic everywhere. I gathered what I could and sent it flying.
A cannonball of light fell in the midst of the soldiers surrounding Dorian. Some dove to the side to avoid it. Others hunkered down and absorbed the magic, rebounding it back in our direction.
Coral rushed past me in shifted form. The monstrosity she’d become after being changed was something no one expected. Even seasoned warriors blanched when she roared and took down several at once with her claws.
“This way!” Bronwen called out. “Follow us!”
The rebels seemed renewed, ready to bleed for us to have a victory.
The bulk of my magic might have flooded out but I scraped enough together for one last hit. It blasted enough earth to create a trench between the Unseelie and the rebels, deep enough for Lesheno to take advantage of.
His Dryads followed him, and Coral stood in front of me, blocking me, with her hackles raised and a look of exhaustion.
“Stay behind me,” I breathed to Melia.
“Behind you isn’t the best view, Tavi. And you’re in no shape to argue. We have to get you to a healer before you lose this leg and your power with it.” She lifted her chin, determined. “You’re hemorrhaging magic.”
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t leave now. Not yet, anyway.
Wind and magic whipped around us. Dorian backtracked with his arms at his side, his retreat order still echoing in the air. Spells threatened to blast him sideways but he avoided them all.
“Until we meet again, darling,” he called saucily to me. “I look forward to it.”
Melia helped me to stand, my feet slipping on blood and some noxious goo puddles I’d rather not identify.
I stared at Dorian Jade, defiant.
His horrible amethyst-purple tunic. The predatory gleam of his smile. Those strange orbs. He snapped orders and they changed color to a deep blue that must mean retreat.
This bloodbath had taken down line after line of rebels, bodies everywhere, but we weren’t the only ones.
So many of his people had been slaughtered too. His legion of direwolves, with bulging muscles and bared fangs, their eyes glowing red, fell back and waited for him at the forest’s edge.
His soldiers were no longer running rampant.
Coral’s roaring bellow sent another wave of our forces toward their withdrawing backs. A group of Dryads raised their leafy sword arms overhead. Fevar marched at their rear. Their fire never touched the Dryads, aimed with intricate care at our enemies.
Mike sprinted toward us, and Bronwen took off into the sky with a flap of inky black wings.
We pressed onward, and the pain in my leg wasn’t so bad anymore. I threw it into a box in my mind and bent to grab a sword from one of the fallen, Melia the only thing keeping me upright. I drove it straight into an enemy’s eye and carved south.
A blast of my stuttering power exploded the chest of another soldier into embers. My gaze then locked with Dorian’s in challenge.
“You killed my mother,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the melee. “Now you go down.”
A hungry savagery powered me. I sliced mercilessly to get closer to him, a horrible loss stabbing through my heart. We passed Livvy’s corpse in the advance and I let my eyes fall on her. Once.
Bad mistake.
Dorian spotted the weakness, and when my gaze locked on him again, his smile turned malicious.
“You think this Fae traitor is the only thing I can use to hurt you? There are so many other pawns you’ve given to me. You marked them yourself.”
The enemy was in full retreat, our power trailing them out of the ruined camp as they disappeared one by one, carried out on an invisible wind. I summoned the last bit of power from inside, but before I could launch it Dorian dissolved again.
Melia gasped.
I staggered, immediately unbalanced by the loss of her strength but determined to keep her safe, driving my power around her in a shield. Too late.
Dorian had tugged her free.
I dropped, knees hitting hard on the ground. I should have done more than keep her behind me. I should have tucked her away somewhere.
Dorian held Melia with his hands around her head, but rather than twist, he grinned. “This one will do nicely.”
Then he and Melia both disappeared.
I yelled, crawling to the space where they’d been, my hands swiping at empty air instead. Incoherent screams, awful babbles. None of my sounds made sense.
News of the kidnapping made its way around camp as we struggled to regroup.
We’d lost too many of our members, including a large number of Dryads.
Fewer of the Fevar had gone down, instead draining the enemies of their energy to use as their own.
Eri and the rest of the Encantado arrived too late to do anything.
Dorian was gone but he’d taken something precious as hostage.
* * *
Hours later, eons later, my numbness hadn’t thawed.
Grief hit in waves, but not how I anticipated. I thought for sure each new wave would be easier to tolerate than the last, would inject some vitality back into my system.
My eyes perpetually skipped over to the place in the war room where Livvy used to stand and watch, her dark hair up in a high ponytail, her arms across her chest.
I could have sworn I felt the phantom weight of Noren leaning against me, warming my skin with his heat. Yet every time I looked for him, I found only emptiness.
The spaces Livvy and Noren occupied are black holes.
And Melia—
Devastation took me again. It pushed an uproar of sobs free, my eyes clenched tight against the physical pain of tears.
I’d seen Julie only long enough to get a bandage around my leg and the first workings of a spell to keep me from, as Melia had called it, hemorrhaging magic.
“I can bury him if you want,” Bronwen offered, her fingers a brush of consolation against my wrist. “I know his favorite spots.”
“No.” Because Noren’s favorite spot was with me.
He should be here. And at once every angry word I’d ever hurled at either of them, every time I took out my frustration and they bore witness, came rushing home. I remembered them all in startling clarity more than any of the good times.
I was a horror.
They would have been safe if not for me. They’d still be alive.
The aftermath of the battle spread around us, half the camp in ruins and the riverbank lost to currents. Magic had pummeled and uprooted trees. Zombies, risen from nowhere, were blown to pieces and now the survivors had to clean up.
I couldn’t think straight. My mind spun and a migraine took more out of me than the wounded leg.
How long would this last before it ebbed? How long would the fresh agony of loss batter at me? I curled in on myself with another gut-wrenching sob.
“Take her somewhere to decompress. Please. She shouldn’t be here.” Bronwen. “She can hardly stand, and even I sense her magic failing.”
“What do you expect me to do? Chain her down?” Julie’s frustration was palpable. “I’m doing what I can.”
I’d made it to the war room of my own volition. I’d make it out. Because they were right, I couldn’t—shouldn’t—be here.
But when I lurched outside, when my attention snagged on the two long shapes draped in sheets that someone, probably Bronwen, had brought out of the carnage, I broke.
I fell to my knees and crawled between them. My hand brushed against Livvy’s shoulder and I locked my fingers tight.
The sheet on the right slipped and the tip of Noren’s black nose—
“Come on, love. You don’t have to see this. We need to get you help.”
I shook my head, shrugging him off when Mike reached for me. I couldn’t leave them.
I angled closer and brought my shattered leg beside Noren, curling my body around him. Finding only stillness where there should be a beating heart and a whimper. He hated when I got hurt, even though he’d originally been sent to kill me.