Chapter 30 #3
Malak had barely struck the floor before another Legionnaire climbed over the broken wall behind him. Then another. Then three more through the smoke, armor slick with rain, blades already lifting. Whatever satisfaction Ivan might have felt died before it could take root.
Malak had been one body.
The army remained.
The rift behind them guttered, its pale fire shrinking by the breath, and Bryn screamed Yoni’s name as a slab of ceiling split loose and crashed between them.
Ivan turned toward the others, shadows dragging at his heels.
“Get Godfrey out!” he roared.
Something in his tone made Dario move. Behind him, the rift’s pale fire thinned to a spine as the last of them vanished—Bryn first, dragging Godfrey; then Gideon with the Sídhe’s weight slung over his shoulder; Dario hauling Yoni forward while the Vredian shouted into the roar of falling stone.
Then only the storm remained, and Ivan’s ragged breath.
Dominic was still inside.
Across the chamber, more Legionnaires surged through the broken wall, obsidian armor gleaming beneath rain and riftlight.
Dominic’s Draoth arm blazed, cracked from shoulder to wrist with molten gold, and when he drove it into the floor, the stone convulsed, hurling the nearest soldiers backward through a spray of gravel, their bodies striking the wall with the wet snap of breaking limbs.
Shadow swallowed Ivan’s outline and spat him out between the next wave. He struck hard, fast, blind, cutting down the shapes crawling out of the debris and holding them back from the prince’s side as they came endlessly through smoke, rain, and the widening cracks in the fortress walls.
“Go!” His arm lashed, the chain snagging on a dead man’s pauldron before ripping free. “Get out!”
Dominic’s chest heaved, blood running down his face, and across the sinking chamber, his eyes caught Ivan’s. For all the noise between them, the look was quiet.
You’d stay.
You’d die here if I let you.
And he was right. The thought had already sunk its hooks in the moment the Legion came through Osin’s rift: to die in these halls, where Ivan had led so many others to their end. It felt almost just. He could nearly taste the ease of it, the slow loosening of the oath that still lived inside him.
Elara.
He had done what she asked, or tried to. He would never see her again. The bond between them still stirred, faint and fading, easing rather than breaking, like breath leaving a body. Maybe this was the only ending left to him. His blood for the blood he had spilled.
His hand found the pin in his pocket and pressed it between thumb and forefinger.
Dominic’s eyes hardened.
No.
The prince’s burned hand curled into a fist, split with Draoth, the choice already made.
Ivan shouted, but the ground erupted before the warning left his mouth, and the fortress groaned, the sound deep enough to rattle bone.
Walls split. Pillars burst like rotten trees.
Legionnaires came through the dust in a black surge, armor fractured and blades raised, their war cries swallowed by the ruin collapsing around them.
Ivan threw himself forward, slipping through wreckage, shadow dragging him faster than his body could manage. His hand closed around Dominic’s wrist as the prince faltered, Draoth guttering out.
The light swelled.
Spear shards, stone, and fire tumbled toward them, and the rift took them, drawing Ivan and Dominic through its heart as the chamber collapsed behind them, leaving only falling stone and the echo of laughter swallowed by the dark.
They fell against the earth.
For a long moment, he couldn’t see, only white searing the corners of his vision.
Then the world took shape: bright sky, alpine wind on his face, sunlight too pure after so much ruin.
The air smelled clean, resin and frost and soil.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw the mountains—tall, broken peaks buried in snow, the kind men swore were impassable.
The Northern Ridge.
A shallow breath drew Ivan’s gaze to Dominic lying beside him, chest rising weakly.
He reached out and stopped. The links around his wrists were black with blood; his fingers wouldn’t bend.
His coat hung in tatters, every wound from the fight throbbing in the cold mountain air.
When he pressed a hand to his side, it came away dark and slick.
He swayed, then sank to his knees.
Voices carried nearby—someone shouting for Bryn, another calling for bandages.
Yoni’s rough bark cut through the noise, followed by Dario’s higher edge of panic.
Gideon staggered past, dragging a body, maybe Godfrey’s.
Behind them, the Sídhe lay half-covered by a coat, chest rising with shallow breaths.
In the thin light, his skin shimmered faintly, colorless as candle wax.
Ivan blinked. For a moment, the face looking back at him wasn’t the captive’s but hers—returned, bathed in a northern sun she’d never seen.
He blinked once more, and the vision was gone.
Only the Sídhe remained—hollow-eyed, with the same curve of cheek and the same line of mouth, a reflection of the woman he’d only truly known through a promise. A strange peace followed the sight.