Chapter 54 #2
Jonah falters. His raised bow lowers, and the whites of his eyes flash. Phylax magic lights up the canopy. The other Bonded erect massive shields because they know I’m coming for them.
Not my people. Not mine.
Magic ruptures from my chest with force that blows my hair back.
I’m ready to destroy.
The image of Linsfall caving in on itself rises in my mind.
I point my hand at the line of traitor Bonded and give a shout.
A massive cavern of darkness opens, a fissure in the land between us and them.
Wolves and riders are swallowed. Screams echo and fall, endlessly down. Trees tumble into the darkness, roots cracking and breaking. My power creates a maelstrom of wind, and the enemy line is dashed into the ground, many of them slipping into that slash of blackness.
I watch as the enemies disappear, that gap widening, widening.
Then comes the sound of Venna’s dying breaths.
Venna. I let my hand fall.
Anassa sprints to her side. Tumbling from her back, I hit the ground hard. I catch myself on my hands and use them to pull myself forward and find my feet. A desperate cry scrapes from my throat.
The others are already gathered around Venna. Noemi holds the hand that isn’t still clutching her throat, scratching the skin to bleeding.
There’s a sound like a wind whistling and a streak of color over the ground between here and our camp—and then Lucien is here, too, bending over Venna as well. His face is grim. Elias is in the background, his face set in an equally dire expression.
Venna’s eyes are bloodshot. Her face is going pale and ghostly. She’s making sounds like she’s trying to breathe but can’t get the air past the wound in her wolf’s throat.
Her wolf is gurgling, her eyes unseeing.
“Skaia is holding on,” Anassa whispers. “For her.”
For her goodbye. Agony tears through me, my every nerve in pain.
“M—” Venna tries, eyes tracking me.
I collapse next to her, tears burning on my cheeks as I hold her face. “Don’t talk. It’s okay. Hey. It’s okay.”
Her lips move, but no sound emerges. My body runs cold and hot and I start to shake.
“No. Venna, no,” I say, beg, cry. Not you, too.
We didn’t have enough time. We were just starting to forge a deep friendship all our own. Venna, who has no trouble calling me out. Venna, wry and smart. Venna, who already faced the worst thing she could and stunned me with her courage to keep moving on.
Why?
Her hand leaves her throat. A tear spills from her eye. She won’t stop looking at me. Reaching, I realize. I take her hand and sob.
“Stay with us,” I say over the bond in desperation. “Don’t leave me.”
A gentle emotion drifts through our fraying bond. Small, quiet.
Love.
“Meryn.” Lucien’s voice. I push it aside, going deeper into the bond, searching for Venna’s spark there, where it’s fading so fast. Following it down into the darkness.
I can’t let her go—
A hand slams into my shoulder. I tumble backward, losing the connection to Venna. Lucien’s startling strength knocks me flat.
“Let me,” his voice comes urgent.
I watch, shocked, as his hands close around Venna’s throat. He touches her chest, then, right above her heart.
Then he lifts his wrist to his mouth and rips into it with his fangs. A chunk of his flesh comes away, and his blood bursts from the wound and spatters over her chest. I watch, drifting away from myself. I watch Lucien hold his bloody wrist to her mouth.
My breath catches in my throat as I realize what he’s offering her.
“Drink,” he orders.
But she turns her head to the side, resisting with her last strength, fear in her eyes.
“Venna, please,” I beg her. But I don’t know what I’m asking for. To drink? Or to stay strong and refuse, even as it costs her her life?
What would I choose if given the chance? Death? Or—
Venna turns her head and looks at her wolf. She looks to her for counsel.
Skaia’s eyes are closed, her breath fading. She can’t help Venna now.
They’ll both be gone in seconds.
No. I want so badly for her to stay. Venna deserves a long, full life. It’s not my choice to make though, and my pulse starts to pound behind my eyes. Choose, Venna, choose.
Lucien’s face contorts. Briefly, he sits back, his wrist leaving her lips. But then something comes over him. Something acute and wild. Something real. Something almost human.
Venna sees it, too, and I watch as something stubborn comes back into her gaze. With her last strength, she grasps his wrist feebly, brings it to her mouth.
Blood coats her cheeks, her lips, and she drinks.
Venna’s wolf gives one last, low sound. A groan swallowed by death. Skaia’s back foot twitches, and she goes still.
There’s a wrenching gap inside me.
It isn’t just her wolf gone from the pack.
Venna’s beyond me now.
She’s right here, alive, color returning to her cheeks, but I can’t feel her in the bonds.
My ears are ringing. Everything is numb.
“Meryn.” It’s Stark.
I let out a sob and lean back. I can’t hold myself up, and he’s there. I lean against his leg, cheek to his thigh, clinging to his ankle.
She’s alive.
She’s a Siphon.
But she’s alive.
Stark’s fingertips trace slow circles on the back of my neck. “We don’t have time, Meryn,” his voice tells me, cutting through the fog. “There might be more of them coming. They might find a way across… what you did. We need to get out of here, get her to safety.”
My vision focuses. I swallow. There are tears on my face, but I can see clearly.
“Back on your wolves,” I bark. The order for myself as much as for any of them.
Stark and Noemi move quickly. Lucien remains sitting beside Venna, a stony expression on his face, blood still dripping from his wrist where it’s resting on his raised knee.
Venna is on her back, eyes staring up at the smoky sky. Blood is smeared across her chin.
I take her hand. “Up. Get up. Now.” The words come out gentle, pleading.
“My… She…” Venna rasps. Her eyes turn from the sky toward Skaia.
She lets out a cry that will haunt me for the rest of my life and I almost slide back onto the ground with her.
What if it were Anassa lying there? What if she’d been cut from me and I’d been severed from my entire pack by a single arrow?
What if I were no longer Bonded?
My instinct to use pack authority to get her on her feet is like salt ground into a raw wound. It won’t work any longer. Not on Venna.
Venna rolls over weakly, reaching for Skaia, just barely touching her tail. My vision focuses on fur matted with blood.
It’s cruel how lively her gray fur looks, dancing in the wind but tethered to a corpse.
I take Venna’s outstretched hand and pull her away from her wolf. She screams as if I’m killing her. I drape the arm over my shoulder and use my legs to pull us up.
My world feels as if it’s coming apart at the edges, and even still, I have to keep us moving.
She made her choice. I need to do my part and honor that by making sure we stay alive.
Stark is there, pulling with me. Venna sags. Her legs are limp. She’s mumbling.
Anassa bows before Skaia. She stares at the direwolf’s body as Stark helps me put Venna on Anassa’s back.
I take a step back to sign my next words. “You will never be alone, Venna,” I tell her, fumbling over the words in sign language, but doing my best. “I swear it.”
I jump up behind my friend, my family, and close my arms around her. She slumps—asleep, or passed out. It’s a blessing, I think; she doesn’t have to see us ride away from her wolf. She won’t have to carry that vision with her for the rest of eternity.
“Move. Fast!” Stark bellows, taking off on Cratos, Elias seated behind him.
Lucien’s head whips around as he rides past us on Noemi’s wolf. He only looks forward again once we catch up. We ride, and we ride fast under cover of magic.
Venna’s wolf is left to the crows.