Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I twirl my scythe around in my palm, its weight a familiar anchor in the disorientation, and the ancient words engraved on it glow.
I turn in a slow circle, trying to make sense of this place.
Shadows stretch and shift like they’re alive, curling in and out of vision.
I don’t know where I am—I don’t even think that there is a here— only that I’m not alone.
“ Never alone again, Strider .”
Her words sink into me, and I shudder. I grasp her mane tight. “Where are we?”
“ You’re asking the wrong question, Strider.”
She breathes, and the air cackles with something more than sound.
I still. “Then what’s the right one?”
Her wings shift, her feathers parting the darkness ahead of us, just enough to show the gleam of something silver moving in the dark. Not sky. Not stars. Eyes .
“ What thread pulled at you, and who holds the other end?”
What? I’m going to ask her more, to understand, when there’s a desperate battle cry from ahead.
I turn toward it. Then, I run , drawn toward that cry like it’s my own soul pulled from my chest.
Beyond the darkness, draegoths cut through the air, white as the moonlight. They’re hiding in the clouds above and the fog below. And there is so much fog. It is thick and noxious, and falls from the heavens, more and more of it gathering on the ground and building up in great heaps.
“Not fog. Ash,” Vaeloria says to me.
I jerk around. Oh, my gods, I have to keep her safe here.
But where is here? I sweep my gaze over the horizon and see the volcano in the distance, spewing great swaths of ash and golden, molten lava from the bowels of the earth.
Is this Elandors Veil? No, definitely not Elandors Veil.
This is an island—the ocean surrounds it.
I’m looking down at it, as if we’re in the sky, even though my feet are on the … ground?
“What are they doing?” I whisper to her.
“Attacking your heart.”
I jerk my head around, but I can’t see. Vaeloria and I are still tucked in the darkness, in our cocoon.
I reach out with my other hand, parting the dark like it’s a curtain.
Ryot is on Einarr’s back, the two of them being driven further and further into a pile of ruins at the base of the volcano, beaten back by the Kher’zenn and their creatures.
“Oh, my gods,” I whisper in horror. “We have to save them.”
“Yes. These two we can save.” Vaeloria raises her wings. “ We ride, Strider.”
I go to mount her, but … “I can’t risk you.” I grip my scythe tighter, preparing to walk through the curtain alone. I hold my hands out to her, motioning for her to stay. “You wait here.”
She chuffs furiously, pawing at the ground that’s not there. “ We were made for this, you and I.”
“We’ve never trained! No. Absolutely not.”
She shakes her mane back, irate. “ Those demon spawn won’t even touch my tail feathers. You do not battle alone. Not anymore.”
She will not be left behind. Her determination, her resolution, fills me and becomes my own. I launch myself onto her back. “Alright, Vaeloria. If we do this, we win.”
“There is nothing else.”
She lifts into the sky in a flurry of thunderous sound, her wings swirling the darkness that surrounds us. “ Scythe up, Strider.” I clasp my knees around her flanks and raise my scythe as we drop directly into the battle, leaving the darkness behind us.
Oh, sweet Thayana. How did we do that?
But there’s no time for questions, because she’s already banking hard to the left.
I swing my scythe in a wide arc, slicing the stunned draegoth we’re facing across the neck.
It tries to bellow, but no sound escapes.
It falls from the sky, taking its rider with it.
There’s no time to gloat in the easy victory.
Vaeloria banks again, and I swing the scythe back around, striking the Kher’zenn in front of me in the chest. His pure, white eyes latch onto mine in shocked disbelief.
They’re not cloudy, like the Elder’s. They’re crisp, almost reflective.
He stretches out a hand for me, and I reach for him.
His perfection is alluring—white hair swirling around his angelic face, rune-like markings etched into his bare chest.
Vaeloria shouts at me—not with words, but with feelings. She blasts with me a NO that is so loud I jerk my scarred, blackened fingers back into my chest.
I’m an idiot. I almost did it again . I snatch the blade from his chest with a vicious twist, and he plummets to the ground with a shriek.
The draegoth opens its mouth to display row upon row of wicked, gleaming teeth.
The creature’s sickly white scales glint, and it flaps membrane-like wings stretched over ridges that could shred the air itself.
It swings its tail—a weapon in and of itself, long and whip-like with a nasty-looking tip at the end—toward Vaeloria.
I swing my scythe down. The severed tail curls over the bladed edge of my scythe.
Vaeloria screams back, and flicks out with a wing, hurling one of those dagger-like feathers through the air and striking the beast in the chest. Sweet Thayana, I didn’t know she could do that.
But now our surprise attack is over. The Kher’zenn that are left turn from their assault on Ryot and Einarr. Ryot is covered in blood and staring up at me, mouth agape, in shock. And he’s fucking furious.
I spare another stolen second to watch Ryot with something like awe.
A shield shimmers and ripples around him and Einarr, and he’s using the distraction we provided to launch a fresh attack on the Kher’zenn.
He drives forward with his sword, bringing another Kher’zenn down. But he looks like he’s fading.
“How long has he been fighting?” I ask. It’s impossible to hide the worry from her, but she shakes her head furiously at me, as if to say it doesn’t matter.
“Right,” I murmur, shifting my eyes to the Kher’zenn and their beasts. “Who do we rip apart next?”
Her vicious glee fills my veins. She beats her wings furiously, climbing higher and higher into that billowing plume of ash.
Already, a thick coating of ash covers our skin.
It’s not a terrible thing, as it creates a camouflage that hides us from those things screeching and chasing after us.
Even Vaeloria, usually radiant in her pale brilliance, is dulled now.
The ash softens her glow, dulls the shine of her feathers.
Something scrapes every time I close my eyes.
The more I blink, the worse it gets—ash grinding against the tender rim of my eye until my lashes are thick with soot and tears. My vision clouds, burns, screams.
My body begs me to shut them.
Ryot’s words echo in my ears : “If you’re in a sandstorm, if the heavens have opened in a deluge, if there’s blood running down your face so thick that everything you see is coated in red—Keep. Your. Eyes. Open.”
He didn’t say anything about ash, but I don’t close my eyes.
Vaeloria hits me with a glimpse of her intention before we fall from the sky like a bolt of fury, her wings tucked into her sides, spinning in a dizzying frenzy that almost makes me pass out.
Almost.
But I don’t. I keep my seat. I even manage to fist a dagger, and we burst out of the cloud of ash on top of two of the draegoths and their riders.
Vaeloria doesn’t slow, doesn’t even pause.
She spreads her wings and slices through the first pair with the sword-like edges, cutting them in half.
I throw the dagger at the other Kher’zenn.
Even as it impales him in his forehead, I’m already calling it back into my hand, and swinging up with my scythe into the draegoth’s neck.
“Leina!”
I turn in my seat at Ryot’s shout, as a draegoth flies out of the cloud of ash, its grotesque alabaster skin blending in perfectly with the surroundings.
The Kher’zenn lashes out with a whip. It snaps through the air, dripping with venom pulled from their creatures.
This is why the archons are so relentless with inflicting pain.
Vaeloria tenses beneath me, both of us preparing for the blow. But the shredwhip hits a shield, glimmering around us.
Ryot.
His shield knocks the Kher’zenn back and I throw my dagger at the same time that Vaeloria flicks out with her wing, loosing another feather-blade. Kher’zenn and draegoth fall from the sky.
My eyes find Ryot as he rams his sword through a draegoth. Draegoth and rider plummet from the sky.
I spin around in my seat, scanning the skies. There. Far in the distance—the last one. A draegoth and Kher’zenn fly for Morendahl. My blood heats, ready for a chase—it will only make the kill sweeter.
“Vaeloria!” I cry out. “We can reach him.”
But she doesn’t fly on after the escaping rider.
She swings us around, and Ryot is prone on the ground.
Einarr is prancing around him wildly, shrieking.
I don’t have to say a word. Vaeloria swoops around, bringing us in to land next to them, her hooves striking the ruins of a decaying palace with a thud.
I dive from her back, frantically running my hands over Ryot’s chest. Blood is pouring out of a gaping wound across his neck.
“You’re an idiot,” I tell Ryot angrily.
He manages a smile, but it’s terrifyingly weak. “Good… t’see you… too… r-rebel… girl…”
I rip off a piece of my tunic and press it against the wound. Hard. He grunts a little and mumbles something.
“What?”
“I… like th' sex'dreams... bedder.”
I ignore him. His blood is already seeping through the cloth.
What did Nyrica say about field dressings? Sew it up. Apply aldersigh directly into the wound.
Simple. It always seemed so simple in training. “Do you have aldersigh? A needle?” I ask him desperately.
“Mmm,” he replies, his eyes closing. “Y’r… so damn d’manding… even in my dreams…”
“Ryot!” I smack him, and Einarr screams in his ear.
He rouses. “Inn’r… left p’cket… my r-rebel girl…”
I rip open the pocket on his pack and then weave the thread through his skin in big, erratic sweeps.
My fingers are clumsy and I know some of the gaps are too wide and some are too tight, the skin puckering awkwardly.
There’s no time to make it neat. I’m racing against—something, but I don’t know what—to get these stitches in. I keep going until the wound is closed.
Vaeloria whinnies at my side, as if to say : quicker.
I fumble the lid of the aldersigh jar, my bloodied fingers slipping. The lid stays firmly closed.
The darkness—once my friend, now my enemy—starts to creep closer to me. I snarl at it. “Stay back! I’m not finished!”
It doesn’t listen to me. It slithers closer and closer still, the tendrils reaching out for me and Vaeloria with gnarled hands. It wraps around my feet first, then Vaeloria’s hooves.
Einarr screams, his terror a jagged knife in my heart.
Sobbing, I smash the jar of aldersigh on the stone ruins at our feet. I scoop the paste into my hands, slicing my fingers on the jagged remnants of the jar, and heave it in a mess of blood and ash onto Ryot’s wound, as those dark tendrils climb up my legs.
The darkness seizes us.
It rips us back, Vaeloria and me, in a violent lurch. My scream never makes it past my lips. There’s no air, no light. There’s only pressure, crushing and cold.
And then there’s nothing at all.