Chapter 65
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
RYOT
She’s supposed to be flying over the Valespire Peaks by now, well on her way to Faraengard.
She’s supposed to be safe.
Instead, she’s here, in a battle none of us will survive. Because we’re not here to win. We’re here to buy the people time. To buy the civilians of Aish—gods have mercy on their souls—time. To buy Rissa time. To buy Leif time.
To buy Leina fucking time.
The flesh of Leina’s arm is completely pulled from the bone. Without Elowen, it’s a wound that could kill her from the blood loss. Rage roars up my throat, but I shove it down. There’s no time for that. I rip a jar of aldersigh from my pack and hurl it at her.
“Thanks,” she breathes, the word cracking with relief.
And then, gods save me, she grins—a wild, bloody thing.
Before I can curse her out properly, she scrambles up Vaeloria’s neck to smear the aldersigh onto the faravar's wounded snout first. I snarl, half in fury, half from a desperate kind of admiration so fierce it feels like it might tear me apart.
Another coordinated strike slams into my shield, pummeling my thoughts. The impact drives both of us back, Einarr and me, and has agony lacing up my spine, splintering through my chest and my head. But I plant myself and hold.
I’m shielding thirteen men and their beasts—and now Leina and Vaeloria. If I fall, they fall.
I will not yield. Not while there’s breath left to curse the gods.
“Leina,” the Elder calls, as another shockwave buckles me. I collapse forward, crashing onto Einarr’s broad back. Einarr grunts, his wings flaring wide to brace us both. His fear is a hot blade against my mind—sharp and furious. Not fear for himself. Fear for me.
“Hold , Lastwall ,” he urges. “ Stay with me.”
The strength of him, the raw will of him, burns through the haze threatening to swallow me whole.
Einarr won't fall unless I do, and there’s still breath rattling in my lungs.
I hold, but I can’t lift my sword to counter.
Nyrica moves forward, pushing the Kher’zenn back with his axe, buying me time to breathe.
I drag in a ragged breath as another wave of pain crests over me.
Drennek, Aruveth’s second, slides down his beast’s wing until he can touch me.
I watch him with wary eyes, but I’ve no strength to fight back as he lays a hand on my shoulder.
At the touch, something surges through me—a rush of power so fierce it feels like molten lava poured straight into my veins, burning through the cracks in my will, setting my mind and body ablaze with borrowed fire.
The darkness swirling at the edges of my vision shrieks and tears apart. I gasp, not from pain but from the sheer violence of it, and when I meet Drennek’s eyes, I find him watching me with a knowing gleam. His lips curl into a sharp, satisfied grin as he climbs back up the wing to his beast.
“What the hell was that?”
“Fire-giver ,” Einarr answers. It’s a gifted magic I’ve not heard of, but the name fits. There’s a fire burning through my veins that brings with it strength and blessed energy.
I raise my eyes to Leina. The Elder will order her away. She’s not supposed to be here. She’s not supposed to die here. She smears aldersigh across her ravaged arm, but her gaze is locked on the Elder.
“I need you and Vaeloria to drive the Kher’zenn into the storm,” the Elder says, his gnarled finger pointing at the churning mass of black and lightning boiling at the edge of the enemy’s rear guard.
Wait. The Elder’s words make no sense?—
“What?” Aruveth shouts, his disbelief tearing ragged from his throat. “That’s madness! We’ve always driven them out of the clouds—forced them into the open where they cannot hide!”
Exactly.
“Have faith,” the Elder says simply. “There is nothing left to risk but ourselves. Alert the men. Drive them into the storm.”
Leina nods without hesitation, her curls bouncing, her body bloodied but unbowed. “We’ll do it,” she says, patting Vaeloria’s neck. The air around them ripples.
“Leina,” I rasp out, burning precious energy. She turns to me, eyes full of pain and bravery and fear. I stumble on the words to tell her—likely the last words I’ll ever speak to her. “I love you” seems too trite, the words somehow unequal to the horror and the honor of this, our last stand.
Instead, I whisper, “You made me whole, Leina Haverlyn.”
Her smile is radiant—not a smirk of bravado, not a grimace of grim determination, but a real smile, pure and blinding, a sunbeam slicing through the darkness of a dying world.
“I make you whole, Ryot,” she says simply. “We’re not dead quite yet.”
And then she’s gone, swallowed by warping skies, leaving behind only the echo of wings.