Chapter 33 #2
I turned off the fear that wanted to grip me, to distract me.
He reached for her. I hesitated a fraction of a second, then surrendered her into his arms. She looked even smaller there.
“Get her inside,” I ordered. “Take whatever soldiers we can spare and retreat. Somewhere they can’t reach with frost or fire.”
Daegel nodded, his usual sarcasm gone. “She’ll be safe with me.” His gaze flicked over my face. “You’re going back down.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t try to stop me. Just shifted Lesha’s weight gently, then jerked his chin at the Withered clustering near the entrance. “You heard him. We hold this tunnel, or we all die.”
They let out a battle cry, their swords swinging with renewed fervor.
As Daegel turned, Lesha’s eyes slit open, hazy and unfocused. Her cracked lips shaped a word that might have been Aurelia’s name.
I didn’t stay to hear it.
I spun back toward the hillside.
Flame rolled below us, painting the golden dawn in black and blue. Smoke rolled thick. Screams rose through it—Obsidian, Frostwight, maybe some of our own. Down below, the camp itself was beginning to burn—tents catching, supply wagons roaring, smoke clawing up toward the sunrise.
Somewhere between me and that inferno, Aurelia was still fighting.
I took one step—
A shout cut through the chaos.
“Rydian!”
Keres.
I snapped my head toward the sound.
She stood halfway down the slope to my left, one arm bloody, daggers coated black with Obsidian ichor.
A cluster of Withered held the line beside her, blades up, magic flickering.
Behind them, a gap in the flames opened for the span of a breath, revealing movement just across the river at the camp’s edge.
An explosion ripped through the tents.
A ball of orange flames swallowed a cluster of canvas, blooming up like a poisonous flower.
The force of the explosion hit a moment later, a hot wind that knocked several soldiers to their knees.
For an instant, I saw silhouettes framed in the fire—Slade dragging someone away, Thorne’s broad shoulders turning as he hurled a knife that glowed white-hot.
Then the smoke swallowed them.
My heart stuttered at what they’d managed to do. But it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t get themselves clear of the blast.
“Aurelia!” Keres’ scream tore through the din, raw and furious. I couldn’t see what she saw from this angle.
All I could see was a wall of furyfire, and I ran toward it.
Black flame curled up the slope, faster than it should have. It clung to the ground like liquid, licking at rock and frost alike. Furyfire, but unleashed now, not contained to Aurelia’s will.
Spreading fast up the dry hillside. Straight toward Keres.
“Keres,” I shouted, breaking into a run.
Her figure vanished in the wall of flame.
Heat slammed into me hard enough to throw me back. I hit the ground, rolled, threw my shadows up in a desperate shield. For a second, the fire hit the darkness and held there, pressing, testing.
Once, back in Grey Oak, Aurelia had used her dark flame on me. It had been such a small thing then, a kernel of what she had now. Back then, I’d withstood it easily. Now? It would consume me.
My power buckled.
I gritted my teeth, bearing down on my own strength as I shoved at it. If that wave reached the cave, everyone inside would burn. Withered. Lesha. Daegel.
I shoved my power forward, shadows stacking on shadows, a wall of smothering smoke against flame. The fire snarled back, hungry, ancient, as if it remembered its true master: a god of Hel itself. As if it remembered nothing in Menryth could stop it.
I poured everything I had into the shield, feeling my magic strain and tear at the edges. Shadows screamed as the furyfire clawed through them, burning away layers of dark, inch by inch.
“Rydian,” someone called.
I didn’t look. Couldn’t look.
If I let go now, that wave would hit the mouth of the cave like a hammer.
Flame licked around the edges of my shield. My skin burned, the heat searing exposed flesh. My lungs felt like I was inhaling knives.
Still, the fire climbed.
My knees buckled. I dropped to one hand, gritting my teeth as the slope rolled under me. The river roared somewhere to my right—a dim, distant sound under the thunder of blood in my ears.
I thought, for a moment, that this might be it.
The way I would die. Not on some glorious battlefield.
Not on the day we vanquished Heliconia. Not protecting Aurelia from another’s cutting blade.
Just here, on a hillside, holding back the fire of the woman I loved long enough for her to live and fight without me.
I could make peace with that.
I started to let go.
A hand closed on my ankle.
I barely had time to register the grip—cold, strong, wet, like water given form—before the ground vanished beneath me.
The world turned sideways.
I slid down the slope, shadows ripping free of the furyfire as my concentration shattered. The furywave roared overhead, devouring the space where I’d been standing a heartbeat before.
Ice-cold liquid swallowed me.
The river’s cold embrace gripped my bones as it sucked me below its surface.
I thrashed, instincts screaming as my body plunged into black water so cold it stole my breath. The current seized me, dragging me down, spinning me end over end. The roar and crackle of the fire vanished above, replaced by the dull rush of water against stone.
Hands pulled me down.
Not one. Several.
They gripped my arms, my shoulders, my coat, dragging me deeper, away from the burning sky. I caught a glimpse of pale faces—eyes that glowed faintly in the dark, hair streaming like riverweed, webbed fingers tight around my wrists.
Naiad.
I tried to speak, to beg, to demand they save Aurelia—but river water surged into my mouth, stealing the words. Stealing my breath. My life.
Cold carved its way into my bones. The last of my air tore free in a stream of bubbles that spiraled upward, toward the distant smear of gold that was the surface.
“Aurelia,” I thought, as the dark closed in.
Then even thought was sucked away, and there was nothing left but water and hands and the relentless pull of Beneath.