Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Aurelia
Isurfaced to pain, a dull, heavy ache that seemed to weigh down every limb. My throat was raw, my lungs scraped clean. I might have been lying on snow or stone or the back of a Brindalorn; I couldn’t tell.
Something cool brushed my forehead.
“Thank the gods,” a familiar voice muttered. And then louder, “She’s waking up.” Murmured replies sounded, and then the voice added, “I was starting to think I’d have to haul your soul back myself. And I really don’t want to go to Hel today.”
I pried my eyes open.
Keres’ scarred face hung over mine, pale in the torchlight. A thin thread of shadow still ran from her fingers into my chest where she worked her healing gifts on me. The ceiling above her was jagged rock, slick with condensation. I’d made it back to the cave.
“Did we win?” I croaked.
Keres’ mouth twitched. “That’s one word for it.”
A face appeared over her shoulder. Slade’s hair was singed, one eyebrow missing, soot smeared across his jaw. His smile was fuzzy with barely contained adrenaline.
“You scorched the entire fucking valley,” he said cheerfully. “Took out half the army. Very dramatic. Ten out of ten for spectacle. Zero for self-preservation.”
I tried to sit up. My body protested, every muscle trembling. Keres’ hand shifted to my shoulder, pushing me back to the bedroll I was lying on.
“Slow down,” she said. “You burned yourself out. Makarios or no, your body’s still fae and very much mortal.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue, which likely proved her point. Already, exhaustion tugged at me, trying to pull me under, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist it for long.
“Lesha?” I rasped.
“Alive,” Slade said. “Barely.”
My eyes went wide. Panic spiked.
“I’m already working on her,” Keres assured me.
I looked around but didn’t see anyone else.
“Daegel’s with her farther in,” Slade said. “We’ve set up as far from the collapse as we can without getting lost in this gods-cursed maze.”
Lost? Where was Eirnan? Or the rest of the Withered?
“What… happened?” I asked.
Pieces returned in jagged flashes. The Frostwights. The surge of power. The valley burning like a sacrificial pyre.
“Your gifts happened,” Keres said dryly. “You pulled enough life out of that camp to live for a thousand years. Then your Furyfire did the rest.”
I swallowed hard. “The camp—”
“Gone,” Slade said. “What’s left is a scorch mark big enough to see from the moon.”
I closed my eyes, seeing again the way the flames spread faster than I’d meant them to. The sound of screaming. The pull of all those lives ending, ripping through me like I was a conduit carved just for that purpose.
“What about our people?” I whispered.
Silence.
It stretched long enough that I forced my eyes open again.
Keres’ jaw was tight. “Many made it into the tunnels,” she said. “Some didn’t. We’re still counting.”
“And Rydian?” The name tore itself from my throat before I could shape anything more neutral.
They traded a look.
Panic slammed into me, hard enough that I shoved at Keres’ hand and lurched upright. The world reeled; my vision went black at the edges. Slade caught my elbow, bracing me.
“Aurelia,” he said quietly. “Let us explain before you set something on fire in here too.”
I grabbed his sleeve. “Where is he?”
Keres scrubbed a hand down her face, leaving a streak of soot on her cheek. “I was midway down the slope when your power went wild,” she said. “I saw him at the ridge, holding back the worst of it so the cave entrance wouldn’t burn.”
I remembered the glimpse. Shadows stacked like walls against my fire. A figure silhouetted in the blaze.
“I tried to get to him,” she went on. “Then the furyfire hit. You… you weren’t you anymore. It was like the god behind your mark took over. The hillside went up. I lost sight of him. The next thing I saw, he was gone.”
Gone.
The word hollowed my chest.
Slade shook his head quickly. “Not dead.”
I latched onto that. “Then where—”
“The river,” she said. “Something or someone pulled him under.”
Naiad.
The realization hit with the force of a blow. I’d begged Naliadne to watch the river borders, to help us if she could. If she’d seen that fire…
“They took him Beneath,” I whispered.
“Seems that way,” Keres said. “Better than burning. But it means he’s out of our reach. For now.”
I sagged, the tension in my muscles turning from rigid to liquid. The cold cavern felt suddenly too small, the air too thin.
Alive. He was alive. Drowned or half-drowned or furious with me somewhere under the river, but alive.
The relief hurt almost as much as the fear.
“I need to go back,” I said. “We have to get out, find another path down, reach the river—”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Keres snapped. “Besides, that entrance is gone.”
Slade nodded grimly. “She’s right. The rockfall buried it. We tried clearing some of it while you were unconscious. Every stone we moved brought more down. If we keep going, we’ll bring the whole tunnel on our heads.”
“You can shadow-walk,” I insisted, looking at Slade.
“You’re in no shape,” Keres said sternly.
I started to argue, but Slade cut in. “Keres is right. We got lucky that Heliconia wasn’t at that camp, or we never would have been able to escape with your friend. Or our lives. But the minute she finds out her camp’s gone, she’ll know who did it.”
“And she’ll figure out how we got in,” Keres added grimly.
Slade nodded sadly. “The cave mouth will be the first place they look.”
My chest tightened. “So we’re trapped.”
“No, we’re taking the only way out we have now.” Slade crouched beside me, resting his folded arms on his knees.
Back through the tunnels.
The idea of spending days and days in the dark was its own anguish.
Keres spoke, reading my distress. “Eirnan says there are other exits. We can take Lesha and whoever’s left of the Withered and get them away from here before Heliconia regroups.”
Eirnan.
The knot in my stomach twisted. “Is he…?”
“Alive,” Keres said quietly. “But hurt. He won’t be leading anyone on his own two feet anytime soon. He pushed too far, trying to get his people back here before the fire…”
The memory of the dissenters’ faces flashed across my mind. Fear. Disgust. The way they’d called me demon-touched.
“Do they still want to follow me?” I asked.
Keres’ mouth twisted. “Most saw the Obsidian camp burn and decided they don’t care what gifts you carry so long as they’re pointed in the right direction.”
“And Brist?” I asked, rage burning hot in my gut.
“Dealt with,” Keres said quietly.
“Taron too,” Slade said. “A shame. If we’d had more time, I would have made it last. A quick death is more than they deserved.”
“After their brothers’ betrayal, I don’t think the others will be eager to confront you again,” Keres added.
That should have made me feel better.
It didn’t.
“I lost control,” I said slowly.
Slade tilted his head. “You unleashed the kind of power that levels armies. That tends to be messy.”
I pressed a hand to my throat. The skin around the rune was tender, as if it had been burned from the inside out. “I didn’t choose how far it went. Or who it took. I was… feeding, and the magic just kept pulling and pulling. If I hadn’t burned out—”
“You’d have taken more,” Keres finished. “Maybe all of it. Maybe us.”
Her honesty cut—but I needed it.
“And this is why Rydian doesn’t want you opening the gate just yet,” Slade added. “Not because he thinks you’re weak. Because he knows you’re strong enough to break everything if you’re not careful. Including yourself.”
The thought of the Midnight gate—of that much power crashing up against the thing I’d just felt in the camp—made my stomach turn.
Whatever else I’d felt out there. The voice that had whispered through me, claiming all those lives, all that power, it wasn’t my own.
And it wasn’t a part of my furyfire or my Makarios gifts.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to know what else had risen in me.
A third gift, though it felt much heavier—like a curse.
One I hadn’t been able to control in the end.
Rydian had been right about me.
I dragged in a breath, forcing my pulse to slow.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll find our way back through the tunnels. And get Lesha and Eirnan somewhere they can recover.”
Slade nodded once, relief flickering in his eyes like he’d been bracing for me to say something far more reckless. “Music to my ears, Princess.”
Keres pushed to her feet, flexing stiff fingers. Shadows flickered faintly around them, thin as smoke. “I’m going to check Eirnan’s bandages before we move. He’ll want to speak to you before we go deeper.”
When she went to tend the others, Slade stayed, watching me with that annoying, perceptive gaze that meant he knew too much and said too little.
“You should hate me,” I said quietly.
He blinked. “For what?”
“For burning half a valley. For almost destroying our only way out. For…” My chest tightened. “For maybe getting your prince killed.”
Slade shrugged. “To be fair, he made that a group effort. And you didn’t kill him.
Your friendship with the naiad saved him.
” He paused. “Also, Aurelia? You just crippled Heliconia’s army.
That’s the kind of thing bards are going to sing about for centuries, assuming there’s any courts left to sing in. ”
“It still doesn’t free my court,” I said. “Or stop her.”
“One battle was never going to fix any of this,” he said. “Or one girl. Even if she happens to fight like a demon-god’s daughter.” His mouth quirked. “This?” He gestured to the cave, to us. “This was a start.”
A start that had nearly ended us.
But he was right about one thing—we had hurt Heliconia. Badly. She’d poured power and soldiers and Scath wolves and whatever abomination the Frostwights were into that camp, confident no one would dare strike it.
And I had.
Me. The girl she’d cursed. The princess she’d tried hard to keep sleeping forever. Let her feel that when she looked at the ashes. Let her know it was me who burned it all to the ground.