Chapter Forty #2
I try valiantly to do as he says, but the pain is unbearable. I don’t hear Darrius’s roar when I slip into darkness for a few seconds, nor do I see the curse take hold, his bones cracking and the howl of a manticore rumbling over the valley.
Starkeeper.
I hear Razulek’s weak voice and relief fills me. Raz, thank the stars you’re alive.
Weakly, I feel the tremor of his fear. You’re hurt.
It was inevitable. My thoughts feel fragmented and faint, but I force myself to concentrate.
You know I read in a book once that your kind were called “dragons” by the storytellers.
They were fierce and valiant and bathed their enemies in fire.
You are the king of dragons, my friend. My simurgh lets out a soft keen.
Take care of your hatchlings. I wish I could have seen them.
Stay, little queen . . .
But my ability to think fractures and fades. Someone falls to the ground beside me and gathers me into their arms. It’s Roshan, my Oryndhrian king—I can smell his bergamot and smelted-iron scent that always makes me think of home. Of Coban.
I curl into him. “Ro . . . you fought so well. Take care of him.”
“Sura, no, no, no, stay with me, please.”
Weak from blood and magic loss, I feel my punctured organs start to fail, my lungs desperately trying to give me air, my heart laboring to beat, and my simurgh desperately trying to heal the worst of it.
But Anahima—devious, lying Anahima—poisoned the iron bolts, too.
I feel her special soporific toxin burning through my veins as my drained magic tries to eviscerate it and tend my wounds at the same time.
Gods, I’m so tired . . .
A roughened tongue licks my face, and I rub my cheek against the soft, velvety muzzle of my manticore mate. “Dare, not sure I’m going to get out of this one.” I reach up with my free hand to scratch his soft ears. “Will you let me say goodbye to Darrius?”
We are so wrapped up in each other that none of us notice the dark purplish rot from the blood that had dripped out of Anahima’s body creeping toward me like ravenous maggots—until it’s too late.
They latch on to my calf muscle like blood-sucking worms, and my vision wavers when I feel hundreds of tiny teeth.
My eyes flutter shut when I feel them start to chew and burrow.
“Suraya, no!” It sounds like Darrius. “Fuck!”
And then he cups my face and kisses my dry lips, and I feel my soul-fated’s magic burst through me as I arch upward, my body shuddering from the influx of so much power.
My dauntless, ruthless deity. But he’s not done—that beautiful fool summons the rot toward him with his magic, meaning to take it into his own body.
I push upward and shove him away. My eyelids crack open as I stare woozily at the open, pulsing wound on my leg.
“We can’t let that loose, Starbright,” he whispers.
“Then kill it,” I say.
That midnight gaze darkens in a way that says he’s going to tell me something I’m not going to like. “It’s ancient and can’t be killed in that form. I need to take it from you, and you can bind me.”
“I’ve got this,” a voice says, and my gaze lands on my gorgeous gardener-prince. “I can do it.”
Clearly, I am in love with two beautiful fools who don’t value their own lives.
“No,” I say. If I’ve learned anything from fighting against dark forces the first time and the true purpose of the Starkeeper, it’s sacrifice.
And for the people I love, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
“I’m more powerful than both of you. I should be the one to bind the remnant.
My starlight will be its cage for eternity. ”
“You’re damning yourself to eternal torment,” Darrius says. “It won’t go quietly.”
I reach a hand up to his chest, feeling his shadows envelop my fingers.
“Neither will I. This is what I was born for, Dare. To safeguard the realms. Both of them.” Tears brim in my eyes.
“Look after Raz, will you? And tell Indira we couldn’t have done it without either of them.
” My gaze swings between my two beloveds, my heart rupturing. “Gods, how I wish we had more time.”
“Starling . . .”
I turn and let my palm cup Roshan’s jaw before threading my fingers through the silky dark curls that flop onto his brow. Maker above, he’s so handsome he takes my breath away. “He stole so much from us, Ro. I can’t risk losing you or Darrius. Tell Amma and my father I love them.”
Those brown eyes flash with a stubborn expression I recognize. “Tell them yourself.”
I’m not fast enough to stop Roshan from gripping my leg and absorbing the mass. His veins turn inky purple, and his eyes burn a deep violet, much worse than before, and for a moment, I’m frozen in terrified shock.
“Acharia, what have you done?” Darrius whispers.
He doesn’t answer . . . those unholy dark violet lines creeping outward into his umber skin as if they’d never left.
But then his brown eyes glimmer with gilded flecks that grow brighter and brighter, and a soft golden light covers him, becoming more brilliant until he’s nearly ablaze.
My simurgh kneels, and my lips part in awe, as if my magic unconsciously recognizes that it’s in the presence of something divine.
Time stops in the presence of all the gods . . . and the glow is blinding.
Celestial.
The glow explodes, and when the light clears, Roshan is standing there . . . unhurt and untouched, with no signs of the rot.
“What was that?” I whisper in wonder.
“Saru’s light,” he says. “Turns out nothing from the abyss can live in my body. Or so he says, anyway. Now that I’m immortal. Looks like my parents left me with a legacy of akasha after all.”
“Good to know,” Darrius says, clapping him on the shoulder, relief clear on his face.
I sigh and hide my grin. “Great. Two arrogant deities. How did a girl get so lucky?”
My joy is short-lived, however, when I hear a deafening screech and a gust of corrosive gas misses us by inches.
We stumble out of the way, running for the cover of the trees.
The azhi lands, its bulk shaking the ground as it towers over us.
One of the heads nudges the dead Anahima and then gobbles her down.
Foul.
But my disgust aside, I remember too late that blood is power, especially death magic—and sure enough the lesions and wounds on its body all start to heal, and before my eyes, it gets even bigger.
We narrowly dodge a combined breath attack, watching as the remaining Aspa?anā hordes and the armies of the two kings gather at its back.
They dodge a flick of its twin tails, weapons at the ready and waiting for our signal.
The beast roars; it won’t be long before its ruined wing repairs and it will be able to fly again.
“We only have a small chance while it’s grounded,” my soul-fated says.
“What do we do?” I ask.
Darrius grips my hand. “We do this together.”
I feel the bond between us hum as my refilled wellspring of power expands and my simurgh rises.
I realize what he intends when I feel our magic start to flow and combine.
I’m scared to see what becomes of us, but I trust him completely.
Shadow intertwines with starlight into a brilliant plume of shimmering night.
He glances at me with so much love that my knees weaken. “I love you, Starbright.”
“I love you, too.”
“Now burn like the star you are,” he says. “I’ve got you.”
Silvery runes and tattooed markings light in tandem as the iridescent wings of my simurgh burst out of my back.
Black shadow wings flare as he tightens his grasp on my hand, and together we aim our magic toward the azhi.
Our combined magic blasts the two smaller heads, which explode in bursts of ash and embers.
Only the middle head remains. The azhi roars in fury, sucking down the magic of the remaining revenants and whatever it stole from its mistress in a desperate bid to regenerate itself.
If we don’t eliminate the last and most powerful head before the other two return, then we will have to start all over again.
It’s a matter of careful timing, constant pressure, and a whole lot of luck.
Blood thunders in my ears, each passing second fraught with fear that the window of opportunity will close .
. . that it will leap into the skies. We focus our power on the main head’s eyes, blinding it temporarily, and it shrieks, attacking wildly but without coherence.
This is it . . .
Darrius retrieves his massive obsidian sword and tosses it to Roshan with a wink. “Show us what you’ve got, Sunshine.”
Roshan grins back, and I watch in awe when he jumps on a horse and races toward the belly of the beast. The king and his mount move like magic, an aureate iridescence surrounding them both.
My breath lodges in my throat when he gracefully dodges a stream of acid breath and a vicious swipe of the azhi’s talons.
It’s only a testament to his skill as a rider that he doesn’t get unseated.
And then he leaps off at the last minute to roll beneath the creature’s massive legs.
The sword—Darrius’s sword—ignites, bright light blazing along its obsidian edges right as Roshan cleaves it through the azhi’s belly like a hot knife through butter. The scream the demon releases is horrific as its entire body splits in half and flakes to ash within seconds.
Stupefied, I turn to Darrius. “Did you know your sword was god-touched?”
“It’s not. But Acharia is. It’s his akasha that made it so.”
The Everlean prophecy floats to mind: By the chosen’s own hand, the ill-fated shall die . . .
Tears spring to my eyes as the entire valley goes up in cheers and shouts of victory, the men and women of Endara who had fought and bled together lifting a victorious Roshan up onto their shoulders. Of course. A god-touched sword. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.
“Stars, is it finally over?” I say, half expecting the demon to rise again for one last unholy hurrah. But it doesn’t, thankfully.
Darrius nods, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s finally over, my love.”
“What do we do now?”
Roshan smiles. He’s broken away from the crowd and made his way over to kiss my cheek. “Whatever we want.”
Covered in blood and gore and gods know what else, I laugh at the two loves of my life, my heart so full it feels like it’s going to burst. I like the sound of that. I like it a lot.