Chapter 58 The Abyss
THE ABYSS
My sister was gone.
Memories poured inside my head. Rheya sitting between my knees while I braided her hair. Rheya asleep on my shoulder in the foundlings hall. Rheya and I stealing bread from the market, laughing as we ran, convinced that nothing could touch us if we stayed together.
A lifetime of love erased in a few seconds.
Kairos held me tightly, but his arms were shaking. The helpless rage of a male who’d spent a century watching people slip through his hands. Centuries of friendship—gone in a heartbeat. He stared at the fissure, swallowing hard.
You didn’t fail her, he whispered, his voice threaded with pain. You kept her alive longer than this city ever intended.
I shook my head, my breath hitching into sobs.
His forehead pressed to my temple, his warmth wrapping around me. I let myself break against him and the world was silent, shrinking down to the edge of that fissure and the emptiness where my sister used to be.
“Aelie,” Vaeris murmured. “Rheya’s not dead.”
I raised my head, trapped in Kairos’s arms. “What did you say?”
Vaeris ripped off his gauntlet and rolled up his tunic, baring his forearm where a rune blazed on his tanned skin—the faerie deal, perfectly intact.
Sparks erupted in the pit of my stomach. Keep my sister safe. The terms of the deal were binding, and Vaeris was still breathing.
I blinked rapidly. “They’re alive.”
Vaeris flexed his forearm. “For now.”
A sick feeling swooped inside me.
“They’re in Myndra.” Vaeris rolled his sleeve down, his mouth set in a grim line. “Time moves differently there. A minute here could be days for them.”
I licked my lips. Days passing for her while I knelt here, useless.
I shot upright. “So if I break it, we get them back?”
“Aelie.” Kairos hauled himself up, grabbing my arm. “No.”
I turned to him. “She’s my sister.”
“That’s exactly why he’s doing this.” He pointed at Vaeris, his body coiled for attack. “He’s not offering you a choice. He’s forcing you. Everything he does is designed to push you in one direction.”
Vaeris glanced at Kairos’s grip on me. “I’m forcing her?”
Kairos’s jaw clenched.
“If her sister dies,” Vaeris said calmly, “I die with her. I have no incentive to lie.” Vaeris sneered across the fissure at Kairos. “You, on the other hand, lose nothing by waiting.”
“My best friend is gone because of you.” He stepped forward, mist boiling off his skin. “So don't you dare stand there and tell me I've lost nothing.”
The warriors stood behind Kairos—bloodied, braced for battle. On the other side, Vaeris’s Runecloaks mirrored them.
“We are wasting time,” Vaeris hissed.
I knelt on the cobblestones, forcing my attention on the seal. The magic hummed under my knees, vibrating inside my bones like a deep growl. A greasy film covered the stones.
The executions had always been so messy. So wasteful, all that blood spilling everywhere, most of it missing the drain. I’d never asked why.
Gods, I’d been stupid.
All those lives. Poured into this rune so the fae could sleep easy and tell themselves it was necessary. That peace had a price and someone else could pay it. Always us. Humans dragged to the platform. Humans ground beneath fae boots.
They’d had two thousand years to build something better that didn’t eat people to stay whole. Instead they built this. And they expected me not to break it?
No.
My fingers flexed inside the dragon gloves. Then I placed them on the rune. My body seized as a lightning rod of power jolted into my arm, freezing my limbs. The pain was blinding, fire and ice and broken glass, tearing through my veins.
I ripped my hands away, gasping. “What the hell did you do to this rune?”
Vaeris scowled. “Rheya can amplify runes. I thought if we fed it more power than it could hold, it would burn through its magic and collapse.”
My stomach dropped. “But it didn't work. You made it stronger.”
Vaeris’s jaw tightened. “Too strong.”
The ground shuddered.
“It’s not breaking,” I whispered. “It’s pulling the city inside it.”
I tried again, gritting my teeth. Blood dripped from my nose, spattering the glowing lines. A male dropped beside me—Kairos. His palm found my back, his panic bleeding through the pain.
Kairos’s mist curled around me, his jaw working. Then he touched my spine and warmth flooded into me—cool and silver, knitting together whatever the seal had torn apart.
I gasped, the pain receding like a tide.
Elwen appeared on my other side, touching my throat. “This is too much even for you. One more attempt, and we might not be able to heal you.”
I dragged in a ragged breath, glaring at Vaeris. “Are you going to help or just stand there?”
His expression flickered, then he signaled his Runecloaks to follow as they hurried to me.
Mist slammed down between us like a wall and Vaeris halted, his shadows flaring.
“You will not touch her,” Kairos growled. “Elle and I will do this.”
Elwen slid her hand on my shoulder as Kairos wrapped me in his arms. I stared at the rune, the light pulsing beneath the cracked stone. Waiting for me.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I knew what was coming, the feeling of being destroyed while the magic melted my insides. This time, I had to hold on until the rune broke.
Aelie. Can you hear me?
I startled. Yes.
You don’t have to do this, Kairos whispered. You don’t have to hurt yourself for other people.
I cradled his hands. I won’t live in a world that only works if someone like me is willing to die for it. Can you understand that?
He sighed. I hate it, but I understand.
I turned, catching his eye. You think I’m making a mistake.
I think you’re about to change the realms in ways neither of us can predict.
That’s not the same as agreeing.
His forehead pressed to my temple. I would rather pour every drop of myself into you than watch you die alone.
My throat tightened. Even if you believe I’m wrong?
Especially then.
A century of blood on his hands, and somehow he’d emerged with such a big heart.
Kairos.
Don’t. Just let me love you.
I closed my eyes, savoring his warmth, his fear, his stubborn devotion, and then I opened them.
Trembling, I reached for the rune.
My fingers touched the lines, and light exploded, arching in between my hands. It writhed, twisted, forked into a dozen jagged branches that lashed the air. Elwen cried out.
The magic seared into me. It danced and jolted, slicing through me in bright pulses. My vision blanched. All I could see was the rune, its threads blazing like veins of lightning.
Two currents poured into me. Kairos, warm and steady. Elwen, cool and precise. They filled the cracks the magic tore open, held me together as the seal tried to rip me apart.
We are not your enemies, Tazurel whispered through the agony. We never were. The fae stole what we freely gave. Free us, and magic returns to what it should be.
I didn’t know if I believed him, but the seal was wrong. That had to be enough.
The rune battled me. It wanted to keep stretching and devouring and I sobbed, unable to find a single thread. They were tangled. Whatever Vaeris had done to the rune had stretched it thin, and now the threads pulsed erratically—some too tight, others fraying.
Kairos’s mist circled me, forming a barrier around me until a pulse of raw magic shredded his mist. He grunted, his body jerking.
I felt my skin splitting, layer by layer, the magic stripping me to the bone. The smell of burning flesh filled my nose.
Aelie! Kairos’s voice, ragged with terror. Hurry!
He spilled more of himself into me. I could feel him guttering, his heartbeat slowing.
Stop, I begged. Kairos, you’ll die.
Then I die.
The threads blurred, a screaming knot of ancient power, and then I felt it. The core, buried deep where everything converged.
I lunged for it.
My fingers fastened around something that wasn’t quite solid, and the ground buckled. Somewhere far away, Vaeris shouted. I gripped the core with everything I had left—every ounce of love for the sister waiting for me—and I wrenched myself sideways.
Blinding light seared against my closed lids. The threads I’d been gripping disintegrated like spider silk, and a blast lifted me off my feet and threw me across the Square.