Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Abandon Stynguard and sail your fleet south. Rising forces knock at the gates of Aedrialis, and the shores are littered with Marisarma trash.
—Correspondence from General Calvus to Lord Pavel.
Blood leached from Vienah’s face. Tremors raced through my hands as power rose from the depths.
“Lower your weapon,” I breathed.
Astraeus slid his dark eyes to mine. “No.”
A countdown began in my mind, and when it reached zero, there would be nothing holding the blade pressed to Vienah’s exposed neck, air oath be damned. A trickle of blood slid down her ivory skin.
“Please,” she begged, and my heart squeezed. “Kellan, please.”
“Tell them, my dear, about those little lightning tricks you’ve kept hidden all these months,” Astraeus crooned as silence cleaved the room.
My heart began a slow gallop in my chest.
“I cannot control the fire in the skies,” Vienah pleaded, a small whimper escaping her lips.
“Is that so, water witch? You’re more powerful than you’ve been letting on. Tell them about your messages.”
Vienah’s throat bobbed as she tried to swallow against Astraeus’s curved blade.
“What are you talking about?” I breathed. I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the small pool of tears balancing in Vienah’s brown eyes.
“Odessa… Demon’s Door… And now here, on Saros’s doorstep.” Astraeus’s tone turned deadly as he inched his face closer to Vienah, his blade perfectly still.
“I suspected something was off when that storm arrived at Demon’s Door,” he murmured, his face a breath from hers. “A bit unseasonal, for a lightning storm in the southern part of the kingdom, I should think. Certainly, unseasonal in the Thandal Sea.”
Vienah blinked, a tear trickling down her cheek as she slid her watery gaze to me.
“Lyvia, please,” she whispered, her throat dipping along the blade. “I didn’t have a choice. King Saros has my family…”
My throat went dry.
I blinked once, twice, attempting to process what had happened amidst the thundering of my blood as I came face-to-face with another betrayal… Spy, my powers whispered beneath my skin.
Vienah had spied on the Rising, on us, on me…for months.
“Please, Lyvia,” Vienah pleaded. “Father Marcus is still alive. I can help you…”
Rage squashed the growing nausea as my veins darkened, a shimmering golden glow lining them.
Odessa.
That evening, amidst my anger toward Bayne—when Ronan had shared his secret and Bayne’s deception—I had barely registered the strange heat lightning that sparked in the night before the attack.
A message. A signal, giving away our location to Saros’s forces that attacked in the night.
Thousands of lives were lost that day.
The pressure rising deep below began to quicken, and my fingers buzzed. Astraeus snapped his head toward me.
“Get out of the tent, Lyvia,” he ordered.
I opened my mouth to respond as Ezrich hurtled into the war tent and skidded to a stop.
“Dad,” he said, his voice shaking as he reached for my arm. “It’s Dad, Lyvia.”
My name broke off his lips, and he lifted a trembling hand to his temple.
“What do you mean? Where?”
He looked up, his dark skin pale.
“On the wall.”
Crimson streaks thinned as they dripped down the walls of Aedrialis, a stark contrast to the bright white stone illuminated by the midday sun.
An excruciating, distant scream cut through the air before it crumpled into a pained moan and was lost among the shouts of the Rising soldiers.
A desperate connection formed with Tiberius as I shoved my way through the soldiers, who stood shoulder to shoulder, simmering at the spiked bodies dotting the upper edges of the walls.
The same pikes we used to slip into Aedrialis last year.
A message to traitors.
Ezrich shoved a path through the remaining soldiers, and my heart stopped as my eyes landed on a line of living prisoners standing at the uppermost battlements, each awaiting their gruesome sentence.
Ezrich’s hands bunched into fists, and numbness spread through me as I took in Bear’s unmistakable large form at the front of the line, standing next to General Calvus.
My blood stilled as my powers stood at attention.
Not Bear.
Vulcan stepped to my side as Tiberius’s dark form shot into my view.
“With me,” I commanded, barely registering Vulcan’s confirming growl.
Ti slowed his landing gallop, and I sprinted into the short opening ahead of me, Vulcan close behind, before leaping onto his back.
We launched into the sky, and I pushed our dark shield into place, stretching it as thin as I dared to get a better view as we flew to the edge of King Saros’s impenetrable shield. Tiberius’s massive wings pumped steadily as we hovered only twenty feet from where Bear stood shackled.
My heart crumpled as I took in his form. Old and new blood stained his torn, ragged clothes. The white, bubbling blisters of fresh burns lined his powerful arms, and he squinted through bruised and swollen eyelids, his face falling as it landed on me.
“Bear,” I whispered, the name broken on my lips.
Something was happening to me. Rage and devastation swarmed, the Obscura seizing the emotions as the Transcindiel surged alongside some powerful force filling my being.
“We can’t do anything. Saros’s shield is too strong,” Vulcan urged me from behind. “You’ve already tested it against your powers.”
Blood darkened the center of the sickening contraption used to impale the bodies on the pikes lining the walls of Aedrialis. Held upright by a steel brace and pulley system, they rolled the wooden platform to the next empty pike.
“I have to try,” I breathed, as I envisioned my shadows sharpening into a line of spearheads.
“We’ve already tried this,” Vulcan urged. “Do not waste your strength. Your powers will bounce right off.”
No.
Bear winced as he straightened, turning to General Calvus, mumbling something through the gag in his mouth.
The general, a man I’d seen countless times in Mount Telum and one of Saros’s most trusted advisers, pinched his brows in disgust as he looked at Bear, but gave a resigned nod to one of his men.
A sneer slapped across his face as his eyes landed on me.
Bear turned very slowly to face me.
“What’s happening?” I asked, more to myself.
“It’s time,” Vulcan murmured.
My head shook, but Bear’s dark eyes remained pinned on my own without an ounce of fear in them.
Instead, they held a world of memories in their depths.
Was he thinking of Evony and Ezrich? Was he reliving those days of adventure on board the Evecta when he fought side by side with Bayne?
When he saved Morwyn? Did he regret joining the Rising?
Was he wishing he’d stayed behind with his family?
The guards began speaking, turning to face Rising fighters gathered below.
“Can you hear what they’re saying?” I asked Vulcan.
“No,” he murmured. “Not well enough through your shield.”
“I have to drop it.”
Without waiting for a response, Tiberius inched closer to King Saros’s shield, and I dropped my own.
The guard leading Bear to the contraption called, “To grant him his final words.”
My pulse stopped as I realized Bear needed to tell us something. He kept his eyes on me as they strapped him against the platform, the ropes from the pulley system lifting it upright so he was angled toward the Rising forces.
Bear’s eyes softened as a single tear traveled down his broad face. A guard pulled his gag free.
Bear cried out in a hoarse, booming voice, “Glastí!”
My stomach pitched.
What? What does that mean?!
His eyes frantically searched mine as the contraption creaked, the ropes pulling the bottom of it higher so I could no longer see his face.
This was happening too fast. I rallied my powers, that strange sensation twisting into something lethal, something deadly.
The Transcindiel molded the Obscura into a razor-sharp spear as my hands lifted to the air and thrust it at the massive shield.
Devastation sliced through my shock, my powers raging as they bounced off, and the darkness disappeared in a cloud of shadows.
Bear’s voice boomed once more. “IT’S A F—”
A scream wrenched from my throat as the platform slammed down against the side of the wall, the massive pike ramming through Bear’s broad chest and cutting off his words in an excruciating cry.
Screams rose from below in violence and anguish. My vision blurred as a flood of memories rushed in, and I was caught somewhere between grief and rage.
Sizzling bacon. The whir of a tea kettle.
A booming laugh that shook the small cottage.
His bravery as he stormed through the crowds and soldiers in Rivaner to get to his family.
The fierceness and determination of his tenacity, his fight and resolution to avenge Morwyn on the Cliffs of Odessa.
A reassuring hand on my shoulder after embedding his axe in the soldier, ready to cut me down. ..
My life. I owed Bear my life and so much more.
Tiberius remained hovering, his emotions soaring down our connection at unrivaled speed. His or mine? I didn’t know. An arm slammed around my waist as I began to tip.
“SHIELD!” Vulcan bellowed, alarm spiking down my bond with Tiberius.
I snapped my head up as an arrow zinged through the air, its tip a gray whir against the white and red walls.
I tunneled intention into my powers, the shield a breath away from forming, as Vulcan’s arm ripped my chest back and his body formed its own shield against mine. He let out a pained grunt as the arrow ripped through his shoulder, the tip of it slicing against my forearm.
Tiberius dipped as my shield finally snapped into place, and he soared away from the walls of Aedrialis and back to camp. Guilt dug its claws into my chest and sent the spreading numbness scattering before slamming me back into reality.
Vulcan’s bloody arm slipped through my hands as he slumped into Nerissa’s arms upon our landing, healers rushing forward. My vision tunneled as the Rising warriors worked themselves into a frenzy after witnessing the horror of Bear’s execution.
Commanders swarmed me, and Carina placed a hand on my shaking arm as I slid from Ti’s back.
I stared at Ezrich’s figure in the distance.
His knees sank into the mud as he sat back on his heels, his arms heavy at his sides, and his face staring at the motionless figure of his dead father displayed on the wall.
So much was happening. I should go to Ezrich. I should see if Vulcan is okay. My stomach plunged. He’d taken an arrow for me…
A hand was on my shoulder.
“Vulcan will be fine. It’s a flesh wound.”
Astraeus’s words bounced off my mind like water against rock, and my breath continued to escape my lips too quickly. It was my fault Vulcan had been shot… Why did I drop my shield? It was my fault Bear was dead. I couldn’t get through Saros’s shield…
Glastí. Tiberius’s voice shook in my head. He was trying to tell us something.
“What’s happened?” Drystan asked as he rushed through the crowds.
“Glastí,” I replied and turned toward Carina. “What does it mean? Is it Elvish? He was trying to tell us something.” My throat bobbed as the words escaped my lips in tremors, tears forming in the corners of my eyes.
Carina’s brows tilted up and she shook her head, “I don’t—”
“Fern,” Astraeus breathed. His eyes were wide as they darted between mine and then to the slice on my forearm. “Glastí means fern in Old Votruvian.”
Astraeus’s mouth fell open as he dropped his hand from my shoulder and turned, his eyes tracing the air surrounding Aedrialis.
“It’s a steepled fern shield.”