Chapter 32
“Alex!” An urgent plea that he instantly understood.
In an eyeblink, the cords cutting off the circulation in Nili, Princess Sunlay, and Linnea’s limbs were cut, and nearly two dozen additional royal and noble personages were gently freed from the ropes and spikes that had bound them to crosses, each of them carefully lowered by one who could effortlessly pierce lingering wujen traps and curses that a certain infernalist had placed even beyond the Xien brothers’ commands.
Within seconds Alex had them all free, moving so fast that not a single royal personage or former noble captive had time to say a word to him in thanks, or burn with the shame of knowing that a stranger, a figure out of fable and legend, had seen them at their most powerless, most vulnerable, and most wounded.
Only Lao Tie, forcing a smile despite a cracked foundation and an abdominal wound that had soaked his cultivation robes in blood, dared to meet his gaze.
A moment of camaraderie from a man grateful just to be alive, despite the agony of a mutilation that had turned his brightest dreams to ash as Sunlay raced to his side and wept, kissing his brow once before attending to her father, mother, and baby brothers.
All of whom by some miracle lived… all of whom had been deliberately maimed as well.
Alex bowed before them all, so low his gaze met no one else’s as he stepped back and shut his eyes against bitter tears, even as the air rang with desperate exuberance, the king himself whispering words for all loyal soldiers and guardsmen to man the gate and make sure that their unwanted guests left in full, before sealing the barrier in ways so absolute that not even a Gold would be able to force it open.
And no one would be able to enter or exit for at least a year’s time.
All around him, Alex could sense a city pulling itself back from the brink when Wanshi’s horns trumpeted with renewed urgency as the royal family was oh so carefully tended, now surrounded by what seemed an entire city’s worth of Silvers and healers and fanatically loyal guardsmen.
The urgent shouts of panicked healers as the academy headmaster himself arrived washed over Alex as he trembled upon his knees, overwhelmed by the twin dichotomies of triumph and despair, dreading the questions that he knew would soon come.
His hyper-acute ears couldn’t help but register Nili’s sob as she gathered her shaking, disemboweled husband in her arms… who was by some miracle still alive.
Yet before the solemn-faced healer’s assistant could bow her too young head in formal apology as every last Silver-tier healer desperately attended the pale-faced king and other royal and noble charges, before Nili’s eyes could widen with feelings of betrayal and panicked fury, Alex forced himself to face his greatest fear and hand her the prize that the wind—and his fearsome kick—had torn free of Xien Tang’s powerful grip, just minutes ago.
Nili blinked back tears as she claimed the priceless ruby flask, before placing just a few precious drops upon her husband’s gruesome wound.
He gave a desperate cry, kicking and writhing his bloody feet upon the shattered flagstones as his entrails slurped themselves back inside and his abdomen sealed itself right up, and Alex could only guess that a final flash of internal heat had eliminated countless pathogens.
The wild-eyed and groaning Quing Da gazed at Alex with an odd mixture of agony, relief, hope, and despair as Alex solemnly reclaimed the vial.
“Alex.”
Alex forced himself to turn and meet the gaze of the beautiful green-eyed angel who had healed completely, with just the slightest surge of his will and potency accrued. She looked absolutely striking, as if she had ascended a handful of levels that night alone, which she probably had.
“Please give this to Sunlay and let her know that just a few drops will heal her father’s and brother’s partial disembowelment without straining their fragile bodies, even if it won’t do enough for what else is missing.”
Linnea stiffened before bowing her head, saluting fist to heart. “It will be as you say, Ancient One.”
Alex blinked at that, but the woman he very deliberately pulled away from any sort of gestalt with was already darting off to earn a tearful hug from Sunlay, who finally had the courage to look back at him with eyes filled with gratitude, warmth, and other things that suddenly didn’t matter when a desperate soft voice speared his heart from behind.
“Alex… please… I know I must have misunderstood the look in your eyes when you were fighting for our lives and our world was fraught with pain and peril and despair and I just need to know, please, Alex… Where is my daughter?”
And the shame he felt with those desperate words was an agony far more painful than Xien Tang’s Gravity Well. For his flesh had already healed.
Yet he feared the despair he saw in Nili’s eyes would haunt him for a very long time.
“She is the one who saved this caldera, Nili. Not me.”
The kitsune woman, no fool, blanched at those words.
Knowing what they meant. What Alex’s solemn, tearful expression could only mean.
“No! No! How dare you say that!” Nili’s eyes were wild with furious despair.
“How dare you put my child on a pedestal like you’re honoring the dead!
? How dare you, Alex Hammer!? Now tell me, where the hell is my daughter? ”
Her desperate cry rang through the courtyard as countless gazes turned their way.
Alex lowered his head, the weight of his shame greater than even his strength could bear. “I’m sorry, Nili.”
“I trusted you, Alex!” The kitsune woman sobbed, ears folding as she crashed to her knees. “I trusted you to keep her safe! Please tell me that she is only injured, hiding in Shadow, but safe! Please tell me there is still hope!”
Alex blinked away the awful sting in his eyes, vision blurring as his voice grew rough and ragged. “Ya Ling, Rachel, Lini, and I successfully made it to the ritual site. Once we were there, we ran into no fewer than twenty of Dongfang Hong’s elite Silver-tier killers.”
Nili’s eyes widened. Her jaw clenched, hands trembling in tight fists. “If those monsters dared to harm or kidnap my daughter…”
Alex shook his head. “No. They’re all dead. I made damn sure of that.”
Nili wasn’t the only one to be momentarily taken aback, Alex sensing the weight of even the king’s regard, despite the man’s injuries.
Alex forced himself to speak past a choked sob.
“I wanted her to stay back. Begged her to stay back. But as she herself pointed out, no one else was so attuned to Shadow. No one else, save her or you, could possibly stealth past Silver-tier scouts and assassins to plant the Water core that would save your precious home.”
Alex swallowed his own tears, gazing up at the wonder of the prismatic field that one could actually see shimmering so consolingly overhead, as the sky lit up with the first rays of dawn.
One of the healers gave a breathless gasp. “For it to shine so brightly, so true! A miracle. I’ve heard tales only of the faintest glimpses when the last Silver core was placed, over a century ago.”
“Well, this wasn’t Silver,” Alex said. “It was Gold. A Gold put in place in Wanshi’s final hour by Lini, daughter of Nili.
May she forever be remembered as Wanshi’s hero.
” His own gaze hardened. “A hero of a thousand years. For it was only her sacrifice, a persecuted kitsune’s sacrifice, that gifted you a sanctuary that not even the Red Prince of all of YanTu nation can hope to destroy. ”
Nili’s hands were like claws, gripping Alex’s unresisting wrists so tightly.
So painfully tightly.
Desperate eyes glared into Alex’s own.
“Where is my daughter?”
Alex blinked back the hot sting of caustic tears. “In the final moment when hope dared to blossom into a happy ending, that was when he came.”
“Who!?” Nili blanched. “Oh no. No, no, no! Tell me it wasn’t the same damned Gold who came so close to sabotaging us at Liushi’s ritual sites?”
“The very one.”
“Alex!”
He forced out the words. “Out of nowhere, he appeared.
Despite all my efforts to play the wild manic fool and draw out all our foes to focus on me and me alone while Ya Ling and I tore through them, that Gold-tier monster sprang before your daughter in the very instant she was about to place the core that would have saved the entire city.
“Li of a Thousand Eyes. Versed in the Gold-tier God’s Fire technique that I suspect is Dongfang Hong’s secret to his decades of military success on behalf of the emperor.
A company of riflemen in a world of legionaries, which makes no sense to you, I know.
The point is that he had Lini locked dead to rights.
Ready to obliterate her, should she dare to make any move, save to surrender Wanshi’s salvation. ”
Nili’s features twisted into a rictus of fury. “Did you tell her to—”
“I did everything I could to distract the bastard!” Alex sobbed. “I told her to toss the core and duck for cover! But in the end, your daughter made her choice. A choice only she could make. Then… then that monster struck. And Lini…”
He closed his eyes, even as the air rang with the crack of Nili’s fist slamming into his jaw.
“I’m sorry, Nili. I truly am.”
“You don’t get to apologize! She was only eighteen!
She was falling in love with you and wanted to impress you!
You should never have let her join you in this madness!
” A wild-eyed Nili cried, glaring so furiously at him, even if her knuckles bled as her fist once again cracked against prismatic-tier bones she had no hope of breaking… and Alex could only lower his head.
“I should have never let her join you in this madness. We all know how bitterly your tales end!”