Chapter 40
R ust scents the air, and Alistair’s hand stirs in my own.
The night is thick with the deep purple-blue of twilight. The Howling Sea is always a restless beast, but the waves roar even more ferociously tonight, the foam rushing up the black sand beach and lapping at our ankles.
The elves make quick work to walk their small boats into the sea while Alistair and I prepare our shields. The tide is low; the current will work in our favor to push our boats out and force Torin’s back. The longer we can keep them from reaching the beach, the more time we have to pick them off, one by one, before they inevitably breach our shore.
Our army is stretched thin around the isle’s northern coast, us needing to defend each of the three access points that Torin’s fleet could try to invade. Vox should be arriving with most of the elven fleet tonight, a few ships staying behind to blockade Torin’s vessels from entering through the Vale, while Cornelius leads the kingdom fleet to flank from the northeast.
We don’t have nearly the numbers we need to defend Scarwood while having to disperse so many of our troops across the coast, but even that pales in comparison to how threadbare our defense feels right here, right now, on this black sand beach that extends for miles on either side of us.
I glance at the bloodwitch beside me, and he flashes me a smile that reveals those sculpted teeth. The smugness doesn’t meet his eyes. Alistair is nervous, a fact that is unsettling in itself. “Leave me in a ravine again, and I’ll drag you into the depths of Hell with me,” I say cooly, allowing my gaze to skip across the water where Torin’s vessels are already warring with our own.
He flicks his head to the side, shaking free a short, humorless laugh. “If it’s an apology you want from me, it’s not really my style.”
“Words mean little to me. Make it up to me by obliterating these mundane fucks when they reach the shore.”
Another chuckle, this one containing an air of humor. “That I can do, princess.”
His magic is restless. It snaps and writhes in my hand, while mine coils and snakes around his, our power familiarizing before we collaborate our magic into a single ward to shield the elves as they use the current to row towards Torin’s fleet.
The beach is packed with soldiers, some on foot, some on horseback. A few transcendents pace the sand, but most of the shifters remain farther back, preparing for when the coast is breached. The shifters are too large to fight in quarters this tight, the risk of accidentally inflicting our own casualties too severe. But their size and dexterity make them excellent fighters on sand and craggy terrain, and when it’s time, the transcendent army attacking in rapid, hit-and-run strikes will be devastating for Torin’s men.
I glance at the cliffside behind me that overhangs a large bed of serrated rocks, archers standing along the edge with freshly fletched arrows already nocked. But it’s not the archers that lock my attention.
Aeverie watches me from the tapered point of the tallest cliff. She offers no passing smile, no nod of acknowledgment… nothing but the weight of her stare that threatens to knock me back a step, even with a stretch of beach and several stories of height between us.
Iron sinks into my stomach as every hair on my body stands pinpoint straight. Nothing good can ever come from a high priestess gifted with the ability to see the future giving you a look like the one she’s giving me right now. But I don’t let that unease show. Instead, I give her my back and look to the water once more.
Aeverie will magic the arrows into arcing higher and lodging deeper. She’s in the most advantageous spot for her power to best aid us, just as Alistair and I are in ours, the shifters in theirs… and my Mate in his.
Sin is farther down the beach but close enough I can hear as he orders for the elves along the shore to begin manipulating the water with Source. He is leading the first line of defense, ensuring none of Torin’s men reach Alistair and me before the elves in the rowboats reach the vessels. They’ll never endure the fire cannons without our shield stretched around them, ensuring they get close enough for their magic to reach the fleet. Torin’s weaponry was nearly our downfall in Blackreach, but we are better prepared for it this time. Our shields will hold, they must , because it will mean our abrupt end if they do not.
Sin finishes relaying the order, and in near unison, the elves raise their arms towards the sea, pearl light emanating from their fingertips. The elves’ magic is always void of color, and I’m beginning to think that perhaps it truly does stem from the earth as they believe, void of the chaos that tarnishes the collective and dyes our magics.
Sin must have accepted his father wasn’t going to try plunging a sword into our backs the second we looked away, because there he is galloping along the shore, a shadow atop a horse of moonlight.
“That’s our cue, princess,” Alistair says, giving my hand a slight squeeze.
I respond by attaching my magic to his, and together, we push out our shield. More, more, more, until it reaches the elves, and then we pull it taut, stretching it in either direction so it encases the rowboats in a phantom shroud.
Torin’s men made quick work to already lower their own small boats and begin rowing their way towards the shore, but the low tide will delay their approach. The elves’ magic aiding the violent current into a tumultuous wave will slow them ever further. Likely take a few of them out, too. Boats of that size aren’t equipped to handle a current of this magnitude, but they have no choice but to try and push their way through, even if that means sacrificing a few men and supplies to the Howling Sea.
Flaming arrows arc overhead, striating the sky with ribbons of smoke as they soar to find their marks, Aeverie’s magic propelling them forward. My collective strains in my temples the farther out the elves row, and the hand not gripping Alistair’s rises to press two fingers to my head, the cool pads of my fingertips providing some clarity.
“You alright?” Alistair asks at my side, and I nod.
“Yes, it’s just a lot of strain.”
Water roars in my ears as the sea rears up and hovers for a few moments as the elves pour their intention into it, then it crashes forward, a layer of foam blanketing the surface like fresh winter snow. Again, and again, and again, they steer the current, driving Torin’s boats back and capsizing some, but still they draw near.
Closer and closer until the first boats break through the current, and their passengers charge into a paddling frenzy, rowing themselves against the tide.
That’s when they start hopping out of the boats. Trudging through knee-height water, drawing the weapons from their backs and hips, with the approaching onyx sails of Torin’s reinforcements flapping in the distance.
“The rest of the fleet is here. Come now, get to the fucking boats,” I mutter to Alistair, gripping his hand tighter as I command our shield to stay flush with the elves. “A couple more minutes, and the tide should get them the rest of the way.”
Metal slaps against metal as our men meet their soldiers in the water. The wave-bending elves disperse, creating distance between themselves to better control the current now that our own men are standing in it. I swivel my gaze to find Sin in the water, cutting through Torin’s first wave of soldiers with savage brutality.
Disgust folds in my gut.
I was under no false impressions that Torin was a decent man, but the extent of his callousness sinks into my stomach at the sound of flesh splitting beneath steel. Torin’s fleet are sharks in the water, their weaponry far more advanced than our own, but their foot soldiers are nothing more than that—hired mercenaries that are a body to run through, a drain of our energy that buys Torin more time for them to cut through the current.
“How you doing, princess?”
I snap my head forward again, keeping an eye on Sin in my periphery. My husband was a warlord long before he was the Black Art. His station may have been given to him through an arbitrary Rite, but Sin’s reputation on the battlefield was earned . Having Adelphia’s magic stripped from him is unsettling, but I need to place trust in his decades of experience as a swordsman.
“Fine. You? You’re not going to leave me to go gobble up a late-night snack, are you?” I ask, the mix of rust and saccharine teasing my nose as blood begins to color the sea in pools of deep red.
I don’t take my eyes off the shore. None of Torin’s men have made it to sand yet, but it only takes one well-placed strike to break our focus. If I go down, Alistair will be left to shield the elves on his own, severing the strength of our ward in half.
As if Sin would ever let one of them get within a few yards of me, and that is perhaps the worst part of all. I refuse to allow my Mate to get himself killed by taking a sword through his back while his attention was divided protecting me. Which is why the elves need to reach those ships, and they need to reach them now .
Alistair licks his lips. “You’d think that after all these years, I’d have learned which is better—breathing through my nose or my mouth.” He shrugs, the leather of his cuirass sighing. “It’s a trick question, blondie. Both methods fucking suck, unless you’re the masochistic type and enjoy being deprived the one thing you need most.”
I don’t. In fact, my tongue turns to soil in my mouth as the scent of their suffering invades my nose and slips through the seam of my lips. Fear has made me hungry these past few weeks, my creature itching to sink its teeth into flesh and bone as I reap their blood from their skins and pump it into mine. Whatever it takes, whoever I must become, I would do it in a single heartbeat if it meant protecting the ones I love.
A sudden pang in my forehead buckles my knees, a swear falling from my lips as I regain my footing in the onyx sand. Alistair’s fingers tighten around my hand, mirroring a swear of his own as he wipes the back of his other arm across his forehead.
A firestorm erupts on the water, the foam turning a malignant shade of orange-red as flames from the cannons hit our shield and are forced to part around the rowboats. I close my eyes and focus on where my collective writhes in my mind, desperate to relinquish its hold and flee, but I strap it down with mental restraints. If we lose this shield, the elves lose the one barrier keeping them from being charred to blackened crisps.
“Fuck, they’re dispersing,” Alistair snarls. “We’re going to need to separate.”
When the pressure in my head lessens, I open my eyes and breathe a sigh of relief as the fire cannons extinguish the last of their flame. For now.
My relief is short-lived because Alistair is right. The once tightly packed vessels are distancing from each other, soldiers hopping onto more of the small boats and rowing towards our coast at several different access points. Our own soldiers are forced to stretch out to defend the beach, but it also thins Torin’s offense, forcing them to strike in smaller groups.
My eyes flit to Sin again, but it’s not him I’m most worried about right now. Everyone on this beach is a proficient fighter, but none of us are immune to the fire blazing from those cannons. The cannons that will be relit any second, their mouths aimed directly at the horde of elves whose magic is nearly within reach. We just need a few more swells of the tide, which has slowed as the wave-benders must keep relocating to avoid accidentally upturning our own defense.
“Fuck. Fuck ! Eyes up, princess,” Alistair hollers, and it’s then I notice the mass of arrows spearing towards us. More arrows than should ever be able to be fired at once, especially while packed that closely together. Fired from the same machinery we were met with in the city. The Horde of Wasps , I learned it was called. They arc across the sky like a murder of crows, directly towards Alistair and me. They must have figured out that we’re the source of the elves’ shield, but with how many arrows that machine launches, they’ll rain down far more casualties than just two bloodwitches.
“Can you hold it?” I shout.
“For now,” he answers quickly. “I’ll keep the shield; you keep us all from dying in about five seconds.”
I detach my power from Alistair’s, immediately spinning in Sin’s direction. My magic snaps back into its place behind my eye, and I fling it back out, this time directing the shield around the group nearest us, stretching it as far as I can to shroud Sin and his men on the beach, the elves bending the waves, and Alistair at my side.
After the attack in the city, Aldred had told us the Horde of Wasps takes approximately twelve seconds for its arrows to find their mark, give or take a couple seconds depending on exact distances. Judging from their current position, Alistair was right in that we have about five seconds before they find purchase in our flesh.
Four .
I watch the exact moment Sin takes notice of the arrows. He runs his blade through the man at his front, and his head jerks up with rapid realization of what has happened while his focus was engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Three .
I throw out a hand the second he spins towards me, my name a prayer on his lips. And then he’s running, time slowing as Sin races for me, preparing to hurl himself over my body to shield me from the arrows with his body.
Two .
I scream his name, and I scream for him to stop. There’s no time for me to tell him I’m shielding the beach; I need him to trust me.
Sin’s boots skid to a stop mere inches from mine, and goddess bless him, he stops himself from shoving me beneath him, risking my hold on the ward severing.
One .
The horde of arrows hit my shield, piercing my collective and embedding it with shrapnel. I bite through the pain, a hiss sneaking out between my teeth as I will my hold not to yield.
My ward does not falter, but the same cannot be said of my feet. I sag forward, and Sin’s arms loop under my armpits, halting my fall and holding me steady against him. “Wren, look at me. Wren ,” he demands again, this time snarling my name. He shifts to support me with one arm while his other calloused hand grabs my jaw. A quick smack stings my left cheek. “Open your eyes for me, love.”
It’s only then I realize they had closed, and I blink furiously, finding his face inches from mine. My mind snaps back to the present, and I right myself on my feet, the pressure in my head having ebbed significantly. In its place is a deep drowsiness… exhaustion .
A quick scan around us confirms my shield did not crack, and the elves and soldiers begin running down the beach, spreading themselves wide to defend the shore against the waves of Torin’s men now storming towards us from many different points in the sea.
A hand grabs my elbow, and I turn to find Alistair at my rear. His irises are painfully golden, emphasized by the deep purple veins snaked across the tops of his cheeks. His stance is off too, his usually stiff straight posture slumped into rounded shoulders, and his head is favoring one side. I glance to the sea and find our rowboats unscathed, the elves’ magic now nearly within reach of Baelliarah’s vessels. Alistair had protected them against the sheer force of those fire cannons alone, but it had cost him greatly.
“We need to separate,” I say. “We can’t protect the boats and the beach at the same time. Not with them spreading out like this.”
Alistair nods, the movement a touch too slow. “I’ll take the cannons.”
I eye him suspiciously. “Are you sure? You don’t look well. We can trade off.”
“We need to move, Wren,” Sin barks at my side. Of course, he wouldn’t want me to trade places with Alistair, not when the assault of those cannons nearly collapsed a bloodwitch far more feral than me. Not that absorbing the impact of a hundred arrows was a particularly pleasurable experience.
Alistair nods again. “Leave this to a witch with more bite,” he says, flashing me those pointed teeth, but the tease in his words doesn’t match his expression. There is something deeper brimming in those golden eyes, something I don’t like.
“Don’t go being all sacrificial now, Alistair,” I hiss.
“Wren,” Sin warns again at my side.
The bloodwitch flicks his head to the side, jerking his chin towards the beach behind me. “ Go ,” he orders. “Protect them, or we’ll lose too many too quickly. I’ll handle these godsdamned bloody fucks in the water.”
He doesn’t waste any more time arguing, giving me his back and running back to where the sea laps at the sand. Sin tugs me forward, and I allow him to, my mind quickly catching up with my feet. He begins barking orders for everyone to retreat up the beach. We need to get out of range of the Horde of Wasps, especially because I don’t trust for a single moment that Torin gave his crew any caution about firing when it meant risking his own soldiers. Not when we’re this outnumbered and he has the bodies to spare.
“You need to stay back,” Sin orders, jerking us both to a stop and giving me a gentle shove to put me behind him. “Preserve your magic to shield us.”
Sounds of battle sunders the twilight as metal clanks against metal, the fighting once again beginning as Torin’s men chase us up the beach. “I can’t just stand here while you all fight.”
“You’re not. You keep me from dying, so I can keep us all from dying. Understand me?”
I swallow. He’s right, and fuck , I know he’s right.
I just wish he wasn’t.
I nod, and Sin turns, immediately throwing himself back into the fight with both swords. The earth rumbles with the stampeding of paws as transcendents leap onto the beach, now able to pivot without as much risk of trampling our own. A cacophony of snapping jaws, throated growls, and screams that brittle my bones racket the night.
I keep a sharp eye on the elves and the ships, honing in on where a few soldiers begin priming the cannons once more. One final attempt to char the elves before their Source magic is within reach. Alistair needs to hold his shield strong—one fracture, and the entire ward could shatter. Every fiber in my being demands I race to join my collective with his, but I can’t risk leaving Sin and the others exposed.
A flash of color catches my periphery, and my head jerks towards the enormous red wolf, it’s three magnificent paws skidding into sand. Eldridge begins shredding through plated armor, but it’s not my friend that sends a pang of awe thrumming through my chest.
It’s his rider .
Donned in all-black fighting leathers, Ileana leans forward with thighs tightly gripped around either side of the saddle, a long flint-tipped spear held over her shoulder. She jabs and thrusts and pierces from atop her beast, her spear always primed over Eldridge’s left shoulder, protecting his vulnerable side, while Eldridge’s teeth and claws find purchase in the chests and guts of those unfortunate enough to be in his path.
Instinct pricks the back of my neck, and I spin on my heels, a ward immediately springing from my fingertips, though it will serve me little against an iron sword. A man with the smile of a snake lunges for me, and I dart to the left, barely missing the thrust of his blade.
I snatch the dagger from my thigh, forgoing the short sword on my hip. I’m not as adept with it, and I’ve grown quite fond of killing the scum of the earth intimately . A soldier plunges a sword into hundreds—maybe thousands—of guts while in the heat of a battle, but few get to experience the intimacy of running a dagger through a face. I’ve come to crave the disgust in their eyes as they watch the want materialize on mine the moment their juice begins to pulse from their split flesh, and they know I am about to reap so much more than their lives.
I take their fucking souls, and I swallow them whole like a godsdamned viper.
And this man with the malicious grin of a snake deserves nothing less than to be feasted upon by his own.
He tracks me, spinning to face me again, and the two of us begin to dance. This one either already lost his helmet or forwent one altogether, and his eyes rake over me with arrogance. I hiss at him, and he bares his teeth in a tight-lipped snarl.
I need him closer. A dangerous game when he’s wearing a suit of iron, but good thing my aim is fucking true. I drag my tongue across my top lip, my head canting with an edge of mockery. “So many have tried to kill me before, and you think one of Torin’s flunky soldiers is going to be the one to finally do it?” I laugh once, the sound a wicked, malicious thing. “Out here fighting for a man so eager to send you to your death. Tell me, is this the life you always dreamed of when you were a boy?”
We circle each other some more. Every step I take, he mirrors, and round and round we dance, more and more anger bleeding into his brown eyes. And when I flash him one last saccharine smile, I know I have him exactly where I want him. A man with a bruised ego is impulsive, so eager to reinflate his pedestal.
“That you would grow up and make your parents proud by pining for the approval of a king that views you as nothing more than a pawn? One that will not care to retrieve your body for a proper burial? You will be dumped into a hole in the ground, amongst the maggots and the thousands of other bodies we will slaughter here today, where no one will remember your name, your rank, or that you even existed at all.”
My words are cruel. Which is why they are also effective.
With a cry sharp enough to pebble my skin, he lunges for me, swinging his sword in a downward arc. Lithe and swift, I pirouette around him, thrusting my magic towards the back of his head. It catches him immediately, the one part of him not plated in iron, and I don’t just dig my mental nails into him, I shred at his scalp and push, forcing him face-first into the sand.
I dive for him immediately, using both legs to swiftly kick him onto his back before he can recover, and I sink to my knees, one thigh straddled to either side of his chest. I ignore the sear of the metal against my leathers, don’t register the blistering of my skin as my lips part, readying my tongue as I prepare to mist the air with his suffering. He blinks up at me as I raise my dagger above my head, that snake smile finally vanishing as his expression shifts into that of a terrified mouse.
I plunge the blade into his face.
Again.
A third time.
His essence rushes into me and swells my veins, my head tilting back as a deep breath puffs from my chest. Fuck , I needed that.
The sharp clang , clang , clang of steel-on-steel surrounds me, but I don’t miss the quickened footsteps heading in my direction. I jerk my head forward again, a hiss already slipping through the bars of my teeth.
Sin’s very presence silences my creature.
He stops a few feet away from us, his eyes dropping to where I punched my knife into the soldier’s face. My cheeks and forehead are sticky, and my tongue darts out to lick the few drops of blood that season my mouth. Sin says nothing as he beholds this black side of my heart, but I swear there’s a glimmer of something feral flickering in the depths of his feline eyes as I yank my dagger free and rise to my feet.
“Again!” a voice shouts from somewhere nearby. “The Wasps—get Her Grace! Now!”
I twist around and scan the water, swearing under my breath. “They’re reloading.”
Sin grabs my arm and points farther down the beach. “Alistair,” he growls. “They hit the elves with everything they had.”
I follow his finger and?—
“Alistair!” I echo, sprinting for the bloodwitch who lays collapsed, his alabaster skin a beacon against the midnight sand. I birth a shield of fire around me as I dart across the beach. I need to preserve my magic, but I need to not take an iron blade to the gut even more.
Sin follows on my heels, my own personal bodyguard keeping any soldiers from trying to flank me. I dive to my knees when I reach him, immediately grabbing his wrist and exhaling when a slow pulse beats against my fingertips.
“Hey, hey, hey,” the words spill out of me in time with the controlled smacks I give his cheek. “Alistair—wake up. Alistair. Alistair! Wake up!”
The bloodwitch groans, and his head turns slowly in my hands. “Wren,” he says softly, but his eyes don’t open. “Get them there. Almost there. Get… them there.”
I jerk my head up to find the elves in the sea. Thirty more seconds with the current tide and they’ll be close enough for their Source to target the vessels. I mutter a swear as I watch Torin’s men prepare the cannons in a final attempt to incinerate the fleet of rowboats, the wide mouths of their cannons pointed at either side of the elves from opposite vessels.
“You did good. You kept them alive.” I’m not sure if that fact surprises me or not. That the bloodwitch with an appetite of a starved bear forced himself to withstand the psyche weight of the inferno to the point of collapse. To protect the elves. To protect all of us .
A whistle rends the air.
Not a quick, shrill whistle—an eerie, crescendoing drawl that pebbles every inch of my skin and sends my heart beating mercilessly against its bone cage. Movement commands my attention, and I look up as a hundred arrows soar through the dusk. But they’re not coming for us. I trace a line between their arc and their target—soldiers from both kingdoms, a few shifters, several elves—all packed tightly together. Far, far too tightly.
A shadow zips by us, the thunderous hooves of his all-white steed sending ebony sand flying out behind him, and Dusaro’s horse nickers loudly, as if it were racing the dusk itself. With a cloak of billowing black, Dusaro barrels down the beach, towards the arrows’ target.
Towards Sera.
Sin lets out a low swear, and I grab his arm, steadying him. “I can’t protect them both,” I say hurriedly. My magic has to choose—protect the elves who are seconds from reaching the vessels, potentially turning the tide of this war, or Sera and her group who are now scrambling up the beach. They’ll never be able to outrun the Horde of Wasps, and we both know it.
I need to make a decision. And I need to do it right now.
Sin’s eyes narrow as he watches his father storm across the black sand, who now leaps off his horse and sprints towards them. I look back to the water, just as the crew is giving the call to ignite the cannons, many of the elves looking back to me and waving their arms frantically. The roar of the sea claims their screams, but even from this distance, their panic is apparent.
I see the elves’ fear in the ocean, and I hear Sera’s terror on the beach.
Alistair groans at my feet, and I raise my hands. Squeezing my eyes shut, I focus on the vault sealing the magic in my blood, and with a guttural howl, I throw my hands out.
The roar of the incandescence rips across the sea as the cannons unleash their full might against the elves, just as a symphony of cries ruptures the dusk. My eyes fly open, and tears roll down my cheeks as I watch the fire fold around my shield, the rowboats pushing right on through the blaze.
The fire dissipates, and the elves spring to their feet. A moment later, a wave rears up as if it were pulled from the very bowels of the sea, hovering over one of Torin’s vessels for a split second before it crashes down on the ship, scattering everyone and everything on board, and forcing several men over the railing to be swallowed by the surf.
There is no time to feel relief, and even if there was, it would be quickly eclipsed by the sudden hollowing of my chest, as if my heart ripped free from its cavity alongside my magic. I’m not even turned fully when Sin loops an arm around my waist, jutting his hip into my side to hold me upright. But my body does not sag.
It’s not that I don’t feel the exhaustion—I very much do. Bearing the weight of that last burst from the cannons has turned my bones to iron, my blood to a sticky tar that sludges through my veins. But how can I allow myself to feel something as fleeting as pain when I just…
“I killed them,” I choke out. My breath comes in short, rapid pants, and now my knees bow. “I’m so sorry, Singard. Gods, forgive me.” My words are no more than a whisper, likely lost in the blare of battle, but I know his transcendent ears hear my plea.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, and I force my head up to look at him. “Talk to me, love. Do you need healing?”
I only meet his eyes for a moment before they wander behind him. Men and women lay fallen across the obsidian sand, arrows protruding from the gap and flex points of their armor. Some still alive and inching along the beach, and some of them dead. But there’s one body I cannot look away from. He’s face-down, several fletched arrows spiked into the gaps of his armor, but his spine heaves like someone was punching him from within, the movement strained and unnatural, and?—
Oh . Oh no.
A thatch of dark hair emerges from beneath him, and I watch as Sera’s tiny hands twist into his cape as she hauls herself the rest of the way out from under him. Where she had been trapped in the sand, when Dusaro leapt off his horse and threw her beneath him, covering her body with his own as the arrows rained down in a vicious storm. Where the man who longed to hunt her kind to extinction had charged across the all-black beach to save the one all-consuming light in his life. Where the man who resented his son for carrying the blood of the beast in his veins has just acted as a human shield to protect the one beast he could never stop loving.
Sera’s cry of anguish is as dark as nightfall.
An unearthly wail pierces the twilight, the sound so haunting, so serrated, it shreds the dusk to slivers. She clutches Dusaro’s cloak, her head slowly dipping to rest sideways on his back while her shoulders tremor with torment.
It’s in this moment, in the shrillness of her cry, that a newfound understanding swaddles my chest.
I do not know Sera and Dusaro’s story.
I do not know the depth of their love, nor do I know how many thorns their hearts endured. I do not know their tribulations or trials, nor do I know their victories or wreckages. But one thing is certain.
Sera and Dusaro’s love story was epic.
But even the most epic of beginnings must come to an end, and I have loved deeply enough in this life to know that it is the most ferocious of loves that collapse the most violently.
Sin shouts for others to move Alistair off the beach, then turning to me, he asks, “Can you walk?”
“Yes, of course,” I brush him off, as if my collective didn’t just suffer a jeopardizing blow. The look he gives me tells me he sees right through my act. “I need to get Sera—you move off the beach. Now , Wren,” he shouts when I hesitate.
I swivel to look back to Sera and where she still clings to Dusaro’s body, either unaware that Torin’s rowboats are about a minute from being in shallow enough water to disembark, or simply uncaring of it. But something tells me the woman who single-handedly established an entire rebellion army isn’t ignorant to the peril closing in on her.
“I’m not leaving you, Singard, so do not ask me to.” Just as I won’t ask him not to risk himself further by going to Sera’s aid. Because I know, that despite everything, he cannot leave his mother there to die, mourning the death of a man who has hurt her in as many ways as she has Sin.
We share a look, neither of us arguing further because we do not need to. Because perhaps for the first time in this tumultuous storm the Black Art and I have tangled ourselves in, we share the same resounding understanding.
War is mangling, but even the bloodiest of battles can’t compare to losing the person that is the very blood in your heart.
As if sharing some unspoken cue, we both take off down the beach, my boots sinking into the sand, and my thighs burning as I work to hike my legs higher to traipse across the unforgiving grains. My creature howls in my flesh at the scent of blood fogging the air, at the foamy pools of red along the shore, and I hush her for now, promising to drop her leash in a minute. I needed to remain clear-headed while shielding the elves, but now… Between the shifters running wild and the malevolence thrumming in my heart, this will be the hour of the beasts.
Sera is quiet when we reach her. No, not quiet— silent .
The absence of noise unnerves me more than her cries had, her stillness over Dusaro’s body amidst a battle raging around her so unnatural, as if she were captured in a mural, cursed to forever exist in this harrowing scene. This torturous sliver of history.
Sin grabs her shoulders, and Sera’s head snaps up, a throaty, strangled sound crawling up and out of her chest.
“You must leave him,” he says quietly, but his hands pause on her shoulders, granting her a moment we don’t have.
She bays again, the sound cleaving my chest into two jagged pieces. Despite my resentment for the pain she has caused Sin, I wouldn’t wish this kind of soul sundering hurt on anyone.
“I can’t,” she moans through her tears. And then her head rips back and she wails Dusaro’s name, the song of her agony piercing my heart. That’s when I realize. When I truly understand the soul plunging depth of which Dusaro loved this woman.
Enough to Bond with her. Sera didn’t just lose her one merciless love.
She lost her Mate.
“Sera, we will move him, and I will make sure he has a pyre, but none of us will if we stay here. You need to come with me now, or you will die here beside him, and then there will be no one left to honor his memory because I promise you, I will not.”
She goes quiet again, her shoulders rocking as rapid breaths exercise her chest.
“At once, Sera,” Sin demands. “If you will not leave him for yourself, then leave his side for me.”
They were the right words to say. Sera looks up at that, her bleary eyes shifting to look at Sin, and a long moment passes between them. And then with a sharp swallow, she nods and climbs to her feet.
Sin orders for Dusaro’s body to be carried off the beach, and as soon as others begin lifting him, he yells for Sera to retreat. He didn’t need to. Her form is already trembling, and with a graceful leap from two feet, she sheds her skin and lands with four.
My breath hitches at the sight of her like this. Sera darts across the beach in a flash of midnight, her lean, feline body carrying her forward as her black paws bound across the sand. I only caught a glimpse of her face before she took off, but it would have been impossible to miss the brilliant yellow-green eyes against the mask of raven fur.
Sin is the spitting image of his mother’s beast.
A quick glance to Sin confirms he’s never seen her in this form before, and I wonder if he even knew that his parents had been Mated. That the reason for his father’s resentment was seated in the agony the Bonding embedded in him, a shifter ritual that would forever be nothing more than a curse for him, a memory that refused to leave his heart no matter how desperately he tried to shove it away with hate.
“We need to get you to higher ground,” Sin snarls, and I allow him to grab my waist as he pulls me forward, this part of the beach now mostly desolate in the aftermath of the arrows.
When the sand turns to soil, he calls for a horse, and we mount the steed, taking off in a gallop as violent as the sea roaring in our wake. This was always our plan—that once the shore was inevitably breached, that I would find higher ground to unleash my magic. Sin escorting me wasn’t rehearsed, but I don’t fuss, knowing he will promptly rejoin his forces as soon as I’m in position. I should be feeling a twinge of relief at knowing I will be able to unleash the malignance in my veins as soon as we reach my vantage point, but all I feel is this chilling, thick sense of dread stirring in my gut like a cruel poison.
Our horse climbs and climbs and climbs, up the hillside and over the craggy, asperous rock. Sin urges the steed as fast as it can go without laming one of its legs on the rugged terrain, but it’s not fast enough. Sin needs to get back to level-ground, and I need to rain down hellfire from the heavens. And we need to do it now.
When we finally clear the slope of the cliff, we ride across the precarious ledge, back towards the part that overhangs the beach and continues to wind around where most of the fighting has now congregated.
“You still with me?” Sin calls from the front of the saddle.
I don’t register his words at first, my own thoughts trampling one another faster than the horse’s steady beats against the rock. “Talk to me, wife,” he growls, this time glancing over his shoulder at me and?—
“Sin—stop!”
He whips back around, sliding a hand down one rein and leaning back to bring the galloping horse to a sudden halt. It high-steps in place for a moment, its hooves slamming the earth directly in front of the high priestess’s robes.
“Aeverie—what in the Hells?” Sin snarls, still using a hand to calm the snorting horse.
She doesn’t answer, doesn’t even acknowledge him at all.
Because her focus is on me.
“What is it?” I ask, throwing my leg over the horse and sliding off the saddle. I don’t know why I dismount, other than that instinct demanded it.
I walk to her, the priestess’s white robes billowing out behind her as a squall rips across the cliffside. I dare a glance to the ledge and the toothed rocks that lie below, the strong gusts suddenly making me very uncomfortable.
“I did not see it,” Aeverie says, her words cold as the sea foam.
My head snaps back to her. “Didn’t see what?”
“You asked me before, after you lifted the chaos from the Vale, if I had seen that you and Singard Kilbreth would survive the transferral. I did not see it,” she repeats.
I study her curiously with a slow nod. I had wondered, and I never forgot that the priestess didn’t answer. Vox had told me that Aeverie had seen that one of us would survive, but she did not know which of us would be the one to succumb.
“Interesting time to be telling me this,” I say cautiously.
“I did not see that you would survive, because I cannot see what has not happened. Fate is fickle, blood mage. I saw many different outcomes, some of them you both lived, some you both died, but my strongest were the ones where only one of you perished. But still, Sight had shown me glimpses where both of you walked the Vale, and so I knew that possibility existed. It was dependent on your choices if that was to be the path you took. Just as it is now.”
Sin dismounts behind me, a snarl on his lips. “Speak freely, elf.”
“What does that mean? I can’t take the riddles anymore, Aeverie. In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have the godsdamned time to figure them out right now.”
“It means you need to make a decision. And you need to make it very quickly. There are several vessels approaching with ballistae on deck. Alistair’s connection to Source has suffered too grave an assault to continue, which means the strongest of our offense has been cut in half. Here you stand, presenting well, but one more shield of those cannons and you would be no better off than Alistair. That I did see with clarity because that was the only outcome should you have attempted it once more.”
My hands ball at my sides. “And you didn’t think to tell me that before I made the decision to stop shielding them?”
“It was not my truth to tell,” she snaps. “You may find yourself enslaved by many things, blood mage, but your future is always yours to alter. Whatever choices you make are organic, as is the fate that follows them.”
I look over to Sin and find him staring out at the sea, his shoulders raised and his stance impossibly tense. I follow his gaze and?—
“Ballistae,” I whisper.
The priestess must have glimpsed them from this vantage point earlier, and her milky sclera did not lead her astray. Onyx sails billow with strong, resounding flaps as more of Torin’s fleet move in front of the horizon like a shiver of sharks, heavy bolt throwers on their decks. More ships appear from the southwest, their banners undoubtedly belonging to the elven fleet.
“They don’t know,” Sin says. “Those ballistae surely have exceeding range. They’ll be able to reach us from there, and that’s assuming they don’t turn them around and fire on the elves attempting to flank first. The kingdom ships will be arriving from the east at any moment… They won’t be expecting the ballistae. Neither fleet will know.”
“No one down below knows either,” I say, the words nearly getting caught in my throat. “If they take out our fleets, it’s all over.”
Sin says nothing, but his silence is answer enough. I spin back to the priestess.
“Aeverie, you must have seen something!” My words cut off when I notice the dagger she must have pulled from her robes. An ornate hilt with twin rubies embedded into either side of the sweeping crossguard. The same knife I tried stealing from Vox’s quarters, the same one I once plunged into the Black Art’s heart.
“We need Adelphia,” I breathe. As soon as I say the words, I know with every ounce of my being that they are true. “You need to return her magic to Sin. Aeverie, we need her.”
“Vox was not lying when he told you the magic cannot be taken out of the dagger. Once her power was siphoned into the rubies, it cannot be suctioned back out. The rubies are direct siphons to Source. To overpower such a pull would require a magic much closer to the heart than that of an elf. Even an elven high priestess.
“I cannot tell you what I’ve seen, blood mage, but I can tell you that the fates of everyone else beneath us relies on you. They do not rely on him,” she motions to Sin with a quick jerk of her chin. “You, Wren. Blood has always commanded your magic, at constant war with your heart. Perhaps those two work more fluently together than you once believed.”
I don’t have time to even think about smacking her upside the head for being so godsdamned vague before she’s grabbing my hand and placing the hilt in my palm.
“The chaos in your Vale may have been on kingdom hands, but the blood spilled here today is undeniably on yours,” Sin growls, appearing at my side. “God magic doesn’t belong to man, you claimed, but how quickly your morals change when your own life is at stake, Priestess ,” he spits her title.
“Why are you giving this to me—you just said the magic can’t be taken out of it,” I say, turning the weapon over in my hand, scrutinizing it as if I could somehow find a loophole scribbled in the elegant design.
“I said a lot of things, blood mage, but I will emphasize one—your heart has always been your guiding compass. Allow it to lead you now.”
She turns to leave, but Sin grabs her arm, claws vicing around her wrist. “If you do not help us, you are condemning us all to die, Aeverie. And if you somehow survive,” he warns, “I will personally rise from the depths of this earth and drag you to the blackest, most vile parts of the realm for your spirit to wander for eternity.” The venom in his words encases my spine in ice, but the priestess matches his promising stare with one of her own.
“I have done all that I could. It is her heart that decides the rest.” With that, she yanks her wrist free and gives us her back as she rounds the bend of the cliffside to rejoin the archers, the weight of the dagger like lead in my hand.
“Fucking priestess,” Sin snarls, running a hand along the underside of his jaw as he paces the ledge. “We can never trust the elves so long as they look to her, can never trust Vox who can’t take a piss without her permission, can never…” he trails off, turning towards the sea once more and the ballistae that are growing larger the closer they get to the shore. “ Fuck ,” he shouts, the growl in his voice belonging to his beast.
I stop listening to him, instead replaying Aeverie’s words over and over in my mind, each loop listening for something I may have missed. I study the dagger in my hand. Why would she have given me this? Why now? If Adelphia’s power can only be put into the blade but never removed…
Blood has always commanded your magic, at constant war with your heart. Perhaps those two work more fluently together than you once believed.
Surely, she’s referring to my own moral code that has kept me from ever fully indulging in my truest craving. But I’m not riddled with the same fears that once plagued me. I can control it, because I will not allow myself to become the monster portrayed in the legacy of the bloodwitch.
Your heart has always been your guiding compass. Allow it to lead you now .
Protecting the ones I love has always shaped my decisions, but how am I to protect them when I’m up here on this godsdamned ledge with the impossible task of getting Adelphia’s magic out of this dagger and back into Sin? HOW?!
It is her heart that decides the rest .
I blow out a breath, commanding my lungs to settle and my mind to clear. I’m missing something; I have to be! Adelphia’s magic can’t be siphoned out of the dagger because it’s stored in the rubies, and the rubies are directly channeled to Source. No mage, not even an ancient elven priestess, can overpower the pull of Source, but if we can’t reverse the insertion of the magic, then…
I gasp. Audibly and painfully. Sin turns around, his stare demanding to know the reason.
“Transferral,” I whisper.
“What are you talking about?”
“The magic that binds Adelphia’s power to those rubies—if it can’t be reversed, then that means it can only be transferred.” My words pick up speed as I voice them, the pieces of this riddle locking into place, one by one.
Sin clicks his tongue. “The last time we attempted a transferral with elven magic, it nearly killed both of us.”
I look at him, and he must see the spokes spinning in my head because his expression suddenly hardens to granite. “Wren, I don’t know what idea you have in your head right now, but I suggest you forget it immediately.”
“It’s not an idea. It’s the solution,” I insist. “If we cannot rebind Adelphia’s power to yours by siphoning it out of the dagger, that means we need to put the… put the dagger in…” I trail off, looking out at the sea as the puzzle continues to snap together in my mind.
Sin is suddenly in front of me, his arms crossed. “Are you suggesting you want to stab me again, love? And here to think you seemed so regretful last time.”
“Blood has always commanded my magic,” I repeat Aeverie’s words, “and the solution must be decided by my…”
My eyes snap back to his.
“Singard, you need to stab me in the heart.”