Seventeen #3
He kisses my forehead, soft and gentle, and I want to cry. I just might.
Behind him, Nyxen slumps sideways and Vaelis looks barely conscious. The dome trembles.
Kael tries to stand, but his legs buckle. He looks up at the ceiling of the dome, as if reading something in the shadows I cannot see. “If this dome falls,” he says, voice small, “the light will shred them. Blinded, likely dead.”
He looks at me, the fear finally showing through. “We’re trapped, Luceris.”
“I’ll handle it,” I say, and I mean it.
“If you go out there—” He shakes his head. “You can’t.”
“How do you think I got in here?” I snap. “Alaris is out there right now. Fighting for you.”
He closes his eyes, letting his head fall forward. “He’ll die.”
“Not if I go now.”
There is no time for goodbye. I press my hand to his cheek, and he leans into it.
I push to my feet and stride towards the inner wall of the dome.
It barely resists me, as though it remembers me as a friend. The darkness splits around my body, and when I step through, the world slams into me: blinding, burning, all the violence and pain and memory returning at once, magnified into a single searing instant.
I am ready for it.
I will not look away.
White and gold crash into black, searing every cell. I blink, but it doesn’t help. The wind is wild now, a predator let loose. It rakes my skin and fills my ears with a scream that never stops.
In the centre of the dais, Alaris has Atheron by the throat.
Not literally, but he might as well. They stand only a few feet apart.
Alaris has one hand outstretched, the other clutching his stomach as blood runs down his sleeve.
Atheron staggers, battered by a wall of invisible force.
The Fireborn heir is scorched, his once-pristine uniform burned away in places, hair unruly, eyes wild. He grins through broken teeth.
“You think you can kill me with a breeze?” Atheron spits, flames curling off his tongue.
Alaris doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to. His focus is absolute. Every part of him is fixed on holding Atheron inside the eye of the storm he has created—and keeping everyone else out. Around them, the winds shriek.
Atheron tries to step forward, but the wind tightens, pinning him in place and stealing the breath from his lungs.
I sense what Alaris is about to do.
And I don’t intervene.
Alaris narrows his eyes and twists his wrist. The storm recedes a fraction, and a razor of wind materialises, warping the air around it. It forms a crescent so sharp it seems to glow.
He launches it at Atheron’s neck.
At the last possible instant, Maleiros moves.
He’s just a blur. A jet of fire propels him—a flash of red and brown—between Atheron and the razor.
The wind strikes him full in the chest, cutting straight through.
He doesn’t even scream—just collapses to his knees, blood spraying in a fan across the glass.
He falls forward, gasping. He is dead before he hits the ground.
His body rises into the air, as so many have before it, peeling away to dust as the golden-red light of his life force spirals towards the Mother Shard. It seems to explode on impact with her crown, one final flare before it is swallowed.
The counter pulses, shifting from eight to nine.
Atheron is free. He stumbles but throws up a wall of fire between himself and Alaris. Through the flames, Atheron stares at him with something like awe, or maybe it’s just hatred stripped bare.
“You wasted it,” Atheron snarls. “You wasted your chance.”
Alaris staggers, the blood from his stomach wound slick and bright. “I had you though. You’re nothing—” He doubles over, retching.
Atheron roars, a sound more animal than human, and unleashes a river of fire straight at Alaris.
I throw myself between them, shield up, but the fire is beyond anything I have seen before. The heat knocks me off my feet, sending me tumbling backwards across the mirrored dais. I slide to a halt, tasting blood.
When I look up, the world is eclipsed in red. Alaris is engulfed, every inch of him burning, but still he fights. The wind rips outward, a hurricane in every direction, but the air is sucked away, feeding the fire, making it worse. I see Alaris’ mouth open in a scream, but I can’t hear it.
I push onto my knees and crawl, every moment fresh agony. I know I can’t save him, but I try anyway.
Atheron watches, arms crossed, smiling as if he’s just won a prize.
I reach Alaris and throw myself over him, rolling us both across the glass.
I summon a shield, a dome of golden light so thick I pray it can starve the flames.
But the fire rages on, eating us alive. Flesh bubbles on my back, the nerves burning down to nothing. I don’t care. I only care about Alaris.
I clamp my arms around him, smothering the flames as best I can. He shudders, then sags in my grip.
“Alaris,” I plead, throat raw. “Stay with me.”
He opens his eyes—pale, the colour leeched from them. “Did I get him?” he gasps.
I hesitate.
He smiles anyway. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Thought so.”
He grins. “Tell my sister—she was right. About the wind.”
“I will,” I say. Another promise I can’t keep.
His eyes lose focus—not slowly, but all at once, like something vital has slipped loose inside him.
The fight leaves him all at once.
Something in me just... stops.
Alaris’ body hovers slowly into the air. Scarred and ruined, a burnt-out copy of the boy I’d known.
His skin glows golden, his fibres unspooling, drifting away, carried by a phantom breeze as the golden-red light of his life force streams towards the Mother Shard.
The nine on the death counter twists, collapses, and becomes a zero.
If only that were true.
A golden slash carves itself beside it.
One. Then zero.
The death count is ten.
Atheron approaches. He doesn’t rush me. He doesn’t need to. The fire coils around him, eager. “Was that it?” he asks. “Is it done?”
I want to kill him. I want to rip his heart out. I have never wanted anything more.
Somewhere below, I hear another scream, high, human, desperate. I think it’s Marissa, but it could be Morwen. It doesn’t matter.
There is a moment—just a breath—where I think this trial will never end.
Then I am gone.
I am in the Embrace, flat on my back, gasping for air. My body mends itself, becoming whole, but the pain stays behind, a ghost in every muscle.
I roll to my side and dry heave. There’s nothing in my stomach to give.
I sit up, and the world is quiet.
Too quiet.
I want Kael. I need him.
I press my face to my hands. A scream claws up my throat, but I swallow it down.
I survived.
But I am hollowed out.
Every trial takes something else from me.
Soon there will be nothing left to take.