CHAPTER 80
What new hell is this?” Quin shouted.
There was a break in the onslaught, and the others turned. In the distance, two huge, shadowy figures swooped through the sky, long tails trailing behind them. Their enormous pointed wings banked, and the creatures dove, the scales on their backs reflecting the sun.
Cosette gasped. “Fucking dragons.”
“Avydra,” Dalagorn said, his thick ogre lip twisting. “The smaller ones.”
“But big enough to swallow you whole,” Quin assured him. “First, they’ll roast you.” He hissed. “How many more beasts can we take on? Especially ones that size.”
Melizan squinted. “Look,” she said. “Look closely at those small shadows around them. They’re hunting an incoming regiment. Of Fomorians. I think they’re helping us.”
“God, I’ve missed this. Never thought I’d say that,” Kierus said.
“It’s a surprise to me too,” Tyghan grunted as he halved a hyagen.
Their horses had come, and Tyghan and Kierus fought side by side with other sky fighters, Perry, Sloan, and Jarvis nearby.
Sloan had only briefly raised his brows.
Kierus was fierce and holding his own, making as many kills as the rest of them, so for now, he was on their side, and nothing else mattered.
“I’m sorry,” Kierus said after they dispatched another restless dead. “I should have thought of another way. I’m sorry I made a bad choice. A frightened choice.”
“I know. I saw your painting.”
“But in some ways, it was a good choice too.”
“In some ways, yes,” Tyghan reluctantly agreed.
“She is smart, Bristol.”
“I know.” It seemed that was all Tyghan could say. And discussing this now, of all times? While they were fighting for their lives? He couldn’t understand, but it felt good. Good to have something back, maybe something that could never be lost or destroyed.
They spoke between dives, dodges, and stabs, their words punctuated by the heavy breaths and grunts of battle.
“You love my daughter?”
“Completely.”
“You’d do anything for her?”
“Is this an interview? Now?”
Kierus laughed. “Sounds like it.”
“Anything.”
“Then you know. You know what it’s like. Bank right!”
Yes, Tyghan thought. I know.
A huge piece of carcass fell between them.
“You like it?”
“Like what?”
“The painting.”
“Like isn’t the right word. I hate it. But it’s good.”
“I hate it too. Its why I have to keep painting it. I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I know,” Tyghan said again. He knew.
“Behind you!”
They both spun instinctively, like a precise timepiece, still remembering how they moved together, and a restless dead was split in three clean pieces.
Tyghan spotted a flash beneath another hot spot of the battle. It was Eris, making a crazy, dangerous dive toward the floor of the valley. Something was wrong.
“Team with Sloan!” Tyghan told Kierus. “I have to check on Eris!”
But Kierus had other places to be—and another person to find.
Someone who needed him. He hadn’t seen her brilliant copper hair anywhere.
He had even called her name near the Mother Ring.
The battle only drowned him out. But the skies had thinned now.
His chances were better. Or he would hunt down Kormick. The coward always kept her close.
Eris dodged hyagen, restless dead, and Fomorian warriors as he dove in a straight line to where Dahlia had fallen from the plateau to the shadows below.
He refused to lose sight of her. The short distance seemed to take forever.
He finally landed near her still body and jumped from his horse.
All he saw was blood. Pools of blood. “Dahlia!” he cried as he ran to her, hoping for any signs of life.
He fell to his knees and brushed her silver hair from her forehead.
He called her name again, and looked at the gashes around her abdomen.
He pressed his hands to them, but the blood only gushed through his fingers.
Cantes! Shant! He shouted every spell he knew to close, weave, and stop.
The flow slowed, but he had to get her to Esmee or Olivia.
He scooped her gently into his arms. “It’s all right, my love,” he whispered. “You’re going to be fine.”
Her eyes fluttered open. “Eris?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m taking you to Esmee. Everything is—”
“Eris, I’m sorry. At the tent, I was going to say—”
“Don’t talk. Save your strength,” he ordered. “There’s nothing you need to say. We—”
“Yes,” she said weakly, “I need to tell you.” Her gaze rose to meet his, her pale blue eyes glassy. “I love you,” she said. “I’ve always loved you.”
“I know. Hold on, Dahlia. You are my rain. Without you I am the scorched earth.”
He pulled her onto his horse, holding her tight against him, and then Tyghan was there, clearing the way for him as they rushed to get help.
“Where are they?” Kormick screamed, not expecting an answer from the twelve guards who surrounded him.
He scanned the sky. The restless dead were already thinning—and no more clouds were in sight.
His army of warriors was thinning too. How long could they last without the endless supply of demons streaming in to support them?
Below him, there were still too many archers for him to take a chance and make a run for the Stone of Destiny.
The protective ward above the ring and his wall of shield warriors would keep it secure for now.
He circled, trying to get a glimpse of Maire, but he was too high to see her.
Only the tops of stones and the dark shadows they cast were visible.
Had she summoned the dead as he ordered?
She had to be there, safe in the shadows somewhere.
“Go down,” he ordered one of his guards. “See what’s taking her so long!”
The guard had just reached the ground when he was shot by an arrow, killing him instantly. Elven arrows. Kormick hated the creatures. He ordered another guard to go down, and he left hesitantly.
And then Kormick spotted a figure skirting the standing stones.
Maire? He flew a little lower on his horse, and saw her weaving among the stones again.
Chestnut hair. No horns. It was Bristol.
She hadn’t left as promised. Was she the one thwarting Maire?
He reached up and touched the crown on his head, its protective magic humming beneath his fingers.
Other than with Tyghan, and a small skirmish as he escaped him, he hadn’t encountered any other combat that would deplete its magic.
He could risk a few arrows—and use his remaining guards as a shield for the rest.
Maire whirled, her eyes flaming. “What have you done?” she said, not as a question but as an accusation. “You promised me you would leave.”
“I lied. You know about lying, Mother. Can we stop now? Can we finally stop?”
“You said if I gave you Cael—”
“You aren’t listening, Mother. I lied. I said what you wanted to hear.”
“For Cael?”
“No. For Elphame. For Father. For Cat and Harper. For you. I’m taking you home. Your time here is over.”
She shook her head like Bristol was speaking gibberish. “How were you able to close the portal?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m bloodmarked just like you. The tick is gone.”
Guilt flashed through her mother’s eyes.
She glanced down at her palms, like they itched.
The power. Bristol understood. She had felt its enticing allure too.
“You don’t understand,” Maire said. “I need—” She turned away and lifted her hand to a stone on the outer perimeter.
A bright stream of energy burst from her palm making the stone light up.
She began to name coordinates, “The caves, the—”
Bristol raised her palm too, allowing her own energy to stream out and wind around her mother’s, and then pulled back. She felt the sharp tug of her mother’s energy snapping. Maire’s light and power disappeared.
“Stop!” her mother screamed, her chest shaking as she gasped for breath. She lifted her hand again, brilliant light streaming out once more, and Bristol did the same, choking her power, closing it up before it could even take hold.
“I will do this all day with you, Mother. You are not reopening the Abyss. Please. Come home with me.”
Maire’s eyes glistened in the shadows. “You don’t understand this world. You haven’t been here long enough. Kormick—”
“Kormick is done! Can’t you see his power waning already? You owe him nothing!” Bristol stepped closer and grabbed her mother’s shoulders. “Listen to me! Sometimes you get another chance, Mother. This is yours.”
Her mother’s eyes locked on to hers, and the pain Bristol saw in them was bottomless, the depth endless.
Bristol ached for her, but she wouldn’t back down.
She kept a firm grip on her shoulders. “Remember, Mother. Listen to my voice, and remember. Listen to Cat and Harper and all of us laughing around a campfire, Daddy playing a tune on his harmonica. Listen. You are the strongest woman I know. You found the dream once, and you can find it again—and this time, you’ll keep it. ”
She saw the panic in her mother’s face, still resisting, but Bristol wouldn’t stop, not trying to sell her something false this time, but something true, something her mother once had: her love of her loom, the seashore, powdered doughnuts, rose oil baths, orange soda, and her family.
“Your family wants you. We want you back.”
Bristol watched her mother’s eyes transform, like Bristol had finally shaken something loose inside her.
The cold glass faded, and her eyes became the ones that searched the night with Bristol and pointed out the stars, the eyes that sparked with pride when her daughters recited a play without missing a line, the eyes that held dreams as she wove another colorful scarf.
The eyes that looked over her husband’s shoulder, admiring his new painting.
Her green irises shimmered with puddles.
“I love you, Mother. It’s not too late.”
And then a furious shout destroyed the moment, and they both turned toward it.
It was Kormick, surrounded by guards, spears in hand. “Open the portal!” he shouted at Maire. “Summon them now!” And then to Bristol, “Step away from your mother. Closer to me.”
Closer? His gaze was deadly. He didn’t want her closer for old times’ sake.
He wasn’t Mick with his eyes full of lust. He was Kormick, filled with hate.
He wanted a clean shot at her. He wanted to kill Bristol without harming Maire.
But then she noticed a glimpse of something else in his gaze.
Terror? A shine in his frozen eyes pinned her in place, and his parted lips were set with dread.
The dawning was sudden, cold needles pricking her spine.
She stood near the inner ring of standing stones, closer than him, only one stride away from a place where the earth felt footsteps—and judged them.
If he charged her, she had only one direction to run—straight to the Stone of Destiny itself.
Her mother moved fully in front of Bristol. “Kormick, she’s my daughter.”
Distant shouts erupted from the opposite direction.
“Bring her forward, Maire,” he said more urgently. “And she’ll be fine.”
Metal clanked and golden spears beat against shields, the sound of combat getting closer. A wall of knights pounded a path through the warriors still protecting the ring—clearing it for another squad that ran toward it. Cael was in the middle of them.
“No!” Maire cried out. “No!” Bristol wasn’t sure if she was shouting at the knights or Kormick, but she grabbed Bristol and swept her behind the inner standing stones and into the Mother Ring.
Kormick screamed and ran after them. Maire kept going, her grip iron around Bristol’s wrist. The Stone of Destiny was only thirty feet away.
“Mother—” Bristol knew her intent and strained against her grip, like the time her mother dragged her toward the portal to send her home, but this time nothing could stop Maire.
She was thwarting Cael, Kormick, maybe all of Elphame.
She was summoning a different kind of power.
Come to me. She was a mother dragging her daughter away from a park and rubbing herbs in her hair and whispering spells to protect her.
Determined. She dragged her to the center, more screams erupting, not just Kormick’s anymore, and just before Maire reached the center, she stopped and pushed Bristol onto the Stone of Destiny.