Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
Septimus’s blood sprayed against the ruined wall, twisting and spiraling into the air.
“I knew you’d come here,” Oraya snarled at him. “Such a collector of god-touched weapons, right?”
I moved before I thought.
Her back was to me, black wings spread, streaks of searing red outlining the bony joints in the darkness. Long, wet, black hair ran down her back. I aimed right there, right between those wings—right at her heart.
She sensed me before I could land it.
Shockwaves reverberated through my broken body as the Nightborn queen whirled in time to block my strike. Her weapons, those mesmerizing blades of red and broken black steel, burst with Nightfire.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Septimus fall to the ground in a heap. Gods fucking help me, there was so much blood. It now reached up in hungry twists.
Our weapons clashed in a cacophony of steel. Another roll of thunder shook the ground. A bolt of fear in my chest, as the distant shrieks of soulless rose from the forest.
She was fast. I was injured. I barely slipped her blade—but only barely. Her leg hooked around mine, and I tripped, offering her an opening to push me to the wall. The tip of one blade pierced my shoulder as she held me there.
A flash of lightning illuminated her face, reflecting in her bright silver eyes. They narrowed at me, curious. Her Heir Mark glowed red on her throat, disappearing beneath the neckline of her leather armor.
“Do you have any idea who you’re aligning yourself with, Kyrene?” she said.
Perhaps my surprise was visible, because she laughed softly.
“Of course we’ve been doing our research into you, too, Vindica Ultis.”
Her blade slid a little deeper. The pain was agonizing.
“I won’t kill you,” she said. “But only because—”
I grabbed her wrist and twisted. My flesh tore as I seized her surprise, using it to grab Zefiah’s hilt and swing.
A spatter arced over my face. I’d hit her, though I wasn’t sure where. I landed heavily on the ground, and as Oraya righted herself, I bolted for Septimus.
He lay in a heap, unmoving. My heart sank as I realized he was barely even conscious. His eyes were fully crimson now, wet splotches of it leaching into the whites. His blood wound over his body like poisonous snakes.
He couldn’t fight like this. Certainly couldn’t defend himself against a Nightborn queen.
I had seconds to make my move. Already I could hear the incoming whoosh of the queen’s wings as she dove for us.
Septimus could not fight. Could not flee. Could not take cover.
So I’d do it for him.
I gave his body a mighty push, sending him over the edge of the ruined floor and rolling into the ravine.
I whirled around just in time to see Oraya changing course, ready to go after him. Her wings were spread, their streaks of red brilliant even in the darkness of the night storm.
I threw myself at her.
There was nothing graceful in my strike compared to the inhuman beauty of the way she moved.
The tip of her left wing nearly tripped me, so my lunge was more of a controlled fall.
Still, it was enough to knock her off-course.
With a growl of frustration, she whipped toward me.
Her counter was so quick I couldn’t even try to dodge it, a fresh wound opening on my right arm.
Zefiah hit flesh again, sliding along her left wing, but she didn’t so much as flinch.
I staggered, attempting to right myself as she came after me again.
My only goal now was to keep putting myself between her and Septimus—to disorient her enough that she would lose track of where he was.
But to be at the center of her focus, the singular mark of such an efficient predator, was terrifying.
Still, I had some advantages. She didn’t want to kill me. She’d had the opportunity already, and had looked at me with such curiosity. It was the same thing that had saved my life when the Shadowborn had come after me, too. I was interesting.
So when the Nightflames burst up around us, surrounding us in blinding white, I ignored them.
I knew she wouldn’t let me burn to death.
Still, our weapons clashed, the melody of metal against metal growing faster and faster and faster as our battle rose into a bloody dance.
The white fire sapped away all terrain save for Oraya’s determined face, silver eyes locked to me.
I was bigger than she was, more muscular, but she was lithe and quick.
And she had those fucking wings. They were at times a liability here, in terrain littered with obstructions that limited her ability to extend them, but they also allowed her to slip my strikes by vaulting into the air, or letting the gusts of storm wind propel her to or away from me, forcing me to block from above, from below, from either side.
I had to ground her.
I stumbled over a crooked stone beam and barely managed to raise Zefiah in time to block her as she pounced over me, our faces inches from each other’s.
“At first we thought he’d kidnapped you,” she said. “Because that’s what Bloodborn do. And what kind of human would help the kingdom that was wiping out their kind?”
With a grunt of exertion, I thrust Zefiah up. Beads of black-red blood rained over me—brighter than vampire blood, darker than human. But Oraya barely reacted. She sneered through the fresh blood dripping down her forehead. Pain snaked over my shoulder as I failed to dodge her next blow.
“Then we realized that, unlike all the seers and midwives and healers he had held against their will, you actually wanted to be there,” she spat. “What did he promise you?”
I huffed a laugh as our weapons clashed again, giving her a wolfish grin. “Just money. I’m a cheap whore.”
She scoffed. “Then I see why you two get along.”
We danced deeper into the ruins, where we had to duck and weave between crumbling stone columns and rotting beams and half-collapsed walls.
The mud slid beneath my feet, the terrain steeper with every step.
Oraya pulled her wings in tight—no other choice in such close quarters—forcing her down to the ground on my left.
I glanced over my shoulder at the ruins behind me. Pulsing gold leached from the pit of the remains of the temple and Shiket herself. Now, we were close enough that little wriggling threads of light seeped up from beneath rocks and cracks.
If Oraya wanted to keep Shiket’s remains from Septimus, why hadn’t she gone after them herself? Was it because, despite her human blood, she couldn’t enter what remained of Shiket’s temple? Did godlight hurt her, too?
I chanced another look over my shoulder, judging the distance between us and the nearest beam of gold seeping up through the ruins.
We had run into what had once been a three-story building, but it was now missing half its walls, toppled and sliding down the steepening ravine.
Through the absent back wall, I could see a rotted door to an askew balcony, and what looked like a long, sheer drop.
I let myself be distracted too long.
The storm had grown more violent the closer we came to the temple, and now, a fresh wave of torrential rain poured down over us, along with a burst of wind that struck me at just the wrong time.
I tripped over a piece of debris. With a sickening crack, my ankle twisted in a way biology never intended.
I gasped a curse.
And then a bolt of pain speared my torso.
I looked down to see a glowing blade of red piercing my leather jacket, pinning me to the wall, a wound open in my side.
Fuck. Fuck.
I swore Oraya’s eyes glowed with the next crack of lightning. The red shards in her blades gleamed. I sank down, letting her loom over me, wings spreading as her feet touched the ground, long tendrils of black hair falling behind her.
As she descended, she looked nearly as powerful as the gods themselves. Hell of a final sight.
I raised my free hand. “Good fight,” I rasped. “I think you’ve won.”
My words were barely audible over the roar of rain.
Oraya smiled. Funny that she was supposedly half human. Her teeth were sharp as any vampire’s.
“You made a mistake when you chose your side,” she said.
I returned her a bloody grin. “Chose? I told you, I was bought. And hey, I already said I’m cheap, if you’d like to make a competing offer.”
The weakness of my own voice startled me. It rattled with a wet rasp. Zefiah must have still been lending me at least some of her magic, because I was certain that otherwise, I would have lost consciousness.
Oraya lowered before me. Her hand reached for her blade, wedged against my side. At the faintest touch of the hilt, pain blinded me.
A smirk twisted the corner of her mouth.
“Can’t buy decency,” she said. “Or intelligence.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes to the back of my head. Sanctimonious bitch.
And at just the right moment, just as she stepped close enough to retrieve her blade, I seized a piece of metal from behind me and slammed it as hard as I could through her chest.
Even as I made my strike, I wasn’t totally sure what I had grabbed.
I only knew that it was long and thin, and, most importantly, pulsed with the familiar hot glow of Shiket’s magic.
It turned out that it was a piece of gold debris, perhaps once a handle to the spear of one of Shiket’s Sentinel statues that lined the halls of the temple, or a rod that had held candles around one of her altars.
I didn’t give a fuck. All that mattered was that it was pointy, that it still burned with Shiket’s touch, and that I struck hard enough to break through Oraya’s Nightborn leather armor.
I’d hit a little too far to the right to strike her heart. It wouldn’t kill her. But it made her lurch backward, stumbling. Seconds, just seconds, for me to capitalize on the opening.
Her blade was still lodged in my side. But I tore it free. Pushed forward. Pushed through the pain.
Seized Zefiah.
Time slowed.
Oraya’s eyes locked to mine. From the look in her eye, I got the distinct impression that she no longer felt especially motivated not to kill me.
I threw my broken body forward as she lifted her hand. As blue flame sprung up around us. As pain consumed me—gods, a truly incomprehensible amount of pain, worse than the wound in my side, worse than burning in Shiket’s death throes.
I couldn’t help it. I staggered, even though I threw every shred of physical strength I had into pushing forward because I had a heartbeat, if that, to land this blow.
I saw it slipping away as Oraya ripped the golden rod from her chest, tossing it aside.
Well, shit.
She lunged. Our bodies collided. Black-red mist smeared my vision. I couldn’t see anything. The two of us tumbled to the ground, both thrashing, and I was blinded by blood and rain and darkness and something in my eyes—
And it took a few long seconds for me to realize that Oraya had, in fact, not stabbed me.
I lurched back away from her to see tendrils of blood rising from the hole in her chest. Her body had gone rigid.
And she was fighting to look behind her, to find her new attacker.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away long enough to find him in the dark, but I knew who was out there—and I also knew he wouldn’t hold her for long.
So I seized the opening.
With a roar of exertion, I rallied, tearing Zefiah right through the delicate membrane of her outstretched wing.
With a sickening crack, bone shattered.
The mist of her blood was now so thick that between that and the rain and the darkness, I couldn’t see anything at all.
But I didn’t need to. I pushed her over the edge of the balcony.
The soulless below howled.
I hung against the broken rail, breath heaving.
It was too dark, and too sheer of a drop, to see down there.
But I could hear the howls of the soulless screeching into the night, clustering below.
My thought had been that they would be attracted to Oraya’s half-human scent, but now for the first time it occurred to me that perhaps the Shadowborn had trained the beasts to prey on their vampire enemies, the Nightborn and Deathborn, too.
Still, I braced against the wall, wary that I’d see her come back up. Maybe I hadn’t ruined her wing enough to keep her from flying; or perhaps she was so enhanced that she only needed one to fly. Certainly, she was not dead, and a few soulless wouldn’t be enough to pick her off.
Then again, maybe killing a vampire queen was more trouble than it was worth right now. I surprised myself with that. Look at me, so measured. Zefiah would be thrilled.
At that thought, a pang of emptiness. I glanced down at her. Still silent, pulsing only the faintest gold light.
Slowly, the pain began to set in. Not as bad as it could have been. Through my anger, I still felt a small pang of gratefulness to Zefiah for that.
I turned. “Aren’t I lucky that you decided to—”
I stopped short.
My blood floated in the air, suspended in delicate arcs and curves, like ribbons of red silk floating in a breeze. It seemed absurd to think that my grotesque human injuries could create something so beautiful.
And there, at the other side of the collapsed room, was Septimus.
But I had never seen him like this.
He leaned against what remained of the doorframe.
All the typical elegance in his form was gone.
His eyes, I could see from across the room, were purely red.
His clothes were smeared in crimson and black, the top buttons of his shirt ripped to reveal dark bruises and crawling streaks of black reaching up his throat.
And he looked at me with such devastating hunger. The way a wolf looked at a rabbit.
One hand clutched the doorframe, white knuckled, nails digging into the rotting wood. Like that single touch was the only thing tethering him there, and the thread was fraying.
I remembered what he had told me once: the fact that I am standing here is evidence of my self-control.
I thought of those words and watched his fingers slip from the frame.
I didn’t bother asking what was wrong with him. I already knew.
I started toward him, but he ground out, “Stop.”
I halted mid-step. A chill skittered up my spine. It was more a growl than a word, like he had to throw everything he had left into forming it. My blood’s pull toward him grew sharply stronger, as if his magic was protesting against his words.
I took in his broken body.
“And what?” I said. “Leave you there?”
I stepped closer again, and he breathed, “Kyrene. Please.”
My name was a desperate plea. His fingers dug into the doorframe. That one final thread.
But what did he expect me to do, leave? Let him die out here and go on to kill Nyaxia on my own?
I clicked my tongue. “Come now,” I murmured. “You know me better than to think I’d be so reasonable.”
I stepped forward.
The thread snapped.