Chapter 30 #2
I was on my feet in the next second, reaching for her. She sidestepped my fingers, and I caught air as she spun away. Her hand shot toward the map, and I knew the second she touched it, she would be gone forever. Lightning shot from my fingertips, scorching the parchment.
She stopped, her hands half-raised, watching as it floated toward the ceiling in ashes.
“No.” The words left her lips on a whisper. “What have you done?”
Then she turned to me, her crimson eyes burning with blistering rage, and on a roar of fury, the room burst into flames.
* * *
My first thought was how glad I was I’d evacuated the city. It burned now. Every ball of fire she tossed at me, and I redirected, burst through a wall or window, lighting the city aflame.
My second thought was I had never really counted the number of floors we had in this building until I fell through each and every one of them.
My hand swiped the dust from the silver-plated armor on my shoulder.
I had summoned it for protection between the first few floors Dianna sent me through, letting it take the brunt of my fall.
I couldn’t allow an injury to slow me down, not now. Not when I was finally this close.
I pushed from the floor as the debris settled. Electricity sparked in the hole my body had made above me.
“You ruin everything,” Dianna hissed, her lithe form landing in a crouch before me.
“You will have to be more specific, akrai, on what exactly I ruined. Your mood?” I taunted her. “Your panties, perhaps?”
Her brow furrowed, and I saw the shock in her eyes at hearing me call her my heart in Eorian. Satisfaction filled me and made the time spent learning the ancient language worth it.
“Don’t call me that,” she growled, lunging forward. My blade blocked hers mere inches from my face. “You egotistical, conceited, arrogant lying bastard.”
“If you’re going to insult me, akrai, you have to do better than that. I have heard far worse from beings who wished to have my head on a spike. You should have heard what they said to me when I ascended.”
“Stop calling me that.” She pushed off, sending me a step back. To her, it looked as though I was eluding her, fleeing, but I had to keep her moving. I needed her closer to the runes.
“Is this us flirting? You yell and toss me through a few stories when you don’t get your way, or perhaps you’ll drop another building on me.”
I twisted from her, sprinting to the end of the hall.
“I am not flirting,” she growled, cleaving her sword through the air toward me. It cut through the wall behind me as I ducked and rolled inside a nearby room.
“I don’t know, Dianna.” I smirked. “It definitely makes me hard.”
She pulled her blade from the wall, stepping into the room. “Shouldn’t your queen do that?”
“She does.”
She snarled, all fangs and fury, and attacked, not giving me a chance to respond. Steel rang against the forsaken blade, the room shaking with her ferocity.
The sound seemed to echo through time as if it was what the universe had craved, what it desired. Walls cracked, tables and chairs splintering as one blade missed its target, then the next. It was a deadly, powerful dance of two beings destined to destroy each other since the beginning of it all.
“You’re wasting my time.” She snarled. “Because of you, I have to find another fucking way.” Her head collided with mine, a crack sounding through the room. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”
“No.” I stumbled back, righting myself as she straightened. “Because you won’t tell me why you needed the map.”
“It meant everything, and you took it from me.” Another sharp hit of her blade against mine. “You ruined everything again!”
Rage, powerful and overwhelming, poured from her.
I took a step back, dragging her with me. In her warpath, she paid no attention to where I was leading her. “Again, you must be more specific about which situation I ruined the first time.”
A frustrated growl left her lips as she charged. “It’s your fault.” Another hit. “I was fine. Everything was fine until you showed up and ruined it.”
Ah. So that was what it was, a crack forming in that impenetrable armor. I only needed to apply more pressure, and I would split it wide open.
“I understand that you have to blame someone. Give all that rage an outlet, but blaming me will not bring Gabriella back.”
Her eyes blazed with a thousand burning embers as she snarled and launched toward me. I dodged, the wall behind me shaking from the force of her blade, the strike so powerful it would have cleaved through bone.
And that crack in her armor widened.
Dianna yanked the blade free, taking a chunk of the wall with it. She shook it off and, with one final enraged glare, disappeared. Dark smoke stood where she had been. I was dumbstruck, to say the least, but I remained alert, keeping my blade in my hand. I still felt her.
“Do you like my new trick?” Her voice carried on like an echo. I spun but saw nothing, yet my senses screamed.
“You did this on the ship.” Realization hit. “How?”
A slash rang against my armor, my arm aching with the blow. I looked down and saw the silver bore a new jagged indention.
“The more I fed, the more I let go of that damaged girl who would give up everything for others. You know, the one you cling to so desperately.”
Another slash, and I spun.
“I have become something truly lethal now. Something so powerful that nothing and no one will ever hurt me again. It’s just a shame I didn’t learn it sooner.”
I thought I sensed her to my right and heard the slight exhale of her breath, but I saw nothing.
Another slash came, this time to my back.
I twisted and saw her coat flare as it dissolved into the darkness.
Impossible. It was as if she were here but not here.
And then I remembered. One of the oldest texts my father ever showed me.
“You are enamored with beasts.”
Unir’s hand splayed on the table at my side as he leaned over me to see what I was reading.
“Well, I must pass the time since you will not allow me to spend time with my companions.”
“That is your punishment for your reckless behavior.”
I cut my eyes up at him, one hand propped under my chin as I flipped a page. My father’s eyes remained on the book in question.
“You went through my personal belongings to retrieve that?”
I smiled. “Boredom overcame me, and you keep all the interesting texts locked away.”
“And what did you find?”
I moved to the side, allowing him a better look at the book.
“Ah.”
“Ancient beasts long since dead.” I brushed my finger over a part that I had enjoyed. “But I’ve never heard of this. What is the inbetween?”
My father was quiet for a moment as if deciding if he would explain.
Finally, he said, “The inbetween is neither light nor darkness. It exists but does not. It is a place out of time and space. Rules do not apply, nor is there enough known about it to explain. I learned about it during my travels. Mostly legends passed down. Some say that long ago, it was where shadows went to hide, but it is that of myth. Nothing of that power lives any longer.”
A touch of sadness filled his eyes as he closed the book and took it from me.
I turned in my seat. “How can you be sure?”
“You question me?” he said, a look of amusement gracing his face as he placed the book behind his back.
“Maybe something slipped past your omniscient rule.”
“You are but a copy of your mother.” The corners of his lips turned up in a ghost of a smile. “You are still so young, with so much to learn. But remember, nothing can truly stay hidden if you listen with more than your ears.”
I closed my eyes and centered myself, my heart rate decreasing as I listened.
There, like a string pulled tight, I found her.
I felt her through time and space, a heartbeat that matched my own.
She walked around me, her footsteps more vibration than heard, as if she perched behind a thin veil.
She sidestepped and thrust forward. My blade drove upward, stopping hers, and my free hand whipped out, grasping her wrist, holding her in this space.
Her eyes went wide. “How?”
“Always with the tone of surprise. There is no place in this world or the next that you can hide from me, akrai.”
She twisted in my grip. “You’re pathetic.”
“Am I? Curse me if you want. Throw your hateful words. Whatever you need, I can take it.”
I saw the struggle in her eyes as if she warred within herself. She pulled at her arm, trying to free her wrist.
“How many do I have to kill for you to give up on me?” There it was, a final split in the armor she built so diligently around herself. Her expression twisted, and I could see that she hadn’t meant to respond, the words slipping out.
“You could make a river of blood run down these streets, and I would still try because I know you, the real you, not this version he created.”
She lowered her blade just a fraction and huffed. “You’re wrong.”
“If I’m wrong, then so was Gabby, and I know she wasn’t. She wouldn’t give up on you, and neither will I. We can do this dance until this world burns and the next takes its place, but I will still choose you.”
She stopped.
Her sister’s name had once grounded her but now seemed to be a catalyst to emotions she fought to destroy.
“You want to save me? You want to be like Gabby so badly?” she hissed, all fangs and sharp edges. She twisted her wrist too sharply, snapping from my grip. “Then you can join her.”
Her face crumpled, but not from tears. Anger flashed behind her crimson eyes, pain hovering in their depths.
She used the rage, turning it into resolve as she’d been forced to do so many times in the past. Kaden had taught her feelings were a weakness, and now she threw herself into that belief more than ever.
She lunged too hard and fast. My blade connected with hers, shattering from the force behind her strike. I had a mere second to summon another to protect against the onslaught of her fury.
“You’re a fool, and so was she.”
Slam
“You will only end up dead because of me.”
I stumbled and brought my blade up to meet hers, but the power behind her strikes made my muscles shudder with strain. My back hit the ground, and I summoned a second blade, placing it across my front to act as a shield. It absorbed her every hit as she unleashed.
“Dianna was weak.”
Slam
“She was a stupid girl.”
Another world-shattering slam.
“Who dreamed of flowers and happiness in the middle of war.”
A crack formed on my blade, a small tiny fissure that grew with every strike.
“She was too trusting and cared too much. She loved too much, and now she’s gone.”
Slam
“She’s dead, and she’s not coming back.”
I knew then it wasn’t herself she was talking about, but the sister she so desperately missed. Even as she rebelled and fought with blind savagery, I saw the shine in her eyes. A part of her shattered, and I knew then and there that Drake had been right.
I had reached her.
With a last ferocious strike, she slammed her sword against mine, breaking it. Then she was atop me, her blade in both hands as she raised it, threatening to impale me. Even with my armor, she had the strength to do it.
“I’ll carve that damned heart from your body,” she said breathlessly. “Then you’ll leave me alone.” But she stopped a fraction from my chest, her hands and arms trembling as she panted.
“Do it.” I angled the tip of her blade above my heart. “If you are truly gone, I refuse to live in a world without you, so you’ll have to angle it farther to the right. That’s where a god’s heart lies, and mine already belongs to you, so do with it what you will.”
She glared down at me, her chest heaving.
“You can’t, can you? You cannot truly hurt me.”
She growled, her arms shaking as she tightened her grip but made no other movement.
I lunged up. Dianna let out a startled squeak and withdrew the blade.
My hands cupped her face, taking advantage of her parted lips to slam my mouth over hers.
Her fangs nicked my lip, and I groaned at the pinch of pain.
She didn’t stop, but the world did as I kissed her with every bit of longing and desire I had for her.
I poured all the desperate need and love I had felt while we were apart into the kiss.
I gave her everything to make her see, make her feel.
I heard her blade crash to the floor, and her hands gripped my armor, pulling me closer.
The taste of her and the feel of her tongue sweeping across mine were complete bliss.
She pulled back slowly, her eyes wide, dazed, and confused.
Her lush lips were parted and softly swollen from my kiss, the emerald magic clinging to them.
It had worked.
She sagged in my arms, and I cradled her against me. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I got you.”
“Wha—” She stared up at me.
“I’m going to help you as I promised. Your burdens are my burdens, remember?”
Her eyes met mine, emotions swimming in their depths. Finally, I had reached her, at least for a moment. Her eyelids grew heavy, Camilla’s spell taking effect. Her heart rate decreased, sleep pulling her under. I cradled her head as it lulled, slipping my arms around her and pushing to my feet.
I stepped into the middle of the room, and the runes on the floor lit, transporting us from the building.