Chapter 27 Sam #2
“I need to get to my father!” Esme shouts over the cacophony of noise, her voice cutting through the chaos.
I bound toward her side, snatching bodies out of her way with my teeth, clearing the path with brutal efficiency. I will get her there, I tell myself as I push forward with teeth and claws and desperate love. Nothing will stop me from protecting what’s mine.
Just when the queen is within reach, close enough that I can smell her perfume mixed with the scent of fear-sweat, she looks me in the eyes and smiles.
It’s a cold, calculating expression that makes my blood freeze.
With a wave of her hand, another wave of wraiths materialize out of thin air, descending on me with shrieking voices that make my bones ache.
I watch in horror as she pulls the king by his chains back toward the portal, dragging him like a piece of baggage.
There is no way for me to retreat, no space to give myself room to fight as they attack with brutal efficiency.
Claws rake across my spine, each one like a line of fire drawn across my flesh.
Teeth pierce my side, fangs sinking deep enough to scrape bone.
Pain rips through me so fast and so complete that I don’t have time to cry out.
They tear at my flesh like I’m nothing more than meat, until the snow rises up to meet me in a rush of white and red.
I hit the ground hard, air blasting from my lungs in a whoosh that leaves me gasping.
The world spins like a broken carousel as the battle wages on around me, sounds becoming distant and echoing.
Blood pools beneath me, warm against the ice, and I can feel my strength ebbing away with each heartbeat.
“Sam!” I hear Esme scream, and the sound of my name on her lips is both agony and salvation.
I can’t move, can’t even lift my head. Pain wracks my body in waves as my vision blurs, my breathing grows shallow as the blood pours from me.
The mountain top shakes from the force of her cries and her magic, the very stone trembling under the weight of her fury.
Wraiths disintegrate like smoke in a hurricane. Soldiers and magic wielders go flying in all directions, falling to their deaths over the side of the cliff with screams that fade into nothing. The air crackles with her power, raw and uncontrolled and absolutely devastating.
Esme appears above me like an angel of vengeance, falling to her knees in the bloody snow. “No, Sam, please. . .please, Baby, hold on.”
Her hands tremble as she reaches for me, fear in her pale eyes. Her face is streaked with blood and tears and grief. She’s been through hell, but she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
She presses her palm to my chest, right over my heart. “I can fix this,” she whispers, and there’s something desperate and determined in her voice. “I can fix you. I know I can.”
She pushes down on the worst of my wounds, and I whine in pain.
“Come on!” she shouts as she wipes away stray tears with the back of her hand, leaving smears of blood across her cheek.
“Please,” she begs like a prayer, like she’s addressing every deity that’s ever existed. She tries again, pressing her hand gently over my body this time, her touch careful and reverent.
Nothing happens at first. Then, like dawn breaking after the longest night, I feel it, instant relief as my lungs fill with oxygen. Esme’s hands pour golden light into my body, warm and healing and impossibly bright.
“Thank you,” she whispers, to whom I don’t know. The god Eidryn of Vanir or the god of the Mortal Realm, it’s a mystery. All I do know is that my Angel saved my life, pulled me back from whatever dark place I was sliding toward.
Healing magic knits flesh and bone, threads sinew like the finest cloth. It floods into me, hot and burning, and so gentle it almost doesn’t hurt. It wraps around my shredded insides like a balm, sealing wounds I didn’t even know I had, fixing things that were broken in ways I couldn’t name.
I want to tell her she’s beautiful, that I’m sorry I couldn’t get her to her father, that I failed her when she needed me most. I want to tell her that I love her more than life itself, but there will be time for that later.
I’m not dying today, and I plan on reminding her of all of this for the rest of our lives.
My pain fades like a tide going out, my lungs expand and contract in a steady rhythm, and my heartbeat steadies into something strong and sure. I shift without warning, body returning to human form, naked in the snow but alive. Wonderfully, impossibly alive.
Rue’s moves over us. “Well shit, welcome back to the land of the living, Sammie Boy.” He tosses me a half-shredded cloak, and I hear the relief in his voice, despite his casual tone.
I sit up, gasping, still shaking from the aftermath of near-death, wrapping the cloak around my body with hands that won’t quite stop trembling.
Esme grabs my face in both hands, and she doesn’t say anything at first. Just rests her forehead against mine, breathing hard, her tears falling onto my cheeks like warm rain. I can feel her pulse racing, can smell the fear and relief and love radiating off her in waves.
“I’m here, Angel. I’m here,” I try to reassure her as she bites back a sob, my voice rough but steady.
Locke stumbles toward us, blood splattered across his face like war paint, exhaustion written in every line of his body. “The portal’s still open.”
He doesn’t have to say the rest. The words hang in the air between us, heavy with implication.
If we’re going to follow the queen. . .
If we’re going to save the king. . .
If we’re going to finish what we started. . .we have to go now.
Esme turns to me, eyes still wet with unshed tears, voice trembling with exhaustion and determination in equal measure. “Can you run?”
I nod, testing my newly healed muscles, feeling strength flow through me like liquid fire. I’m not ready to face what’s next, but I have to be. For her, for all of us, I have to be.
Together, we rise. The four of us stand on the blood-soaked summit, battered but unbroken.
We don’t look back at the carnage we’re leaving behind.
We run toward the shimmering portal, and leap through together, just before it closes with a sound like reality tearing.
We leave the mountain and the dead behind, plunging into whatever hell awaits us on the other side.