Chapter 50
Itried to remind myself Calanthe was compelled like I was, that she had no choice in betraying us, but my anger was too vast. I thought I could trust her, and she risked all of Lazankh by giving Cleodora plans of the castle.
Then she stole the only thing that kept me out of the Greenheart Queen’s clutches.
That was what hurt the worst. She knew the sword kept me sane, but she chose her girlfriend over me. When Cleodora compelled me, I fought it at every chance I got. Calanthe hadn’t fought for me once.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” I demanded, ignoring the spiked mass of pain in my chest as I glared into her tear-lined hazel eyes. Those were the eyes of my friend, of the first goblin to love me as I was, without suspicion.
Calanthe shook her head, her curls a scattered mess, her eyes pleading. “She’s not here. I saw you in the crowd, and I wanted to speak to you alone. Letta, please. I’m not your enemy.”
I hardened my heart, built a wall of steel around it to endure the crack in Calanthe’s voice, the plea in her eyes. It didn’t work. My heart twisted into a bloodied, throbbing ache, and I wrenched myself away, forcing the glare to stay on my face through sheer will.
“You took the sword that kept me sane. That kept me me. You knew giving it to Cleodora would give her full control of me. Friends don’t do that. Enemies do.”
She shook her head fast, reaching out to me and then thinking better of it, clutching her hand to her chest. The other hand… my memory of hacking the sword through her arm, cleaving it from her body, was as vivid and cruel as the sight of her here before me.
“She wouldn’t have hurt you,” Calanthe said through tears. “I wouldn’t have let her. But the sword is important, she needed it. You’ll see, she’s going to make the world—”
“A better place?” I guessed with a bitter laugh.
“Calanthe, all she cares about is power. She’ll take and take and take until there’s nothing left of you, until you’re broken in her quest for ultimate power.
Walk away now.” I flung my arm at the arch, at the street beyond it, the court beyond that.
“Walk away, Calanthe, or she’ll kill you. ”
“You don’t understand.” Her voice choked with emotion, those pleading eyes cutting right to the soft part of my chest. “Everything I did was to make this a safer place for halflings, for humans, for you—”
“Me?” I laughed, the sound loud and caustic. My upper lip curled, hurt digging into every part of my chest. “Calanthe, be honest at least. You did it for you. Because you need to be loved, and for some foolish fucking reason you think the Greenheart tyrant loves you.”
“Don’t call me a fool,” she breathed, her mouth tensing, bottom lip quivering. “You’re my friend, don’t insult me.”
“I was your friend before you stabbed me in the back. Did you fight even once? On that landing, when Cleodora’s compulsion urged you to attack me? Did you resist it for even one second?”
“It’s not…” She shook her head hard. “She’s not compelling me, the stone was for my protection, Letta. She just wants to keep me safe because Bluescale is a dangerous place for halflings—”
“Because she made it a dangerous place,” I yelled, my chest rising and falling fast, my stomach clenching. “Gods, you’re delusional. Did you hear a single word I said? Did you hear my question? I want an answer, Calanthe.”
I had to stop when my voice caved in, had to pull myself back together, drag composure up from the depths of my gut.
Valour and Baby rose, their power pressing against me, but it didn’t give me strength this time.
There was nothing that could heal an emotional wound, nothing that could fix betrayal from the friend I thought I could trust above all others.
“Did you resist her commands, her requests—whatever you want to fucking call them. When you fought me for the sword, did you hesitate for one damned second?”
I saw the answer before she even spoke. It was there in the bobbing of her throat, the soft plea in hazel eyes, the crease in her softly freckled skin. My friend. The person I thought would always be on my side. Cleodora had really done a fucking number on her.
She shrank in on herself, rubbing at a spot on her chest with her hand, as if she ached as badly as I did. I wavered forward a step, weak, so fucking weak.
“Letta!” Aerona screamed. Aerona? Where the fuck did she come from? How did she get here, blurring down the alley so fast that she had to be using magic. Her eyes glowed turquoise with power, black braids flying behind her as she moved faster than the wind, faster than Calanthe’s hand.
Her body cut through the air so swiftly, my mind couldn’t catch up, couldn’t string words into thoughts fast enough. Then she was in front of me, rage on her face, her azure hands thrown up, gleaming with magic I’d never seen before, magic she’d closely guarded.
“Aerona?” I demanded, when my brain caught up, a furrow knotting my brow.
“Knife,” she said, her voice twisted, strangled and—I lunged forward to catch her when she fell, panic rising like a shattering star in my chest. Knife? What knife?
I threw a frantic stare at Calanthe to beg her for help, and my brain stuttered over the sight of a green crystal dagger in her hand.
Her hand. The hand attached to the arm I severed from her body, because it was embedded with a crystal the Greenheart bitch used to control her.
She only had one arm, but she’d used a second to stab Aerona, to try to stab me…
“Back off,” I snarled when she came forward a step. A half-thought had Baby and Valour leaping into the alley, their throaty snarls rife with my pain.
“Hold on, Aerona,” I breathed, laying her on the cold floor and slamming both hands into the gash on her stomach. Gods, it was huge, and deep enough that I could see her intestines.
I gagged, vomit burning the back of my throat, but I ground my teeth and held it together, meeting Aerona’s bright eyes, forcing myself to stay calm so she couldn’t see my fear. “You’re going to be fine. Hames will be here any minute now.”
She shook her head, or at least tried to. It rolled to the ground, her face pressed to the cobbles, and panic hit me like a punch.
“Aerona,” I snapped, pressing harder on her wound, my hands sticky and hot as blood poured out of her, too much for me to contain.
Valour, do something, I begged. Cauterise the wound, stop the blood—
She rushed to Aerona’s side and sniffed at my friend, my little sister who was too fucking young to have a wound this bad.
Fifteen. That was how old she was. Fifteen gods-damned years old, and she took a wound meant for me.
Valour lifted her head, a soft sympathy flowing from her to me, but I shut it out, snarled in her face.
Fuck that. I leaned up on my knees, adding more pressure on the gash in Aerona’s stomach, my hands dark with her blood and more of it pooling beneath her body.
“Don’t even think about going anywhere,” I growled at her, meeting her stare and glaring defiantly.
I reached for my core of power, reached for the cold spark from the stone around my neck, reached for everything I had, and poured it into Aerona’s wound.
She glowed from within as it lit her up, and groaned, her eyes fluttering to half-mast.
“I always wanted… a sister. Would have chosen… a less annoying one.”
“Yeah, well you get what you’re given,” I forced out, trying to laugh, to joke, to hold something in my voice other than flat, empty death. “You’re the best annoying little sister I could have asked for.”
I was distantly aware of Baby roaring a warning, trying to keep Calanthe away from us, of that green crystal blade carving through his mane, through his throat.
Thankfully with no effect. But I couldn’t look away from Aerona’s face as her mouth curved into a smirk, her eyes barely open a slit, her breathing laboured, rattling.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” I snarled.
Her smirk deepened, her eyes slipping shut. “Love you, bitch.”
“Love you, too,” I choked out. “That’s why you’re not allowed to die. You’re supposed to stay right here with me, where we can terrorise the world together. You can’t fucking leave, because I love you. You hear me, Aerona? You’re my little sister, and I love you, so you can’t—”
She took another ragged breath and then her chest stilled.
The whole world went still with her, and I knelt there, staring, frozen, her blood on my hands.