Chapter 52
Iknew from a single glance that the sword would cleave my head from my neck.
Time stretched into an endless sprawl as it neared.
This time I didn’t see my life or my future in the moments before death.
I saw shadows, skittering over the wall behind Cleodora, spreading across the stones underneath me, death reaching out its greedy hand for my soul.
What would happen to Kier? Would he survive my death? Or had I damned us both to the underworld? That thought hurt, right behind my solar plexus.
The shadows drew as close as the sword, slicing through the air, the wind of its path caressing my throat. A shiver rocked me, hard enough that my body actually moved, and I used that split second of autonomy to reach up at the same time the shadows converged.
They didn’t devour me, didn’t rip my soul out of my body, didn’t call out to me in a dark god’s voice. They coalesced into a woman with deep golden skin, frazzled black curls, and eyes the shade of sapphires that blazed with righteous fire.
A hand swung, faster than Cleodora’s, and I froze in utter shock as something slammed into the back of the Greenheart queen’s head, and she stumbled away.
Her sword met the cobbles a few feet away, and I lunged for it, clutching it close, shivering as adrenaline poured into me.
The sapphire—had she dropped the sapphire?
Fuck, it was still clenched in her hand as she wavered on her feet, a snarl crossing her face as she twisted her violent body towards the newcomer. I didn’t recognise the woman, swore I’d never seen her before, but something rippled in the back of my mind, some connection I was too shaky to form.
“You,” Cleodora seethed, watching the woman with the level of hatred she usually reserved for me.
“Me,” the woman agreed in a blown-out, rasping voice.
The kind of voice that evoked screaming, endless screaming.
That made me think her throat had bled and broken.
That made me think of the spire’s never ending torture.
She went for Cleodora with no fear, bringing down the rock in her hand on the queen’s shoulder while she was still woozy.
A rock. Cleodora had been taken down by a rock.
I shook my head, trying to figure out if I was hallucinating. The alleyway swooped and spun, a trickle of blood dripping from my nose. Fuck, I was never shaking my head again.
“Zabaletta,” the new woman called, hoarse and strained, as if she was trying to shout. “Catch.”
Catch? Catch what?
Baby nudged me from behind, butting his head against my shoulder, and I lifted my left hand in a daze, my right still gripping Gaia’s sword. Cool, smooth stone met my other palm, and I closed my fingers on instinct, barely aware of what was happening, what I held.
My head seemed to move in slow motion as I tipped it down, focusing my eyes on the blue gem gripped between my fingers. The sapphire. I held the sapphire. Cleodora couldn’t control me.
I exhaled in a weak, ragged breath, relief making my eyes sting, my hands shake harder.
A tug came in my middle, distant but clear enough that I’d have crashed to the ground if I wasn’t already kneeling on the cold cobbles.
Kier was coming. My bottom lip caved in, a sob crashing up my throat. Kier was coming.
“You should have stayed in your tower, Syl,” Cleodora spat, making me jump. I’d forgotten she was even there, forgotten I wasn’t alone, reeling in the aftermath of her control.
Syl? I lifted my head, alarm crashing through every heartbeat, pumping panic through my veins.
I gripped the sapphire, the sword, and staggered to my feet, telling Baby to stay with Aerona.
Syl had to be Sylana Kollastus. Kier’s mother.
The only person he didn’t talk about with pain and disgust and tangled fear and love.
I got the sense she’d been every bit as much a victim, but here she was, taking on another tyrant and bully. She defended me, literally handed back control of myself, and now she slammed bodily into Cleodora, wrapping her long, fragile fingers around her neck.
I sucked in a breath, filled my tight lungs, and then used whatever strength I had left to hit Cleodora from the other side.
The hilt met her head first, disorienting her further, and then I flipped my hand, driving the blade into her side.
I hefted my weight against it with a grunt, and magic burst from the sapphire, giving me enough strength that the sword’s tip punched through Cleodora’s other side.
I ripped out the blade, panting, a cold sweat trickling down my back. I slammed it into her stomach next, then drove it into her thigh, my hands numb, arms trembling, head pounding.
Footsteps hammered the street, sending another shiver through me, hope crushing all the air from my lungs. But what if it was Cleodora’s army? What if it was Jyrard?
I tore Gaia’s sword free with weakening arms and angled it again when Syl stumbled back a step, breathing skittishly.
My heart clattered into my ribs when I saw blood on her pale blue dress, a stain so violent that it sent me spiralling.
I could feel Aerona in my arms, cool blood dripping on my skin, the weight of her final, not a single part of her moving.
“Zaba, take the killing blow,” someone said from far away. Hoarse and commanding. Syl.
Her voice reached into that dark place, grabbed firm hold of me, and ripped me free.
I blinked, and then I was swinging the sword, a warm presence at my back.
That delusion of being led to Gaia’s tomb by the goddess herself returned, because I could have sworn I felt her, a power far higher than any goblin, any human.
I could have sworn another hand covered mine, pushing the sword faster, driving it into Gaia’s torso, angling it behind her ribs, and driving it into her heart.
As the sword found its mark, I hissed, “I’m no one’s assistant, you dick.”
I’d like to blame Gaia for the fury that struck, for the way I followed Cleodora to the ground and hacked at her neck until her head rolled several feet away. But that was all me.
When I came back to myself, panting, shivering, the sapphire was glowing in my hand and Cleodora was dead.
“I think you should put the sapphire back in the sword now,” Syl said, staggering closer, resting her hand on my shoulder. “Jyrard is still alive.”
I tipped my head up, adrenaline pumping too fast for me to break right now, but it would come. I would collapse, shatter into irreparable fragments, unable to ever heal. I had killed the queen, and freed myself of her compulsion, but at too steep a cost.
“You want me to kill your son?” I asked, surprised when my voice came out as wrecked as hers.
“Immediately,” she agreed.
Well. Who was I to deny a queen? I leaned against the wall, panting, and tightened my fingers around the sapphire.
It fit back into the setting on the crossguard far too easily, my chain dangling around my fingers.
Power tore down the fuller, lighting up the inscription, but I was too exhausted to care, especially as Kier and Xiona staggered into the alley with declarations of war and blood written across their faces.
Kier stared at his mother for a lingering moment, and then blazed down the alley towards me. He only hesitated when a lightning strike of magic cracked from the tip of the sword and hooked into the side of my neck, ripping out the parasite Cleodora had placed in me.
Now she was dead, it came out without any fuss, as if it hadn’t almost killed me the last time.
“Zaba,” Kier breathed, his face slack, horrified, relieved, and a dozen other emotions I couldn’t sort out. My soul was so numb I could hardly feel the bond, but it was there, back where it belonged.
I collapsed into his arms the second they came around me, and the first sob crashed free before I could catch it.
My vision blurred, and the last thing I saw before tears veiled it completely was Syl staring in mute shock at where Gaia’s sword still crackled with magic, destroying the worm that had lived inside me.
What a way to meet your mother in law.