Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Aleksander
There’s help waiting on the other side.
I repeated Thalia’s words over and over to myself as we galloped into the darkness.
There’s help waiting on the other side.
I didn’t believe her.
I had never been one to believe in help from others, regardless of where it came from. I didn’t expect it to find me in this realm, or in any other—I’d had such foolish notions beaten out of me at a young age. Accepting help was always a dangerous endeavor, anyway. It led to debts. And the rule of the Light King was meant to be debt-free , as the head of my council and the master of my studies, Lord Ithar, used to say.
We made it perhaps a mile before slowing and circling back toward Erebos, hoping to spot the rest of our party gaining on us. But no one was behind us, nor ahead of us, and the landscape was even more desolate and daunting on this side of the city.
If not for the fact that she’d given Zayn her horse, I would have been entirely convinced that Thalia had tricked us and had no intention of ever seeing us again.
“What now?” Zayn called from Uldrin’s back, while struggling to keep the steed still.
I didn’t know how to answer him. I wasn’t sure what plans Thalia had for catching up with us, I just knew we couldn’t leave Rowen and Farren solely in her hands—but we also couldn’t effectively fight our way back to them, given our current cargo.
“Nova.”
She mumbled something in response to my voice, but she didn’t open her eyes.
Could I force her awake?
Should I?
No; it wasn’t even a question, really. Fresh blood continued to seep from her shoulder, even now, despite my attempts to staunch its flow with my coat—I couldn’t leave her to go back for the others.
“The chaos never fucking ends with you, does it?” I mumbled, partly in an attempt to get a rise out of her. I needed to hear her voice, even if it was simply her telling me to fuck off.
But before I could rouse her enough to speak, Zayn interrupted us by shouting my name.
“Company!” he informed me, pointing at a line of riders taking shape in the distance. The blue flames affixed to their horses’ gear suggested wraiths.
Of course.
We could outrun them, perhaps, but it would mean leaving the others behind indefinitely. The others who also had most of our supplies.
In the short time we spent debating, the wraith riders drew close enough to count, and I realized just how outnumbered we were.
From bad to worse, over and over and over.
“Seven years of surviving against the odds down here,” Zayn said, pulling Uldrin up beside Phantom. “It was inevitable that death would eventually catch us in this place, I suppose.”
“We must have set some sort of record for the amount of time we did last,” I replied, matching his morbidly amused tone.
“What are the chances we could extend that record?”
I circled my gaze, seeking some miraculous key to victory that I might have missed, even though I knew I wouldn’t find one. “Not good, I’d wager.”
He joined me in my pointless searching.
Red was huddled against him—offering no comment, as expected—her face hidden from view by a thick riding blanket. I felt a stab of something like guilt, watching her shake beneath that blanket, thinking of how we’d brought her back to life, only for her to meet a gruesome end.
I was considering a last, desperate effort to somehow send her away with Nova and Phantom, when Zayn suddenly said, “Perhaps they can help us shatter our previous record?”
I blinked, following his gaze toward an astounding, unexpected sight: A herd of scourge stallions like Uldrin charging out of the darkness, rushing toward us.
There were no less than twenty of them. The ground shook underneath their pounding hooves, and the air rippled with a strange, quivering tension, as though the world itself was holding its breath at their approach. The soldiers who rode upon their backs were silent, dressed in leather armor that made them blend in with their surroundings. This made their true number difficult to count, as did the way they moved so astoundingly fast —so fast that they were galloping past us in no time at all, colliding with the wave of approaching wraiths.
I watched them moving up close for only a moment before I came to a startling realization: They were as alive as I was. All of them, however impossible that was. The blades they carried were solid and real, too, gleaming and swishing with weight and purpose through the air. Each of their swings tore into the wraiths with terrifying precision, hacking the creatures to pieces with brutal efficiency.
Phantom danced nervously at the edge of the battle. I urged him away from the worst of it, but stayed close enough to continue observing.
One of the newly-arrived riders soon stood out—the only one who didn’t wear a helmet or any other protection over his head. His black hair flowed loosely as he twisted back and forth, twin blades flashing as he cut down enemy after enemy. He was the main one shouting directions at the other shadow-clad soldiers, and his horse’s regalia suggested importance as well, from the silver-embroidered reins to the saddle cloth adorned with an emblem that featured a tree with dark red blossoms. That tree kept catching my gaze. It was hardly the time to worry about such things, yet something about it seemed strangely familiar.
As the carnage grew wilder and louder, Nova stirred against me, fighting to lift her head. Her eyes opened. She stared blankly for a long moment, and then a single word fell from her cracked lips: “ Stop .”
“...What?”
“Tell them to stop.”
“They—”
“It isn’t a fair battle,” she said, gritting her teeth as obvious waves of pain rocked through her. “The wraiths will fade outside their city, anyway, there’s no need to massacre them like this.”
“They’re desperate for our magic,” I told her. “They won’t stop unless someone stops them.”
“They’re desperate because they want to live .”
I couldn’t deny it; I just didn’t understand why she was making this argument, all of a sudden.
What had happened to her in that garden back in Erebos? What had she seen—what had she endured—before I reached her?
She averted her eyes as one of the soldiers severed a head and sent it flying dangerously close to us.
“It’s not a crime to want to live,” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say to this.
The quick thwack and wet, bloody squelch of metal cleaving its way through flesh reached us, followed by another thump of some sort of body part hitting the ground nearby. Nova grimaced, and a strange instinct to cover her ears—to protect her—overcame me, but I fought against it. I merely kept my arm around her, tightening my grip as her body shook against me.
A moment later, I realized…
She wasn’t shaking with fear or disgust, but with power . Power that was soon taking on a tangible form—her shadows lashing into the air.
Before I could stop her, she somehow found the strength to pull away from me, leaping from Phantom’s back and trudging headlong into the mayhem.
I sat in shock for an instant before sliding down to the ground myself. Even then, I hesitated, one hand braced against Phantom’s side as I watched Nova and the magic building around her, still trying to understand why she wanted to protect these beings who had only just recently tried to devour her.
We could have been using this opportunity to run.
So what the fuck was she doing?
Phantom stomped his hooves anxiously, giving me a vicious nudge with his sharp snout, urging me after her.
I needed no real encouragement from him; in the next beat I was already running, picking my way carefully through slashing weapons and rearing horses, darting wildly to avoid falling bodies, all while fighting to not let Nova out of my sight.
The shadows whipped more frantically around her, drawing the eyes of every wraith she passed. She didn’t seem to notice, or care, even as several peeled away from the soldiers they were battling and instead converged toward her.
I broke into a sprint.
Drawing my sword, I cut a path to her side, felling three wraiths along the way.
Nova turned as I reached her, still moving as if in a trance. Her brow furrowed. She clearly saw the other wraiths closing in on either side of us, but she didn’t flinch as they pressed closer. She kept her eyes on mine and stepped to meet me, reaching out her hand.
I stared at it. At her. I still didn’t know what this foolish woman was doing. This chaotic, infuriating, fucking beautiful, foolish woman.
She didn’t speak, but I could hear her voice in my memory, whispering while we stood by the frigid waters of Nyras.
Trust me .
I had. Somehow, I had, and then we’d brought the world to life around us. It was hard to think of life at the moment, though. Hard to think beyond the suffocating fiends pressing in around us, choking away what little bit of light and air existed in this hell.
It felt ridiculous to think of life after all the death we’d witnessed today.
But I put away my sword.
And I reached back.
As our fingers brushed one another’s, it happened again: The same rush of energy that had overtaken us at Lake Nyras. The same spark of power that felt unlike anything I’d ever known. All the background seemed to fade for a moment, the world condensing to the single point of touch between us.
From that point, a greater magic began to pulse.
Not fully Shadow magic, nor entirely Light, but a combination of both—a shimmering blanket of silvery-white power that rose up like a wave, rolling higher and wider before crashing down over everything around us, sweeping life and color over all that it touched.
The air hummed. The world rattled and shuddered, a deep tremor coursing under the ground. I felt every movement in my bones, as if some primal part of me was now irreversibly connected to the earth.
I felt the moment our magic approached its limits, too—like a bowstring drawing back as far as it could go before it snapped with a sudden crack! that reverberated through the ether, ripping Nova’s hand from mine and sending us both staggering backward.
I immediately started to race toward her again, but stopped in my tracks as I realized…it was done. The spell was already finished. There was little else left to do but stare and try to make sense of the aftermath. To try and catch my breath and find my footing underneath the exhaustion settling like a leaden weight upon my shoulders.
As I was beginning to expect, we’d left a scene of vibrant growth all around us—swaying grass, shimmering flowers and shining, fluttering insects.
But far more interesting, this time, was what had become of the army of wraiths.
The dead did not stir from where they’d fallen. But the ones who still stood were changing, just as Red had changed that night at Nyras; color returning to their complexions; emotions filling their eyes; their edges growing sharper, more defined.
Astonished whispers filled the air, soon followed by sobs and laughter.
The closest noise to me—a combination of sobbing and laughing—came from a woman who was crawling across the ground, blood trailing down her arm. It was dried, and mostly black, as I’d noticed wraith blood tended to be. She’d been wounded, but had stayed in one piece, and now…she was alive.
Alive.
I staggered toward her despite my dizziness, helping her stand, mainly so I could look more closely into her face and confirm what still seemed impossible. The flush of her cheeks. The feel of her breath. The blood on her arm, which was now turning to a brighter, more alive shade of crimson. She looked thrilled about that fresher, brighter blood. As the trail of it oozed against my steadying hand, I abruptly let her go and stumbled back.
Turning around, I spotted Nova again. She was kneeling among several more of the newly-revived. Her body was visibly heavy with exhaustion, but her eyes were alert as she surveyed the scene.
The black-haired man who’d caught my attention earlier strode into my peripheral vision, studying the scene as well. His calm voice filled the air a moment later, somehow perfectly clear even over the astonished chatter building around us.
“Secure her before she does irreversible damage to herself,” he said. “And let’s get away from here before we draw more attention.”
It took a moment for his words to register. For my eyes to focus enough to realize what was happening—to see the people moving toward Nova, preparing to grab her. Without another thought, I was drawing my sword, ready to cut them down as swiftly as I’d cut down the wraiths minutes ago.
But just as she had at the city gates, Thalia seemed to materialize from nowhere just in time to step into my path and cut me off.
“Let them be,” she urged. “They won’t hurt her. Watch and see.”
I was inclined, once again, to not believe her. Not until she pointed, drawing my attention to what was now happening around the rest of the crowd.
All of the fighting had ceased. The revitalized wraiths and the soldiers, alike…all of them had gone perfectly still, and they were all watching Nova as two men helped her to her feet and held her upright.
She drew her shoulders back, her eyes straining, fighting for awareness. Fighting to take in the face of every person now looking in her direction.
And as she stared at them, they all bowed before her.