Chapter 61
VARIDIAN
Water shoved up my nose and down my throat until I breathed it, choked on it.
Only the lightning soul screaming at me to hold control, don’t lose it now kept my grip on the lightning storm that had built within me all day.
A single slip, and I’d roast everything in this river alive. Including Ameirah and Nabil.
But I needed to take the edge off, needed to do something, so I snapped out four spears of control magic into my wife, my friend, and the two wyverns, and yelled, swim for the surface. Faster! Faster!
I hauled my own arms and legs, fighting the pull of gravity.
Crashing into the river had cast off the grip of the queen’s magic at least, so we were free to swim, struggling and terrified, through the river.
Had this water once been silver, or had it always been as black as night?
Had this corruption lived here the whole time, sitting between Ithanys and Kalder?
Did the blackness leak out, twisting violence into the minds of the people who lived and defended the villages on either side?
Had we fought, all this time, because of this fucking river?
Thoughts sped through my mind one after the other, a blur as obscure and rapid as the water as I hauled myself to the surface.
I broke through with a gasp, and immediately threw my soul through the bond until I reached Ameirah, dragging myself through the river until I felt her closer.
I sucked down air and dove back under, allowing a tiny flicker of lightning at my fingertip so I could see, gritting my teeth as it fought, eager to erupt.
I crushed my fingers into a fist until the lightning extinguished and threw out my hand, grasping Ameirah’s wrist and guiding her to the surface. When I broke through this time, Nabil was treading water, gulping for air as he searched the river.
The moment he spotted us, he carved through the brackish water, his eyes wide.
With the turmoil of almost drowning, I thought, until he grabbed my shoulder and breathed, “I saw something when I was under. There’s a ring, leaking dark magic at a crazy rate.
It’s fucking pluming from it, spreading like poison through the river.
I think that’s what’s transforming their captives into Zalaam soldiers. ”
Ameirah held tight to me, her legs kicking to keep her afloat. “A ring?”
“Like the one in Xiaoyu’s journal,” Nabil rasped, his hand trembling when he let go of me. “What if it’s a source of the pretender’s power? What if we take her out and that thing keeps spitting more Zalaam magic into the world?”
This is what your lightning is for. Her voice made me jump, made my heart clatter into a faster beat. I see it now. This is what guided you to raise magic all day, to gather it into a destructive force. You need to destroy that ring.
Later, I snapped, craning my neck to search for the queen on the black rock, arms still aloft as she attempted to raise a nightmare from the dead. When the queen’s dead.
Can you feel it? The stain in the water, in the air. She’s using it to bring the first queen back.
“Fuck,” I snarled, ripped in two directions.
Your wife is the deathbringer, the guardian of life. Trust her.
I’d unpack those titles later, if we survived. I didn’t want to leave her. Every fibre in my being screamed at me to stay at her side, so we could perish together instead of separated by a fucked-up river.
“Nabil,” I grunted, my voice roughened and deep. “Protect her.”
“What?” Ameirah grabbed my arm, dug her nails in. “Varidian.” It was a warning, that word, my name in that tone.
“You are a wildfire and death itself,” I said, swallowing down my fear as I kissed her forehead. “You survived a childhood designed to break you, and came out stronger. You came out deadly. You can kill her.”
Fear bleached the last trace of colour from Ameirah’s face as she held onto me. “You’re not going back down there.”
“Use everything in your arsenal. Listen to nothing she says. You are stronger than any vileness she spews, stronger than any magic she throws at you. Don’t wait for her to strike; hit her first, hit her hard, and do not stop until she’s dead.”
“Varidian.” Less a warning this time than a plea.
I kissed her temple again and fought to separate her hands from my arms without drowning. “I love you. My brave, dangerous wife. My revelation of a mate. Light up the darkness, Ameirah.”
The spike of her hurt, her fear, reached through her into me, and she kissed me once, furious with panic, then pushed me away.
“Incoming,” Nabil warned, and began to swim hard to the riverbank.
I didn’t look. Would never return to the water if I did, so I sucked three rough breaths into my lungs and dove back into the river.