Chapter 65
VARIDIAN
“Come on, you heavy, stubborn ass,” a familiar voice groused, pulling me back to consciousness god knew how long later. Something thumped my chest, and I coughed up water, slumping onto my side as the force of the coughs bruised my throat, my chest.
“Ugh,” I said eloquently, and flopped back to the muddy ground the moment the retching stopped.
“You can’t lay here,” the voice protested. Soft but hissing. Young but velvety with the wisdom of an old woman. “The queen is just up the river. She’s going to kill us both!”
I groaned again, rolling onto my front and curling my lip at the slip and slide of mud through my fingers as I pushed up to my knees. “My entire body hurts,” I moaned.
“Yes, well. That tends to happen when you’re torn in two. But at least you didn’t drown. You’re welcome for that.”
I squinted in the direction of the voice, my exhaustion and pain making me snap. “Thanks.”
“As I said,” the woman sniped. “You’re welcome.”
She was younger than me, but not by much.
Thirty years old if I had to guess, and small—slimmer than Aliyah but a good head shorter, but with skin the colour of snow and hair only a few shades darker.
An oval face currently contained so much annoyance I was genuinely impressed, and the longer I stared at her, the flatter her expression grew.
It was her eyes that made me startle, that made me stare.
Bright, shocking blue, with a core of crackling white.
I blinked. Blinked again. Registered the emptiness in my chest, the lightness of my body, the quiet in my head. And I blinked again.
“Great, you’ve been rendered into an imbecile,” she huffed, climbing to her feet, her body covered in muck and very little clothes. The moment I realised her clothing consisted of scraps of magic, rather than fabric, I tore my stare away.
“Could you put some clothes on? If my wife gets the wrong idea, she’ll kill us both.”
“Of course,” the woman simpered. “Let me just hop over to the sprawling medina on the banks of this nightmare river!”
“Alright,” I sighed. “Fair point. But don’t blame me when Ameirah murders you.”
I saw her shrug from the corner of my eye. “Do you have a name?”
“Elinour.”
She seemed to startle at her own name, and jumped on the muddy riverbank. The river that was silver from edge to edge, not pitch black, not corrupted. “Elinour! Elinour. I can finally say my name.” She grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously. “It’s nice to meet you, Varidian, I’m Elinour.”
“I’d gathered that,” I drawled, rubbing a pounding headache between my brows. “You’re the lightning soul.”
“Not anymore.” When I shot her an alarmed look, she was grinning. “Look, I have fingers!” She wiggled them in my face. “I don’t know how, but when you purged all that magic into the river, it pulled me out too, and now look!”
“Fingers,” I observed drolly, searching the river ahead of us for purple hair and a flash of black fire, for Nabil’s air magic shuddering across the water.
“Is all my lightning gone?” I mused, struggling to fit this truth into my head, to accept it.
The lightning soul was gone. Was a woman, flesh and blood. And sarcasm.
“My lightning,” she corrected, heavy on the sass. “And no, it’s not gone. But it is all mine, now.” She gave me a beaming smile when I met her gaze in shock. “There might be a bolt or two that remains, likely all your life, but the storm of it came out with me.”
I felt inside me, but everything was too painful to tell what remained. My own control magic was still there, thriving and expanding, as if it had been shoved aside all this time and—
“Varidian!” Elinour shrieked, flinging her hands up and scattering lightning across the mud.
I had to jump to avoid the blinding white spark that swept dangerously close to me, so close it would have burned my damn toes off.
When I landed, I was already moving, swinging around with my hand on the hilt of Dusk-Breaker, miraculously still sheathed at my back even after hours or days in the river.
I was ready to challenge Xiu in battle, ready for winged soldiers or wyverns, but I drew up at the sight of a familiar gentry. A thrill went through me, rippling my stomach with violent butterflies, and I grinned, from edge to edge of my face.
“Hello, Kaazhim,” I greeted, sizing up the tall, sharp-featured man. He didn’t have a sword in his hand—as a high gentry, he preferred getting others to do his dirty work, and the sword across his back was just for show. But milky white magic did gather in his hand.
I gripped a fistful of magic, my power rising eagerly, excited to finally strike an opponent it could seize.
And I drove a spear of control magic into the flesh of Kaazhim’s brain before he could anticipate the move.
He was so focused on the sword in my hand and the lightning that darted across the mud, erratic as Elinour struggled to work her new body, that he didn’t even shield against the true attack.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” I told him, and watched the blood drain from his face when I said, “Put that magic away and draw the sword from your back.”
In an instant, the milky power extinguished in his palm and he pulled free the elaborate jewelled sword from his back. He wasn’t even dressed for battle; he wore the same embroidered djellaba he’d wear to council meetings, not a single attempt at armouring his body. I scoffed, shaking my head.
“Anyone would think you came here to die, Kaazhim.”
His teeth bared, hatred jerking him forward a step—until Elinor shrieked and threw her hands at him, lightning burning a hole in his sleeve. “I came here to kill you as a gift to my queen.”
“Interesting. Did you forget about my control magic?” I tilted my head, watching him freeze when I commanded, “Don’t move.”
“If you’re going to kill him, can you hurry up?” Elinour stage-whispered. “We’re wasting time.”
Any time spent terrorising the fucker who tortured my wife wasn’t wasted, but Ameirah might need me right now. So I gave Kaazhim one last smile—one of victory and satisfaction at his pain, his death. And I swung Dusk-Breaker, cleaving his head from his neck.
The memory of Kamila’s head bitten off by the wyvern filled every space in my head, but I pushed it away and promised I would honour her, that she’d never be forgotten.
We made sure Kaazhim was a hundred percent dead, with no medallion or ring to bring him back, and then I sank into my bond and followed its insistent pull up the river, with the lightning soul given flesh at my side.
“Run!” she urged, lightning racing across the dirt as she raced faster, her eyes wide when she threw an urgent look at me. Urgent, and heavy with sympathy.
Whatever she knew… I ran faster, pushed my aching, barely-patched body to its limit and didn’t stop running when wounds reopened.
I didn’t stop until we rounded a bend in the river and they came into view: the dark queen Xiu, my fearless wife, Nabil, and a dozen other people bearing fire and light and glowing magic to fight back the darkness.
I pushed my body until air barely scraped into my lungs, until I wheezed, and nearly fell when Nabil dropped to his knees and Ameirah followed.
“Ameirah!” I bellowed with the last of my air. “Get to her!” I yelled at Elinour. “Get to her right now.”
But she shook her head. She didn’t know how, or maybe couldn’t use the lightning that way.
“We have to kill her now,” she panted, her eyes so blue, so pale. “Use Dusk-Breaker. It has to be now. If we don’t, your wife will die. We will all die.”
I wanted to scream, but deep down I knew she was right, and if Xiu had already struck Ameirah, I would use this legendary sword to ensure she never harmed her again.
The mud carried me the last few steps towards the queen, and my boots slid as I raised Dusk-Breaker, as I gathered power in my arms and forced air into my tight chest. She was so focused on Ameirah, on Nabil, on the sword that dripped blood in her grasp, that she didn’t see me until I speared that ancient, fire-carved sword through her back and out through her chest.
“Back!” Elinour shouted, and I jumped back just in time to avoid being cooked inside my own body by the lightning that erupted from her and down the fuller of that mighty sword.
Xiu’s knees gave way and Elinour followed her down, keeping the stream of lightning unbroken as Ameirah finally turned, devastation on her face, and met my eyes.
I followed her broken gaze from Xiu to the sword her weak hand now dropped into the muck, to Nabil. He lay on his side in the mud, eyes open, mouth parted, and I thought he was only injured, and rushed to help.
I jerked back when I was close enough to realise the truth. Nabil was dead.