Chapter 67
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
LYRA
It all happens so fast.
The chains linking our manzat cuffs are cut. The holds on our waists are released. We are escorted by the hooded guards to the center of the obsidian room, so odd in the way it both sparkles and swallows light—is this anthracite?—while Draven is given a plain sword.
He turns to eye both Rhea and me after twirling the weapon in his hand, measuring the weight of the steel blade.
“Both of you will stay behind me. We don’t have to worry about magic since they’ll be wearing cuffs like ours, but we do have to worry about being overrun by their numbers.
If we get separated for even a moment, it could mean the end for one of you, which is a fate I am not willing to accept.
So no matter what happens, no matter what tricks they have up their sleeves, you do not move past me. ”
“I want to help,” I say, drawing the full intensity of his gaze to me. I step forward and take his free hand in mine, squeezing. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”
He studies me, lifting his hand from my fingers so he can pinch my chin. “You can stay alive.”
Draven lowers his lips to mine and kisses me tenderly. He grips my neck, and I can feel how frightened he truly is in the seams of his mouth. By the way he savors the kiss. How hard he tries to not let his lips turn it into another goodbye.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, nagging from a far away place, I am aware we should not be kissing right now.
Not while death clots the air, and Tynan’s prying eyes are upon us.
Not while Rhea is mute from her defeat, and Gray is still slumped on his knees, no more than a shell of himself.
Yet it feels like time, this world, and the inhabitants attempting to conquer it—they all keep tearing us apart, not allowing us to just be.
To exist as one, together. To have lazy mornings spent in bed discovering each other’s bodies, and long nights spent under the stars exploring each other’s souls.
And we suspect we will not have such privileges for a while longer.
So I do not rush this kiss; I treasure it. Allow it to dance for as long as our lips need to feel sated.
Draven eventually pulls back, eyes cradling me tenderly for one, final moment. “I love you,” he whispers against my lips.
My heart swells. The feeling is temporary.
“I love you.”
Draven drops his warm palm from my face and turns to Rhea. “Is it true you have your daggers?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Rhea,” Draven demands. “Rhea! I need you to focus.”
Her eyes snap to, and she inhales a sharp, shuddering breath. “Yes,” she answers, her voice such a diluted version of the confident and brazen girl I have seen thus far.
“Good. Use them.”
The walls around us begin to rattle, shaking the ground violently, nearly rocking me from my feet.
“Ah, good,” Tynan says, now returned to his perch on the balcony. “Let the game officially begin.”
One by one, the walls encasing us groan as they recede into the ground, exposing a brilliant night sky and a radiant full moon bleeding silver over the shadows.
The columns once holding our chains now keep the glistening obsidian ceiling suspended over our heads, the vaulted arches and reflected moonlight creating an odd illusion over the space.
It is similar to a house of mirrors, just with less clarity.
Yet that is not the element drawing my eye. No.
It is the group of somewhere between twenty, maybe thirty condemned rebels circling around us, swords in each of their waiting hands.
Gods damn it. If only I could use my magic. I would be able to help Draven instead of being nothing but a burden to him.
Should I have never burned King Alastair? Should I have chosen differently?
I already know my answer.
No—he deserved to burn.
And despite the bleak fate surrounding us, I can not find it in me to feel a sliver of pity, guilt, or regret.
What does that say about me?
Tynan’s voice echoes through the night air. “Begin!”
A roar pierces the night veil as men and women peel their lips back and scream their determination like a promise to the gods. They charge after us, predators collapsing the trap onto their prey. The circle around us narrows as bodies flock to us at all angles.
This is impossible.
Without the use of our magic and with only one sword, we are practically defenseless against this many people.
We are going to die.
“Hey!” Rhea shouts from beside me, despite her hip practically being pressed to mine as Draven stands in front of us, sword at the ready. “Take these.” She hands over two pristine daggers and places the hilts in my trembling palms.
“I’m not very skilled with weaponry yet,” I confess. “I’ve been so focused on refining my magic and hand-to-hand combat skills, I haven’t practiced much with weapons.”
“Well, tonight is a great fucking night to get acquianted with the feel of a dagger in your hand.”
Despite the abysmal situation, my lip twitches as I watch a tiny ember respark in her sharpening gaze.
“It’s not about blocking,” she says hurriedly as the distance between us and death diminishes pace after quickened pace. “It’s about redirecting the attack. Remember that.”
Quick as a blink, I feel Draven reach one hand back to squeeze my wrist. “You are the most resilient person I have ever known.” In spite of the chaos, he is calm. Composed. “You can do this.”
I’m glad one of us thinks so.
Seven paces. Six paces. Five paces.
“Rhea,” Draven growls, some of that composure slipping. “Stand in front of Lyra, and we will keep her wedged between us.”
Four paces.
“If you need me to turn,” Draven instructs, “call out for me without hesitation.”
Three paces.
“Together?” Rhea asks, glancing back.
Two paces.
“Together,” Draven and I agree.
One.
Steel clashes against steel, the high-pitched collision of blades ringing into the air.
Rhea moves like water, fluid and graceful, redirecting the glistening tips just as she said to.
Draven stands tall with the unmovable force of a rooted oak, not bending against the tidal wave of people.
I keep the daggers Rhea gave me firm in my palm, using them to defend against a rogue slice of a blade when it pierces its way through their defenses.
Rhea takes down two condemned fighters, her dagger finding its mark in a neck and then someone’s side. I’m not entirely sure how many bodies Draven has littered at his feet, but from my peripheral and a quick glance back, I can see enough to know it’s more than a few.
But it’s not enough.
The people keep coming, the circle around us pressing in.
Rhea shouts and kicks out, driving a man backward. In the opening, a woman grabs Rhea’s leg and pulls. She plummets to the ground, keeping a hold of only one dagger. Her body slides, until it stills, her now dagger-less hand holding form in front of her, her chest heaving.
I glance up to find the dagger lodged into the woman’s eye socket, blood spilling down the woman’s cheeks like tears.
Was she a mother? A wife? Did she have a family she was fighting to return to?
No.
I can’t think about that now. I can’t. Because the circumstances are clearly set and well outside of our control: either they die, or we do. And I do not plan on dying today.
Silver glints in my peripheral, and I turn just in time to see a blade reflecting the moon as it arcs down for my shoulder. As a reaction, I bring my daggers up, ready to attempt to do something, yet before I am forced to, another blade appears, assuming the brunt of the force.
Draven braces his forearm against the length of the blade, swallowing the force of the attack with his body. Within a heartbeat, he parries and thrusts the tip of his sword into the man’s stomach, disemboweling him within an instant. “Do not touch her.”
Two more blades glisten in the night much like the stars, and they swing down on Draven at the same moment.
He turns to deflect one, and without thinking but having Rhea’s last actions pressed into my mind, I throw my dagger at the charging woman.
It nicks her throat and she stills. For a moment, I think I’ve done nothing but waste a vital weapon.
Until the blood squirts from her neck, and she slaps her hand to where the slice cut deep. She hits the ground within moments.
When I turn around, Draven has neutralized the other fighter, and he has already positioned himself over Rhea to give her time to stand, two swords now in his hand. Cuts are slashed throughout the fabric of Rhea’s clothing, and blood drips from her arms and legs.
She avoided a fatal injury, but she was injured while on the ground. That much is certain.
It doesn’t stop her from picking up two fallen swords and twirling them around in her hands.
Then she moves with swift, brute force, her ability with a blade on par with Draven’s, if not better.
The black kohl always lining her eyes is smudged while blood mattes her hair and dirt coats her skin.
I can’t help but think she looks like a goddess of death right now.
The admiration costs me.
I feel a sharp pain slice down my back and then another at my calf.
I buckle to my knees, a cry of pain tearing free from my throat.
I see the blurry outline of a blade as it plunges down for me, yet the fighter crumbles before it can ever strike true, a blade now protruding through his chest. Draven appears, only one sword in hand, but more fighters keep coming.
There’s still so many of them.
One person trips over all the bodies crowding in and falls into me.
The man clatters to the ground, yet even that doesn’t stop him from attempting to pierce me with his sword.
I move with my remaining dagger—the action agonizing from the oozing slice now marring my back—and drive the tip into the crook of his shoulder the same moment his sword is thrust clean through my bicep.
I scream while pain makes my vision pulse with flashing colors.