Chapter 67 #2
Is this the fate of humanity? I think in my delirious, pain-induced state. Are we doomed to forever act with such barbarism?
Draven bends down and grips the bleeding man roughly, throwing him across the space while my dagger remains wedged into his skin.
At the same moment, a woman charges forward and slices clean through his combat boots, her blade reaching the skin of his heels, cutting both tendons.
Then she slices with another motion, cutting his calves.
Draven drops instantly.
The woman charges forward, her blade lifted high over her head.
Something beyond instinct overtakes me, propelling my muscles to act with a force superseding what I myself am capable of. I pull the blade free from my arm—so much of my blood spilling free as a result—and I throw myself over Draven’s body, driving the steel upward.
It glides straight through the woman’s chest.
She sways before tipping backward, landing with a dull thud.
“Are you okay?” I ask Draven as I pry myself off him, my vision flickering, my bleeding arm now fully limp at my side.
“Get to Rhea,” he says, not deigning to answer me. “Rhea!” he shouts. “I need you.” Blood pools around his feet.
Blood pools around my own feet.
So. Much. Blood.
I reach for another discarded sword with my uninjured arm, some small part of my mind reminding me I am supposed to be fighting. Yet my vision is fogging like steamed glass, and my muscles fill with lead, becoming nearly impossible to move.
A body yanks me up from the ground and drags me backward. I feel cool steel positioned at my throat.
“Lyra,” Draven’s panicked voice cries. He is still flat on his stomach, unable to rise with the wounds splitting his calf muscles and the tendons at his heels. His eyes are ghosts, the whispers of a painful past edging on the precipice of a painful future.
I watch him, my head fuzzy and too heavy to hold upright for much longer.
My heart.
My love.
My person.
An oddly peaceful resignation sweeps over me. Perhaps it’s from all the blood loss. Perhaps my body is going into shock. Maybe I’ve just decided this cruel world isn’t worth fighting for any longer.
But if that’s true, if there is no reason to fight, why does the man I’ve given my heart to keep fighting? Why, in spite of not being able to walk, is he finding a way to reach me, even now?
Because he is coming for me.
Because he will always come for me.
With a sword’s hilt clutched between his blood-caked fingers, Draven moves one forearm in front of the other, crawling forward on his belly, a trail of blood his shadow. His teeth are bared, resolve and panic blazing in his bloodshot eyes.
The blade digs deeper into my throat.
Why hasn’t the person sliced yet?
Draven drags himself forward, inch by slow-moving inch. He crawls to me, unwilling to give up. Further and further and further, he slides over the sticky, crimson lake dividing us.
“Draven…” I murmur at the same moment Rhea’s voice echoes through the sky.
“Draven!”
She’s been disarmed, a hooded figure clutching her to their chest while positioning a blade at her throat.
Draven glances back. When his eyes return to me, there is now sheer terror muting the resolve once setting them ablaze.
“Well, well,” Tynan drawls from the balcony, speaking for the first time since this horrible game began. “Whoever will you choose? What will you do when you can only move—oh, forgive me—crawl to one of them?”
Draven grits his teeth, ignoring his father entirely. He positions himself so he can slam the hilt of his sword into the magic-blocking manacles latched around his wrists. He starts with his left hand, slamming the weapon down with so much force, I swear I hear bone crunch. “Fuck. Fuck!”
He continues slamming the hilt against the manacles.
They do not budge an inch.
“Fuck!” he screams, hysteria now seeming to be the driving force behind his movements.
Though to be fair, it is hard to tell. The world around me is very blurry.
“Too bad,” Tynan pouts. “You couldn’t even manage to keep one of them protected this time.” Tynan lifts his hand, as if to give some signal.
“Choice.” Draven growls the word out, somehow quiet and loud all at once.
“Choice?” Tynan echoes. “Please, do elaborate.” There is an undercurrent of victory in his voice.
“What’s my choice? I know you have one for me.”
“You’re looking at your choice, boy. And it’s already been made—you let them both get captured. You’ve allowed them to both die.”
Draven shakes his head, his thin lips stretched with a palpable resentment. “No. I know you have something else for me up your sleeve—a choice which has yet to be offered.”
“What gives you that impression?”
“Because having both of them die does nothing for you. So far, each of the choices you’ve presented has benefited you.
Gray Nightenjoy’s game was designed to break him so he can no longer be the people’s champion.
Lyra’s game ended with King Alastair’s death.
So tell me, Tynan: What. Is. My. Choice?
What have you wagered on happening as a result of this final game? ”
Tynan watches Draven for a long, silent moment, a curve wedged deep into the corner of his lips.
I sway on my feet.
“Perhaps there is more Dalmar in you than I thought,” Tynan says with approval. “Very well.”
He descends from the balcony and strides over, passing by Gray—who still has not moved away from his lifeless parents, his head hung and shoulders slouched forward.
Tynan stops only a few paces short of Draven. “You want a choice, boy? Then allow me to offer it to you.”
The stone doors from the remaining walls near the balcony groan open, and a hooded figure carrying an onyx tray with a corked glass vial strides in.
They stop at Tynan’s side, lowering their head in deference as he plucks the vial from the tray.
He only spares the person a glance. “Heal the girl a little, would you? I need her conscious for the finale of these grand games.”
“Don’t touch her,” Draven growls through clenched teeth.
Tynan crouches down in front of him, cocking his head at him and frowning. “And are you going to stop me if I do? You can’t even stand, boy. Know your place.”
The hooded servant approaches me, and a warmth blankets over me. Just enough to remove the blurry haze from my vision and rid some of the heaviness from my swaying head. “Finished, Master.” There is something in the croakish voice which strikes a familiar chord.
Tynan points down at Draven. “Now the boy.”
The servant does as asked, responding the same way once completed. “Finished, Master.” Again, there is something in the cadence of the voice I recognize…
“You are dismissed, then.”
The figure exits the room, and Tynan watches me with an anticipatory smirk curling his mouth. He looks back to Draven, who glares at his father as he braces his weight on his sword to rise.
“See this?” Tynan asks, holding up the vial.
“This is known as the Drink of Oblivion. It can only be made by a very talented Gardner due to its complexities. But once brewed, all it takes is a swig for someone to forget what the creator wishes them to. It’s much like your average memory elixir, only three times as potent.
” Tynan again slides his eyes to me, where they linger a heartbeat too long as he mocks an apologetic grin.
And then he glances back at where Azalea lays with her lifeless eyes and crimson stains.
Rage flickers through me, a brief but painful swell in my veins as I call on magic that cannot answer. “I will ki—”
The blade at my throat presses deeper, nicking my skin and cutting my words short. The threat in the action is clear: do not speak unless spoken to. One glance at Rhea tells me she is simmering beneath the same warning.
“This vial has been brewed specifically for you,” Tynan continues, attention now returned to Draven.
“If consumed, you will forget everything that has prevented you from being the heir House Dalmar needs. Attachments. Feelings of love and devotion. You will be stripped of your pesky desire to protect. Will be removed of your sentimentalities. You will finally be the son I have wanted. Then, you will marry Arden Larking as I have publicly declared, and together, the two of you will create a new heir—a new child born of the light and of the dark.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then the two people you love most will die by the blades currently pressed against their throats at my command. Truthfully, the choice is quite simple: either lose them in life or lose them in memory. Choose the selfish or the selfless.” A pause paired with a satisfied grin. “Clever, isn’t it?
Draven swipes the vial from Tynan’s hand. “Do not stand before me and pretend you’ve created a choice of great depth. There is nothing clever about pure theatrics. My decision was never in question, and you knew that.”
Tynan shrugs, still smiling. “It has been a great show though, hasn’t it? It’s a shame you won’t be able to fully appreciate my final bow any longer.”
Draven ignores him. “You swear if I drink this—if I make this choice—you will not kill them?”
“Not tonight at least. Which, given your circumstances, is the best you can hope for.”
Draven observes his father, his decision clearly made. He looks at Rhea first. “Do not give into the darkness, Rhea. Do not let your anger swallow you. Do not allow who you are to be lost.”
“Draven, don’t…” Rhea’s voice quivers. “Please. I can’t…I don’t…” She stops. “I don’t want to be alone.” She is crying now. “Brother, please.”
Draven hides it well, but I can see by the stiffness of his shoulders and the way his chin is held a little too steady he is trying hard not to show his devastation.
“Find Finlay,” he instructs, voice tight.
“He will help you navigate all that’s to come.
He will fight to keep you safe, Rhea. Promise me you’ll find him. ”
“No. I’ll find Kiran instead.”
My stomach drops.
Draven’s gaze hardens. “No. Listen to me, Rhea. You find Finlay. No one else. Promise me.”
“I-I can’t. I won’t. Draven, he—”
“Promise me.”
Rhea jerks her chin away from him, remaining silent.
“Rhea.”
“Fine,” she whispers, still not looking at him. “I promise.”
Draven looks to me next, so many unspoken words spilling over his eyes. How does one say so much in so little time, while not truly being able to say anything at all?
“I love you, Lyra. That can never be rewritten.”
Draven uncorks the vial and tips his head back, swallowing the blue contents inside.
My eyes widen with my horror. “No! No!” I flail against the hold on me, slicing my neck at the center. It stings and burns, but I don’t care.
“You can let her go now,” Tynan instructs.
The person releases their hold, and I sprint to Draven, my steps horribly unsteady. As I run, I realize for the first time that the remaining condemned fighters have disappeared. I haven’t the slightest idea where they went or how they managed to vanish without me noticing.
Yet I have no time to consider the peculiarity of that. Instead, I only focus on Draven, mounds of dust kicking up and burning my eyes, forcing me to swipe my forming tears away with the back of my hand just before crashing my body into his.
He absorbs the shock of my impact without budging an inch.
I squeeze him, holding onto his waist with wild desperation.
Please hold me back. Please hold me back. Please.
Hold me back.
Draven’s hands bracket my shoulders. I pull away to meet his gaze. The gaze I know as intimately as I know my own soul.
Yet there is nothing familiar about the way he looks at me as he pries me off.
He blinks. “Who are you?”