Chapter 15 #2
“Get your shit together,” he scowls. “I didn’t cross an ocean and get syphilis twice, just to have you die before we’ve even found your sweetie.”
Orios strides past us, heading to the window, his massive hands gripping the curtains and tearing them down.
The sunlight floods the room, blinding and stinging like fire on my skin.
Zyphoro steps back, and even through the pain, even in my weakness, I flinch when Reon goes to sweep me into his arms.
He frowns, sensing my hesitation at being scooped up like some helpless damsel.
“I get no pleasure from this either,” he drawls.
“What do we do with her?” Zyphoro asks, her gaze fixed bitterly on Marlayna.
I’m too weak to form the words, but Solena speaks up instead, her voice venomous and unforgiving. “Leave her. She is nothing. Her house is nothing.”
But Solena’s words fall on deaf ears.
In a blink, Zyphoro moves, a flash of smoke and steel, and her dagger finds its mark, plunging deep into Marlayna’s heart.
The Lady of Taramethos gasps, her lips parting soundlessly as disbelief freezes her features.
For a heartbeat she stands trembling, eyes wide and glassy, before Zyphoro twists the blade.
A sharp, shuddering breath escapes Marlayna’s throat.
Then she slips from the steel’s edge and crumples to the floor.
Zyphoro wipes the blade on the leather of her trousers with casual indifference, as if the act were little more than an afterthought.
“You feared punishment from a Mordorin prince. Perhaps it is the princess you should have concerned yourself with.” Her eyes meet mine, and I glimpse something dark behind them. “Vengeance served, brother.”
Despite my protests, Reon lifts me up with less effort than I’d hoped, and Orios, without a word, raises his boot and kicks the glass from the windowpane.
The shattering sound echoes in the room as Reon steps onto the ledge, staring out across the sandstone rooftops of Ballamar.
For a moment, he simply breathes in the air.
Then, with a single step, we plummet. The wind roars around us as we fall toward the bustling streets stories below.
Gravity drags us down until, with a powerful beat of his copper wings, Reon catches the air.
We soar upward, climbing higher into the sky, the wind rushing past us, sending dust and dirt swirling through the streets.
Zyphoro, Solena, and Orios follow close behind, the wind carrying us swiftly toward The Shattered Edge, its dark sails billowing where it lies anchored. Reon’s landing is anything but graceful, his footing falters under my weight, a grunt slipping from his lips, but he manages to stay upright.
“Bring him below deck,” Solena commands as she touches down in a seamless, fluid motion, wasting no time before storming toward the cabin door. She throws it open, and Reon obeys without question, hauling me down the narrow steps before laying me across the familiar smoothness of the table.
Zyphoro and Orios linger in the doorway, their forms blocking the light, but Solena turns on them before they can step inside.
“All of you. Out,” she barks, her glare daring them to defy her. “If I need help, I will ask for it.”
My vision swims, but I catch the smirk playing at Zyphoro’s lips and the heavy sag of Orios’ shoulders before Reon shuts the door behind them.
Solena moves fast, her fingers ripping open my shirt without hesitation, exposing the wound beneath. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t hesitate.
“What were you thinking?” she hisses, grabbing a nearby rag. “As if you do not already have enough enemies eager to see you dead, you decide to take matters into your own hands?”
“I do not deserve to live,” I mutter, my voice hoarse. “Not after what I’ve done to Amara. Not after the pain I’ve caused her.”
The sharp clang of glass and metal fills the space as Solena roughly rummages through a shelf, ensuring I hear every scrape and clatter.
“So this is your penance?” she scoffs, her voice laced with biting disapproval.
I turn my head away, unwilling to meet her eyes, unwilling to answer. Then, the sound I do recognize. A slosh of liquid in a bottle. A second later, warmth splashes against my torn flesh.
A fresh pain tears through me, and I suck in a hard gulp of air, gritting my teeth as the burn spreads deep into the wound.
“If you were truly so wracked with guilt, you would have skewered something vital,” Solena remarks, far too unimpressed for my liking. She tips the bottle again, letting another generous pour of rum wash over me. “You didn’t even hit an organ. This is little more than a flesh wound.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as she presses a cloth against my side, not bothering with delicacy as she binds it tightly with whatever rags she can find, cleanliness be damned.
“What would Amara think if she knew you had done something so incredibly stupid?” she demands.
“I don’t know what came over me,” I admit, exhaling shakily. “For a moment, I thought I was doing her a kindness.”
Solena doesn’t soften. If anything, her expression darkens. “Not just throwing yourself on your sword like an idiot,” she snaps, her hands pausing for only a second. “You summoned Death Singer from the void.” Her gaze drills into me, searching. “Did he see you?”
Regret rises thick and acidic in my throat. I stare at the ceiling, my chest tight. “I do not know.”
Solena shakes her head, disappointment cutting almost as deep as the wound. “On your stomach,” she orders. “I’ll draw more sigils. Just in case.”
I shift, but pain lances through my ribs, sending stars bursting behind my eyes. A groan slips out before I can stop it.
Solena, unsurprisingly, offers no sympathy.
“That’s what happens when you stab yourself,” she snaps. “I’ll mix the ink. Be on your stomach by the time I’m ready.”
I bite down on my lip, my canines nearly piercing the skin as I force my battered body onto my stomach with one final, agonizing roll.
A sharp breath hisses through my teeth, but I make no sound beyond that.
I lie still, my body pressed against the cool surface of the table, waiting for Solena’s return as she continues her scolding, relentless words that blur in my ears, fading beneath the rush of blood pounding through my skull.
Then, another voice cuts through.
“Favored son,” it whispers. “So long have you been unseen by his eye. But not now. We see you.”
A slow, slithering dread knots in my gut.
My eyes burn, red and sore, and at first, I tell myself it’s nothing, just exhaustion, a trick of my blurred vision.
But then I see it. A black speck, flickering in the periphery, shimmering like heat off distant dunes.
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing it away, but when I open them, the darkness is still there.
Larger. Expanding.
The blackness unfurls, stretching wide until it is no longer a speck but a fathomless abyss so absent of light, so empty of hope, it can only be one thing.
The void.
And within its pitch-dark depths, something stirs.
A glint of pale white cuts through the darkness. An eye, enormous and all-seeing, unblinking in its endless hunger. And below it, a clawed hand, its fingers impossibly long, reaching.
“Come home, favored son,” the voice beckons, dark and sweet as a hymn. A call that slides into my bones, curling around my ribs. “It is time to feed the beast.”
A sharp clatter rips through the air. A bowl of ink spilling onto the floor, the thick black liquid pooling at the table leg.
Before my vision is swallowed whole, before my eyes roll over black, I hear Solena scream.
“Zyphoro! Gygarth has found him!”
The door explodes open, wood splintering beneath the force of Zyphoro’s arrival.
My vision swims, edges blurring, but she moves with lethal grace.
Her daggers cut through the air, silver flashing like shards of a dying star.
I don’t even have time to brace. The air hums, sharp with the promise of steel, and before I can take another breath, before I can blink, my eyes roll over black.