Chapter 34 #2
“Baev’kalath is ours, but I don’t for a moment believe all our Blades are lost. Tear through the fortress.”
Orios slams a fist to his chest. “Yes, Rook.”
I nod toward Zyphoro. “Round up the Mor’Thravar Fae. If they want to live, they’ll wear the Mordorin mark.”
Her eyes flicker, and she inclines her head. “As you command, brother.”
I grip Reon’s shoulder. “We need to find Amara. Tell her it’s safe.”
My wings spread wide, smoke and shadow unraveling like dark silk in the rain. Reon’s gaze slides to them, a crooked grin tugging at his mouth.
“Well, aren’t those impressive? Is this a pissing contest?”
He summons his wings, copper and gold burst from his back, feathers bright and fierce.
I leap into the storm, tearing through the sky, wind howling in my ears and the rain parting like a curtain. Reon follows, but he can’t hold pace. I burn forward in black plumes, a tempest unleashed.
“Amara!” My voice cuts through the night, desperate and raw. Silence answers.
Every spire, every tower, empty. I close my eyes and breathe deep, sorting through scent and magic, through blood-memory and bond.
For her pulse. For the place my teeth broke skin.
For the mark that binds us. There. A spark.
A pull. My eyes fly open, fixed on a flash of green flame curling over the eastern balcony stone.
I dive hard.
The balcony is littered with the charred remains of demons, embers still glowing faintly in the rain.
Only Amara could have left this trail. She must be close. Why does she not call to me?
My boots hit the stone as I weave through broken bodies. The doors ahead are shattered, splintered, scorched black from fire’s kiss.
I slow, and an icy knot tightens in my gut and when I turn the corner and my world shatters.
Amara. My light, my fury, my heart.
Bloodied, broken, her skin blistered and torn, her hair burned away in ragged patches. Great wounds gape where flesh should be. More blood pools around her than flows within her veins and the cruelest cut of all, she is not healing.
I gulp, the sharp sting like shattered glass scraping down my throat as I drop to one knee beside her.
“Amara,” I whisper, voice raw and brittle, as if saying her name too loud might shatter what little remains of her. But there is no answer.
My hands tremble as they reach for her, hesitating before brushing against her cheek. Her skin is hot, almost burning, melting beneath my touch.
“Amara,” I breathe again, louder this time, desperate.
Tears burn behind my eyes, but I swallow them down, letting raw fury rise in their place. My jaw tightens until it aches, my skin flushes with heat. I cradle her fragile body in my arms.
“Amara! No!”
Before I can say more, the panel of the secret door crashes open, slamming against the wall. The Golden Son stumbles through, breathless, eyes wild with urgency.
In one smooth motion, I summon Death Singer, blade humming with deadly intent, raising it toward him. He freezes, barely a step from impalement.
“Where is she?” I demand, voice sharp as the steel at his throat. “Where is our…”
Then Solena steps out from behind him. My daughter is nestled in her arms, unharmed. Safe. The sight should loosen the knot in my chest, should wash me clean of the fear choking me. But relief cannot drown the agony.
My gaze drags back to Amara. To the ruin of her flesh. To the rune on her neck, shredded and almost unrecognizable.
“She’s not healing,” I murmur, drawing her closer. My arms lock around her, pulling her upright so I am closer to her mouth. “My love. You need to heal yourself. Amara.”
Nothing. No words. No movement nevertheless, I refuse to believe she is anything other than alive.
She is not gone. I will not accept that.
Not until the sky bleeds and the seas turn to dust. When day becomes night and the end is the beginning.
When every law of above and below collapses in on itself.
Until then, she breathes. She is mine and if she is not living…
Heavy steps echo across the stone. What remains of the door splinters apart when Reon forces his way through. His eyes go wide with horror as he nears.
“Rook. Is she…”
“She just needs to heal,” I roar, my voice booming until the walls quake.
Reon inclines his head, a cautious hand half-raised. “Of course, Rook.”
I do not realize I am rocking her. Holding her close though the contact tears at her charred skin. The Golden Son staggers to the wall, sliding down until his shoulders slump forward, chin tucked.
My canines ache as they lengthen. My voice is a low growl. “This is your fault. If you had not stolen her from me…”
His head lifts. His gaze cuts like a blade. “There is no one to blame but you. She is here because of you. You put her in danger. You put the noose around her neck.”
“I love her!” The words thunder out of me, and my vision blurs. I feel the tears fall, streaking down my face, but when they touch Amara’s skin, they drip black as ink.
“You cannot love,” the Golden Son says, pushing himself to his feet, squaring his shoulders. “You do not know how. So put her in the ground and go find your next plaything, your next innocent soul to corrupt and destroy.”
My jaw locks. In my mind, I carve him apart piece by piece, imagining the thousand ways to make him suffer. Which limbs to take, what to leave, how to keep him breathing so I can begin again and again. For years if I wish.
But before I can rise, my daughter cries out.
Solena rocks her gently. “I… I think she’s hungry.”
I nod. “Yes. Amara will feed her. She just needs to heal.” I turn back to my wife, smoothing a hand over her head, ignoring the strands that come away in my palm. “Amara. My love. You need to heal. Our daughter needs you. I need you.”
Reon edges closer, his steps slow and cautious, like he’s approaching an unchained beast. He lowers himself to one knee, exchanging a sharp, worried glance with Solena.
“Rook,” he says, quiet, careful. “Come, my friend. We need to leave her.”
“To heal?” I demand.
He nods once. “Yes. To heal. Will you come with me?”
The words scrape against my skull, senseless. Leave her? Why would I leave her? Why would I be anywhere but at her side?
Movement catches my eye. The Golden Son. He shakes his head, a mocking grunt slipping from his mouth. I don’t hear the words. Don’t need to. I know the tone. I know the loathing, the accusation. I know they doubt my love. Blame me for her death, and that alone is enough.
The void tears open for me, and in the next heartbeat, I am at his side.
My hand clamps around his throat, lifting him from the ground as I slam him into the wall hard enough to rattle the stone.
Solena gasps, stumbling back. The Golden Son claws at my grip, kicks against my legs, but it’s useless.
I will not release him. Not until I’ve wrung every last breath from his lungs.
I lock onto those bright blue eyes and watch the light dim. He gasps, spits broken words that barely register. I watch only until the flicker fades.
“Rook!”
Reon’s voice cuts through, sharp, but I don’t turn.
“Rook!” Louder this time. Harder. “She lives!”
My head snaps toward him.
The Golden Son drops from my grasp, crumpling to the ground in a choking heap. My focus is already gone from him, fixed on Reon where he crouches over Amara.
“But only barely, my friend,” Reon says. “She does not have much time.”
“She needs a healer,” Solena blurts. Her brow furrows, lips trembling, then her eyes flare wide. “The Grove.”
Reon’s head shakes immediately. “We will never reach it before she…” He stops when my glare finds him, his jaw clenching. “It is too far. Unless…”
His gaze falls to his fingertips, where golden sparks crackle and dance. “I can slow time. Just for her. It could be enough.”
“Can you do that?” Solena asks.
A shrug. “We’re about to find out.”
The void swallows me again, and I reappear at Amara’s side, sweeping her into my arms.
“Then let’s not waste anymore time.”
I rise, but the moment I’m fully upright, the ground quakes beneath us. Stone groans. My back arches as my canines lengthen, every muscle coiled for attack. Ready to face whatever comes next.
The world splits. A wound in reality gapes wide, and from its unending blackness, something stirs.
Something vast. A beast born of teeth and nightmares, its form too great to comprehend.
Tentacles, thrashing and coiling, each ending in glinting, blade-sharp edges forged to rend not only flesh, but hope.
The Father Below.
His presence crushes the breath from my lungs, pins me to the trembling stone. I can command demons. I can devour them. But not him. Not Gygarth. Before him, I am an ant standing against the tide.
A voice rumbles from that fathomless dark, low and terrible.
“You are a disappointment.”
The words seep into me, cold and absolute.
“No matter how many sigils you shroud yourself with, no matter how you twist and claw at the thread of fate, you cannot escape me. We are one, favored son. I dwell within you, as you dwell within me. There is no severing us. I am eternal and our bargain was struck in blood long ago.”
His shadow deepens, swallowing every flicker of light. “So now,” he says, voice curling into a snarl, “I take what is mine, Daedalus Phaedren.”
My grip on Amara tightens until my arms ache, until my claws bite into my own flesh. I will not give her up. I will not…
But it is not Amara he reaches for.
Gygarth’s attention shifts. His gaze falls on my daughter. A roll of black smoke unravels from the void, thick and clinging, snaring her small form. Her cry pierces me, high, panicked, before the smoke smothers it into silence.
“Meat for the beast,” he hisses.
The temperature plummets. The world dims. It is as if night itself pours into the chamber, and the cold cuts through to my marrow. It happens in the span of a heartbeat.
Her cries vanish. The smoke fades. The light stutters back. The void is gone, Gygarth swallowed once more into the abyss.
I turn to where she had been, safe, I thought, in Solena’s arms. But those arms are empty.
Solena’s knees hit the floor. Her face crumples. “She’s gone.”