Chapter 66
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Ryker
Fuck, every part of me hurt.
My muscles and bones bent in ways they should never go. My head felt like someone had smashed it with a hammer. Or maybe not a hammer—maybe it had been crushed beneath the thousands of tons of rock that had fallen on it.
A loud, incessant screeching sounded endlessly in my ears. I tried to touch my head to see how much of it still existed, but my fingers either wouldn’t work or were pinned beneath the remnants of the palace.
I could still think, so that meant my brain remained intact, even if it felt like someone was repeatedly kicking it. When I first woke, my broken spine made it impossible to feel my feet, but as it healed, the feeling started returning.
That feeling was worse than the numbness. Fire raced across the synapses as they fused back together. Flames seared across my healing nerve endings; it burned the skin from my muscles and bones, and though it didn’t fall around me, I was sure the blaze was destroying me.
I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming as bones snapped while my body worked to heal itself. My spine wasn’t the only thing broken in the collapse; both my arms, my right ankle, and my left femur had also shattered.
With every breath I took, my ribs jabbed my lungs, making every inhale a piercing agony. I couldn’t feel the fingers on my left hand, probably because the stones pinning it had bent my wrist into an unnatural angle.
As the inferno continued to devour me, I closed my eyes… or maybe I didn’t. I couldn’t be sure. It was impossible to tell since darkness surrounded me.
Opening my eyes again, I strained to see but only succeeded in increasing the intensity of the hammer bashing my brain. Every time I tried to breathe, a lancing pain shot out from my ribs and through my lungs.
When the pain settled into something more manageable, I searched within myself for Ellery. She was somewhere in here too.
Is she alive?
The idea of losing her was more excruciating than all my shattered bones and bashed skull. She has to be alive.
The pulse of her lightning thrummed within me. It was a familiar beat, one that should have calmed me. Instead, I worried it had become such an entwined part of me that it would be there if she were dead or alive.
She was powerful. If anyone could survive this, it was her, but I needed to see and hold her. My arms ached from more than the healing bones.
Unfortunately, I was too battered to do much more than get lightning to flicker at the tips of my left hand. Narrowing my eyes, I focused on releasing a little bolt of lightning. Some of the rocks shattered and skidded away from me, but as soon as they vanished, more fell to replace them.
I bit back my frustration as the new rocks clinked and clattered into place. When they stopped falling, silence descended once more.
Wiggling my fingers again, I attempted to open a portal, but nothing happened. Either I was too weak for it to happen, or the anti-portal spell that protected the palace remained in place even with the structure in ruins.
My back had healed enough that it stopped burning, and I could feel the cool stones encompassing me. The mineral tang of their scent filled my nostrils.
Their weight against my broken ribs was nearly unbearable, but I had to endure it. I didn’t have any other choice, as there was nowhere for me to go.
Blood still seeped from the sword puncture in my stomach. It wasn’t healing fast enough to keep the loss of blood from affecting me; numbness crept through my feet and hands while my heart gave a lurching beat.
With little sparks lighting the darkness, I tried to see beyond the rocks, but it was impossible. When I strained to hear anything beyond the shrill screeching in my ears, I detected a faint scraping sound.
I frowned as I tried to figure out if the sound was real or more strange noises coming from my battered brain. My eyes drooped as a sudden wave of exhaustion rolled over me.
I couldn’t fall asleep, but my healing body was seeking a way to nourish itself further. I had to stay awake; I had to get to Ellery.
We were at the second-lowest level of the palace when it collapsed. Not only that, but we’d fallen into the city of the dead.
When they built the castle, did they know they were doing it on top of that buried city? Or had they seen the spot and decided it was the perfect place to erect their new monstrosity?
If they had known what they were building on top of, then they were idiots. The weight of the palace might have caused it to collapse one day, even without Ellery’s explosion.
I suspected the builders hadn’t known. They’d simply chosen the best, most central location in the realm. The Heart of Stone might have helped them pick their location too; they might have felt an inexplicable pull toward it. But maybe not, I’d never felt anything until we were much closer to it.
This place, whether the builders knew it or not, possessed power, and, in a way, bound them to the gargoyles their ancestors betrayed. And now it was all in ruins, and the remnants of the palace had buried us in a town few had known existed.
What is going on outside? I wondered as I released another bolt of lightning to break apart a few more rocks. Is the battle over? What was their reaction to the palace collapsing?
Did the fight also collapse when it happened? Had the amsirah fled?
No, Tucker, Ianto, and Fletcher won’t let that happen. They’ll hold everyone together.
But who will hold the guards together?
Ianto, Tucker, Fletcher, and maybe the gargoyles would keep our fighters on the field, but no one remained to keep the soldiers united. The palace’s destruction would have rattled them.
In an instant, they’d lost everything they knew, and even with higher-ranking officials on the field, they’d be confused and scrambling. Most of them had probably forgotten how to think on their own.
If we hadn’t lost the battle before the palace collapsed, there was a good chance its destruction sealed the win for us. Or at least that’s what I hoped for, because other than still feeling Ellery’s lightning within me, it was all I had left.
That scratching sound came again from somewhere nearby. It reminded me of those fucking rats in the dungeon, and for all I knew, they were the ones creating the noise as they tried to escape the debris too.
When a rock clattered from the direction of the scratching, I increased the brightness of my lightning. It did nothing but reflect off the endless sea of rocks surrounding me.