Chapter 33 They Hold No Power over Me #2
I switch to channeling the Star, light burning beneath my skin as the card forges a sword made of light.
Every instinct of survival within me hones its sharp edges, fire licking up the blade.
Sweat beads my brow, but I’m not done—I draw the Sun, the next highest Arcana beside Judgment and the World.
My spare hand brims with lava, cracking across my skin.
I likely look like a demon. I’m surely as angry as one.
I don’t know how long I can maintain this, so I charge Altair just as Fable drops to a knee, forced to release him, Scorpius running to her side, still using the Moon Arcana to impersonate Draven.
Altair’s sword meets mine with such ease I immediately realize I’ve made a huge fucking mistake.
Yet my blade holds. We break apart and Scorpius steps in, his hits stronger than mine, like a rabid bear, all brute strength with no grace.
They exchange more blows, and I angle to find a way to attack without hitting Scorpius.
Suddenly Altair slams his sword against Scorpius and punches him across the face. The card at the druid’s waist blinks out and the king grasps Scorpius by the chin.
“I know how your prince fights. You will never be him—”
I grab Altair’s wrist with my blinding-hot hand.
He drops Scorpius, who lies gasping for air, and swings his sword to meet mine.
I barely block in time and he bends his full weight and strength against his steel.
My feet slide back along the gravel path until I drop the Sun Arcana, forced to hold my sword with both hands.
Neither blade nor bone snap.
“You cannot win against me.” Altair grits his teeth, pressing his blade down harder against mine.
“You will surrender. Then your mother is going to reverse this blight and your prince and his father are going to join our cause.” He takes one step forward, then another, my feet sliding with ease. If I meet a single stone, I’m done for.
“You’re not exactly convincing,” I growl, spotting the crystal wand sticking out of a leather sheath at his waist.
“I think you’ll soon see reason.” He shoves hard, and I topple back, spinning.
One knee scrapes the dirt before I’m up, retreating, the air parting as he swipes his sword where my neck was just moments before.
He strikes so hard he’s likely to lift me from the ground.
Each blow jolts up my arm, wearing me down.
“We wouldn’t have found her without you. The information you gave me, and then the curious interest the prince of Sedah took in an elven changeling … yes, I have my spies, Rune, even in elven courts. Even in druid ones. But I should thank you for leading me straight to her.”
My arms shake, blocking his next blow. My knees threaten to give out beneath the burden of it.
I’m losing. There’s no winning this.
My father battles his way through the illusions toward us, stopping just behind his king. I summon the High Priestess as I keep fighting, dropping my shields only enough to spear a thought toward my father. Dad, please help me.
His voice returns clear as day. The familiarity of it has me nearly breaking, Just keep him distracted, Ruru.
I jolt at the nickname. Ruru … that’s what my brother called me before he was taken. I haven’t thought of it in years.
Hope burns through me like a torch flaring to life inside my chest. I keep my chin up, then dodge another blow backward, spinning out of Altair’s strike range. He slows.
“Whoa, wait.” I put my hands up slowly.
His eyes narrow, and he lifts his sword unhurriedly, tapping it hard enough beneath my chin that my jaw clatters shut, leaving me clenching my teeth. I need to buy as much time as I can get.
“I knew you’d see sense.” His smile is a daggered thing, holding the arrogance of a life lived without hearing no.
“If I take you to my mother, you have to spare her, and Draven.”
“I don’t have to do anything, but as I said, I need your mother,” King Altair growls. “Your smug little master though? Draven. Him, I’ll kill for fun if Silas does not submit.”
My father makes his move, darting forward, aiming his blade at King Altair’s throat. Before it can draw blood, he halts, as if invisible bonds freeze him in place. The seraph king’s eyes glow gold. He doesn’t hesitate, thrusting his sword through my father’s gut, running him through.
My sword drops from my hand. Time stills. Sound silences. All I see is blood blooming across my father’s tunic, the whites of his eyes growing in shock. He’s gasping at the air, as if the wind’s been knocked out of him.
Then a rage I’ve never known scorches through me. I grasp the crystal wand from Altair’s waist and jerk it upright, striking it through the king’s left eye. Blood gushes out as it splices inward, coating my arm. He throws me back, staggering.
A hair-raising scream unleashes from him.
He slowly jerks the wand from his eye, hand trembling as it teeters in his palm.
His fist strangles the Darkstone, though it doesn’t shatter, despite its fragile appearance.
I run to my father who pants on the ground, hands shaking, pressed against the blood loss in his gut.
Altair looks to me once, ruined eye bleeding, the span of it black as if the zenith has infected him.
Then he shuts it tight, baring his teeth at me.
He flicks my father’s blood off his sword and takes two steps toward us.
I throw myself over my father’s body, covering him.
But then Altair stops, staring at something behind me.
A wyvern soars overhead, and I duck my head against my father’s chest as it collides into King Altair, forcing him back.
A portaled darkness widens on the lawns, and Commander Soto flies through.
The druid army and more wyverns come through behind him, forcing the seraphs to retreat.
I exchange one more look with Altair before he lifts his sword to the sky, blinding-white light blaring all around him.
Then the remaining seraphs vanish, abandoning the fight, taking Darkstone with them.
I barely care. I turn to my father and demand the Empress to rise from my deck to heal him.
Blood taints his lips, and he cups my cheek as I force my energy to rally, my other hand pressed hard against the bleeding, but there’s so much of it.
My power presses against his wound, but nothing seems to change.
Tears roll down my cheeks, a darkness gnawing at the back of my mind that I ignore.
“Dad, stay with me,” I insist, the skin unwilling to knit, like paper beneath water.
“Baby girl,” he breathes.
I’m forced to look into his dark golden eyes, warm as a hearth. They were the first eyes I ever saw, and as I blink away my blinding tears, I can’t shake away the thought that mine will be the last he ever sees.
“I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t have a choice,” I sob, my jaw trembling. “Just don’t leave me. I can’t say goodbye. Don’t make me. Hold on. P-Please. I came all this way. We’re so close to being a family again …”
“You can’t do anything, honey. Our vows will make sure of that.” He coughs blood, but I refuse to accept it. The image of that fucking cup returns to me, laying forgotten on my bedsheets back at the Forge. He says, “Druid magic cannot save a seraph.”
But he can’t be right. I search for help, but everyone is too far from us, and my gaze won’t stray from his long.
He wears the smile he wore on his happiest days, and there’s no fear there.
If anything … he looks more at peace than I’ve seen him, his warm hand still resting against my cheek.
I clench my eyes shut, forcing more magic through anyway.
I’ll bleed myself dry if it stops this. Except it doesn’t matter how much magic I pour through, it’s like it falls into a void.
Exhaustion weighs heavily, and my skin smokes from the effort.
I’ll burn myself to cinders if that’s what it takes.
Then I hit a barrier.
I open my eyes, and his other hand rests across my cards. No. I realize he did it intentionally, to prevent me burning out in order to save him. But that would’ve been my choice, mine. Why did he take that from me?
“No. No, Dad. What … what did you do?”
“You are what I’m proudest of,” he says.
I lean my cheek into his hand, teeth gritted as I sob openly now, shoulders racking against the heartache.
“I love you … Ruru.”
His hand drops, eyes fluttering before shifting to the night sky above.
Starlight guides him into the afterlife’s endless seas.
Silence cleaves a void in the world. Like an arrow piercing straight through a target, there’s a gap left in its absence.
His eyes don’t move to mine, and it doesn’t matter that he cannot hear it, my voice still shreds under my grief as I cling to the stranger’s clothes my father’s wrapped in.
I run my trembling hands through the feathers braced against his back, but they begin to disappear, and his body entropies into what it was when he was taken.
A changeling is not a true immortal.
And all mortals must die.
Suddenly others surround us. An Empress Arcana bearing the royal sigils kneels, but it’s too late. All they can do is close my father’s eyes for the last time. Arms wrap around me, and I cannot pull away. I’m turned and clenched against Draven’s chest.
I shake. And scream. Then I break.