Chapter 3 Lazriel
~Lazriel~
Blood.
Blood everywhere.
Her blood.
So much of it.
Too much of it.
It was all I could sense as we arrived on the scene—or near the scene.
I couldn’t see her right there.
Sylas had teleported us, but only to the vicinity, not right to Velra. He’d been unable to track her magical signature given the… situation. So he’d latched onto Cassius’, but that had been really weak.
I shuddered at the sight of the fusion bar.
The place was fucking decimated, in ruins, only two walls left standing and just a couple of chairs intact.
There was nobody else there. No bodies—dead or living. Kelsana was nowhere to be seen either. Knowing how selfless and caring Velra was, she’d probably sent her out of the line of fire the moment she’d registered a threat.
As I struggled to track Velra when her blood was everywhere and overpowering everything else, I couldn’t keep silent with this intense fear and anxiousness threatening to take me over, so I swung my head toward Sylas as he followed beside me.
He had a strained expression all over his face, his struggle to contain his panic and emotion over all of this mirroring mine.
“What did that purist fucker mean about you conserving your power and all that shit about fucking with the balance of nature?”
I wanted to ask more than that. The Glasswake Massacre thing he’d mentioned. And all that shit about Sylas’ father.
But what he was planning to do right here and now took priority.
“Relishing delivering a villain monologue?”
“Sylas,” I snapped. “Don’t give me a party line, don’t talk around it.” I grasped his arm. “All right? I can’t… with Velra… and Cassius… with them…”
He laid his hand over mine. “I know. I know, Lazriel.”
I grimaced and blinked away the emotion welling in my eyes. “We don’t trade lives, okay? Do you hear me? So if that’s something you’re planning to—”
My words caught in my throat as we rounded a piece of roof wreckage, and I caught sight of Velra and Cassius two hundred feet in the distance.
Shit. She’d been blown really far from the wreckage. That would have been incredibly damaging all on its own, and then if her brother had attacked further like Victor had alluded to… fuck me.
“There,” I told Sylas, pointing in the distance.
I grabbed his hand, then sped us the rest of the way to them.
As we came to a jarring stop, my stomach lurched.
Cassius was unconscious in a heap beside Velra, one of his palms flickering intermittently with his white power. I could hear his heart beating, so he was just unconscious and not… worse. Although, his pulse was worryingly weak.
And her?
Shit… I couldn’t… it was bad. Really fucking bad.
“Motherfucker,” Sylas uttered on a strained breath.
Her beautiful face was a canvas of lacerations and bruises.
There was a nasty gash in her head, blood oozing over her face and even into her eyes.
The grass all around her was stained and soaked.
Her top was lifted up on her left side and I saw Cassius’ magical mark there, where he’d obviously tried to heal her but had been too pained and weak to manage it.
Maybe it had been what had knocked him out.
The wound was so horrific it looked like her side had been blown open. The blood loss was beyond severe.
That would have been recoverable for a supernatural being, but things were worse than even that.
The dagger protruding from her heart made that terrifyingly clear.
Especially as I scented it and identified the blade as being made of iron.
I darted forward in the next second and ripped the accursed thing out, crushing it to kindling in my hand with a fearsome growl.
And then I tore into my wrist with my fangs that were still dropped after the Victor Halrow situation, hurriedly cradled Velra against me, then fed her my blood.
“Fuck, Lazriel! The toxicity! You have open wounds and now you have her blood all over you!”
“I don’t care.”
“Her heart isn’t beating. It therefore can’t carry your blood through her body to actually heal her. And I can’t restart it with a shock of magic. Not in this case. It’s not that simple.”
Sylas dropped to his knees, his pants being soaked by the blood all over instantly like mine. He lifted the front of her top and we both gasped as we saw the site of her Soul Brand that aligned with her abdominal center, near her belt line.
“She’s not dead,” he assured me, gesturing at Cassius’ now flickering white line still being crossed by a faint trace of black flecks.
“Her shadow magic.”
He nodded. “Her Wraith side.”
As much as I didn’t want to, I eased back from her, then hauled Cassius up instead and started feeding him my blood.
“So she activated it before the dagger plunged into her heart and it’s… what… holding off death? It must just be slightly because I can’t hear or feel her pulse.”
“She’s at the edge of the Veil. For now.”
“For now? What the shit does that mean?”
“She’s part Wraith. While that aspect can technically straddle the line between life and death, a Dark Fae cannot.”
“You’re saying she’s trapped?”
“In essence. And it won’t be taken kindly to. The Valley of the Dead—the souls, spirits, and the general nature of that metaphysical plane—will not tolerate a being lingering between life and death.”
“You mean it will… pull her in?”
“That’s already happening as we speak.” He gestured at the black line, how it had shortened, some of it disappearing.
“Then we pull from the other side, right? Or you do?”
“Exactly.”
He moved to call his power, but something occurred to me, something I hoped I wasn’t right about, and I snagged his arm, stilling him. “Wait. How was Cassius going to bring her back? He was going to pull too?”
“Yes.”
“Wait—then that means—no.”
“What?”
“I know what you’re trying so hard not to tell me, and hoping like hell I don’t figure out.
Cassius was going to do that by sacrificing himself, by giving his life for hers.
So that means pulling can only occur through a death offering in return for her being brought back to the land of the living. ”
“She’s not dead yet.”
“Part of her is—her Dark Fae side. And the other is stuck.”
“That’s not exactly—”
“You’re not doing this.”
“No… you’re certainly… not,” Cassius’ voice sounded weakly, and I looked to see his eyes fluttering open.
“How do you feel?” Sylas asked, taking him in as he carefully eased from me and sat up on his own, looking weary, but not deathly anymore, thank fuck.
“I am breathing. But you will not be if you do this.”
Sylas gritted his teeth. “I’m not going to trade my life for hers. I’m not you. I’m a necromancer. There are different rules for me.”
“I am well aware. But the risk is not merely in the trading of lives.”
“What are you—”
“You will not survive the spell.”
“How do you—”
“I know you. I suspect you plan to use Auctoritas Mortis.”
“What’s that?” I asked. I knew my fair share about the magical arts, but I’d never heard of that.
“Something nobody should be invoking. Authority Over Death.”
“It’s illegal?”
“Illegal in the eyes of supernatural authorities is the least of it. It is a violation of the balance, one that will come with severe consequences, no doubt.” He glared at Sylas. “And it requires enormous power—a necromancer to give their all.”
“I am familiar with the spell and fully aware of what I can and can’t handle.”
“You are not. Because you are operating as though you are not ill at all. We have discussed this and I thought I’d managed to—”
“She’s dying! And she will actually fucking die if I don’t act.
The longer we sit here arguing, the more my chances of being able to pull this off are slipping the fuck away!
” He gestured angrily between Velra and Cassius and me.
“She dies and you shatter, Cassius. I can tether you to this plane so you don’t perish, separate you from her, but you’ll only be here physically with her gone.
You’ll be a shell. And Lazriel… the devastation of losing her will break you as well. ”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snapped. “So we lose you instead? That’s the solution you’re offering up?”
“What else would you have me do when she’s—”
“I hate it when you get like this!”
“Like what?”
“All magically self-righteous. Stuck in that all-or-nothing mindset. The one where you’re ready to throw yourself into the fire, consequences be damned. Especially your own consequences.”
“Lazriel, there are limited options to save her, so I can’t just—”
“I love you!”
He stilled and I heard a choked sound from Cassius too.
“That’s right, you infuriating, stubborn, reckless, know-it-all motherfucker… I love you. I fucking love you and I can’t lose you either. Do you understand me?”
He cleared his throat, then grasped my nape and held me to him. “I love you, too,” he breathed into my hair. “Truly, deeply, and maddeningly.”
“Then please respect that.”
“I’m trying… I have tried. I’ve opened up to you all in a way I have never allowed myself to before, because I care for you, because I respect what we’re building.
” He pulled away, holding my hands, looking down as he stroked my fingers with the pads of his thumbs.
“But there has to be a line. And you all need me to walk it, whether you’re willing to admit that or not.
Because… fuck… the world we live in….” He raised his head, his eyes meeting mine, a mixture of sorrow and conviction flickering in them.
“To survive and to not be subjugated by others, you need to be willing to do the unthinkable. And I am. I always have been.”
In the next second, he wrenched his hands from mine, and then he swept his arms around with an aggressive flourish, creating a shimmering wall that forced Cassius and me backward a hundred feet from him and Velra.
“No!” I screamed, running at the wall, but just bouncing off it and stumbling back.