Chapter 22
“The Demons are leaving.” The words tore from my throat as I snapped back from a vision.
The world around me spun, and I squeezed my eyes shut until everything stilled.
Moss cradled my backside, and pain bloomed on the back of my head.
I reached up, a hiss slipping through my teeth as I touched a wound.
My fingers came away slick with ruby.
With a groan, I sat up, looking around me.
Where am I?
No tree supported my back. No specters haunted my steps. In fact, no one was around at all.
A soft nicker drew my attention. My white mare waited a few paces away, her ears flicking back and forth.
Did I fall off of her?
Ysolthe swooped from above, her crystalline feathers flashing in the dappled sunlight. She landed in front of me, stalking closer. A worried click slipped past her beak as those silver eyes inspected me. An image of me collapsing pressed into my mind.
Of course.
I’d trotted away from the battalion to relieve myself—that was why I was alone. The vision had consumed me moments before I’d mounted my mare.
Thank the Goddess Althirion and Nymirae weren’t here to witness this one. The Demons slithering away from the desert where I’d Seen them time and time again was important. As was the fort that perched on the precipice of a seaside cliff. If only I could figure out how.
The visions were coming more frequently now, over a month after I Saw the end. Morning, noon, night. Even in my sleep.
And since Vaeron danced with me in the rain, I’d let him comfort me after each tortured one.
As if I’d thought him into existence, hoofbeats shook the earth, and through the ferns, his black stallion surged.
“Sylaira!” His ice-blue eyes were wide, and some of his hair had come loose from its tie. He leaped from his horse with the grace of someone who’d ridden his whole life. “You’re hurt.”
Stormwood enveloped me as he reached for my scalp, and I jerked away as he touched the bloody spot. “I’ll be fine.”
From his pants, he pulled out a vial. “Take this.”
I stared at the purple-tinged liquid. With the bronze in his skin, his wound wouldn’t heal, not completely. Hence these potions he carried with him. We didn’t talk about his lack of magic. We didn’t talk about what had happened to him. We didn’t talk about how few he had left.
His apology beneath the weeping sky had only cracked the barrier between us—the walls still hadn’t crumbled to ash and dust. To be honest, I wasn’t certain how to surrender my carefully constructed defenses, terrified that once they were gone, I’d be raked across broken glass yet again.
“No, you need it more than me,” I said, my voice a soft melody.
He looked away, a muscle working in his jaw. Then his fingers curled around the glass again. “I don’t care.” Crouching, he dropped the vial into my lap. “Take it.”
My breath hitched as his fingers lingered, scattering sparks across my skin. “How many more do you have?”
He paused, releasing a heavy sigh. “That is my last one.”
“We’re not nearly close enough to Eloi for you to risk that,” I murmured.
His eyes searched mine, a pleading in them to understand—that he’d suffer so long as I did not. Vaeron was no holy knight, no hero; he was a monster, a villain.
But I didn’t want someone shining and good.
I wanted someone who would raze realms for me and damn the consequences.
So I uncorked the glass and sipped off the top, leaving a little more than half still there. “That is more than enough for a scrape.” I handed the rest back to him.
Because despite what he’d done to me, I still loved him. Still fucking cared. And him dying well before the final battle was not what I wanted for him—for us.
The lie sat heavy in my heart, weighed down by guilt.
No one but Lyriasthe and I knew the truth: we were doomed to die.
Not telling him haunted my every interaction with my mate. The deception had gone on for so long he’d be furious when he learned what awaited the Angels.
But we had to stay on this path, had to climb into those mountains, had to feed the Demons our soldiers. Because that brutal, final battle would ensure the fall of the Angels; because that was the only possibility I’d Seen where Iaoth and Stadiel would be punished for what they’d done.
My mate was still staring at me, and I shook myself out of my thoughts of overthrowing the monarchs.
“I Saw,” I started, then cleared my throat.
Even after weeks of sleeping beside him, spending time with him with my guard still up, I hadn’t told him a single vision.
He hadn’t pressed either. I didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want to continually remind me of who had forced me into my power again, or if he genuinely didn’t care.
But after his confession about wanting to use my Sight for his plans, I had to assume it was the former.
Vaeron held preternaturally still, waiting for me to speak.
I dragged in a shuddering breath. “I Saw the Demons leaving the desert. They are marching toward the grasslands by the sea…”
His iron-gray brows pinched. “Are you certain? How clear was the vision?”
“Ten.” Higher than it had been since the prophecy that had slammed into me after the trial by light.
“Who was with them?” he pressed, and something wrapped around my ribs and squeezed at the hard edge in his tone.
“A male and female I’ve Seen before, but I don’t know who they are,” I admitted. “Why? Does that matter?”
“It could, depending on who it is. Describe them for me,” he requested, rocking back on his heels and settling cross-legged on the earth.
“The male is huge, and he wears this skull helmet,” I said, diving back into the memory. At least this one didn’t shatter ice through my veins or twist terror into my bones.
“That would be the Halálhívó,” Vaeron muttered.
No wonder everyone spoke about him with fear.
The Halálhívó reminded me so much of my mate—that same thinly restrained violence, that same lethal confidence.
Yet he was death incarnate, a dark brutality emanating from him that always raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Whether he wore the helmet and black armor or went without, his soldiers worshiped him with fear and reverence.
“The female intrigues me the most. There’s something about her…
” I trailed off, thinking back to the first time I’d Seen her, when the vision had felt less like a peek into the future and more like a conveyance of the past. She’d wielded a blade like I danced Vaela?—with graceful precision and undeniable passion.
“They are together? Or they seem to be?” my mate clarified.
I nodded.
“That must be his mate,” he mused, tipping his head up like he could peer through the azure blue and the Goddess would give him answers.
“Mate?” I said, blinking. “How would you know that?”
He swallowed and returned his attention to me. “Ishim wrote and said they’d captured her. By doing so, they were able to…” He paused, and I sensed resistance rising within him.
“Just tell me. I See enough of the violence and bloodshed to understand what you’re implying.”
He lifted a brow like he didn’t believe me. “Where did your pacifism go?”
“It burned up with Heraphia.” Tears pricked my eyes, and I took a deep breath, trying to ground myself against the tidal wave of grief.
Vaeron studied me for a long moment. “We slaughtered about a third of the Demon forces because we held her captive.”
It all makes sense now.
Everything I’d been Seeing about the two of them. Why I always felt drawn to her.
She was important to this war; I needed to discover how.
“But they let her go?” I clarified.
“That was the bargain a Padisa struck with the Halálhívó,” he explained, rising to his feet. “No one else knows of this, save for Maelsar. Please keep it that way.”
“I will,” I promised, dusting myself off.
“We better get back to the group before those errand birds realize you’ve gone missing.” Steel edged Vaeron’s velvety voice, his frustration leaking out while no one else was around to witness it.
Because they always came to find me. It was so fucking annoying. I almost asked my mate to give me one of his blades so I could stab them the next time they did.
My pacifism was dying like a garden in the winter—but I wasn’t quite ready to intentionally cause harm myself.
Yet.
That insidious voice slithered from the back of my mind. It spoke of inevitability, of things I didn’t want to name. Who would I become the first time I swung a blade? Dreaming of Iaoth and Stadiel dying was one thing. Watching crimson spill from their bodies by my hand was another.
Blood. Screams. My visions of battles nested in my marrow. Yet they never showed me what it would cost my soul to take a life.
With shaking hands, I gripped the saddle, using my flexibility to angle my foot into the stirrup. But I was still weak, from the bump on my head or from using my Sight, I couldn’t tell. Likely both.
Without a word, Vaeron came up behind me, heat radiating from him. Stormwood filled my nostrils, and energy sparked under my skin as he gripped my waist and lifted. I swung my leg across my mare’s back, settling in.
“Thank you,” I murmured, a shiver wracking my frame.
He unfastened the clasp at his throat, his cloak falling away. “Take this.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Liar.”
I didn’t protest as he wrapped it around my shoulders, enveloping me in his scent. After I secured it, he handed me the reins. “With autumn upon us now, I’ll have to get you a new one once we’re through the last of the Es? Forest. It’s colder to the north.”
I nodded as he walked away to mount his horse. Honestly, after the wet, oppressive heat in Sivy, I was looking forward to a cold breeze to nip at my cheeks.
Clicking my tongue, I signaled my mare to trot after him. The rest of our traveling party wasn’t hard to find—after all, the ranks were thousands strong. Many rode on horseback. Others marched on foot. We fell in line with them, riding parallel until we reached the front of the procession.
All the while, whispers of Seraelth caressed my ear.
They thought I was here to save them; they didn’t know I’d chosen to damn them instead.