CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Raoku shoved my face into the metal bottom of my glass chamber.
“Sign it,” he seethed again, the bone of the bone helm gritting against my cheek under his weight. I pushed upwards, but his knee pressed harder against my spine.
Something shifted as the curse Noctis and I shared lifted, like pressure finally breaking inside my bones. The pain didn’t leave completely, but it no longer owned me. I was still broken from the torture, still barely holding together, but the will to fight clawed its way back through the wreckage.
The marble tiles ruptured, a fault cracking through its center and throwing Raoku from my back.
He crashed inches from the fracture in the floor and scrambled to put distance between us.
His eyes widened, his mouth falling open before he snapped it shut and rose.
He drew his sword, but the blade quivered in his grip, betraying the fear he tried to hide.
I pulled my knees beneath me, the pain that racked my tail now dull in leg form.
I fought my way to standing, gripping the nearest glass chamber for balance as the room swayed around me.
On wobbling legs, I stared down the commander through the slim opening between the intertwined bones digging into my flesh.
“You do not control me,” I spat, careful not to trigger the helm with the intensity of my voice. “You don’t control anything anymore.”
Raoku snarled. Then, he disappeared in thin air, materializing behind me. His booted foot slammed into my back, agony erupting through my spent body as I crashed to the ground.
I worked to stand again.
I will never yield.
“There is nothing you can do within these walls to interrupt this war.” He kicked my head forward before I could rise fully, knocking the skull helm’s spikes further through the surface of my chest. “You are weak.” He kicked again.
“And worthless.” He gripped me by the collar of my wet and bloodied tunic, pulling me into his face. “And we do not need you anyway.”
Noctis was taking too long.
Light tore from Raoku’s palm and crashed into my chest, a burning force that spread through me like liquid fire. I threw myself to the right out of his grip, my body’s feeble attempt at escaping the attack, but I flipped messily.
When I stood on worn feet, Raoku’s blade rested in place of his power against my sternum. He whipped his foot across my ankles, and I plummeted to the floor, his sword following each movement closely.
I can’t fight anymore.
“Did you really think you could best me? You––” his sword dug deeper. “––a merfolk. You will all rot under our authority.”
Thundering footsteps cut through the moment. The commander’s face went ghost-white as he swallowed sharply, his nose twitching as if he’d smelled something wrong. The blade eased a fraction from my throat—barely enough for me to glance sideways.
My Blood Tie.
Like a wolf sensing his prey’s scent, Noctis closed the distance, hunger in every step. Blood soaked him, gushing from the decapitated head he gripped by the hair in his hand—the uniformed woman who found pleasure in my torture.
His quiet was the kind that needed no words. He said nothing, only attacked. His palms exploded outward with force, but it never reached Raoku. Instead, the energy seized the weapon and ripped it from his hand like it had been claimed.
A longsword pierced through the commander’s chest from behind, stopping inches from my covered face. Ruby blood dripped from the blade’s tip and seeped into the skull helm along my face. Raoku’s body fell in a heap over my knees, only to reveal a hooded, fury-stricken Jun.
It reminded me of the first time I met Jun, when his same emerald-hilted sword pierced the abdomen of the attacking Tide Reaper. This time, he looked relieved to see his father’s lifeless body, more liberated than I had ever seen him.
Then, his features snapped as he looked at his father’s dying body.
I rolled out of the way, yanking my legs from under the commander’s weight before Jun pounced. His fists pummeled Raoku’s face, bone crunching beneath his hits. The sound seemed to fuel his mania.
Heavens…
Noctis was beside me in a flash, blocking the gruesome view. His fingers trailed the ivory helm enclosing my head. A breeze from his powers billowed over my wet body, and I breathed clearly for the first time in two days.
I finally broke in his arms.
“I can’t take it off.” Tears streamed down my face, desperate to get the torture helm out of my skin. “I can’t take it off. Please.”
“Stay still, love.” Even covered in blood and wrath, he was still so gentle with me.
Air wrapped around the bone, only a slight release offered as he pulled with his powers. But the bone helm did not break.
“Take it off… Gods, it hurts!” My cry became frenzied—shattered. I shook. “Take it––” I scratched at the bone, but the helm only tightened around me. “––off!”
The god gripped it between his hands and roared. He mixed the physical strength with his powers, each a monster of might on its own, until the bones around my head shattered.
Sobs wracked my body, but I didn’t care that Noctis saw every part of it.
“You found me,” I breathed between cries.
“Love…” he whispered back, guilt and pain riddling his words.
Noctis lifted my face with his hand. He leaned in, and his lips met my cheek. They pulled away, glistening with my tears.
Everything in me faltered, the truth pressing down until there was nothing left to resist.
He kissed another tear.
“I never stopped trying to get to you.”
His lips met another tear.
“Every second away felt like a lifetime.”
Another kiss. Another tear.
“You saved us,” he whispered into my skin.
Jun stepped around Noctis, his hood covering the majority of his face. His chest rose and fell with such intensity, as if he had been waiting for the moment he could wreak his vengeance against the male who sired him.
“Thanks,” he croaked, but Noctis only nodded.
I tore free from the god’s arms and tried to crawl away, forcing every ounce of returned strength into my limbs. It still wasn’t enough.
“What–” Noctis’s words were cut when he realized who I was trying to reach.
Evelyn lay motionless on the marble ground.
Noctis’s power seized her and brought her forward, and I collapsed against her, folding into her abdomen. She was so broken. My younger sister went through the very trauma I had mangled myself trying to keep her from ever facing.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried. Tears mixed with the drenched dress that was barely wrapped in tethers around her.
A hand rested on my shoulder.
“It would be my honor,” Jun whispered.
He lowered to his knees before Evelyn. Healing power flowed from him into her body, moving in steady waves that traced through the damage and began to mend it. Where it passed, torn flesh melted back together, leaving behind raised scars.
“Do you trust me?” Jun asked over his shoulder as light poured from his hands, absorbing into my sister’s still body.
“Of course I do,” I responded between sobs.
“Then please go find Calvin and Zahara.”
I looked up at Noctis, and he moved like he understood me without words. His hands swept outward, glass cylinders shattered, and the mers were lowered by his powers gently to the floor.
“I have them all,” Jun assured. He shot his healing power toward me, just enough for me to stand without assistance, and Noctis and I tore out the door.
The corridors were chaotic, walls collapsing under the power Noctis threw out. Guards ran in the opposite direction, but he did not care that they fled. His magic found them all, throwing them with a sickening crunch into what was left of the stone walls and dropping them into piles on the floor.
They hurt me. They hurt others, I rehearsed over and over, but as the Royal Vanguard men and women began piling taller than myself, it became nearly unbearable to witness Noctis’s unwavering wrath.
“Duscharne. Laziel,” Noctis drawled, searching the hallways as we made our way deeper into the facility.
“Duscharne? Laziel? We are looking for Calvin and Zahara.”
“I am looking for everyone that played a part in hurting you. The crew's whereabouts are known. But the Varaxis and the traitor hide.”
The god faced his palms outward, and the walls blasted apart, leaving a gaping hole to the outdoors. He shifted and destroyed another face of the building.
He was going to tear the entire place down single-handedly. Damn, if only I could help.
We turned off toward the eastern end of the hallways and came face-to-face with Calvin and Zahara rounding the corner in a sprint, casting quick glances behind. Calvin nearly toppled over me, but he grabbed my arm instead and yanked me behind Noctis to hide with him.
“We’ve got company—and they’re ugly,” he whispered, peeking slightly around Noctis’s shoulder.
Zahara stood firm at Noctis’s side, even as a horde of guards’ metal clanking, heavy-footed steps ricocheted off the marble floors.
Buzzing flitted into my ears, a dull hum of energy calling my name gently like a song on the wind. I shook it off, certain it was the helm’s aftermath, but something kept pulling at me, steady and insistent, like it knew exactly where and who I was.
My feet betrayed me, dragging themselves toward the hum as if it had its own gravity. Calvin’s gaze locked on me as our bodies met, his brow tightening in confusion.
What am I doing?
I couldn’t focus on anything else, even as the guards fell into massive, lifeless piles by Noctis. In the distance, bones cracked and crunched under his power. A screech rose as they sensed him and turned to run—then came the heavy thumps as they dropped one after another.
“Caelyn…” Calvin said uneasily. He stepped backward as I pushed more into him. But I couldn’t stop myself from getting closer to him… and closer.
“Love?” Noctis asked, but his words were drowned out by the constant pull for my attention. And it came from Calvin.
My arms raised against my will, feeling along Calvin’s biceps. Then his chest.