Chapter 66
His fingers slipped from mine. Slowly, almost absently, he drew his hand away and took a single step backward.
"Rìan, I—"
"You knew."
The words were barely audible. His eyes searched mine desperately, begging for some sign the magic had lied.
"Yes, but—"
"You knew." Agony and betrayal flooded swiftly through our bond, feeding one another until they ignited into an incandescent fury. "You lied!"
"It wasn't like that!"
A wild laugh burst from him, broken and empty. "You watched me mourn my sister. I watched her die—because of you!"
The accusation lashed across my heart, despair clawing its way up my throat.
“I didn’t know about Dannis, I swear it! I didn’t know it was him—she touched me when—” I stumbled over the words. “Oh, please, Rìan, I know I should’ve gone to you, but I didn’t know what to do! I just wanted to protect...”
"Aedric?" he snapped, catching my meaning before I could say it. "You wanted to protect your murderous bastard of a mate? Is that it? Even after you knew Dannis—a child—had suffered at his hand?"
"He was safe!" I cried, tears blurring my vision. "Aedric protected him. He loved him. I'm certain of it!"
Rìan went utterly still.
"Loved him," he repeated, barely above a whisper.
The force of his rage slammed through our bond with such brutality I staggered beneath it.
"Rìan, please!" I sobbed. "Just let me explain! You don't understand, I—"
"Don't understand?" He laughed again, the sound sharp enough to flay skin. "I understand perfectly."
"No..." My legs gave out beneath me. I hit the dirt hard enough to jar my teeth. "Rìan... please. I wanted to tell you. I didn't know how!"
He ripped the rope from around his waist. Hand over hand, he hauled it up with savage force. The burlap bundle rose from the darkness. He seized it the moment it cleared the opening, soaked red and dripping with our blood.
"Rìan, please!" I screamed.
But it was too late.
Tilting his head back, he twisted a corner of the sodden cloth into his mouth. Blood streamed over his tongue, spilled from the corners of his lips, and ran down his throat, soaking the front of his shirt. He drank.
And then he turned to me.
For a moment, I caught it through our bond—a yawning, unbearable grief. Then it vanished beneath a fresh surge of fury so immense it transformed his features into something almost unrecognizable.
He took a menacing step toward me.
"No..." I scrambled backward. “I won’t do it! I won’t!”
He was on me in an instant. His fingers fisted in my hair, pulling my head back before I could wrench away. I clamped my lips shut as he crushed the blood-soaked rag against my mouth. Warm blood splattered across my face, slicking the seam of my lips.
"Drink, Eidra!"
I refused even to breathe.
"Drink, damn you!"
His whole body shook with the ferocity of his rage, as hot as a wildfire.
I twisted and shoved against him, holding my breath, refusing to part my lips. My lungs burned. Black spots danced across my vision.
Then, in the frantic chaos, something stirred deep inside me.
A spark.
I seized it before it could disappear and hurled it toward Rìan. The pulse of my magic struck him squarely, throwing him backward. The rag flew from his grasp and hit the stones, trailing a long streak of crimson as it slid toward the mouth of the well—
—and vanished over the edge.
Rìan stared after it in stunned silence as the faint splash echoed up from the depths. Slowly, almost mechanically, he turned back to me.
“I never meant to hurt you.” I swiped the blood from my mouth with my sleeve. “I never meant to lie to you. I’ll find a way to make this right again, I swear it. But I won’t break this bond. I… I can’t.”
I tore down every wall around my heart. Every ounce of my regret, my hope, my love, my longing poured through our bond. If words weren’t enough, then I’d let him feel how deeply I meant them.
His fury ebbed, and for one heartbeat there was nothing between us but the terrible, beautiful enormity of what we felt for each other. His fingers slowly uncurled.
Relief swept through me.
And then he lunged.
Within two strides he was there, one hand closing around my jaw as he dropped to his knees before me.
Between us, he raised the other—the one bearing the twisting black lines of our bargain.
His dark eyes locked on mine as he shoved his blood-slick fingers into my mouth, splitting my bottom lip against my teeth.
The coppery sweetness flooded my tongue.
“Fucking drink, Eidra!” His voice splintered to pieces.
He shoved his fingers deeper.
I gagged.
The last thing I felt from him was the enormity of his broken heart as my throat convulsed—and I swallowed.
Pain exploded through my chest, white-hot and blinding, as though invisible hands had reached inside me and seized my very soul.
They wrenched at it, pulling harder and harder against something that refused to let go.
I tried to scream, but no sound came. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Rìan’s grip vanished.
Stone slammed into my shoulder, then scraped across my cheek, but it seemed to happen to someone else. My body no longer belonged to me. Nothing did. There was only that impossible tearing, ripping deeper and deeper, shredding me apart from the inside.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it vanished. And in its place was something worse.
Emptiness.
I lay where I’d fallen, blinking against the daylight as my magic darted frantically beneath my skin, reaching again and again for the tether that should have been there and finding... nothing.
I pushed myself up, searching at once for Rìan on the other side of the well. He was only feet away, yet it felt as though an entire world had opened between us.
“Rìan...”
Something trembled beneath me.
So faint at first I thought I’d imagined it. Then it came again, a subtle vibration beneath my palms that steadily grew until the flagstones began to rattle.
A low groan rolled through the earth. Dust stirred across the square. The buildings around me began to shudder, loose stone and mortar raining from the walls.
A deafening crack split the air.
Jagged fissures tore outward from the well, racing across the yard as the ground heaved beneath me. They widened rapidly, splitting paving stones apart and swallowing others whole as chunks of earth crumbled into the darkness below.
“Eidra—move!”
Across the well, Rìan leapt to his feet and threw himself clear. I scrambled upright and stumbled toward the city wall as another violent tremor pitched the ground beneath me. I slammed into the stone and turned just as the center of the square gave way.
The well collapsed inward.
Stone and earth plunged into the darkness with a deafening roar as the chasm tore wider, its edge racing across the square toward me.
I flattened myself against the wall, watching helplessly as it came closer.
Twenty feet. Ten.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Five…
The sudden silence rang in my ears.
I coughed, choking on the thick cloud of dust.
I opened my eyes.
The edge had stopped barely inches from my boots.
My breath escaped in a rush. The square was gone. In its place yawned a darkness with no visible bottom, an emptiness that echoed the hollow inside my chest.
A cold wind climbed from the pit, carrying the scent of damp earth and something older. Something that had lain buried longer than memory itself.
And far below, something moved.
My pulse lurched as another sound reached me.
A dull, rhythmic thunder rolled across the earth, from somewhere beyond the walls. The shrieks reached me a heartbeat later.
The Infected.
My eyes shot across the abyss to Rìan.
“Rìan...”
For one long moment, he held my stare. Then he turned on his heel and disappeared between the crumbling buildings.
“Rìan!”
There was no way across.
I pressed myself against the wall and edged toward the nearest staircase. Dust choked the air as I reached it and took the steps two at a time, scrambling for the top. I gripped the stone and looked beyond the walls.
A scream caught in my throat.
Thousands of Infected spilled between the trees in a writhing tide of death. In moments, they would reach the city.
My gaze flew to the front gate. “Saskia...” She was gone.
I leaped into motion, stumbling along the battlements, vaulting over the bodies of dead Plague-Hunters strewn across the ramparts.
“Rìan!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
My gaze raked the ruins of Midland, searching, searching…
There.
He was already near the front gates, heading toward the collapsed section of wall, one hand pressed to the place on his chest where our bond had been. Straight toward the Infected.
“Rìan!” The screams of the horde swallowed my voice. He didn’t turn.
Movement caught my eye.
An Infected exploded from the shadows of a nearby building, black-veined limbs moving with terrifying speed as it charged straight for him.
He hadn’t seen it. Oh gods…
Everything slowed.
Rìan took another step. Another.
The creature lunged.
My gaze caught on a fallen Plague-Hunter only a few paces away, a bow still clutched in his lifeless hands. I threw myself toward him, wrenched the weapon free, and ripped an arrow from the quiver at his side.
I nocked the arrow, my shoulder screaming as I drew, the blood pounding in my ears until it drowned out the screams.
The battlements blurred.
For one terrible heartbeat, it wasn’t Rìan down there.
Papa…
My hands steadied. The fear vanished. There was no doubt now. No hesitation.
I drew a slow breath, let it out—and released.
The world snapped back into focus.
The arrow punched through the back of the Infected’s skull and burst from its face in a spray of blood just as its fingers closed around Rìan’s shoulder.
Scarlet spattered across his cheek as the creature crumpled at his feet.
I lowered the bow numbly just as Rìan lifted his head and found me on the ramparts.
For a moment, everything else receded—our broken bond, the undead racing toward Midland, the final Gate of Othyr.