Chapter Thirty-One
Shattered
Crashing.
Smashing.
Tinkling glass.
I gasp heavily and bolt upright in bed.
Bleary-eyed from the dream I just had.
A nightmare. One I’ve had before.
Frenetic energy greets me before I can make out the scene.
“Fly!” Varic screams, bounding around the foot of the bed just before time slows, and I look past him to gape at the giant hole in my window.
“No!” I scream back, shredding my vocal cords as I throw up my hands to try to prevent Fray from taking me when his arms crush my thrashing form to his chest in my futile attempt at fighting against his strength and determination.
Yet his unrelenting hold does nothing to stop me from trying—pushing and shoving—needing to break free.
The deep ochre of horror fills my chest when Varic’s shield transforms into an orb around Fray and me the moment we lift off the mattress.
Fray pivots, angling us headfirst toward the balcony as my heart squeezes from Varic’s quick thinking, then tears pool when I crane my neck, needing to see if he’s shielding all of them.
He needs to protect everyone, not just me, and Fray by extension.
Staring where Lars and Malin are trapped in some argument, angrily gesticulating, while Cirrin’s hands are clasped behind his head with a worrying look spread across his features, saying something to Varic as the shield parts, allowing his blue-green healing to infiltrate both of us, imbuing Fray and me with energy and pain relief before it seals us off.
Not seeing amber anywhere but around us, I shout, “Varic! Shield everyone, please! I can’t lose any of you! I won’t!”
The light is missing from Varic’s irises when he looks up, mouthing something I can’t quite decipher. Pushing against my savior’s chest, though he refuses to relent, I yell, “Fray! No! Stop! We can’t leave them!”
I’m too weak. I cannot free myself from his grip.
Fray squeezes tighter, crushing my ribs, rotating just enough for me to catch a glimpse of the long cylindrical object. My whole body tenses, because that has to be the largest fucking bomb in existence.
No. This cannot be happening.
I refuse to allow this to be the last I see any of them.
Fray’s hand splays over my cheek and shoves my face to the curve of his neck. We hurtle through the giant hole in the window, with the warmth of Varic’s force-shield growing fainter as Fray flies us farther away from him, and the bomb.
“No! We have to go back! Set me down somewhere and save them! Please! There is no reason to leave them all to die!”
But Fray doesn’t stop.
Or speak.
And I swear my heart shatters as the amber shield disappears.
The loss of which hurts nearly as much as what is about to happen if Fray doesn’t fucking do something to save them.
Or seem to care that I do not wish to be saved.
Not when it means they should die so he might ensure my safety.
Not when their deaths will break whatever is left of me.
Because they cannot possibly survive the blast—not from a bomb that big.
Not even if Lars were to run it far enough away to save the rest, because losing him to this would crush me, regardless.
Gods, I was so cruel to Varic.
I should have just let him undo the last few buttons on my dress.
Fuck feeling as if I would implode if he were to touch me one more time in the moment.
It was just a few more buttons. I would have survived.
And now—
I didn’t know. I had no reason to believe that would be it.
Taking what we had for granted, believing we had more time.
We need more time.
This can’t be it.
This can’t be the end for us.
“Fray! Put me down somewhere and go back and get them!”
He remains silent as the frigid air bites everywhere from the loss of Varic’s shield.
“Please!”
Dizziness, nausea, and panic infiltrate while the force of Fray’s power propels us higher and higher as he carries me—unwillingly—into the inky black depths of the sky.
“Godsdamnit, Fray! Say something!”
Wind whips over my ears, buffeting so loud I cannot make out any other sound. Tears stream down with the thought of how I must have missed the explosion going off.
Tendrils of panic form hearty vines, wrapping and constricting throughout my insides.
I need to see it. I need to hear it.
I need to know.
“If you do not stop, I will make you!”
Fray finally halts our ascension, holding onto me high above the Imperial Palace, while the light gray of his magical signature emanating from his form dissipates into the pitch-black sky.
My heart hammers as I try to determine how long it’s been since we burst through the window.
If there could still be time, or if it’s all too late now.
“Have you heard—” I falter, unable to ask him the question.
Though I need to know. I just don’t want any of this to be real.
“No,” he says, with a solemnity I recognize from the night Hendry died.
“Can you see any damage?” I ask, my tone coming out frantic.
He leans to the side, peering as far as he can over his shoulder.
“No, there’s too much cloud cover.”
“Then fly lower,” I demand.
“You know I can’t.” Resignation weighs every syllable.
“Godsdammit, Fray, please don’t make me manipulate you.”
“Tasch, please. I can’t. It’s not safe.”
“You think I care about what’s safe?” I scream into his chest, “Cirrin, Malin, Lars—” My voice breaks, and I can’t—
I cannot say his name.
“I’m following Varic’s orders.” My heart lurches with his use of it. “He knows what he’s doing. They’re going to be okay. I promise.”
“Don’t.” I shake my head, and my heart constricts from behaving just the way he does anytime I make a promise about anything of which I have no way of controlling the outcome.
I press against his hand cradling the back of my neck. “How can you say that? Did you see the size of that thing?”
His chin bobs against my hair. “I haven’t heard it go off, meaning they either found a way to disarm it—”
“It’s not possible.” I cut him off, body trembling. “Malin could have tossed it out to sea. But we would have heard the blast from under the water, which is shallow enough it would have wrecked the port.”
He nods again in encouragement.
“Cirrin’s healing isn’t capable of doing anything to diffuse or dispose of it, and while Lars could have run with the bomb, he couldn’t have made it so far we wouldn’t have heard it.
Force magic can shield from attack, either in or out, but it cannot contain the blast of a bomb—our Army has tried everything.
A force-shield may protect them from the blast, but they would have had to be at a much farther distance, while the bomb would have detonated either way, and we would have heard it regardless.
Whoever shot it through the window would have calculated for each of these contingencies, ensuring it killed at least some of my Guards, weakening my protection so they might finally have a chance to assassinate me.”
Stomach twisting, my chest constricts.
“Hold on as tight as you can,” Fray instructs. “I’m going to put the harness around you. I just need one free hand.” I shake my head as terror controls my reactions. “You can do it, Tasch. You’re strong, I promise. And I’ll still have hold of you with one arm, yeah?”
I nod, since it’s not like I have a choice, while tears start to crystallize along my lower lashes, freezing rather than falling in the thin wintry air.
My arms comply with his command, winding around his neck, pulling myself in as much as I can in this weakened state, feeling as if we are spinning through the air as the dizzying sensation fucks with my vision.
Fray slowly releases an arm, and I gasp, despite the fact I knew he was going to do exactly that. Lungs burning with the chill aggravating my need to cough, it challenges my hold as Fray tightens the arm still wrapped around me, while all I want to do is scream.
The creaking of leather tells me he’s pulled the harness from the side compartment in his uniform.
We haven’t ever been in the air long enough to need this contraption, though we’ve practiced utilizing it enough for me to know what to expect.
He pulls the leather band around my back and switches the arm that braces me to him, reaching to the opposite side where he hooks the harness in to secure me.
Opening my eyes is futile at this point, since dizziness is spinning my vision and the clouds remain too thick to see the Palace.
Fray breathes steadily, and the rhythm of his chest expanding seems to help settle my heart rate. I relax my hold around his neck as we float within the pitch-black sky filled with blinking stars, bodies shivering in unison as the chill cuts straight to our bones.
Fray’s eyes rove, scanning the clouds below as we wait in silence, bracing for the tell-tale sound of an explosion. Blinking dislodges tiny ice crystals forming along the line of my lashes, and we hear it—
But that can’t be it.
It was barely a muffled thump.
Fray’s furrowed brows communicate that we both expected something louder, though it does nothing to lessen the impact of the detonation, feeling it hit me square in the chest.
Pained cries emit from between my quivering lips as I desperately cling to the only Guard I have left.
But it took so long for it to detonate.
Maybe that means they did get out.
Maybe they are safe.
Doubt creeps in without feeling the same sensation I did with Henry, where it felt as if our soul-bond was severed.
Memories flash from the devastation at sites where similar bombs went off—
“You have seconds,” General Sal explains, gesturing at the destruction of a significant section of the encampment. “A minute at best—to flee as far away as you can, and even then, you’ll still most likely be caught in the blast zone.”
Clouds pass below us, yet my view is mostly obscured by Fray’s arm. Even when my eyes clear from tears, the dizziness makes it difficult to focus on anything I’m seeing.
We must be too high to make out much detail on the Imperial Palace, though I assume Fray would notice a giant black hole from an exterior wall no longer existing.
“Can you see any damage?” I ask, my voice shaky as my teeth chatter incessantly.
“No, none.”
“What do you mean?” That bomb could have taken out the entire side of the Imperial Palace.
“Could the stories be true? Could the Imperial Palace really be incapable of falling?”
“I don’t know,” he says, sorrow bleeding through.
Subzero temperatures and the stress of the evening finally catch up with me, sending my body into shock as my muscles quiver and my vision fades to black.
Fray rubs his frozen hands up and down my back, and I nestle my face in the crook of his neck while he tries his best to warm me.
Yet the chill is too intense, and my muscles jerk violently in his hold, with shivers taking over without him being able to add any more warmth since his body is just as frozen.
I need stable ground. A fire. To know, for certain, the fate of my Guards.
Though I know there’s no way they could have survived a bomb that large.
Nothing I think, feel, or hope can bring them back.
No amount of wishing, hoping, or dreaming can change what’s happened.
I can’t fucking believe they’re gone.
I can’t believe Varic just took his vow to protect me, and this is how his life ends.
The fear I experienced when he said those words on the stage—it’s all too much.
Grief floods my chest, weighing me down, as memories—from the details of their faces to their laughter and disdain—flood me, then sobs rend me open, as the despair threatens to consume me.
Heart faltering. Emotions tugging at me too strongly, too deeply.
Pulse slowing. Alarmingly. Fray’s concern grows.
My magic knows. What little is left.
Two frigid fingertips press into the pulse point in my throat as the only other thing I notice is his fresh, earthen scent—strangely comforting as my consciousness slips.
“Shit. Hold on, Tasch.”
Darkness envelops me.
“Stay with me.”
The cold night air flows around us, and the faint tickle of hair whipping around my neck indicates how fast he is flying.
“I’ll get us to safety, I promise. I won’t let them take you from us. I won’t. I won’t let them.” Fray’s voice grows faint, and my vision fades to nothingness.