Chapter 33
DIEM
My throat was full of mud.
More specifically, a thick slurry of rain and particles of shattered rock that had collected while I was unconscious. I was choking on it, lungs straining. I felt like I was drowning—not as a poignant metaphor, but in a very real, very cause-of-death kind of way.
I couldn’t move, either. One arm was bent at an angle behind me, the other pinned beneath what felt like an entire building—or what was left of one. My attempts to open my eyes brought a watery, red-tinged blur in my right eye and agonizing pain in my left.
“Find the Queen,” a man’s voice shouted. “I saw her in the tower before the bomb exploded.”
“She’s probably dead, like the other one.”
No.
No no no.
“We can’t take the risk. You four look through the rubble. If you find her alive, don’t kill her. Father Vance wants to do it himself.”
The rocks around me rattled as more explosions detonated in the distance. Faint shouting joined bootsteps and clanging swords along with a gryvern’s enraged roars. Hundreds of miles away in Lumnos, a different gryvern was absolutely losing her shit.
“It’s too dark,” a man complained. “I can’t see a thing through all this rain.”
“She could be under ten feet of rocks by now. Come on, Francis, let us join the others. I wanna kill some Descended.”
A long pause.
“I’ll stay here and keep looking. The two of you can go ahead.”
Eager whoops rang out as feet scrambled across the rocks. One of them passed over me, pushing a sharp edge further into my eye and sending warm liquid oozing down my cheek. I could barely feel the pain as my heartbeat grew weaker and the world drifted further away.
All I could think about was Luther—where he was, if he was hurt.
If the most incredible man I’d ever known had died, believing I found him pathetic.
Someone walked over me again, and the rocks around me shifted against my chest, forcing out a garbled, airless cry. A moment later, weights lifted from my face.
“There you are.”
My good eye fluttered, catching a glimpse of a woefully familiar face: Francis, Vance’s third-in-command. He held the point of his knife at my throat. “Scream for help and I kill you. Use magic and I kill you. Try to escape and I kill you. Understand?”
I wasn’t sure if I responded, given that I could no longer feel my body.
Francis sheathed his blade and began dragging rocks off my chest. At the sudden release of pressure, violent shudders racked my body, and my throat began to retch.
Seconds later, my mouth filled with the sweet, delicious drink of open air.
“Get up,” Francis said. “You have to come with me.”
“My mate,” I rasped. “Is he dead?”
“Who, the Prince?” Francis glanced over his shoulder at something I couldn’t see. “Looks like it.”
My body—my soul—went cold, but I refused to believe it. If he was gone, I would know. I would feel it.
Francis glanced down at my legs. Both were a bloody, mangled mess. “I thought your kind could heal.”
“It takes time,” I said, secretly prodding my Fortos magic to mend the less visible wounds. “A few hours, at least.”
He scowled. “Fine. I’ll carry you. But don’t get any ideas. Even you can’t get through his shield.”
I barely had time to notice the shimmering film wrapped around his body before the pain of being hauled to my feet turned my vision white.
As the gryverns sensed my agony, the bonds crowding my head knotted into a jumbled ball of panic.
I tried to focus on untangling the glowing thread that bound me to Luther.
I had to find him and heal him before it was too late.
“My mate,” I said between gasps. “Please, I need to see him.”
Francis shuffled over the rain-slicked rubble, grunting under my weight. “Which part? Body’s in three pieces.”
A sob cracked out as I slumped against him. If Luther was truly gone, at least it made my next choice easy.
“Then take me to Ophiucae,” I insisted.
Francis stopped. “Why? Are you going to join him?”
“Yes,” I rushed out, praying for him to buy the lie. “I’ll join him—and Vance. I’ll swear my loyalty. Just take me to him.”
He looked me over, sharp and appraising. “You would turn on all your Descended friends? Betray your mother?” I nodded eagerly, and he let out a deep sigh as he eased me back to the ground. “They really believed that you were different. But you Descended never are.”
Suddenly, his dagger came swinging. My shield rose in useless defense, the godstone blade easily carving through it. I screwed my eyes shut and braced for death.
Then—a flash of light, glowing crimson through my eyelids.
A tingle, freezing cold and blisteringly hot.
And silence.
“What in the glaciers of hell?”
My eyes popped open. Francis stood over me, staring at his empty hands.
“You destroyed my blade,” he said, gaping. “How did you do that?”
My legs jerked as healing magic fused my broken spine. I dragged myself backward over the rocks to buy some distance. “I guess there’s more to us than you thought.”
He prowled forward. “Get back here. You’re not going anywh—”
His eyes stopped on the ground nearby. Sorrow’s Edge had been thrown from me in the explosion. It lay wedged in the fallen debris, its handle peeking from the rocks.
We both lunged at once. I got the hilt, but Francis got me, yanking my arm away before my grip could tighten.
I swung at his jaw and felt my knuckles crack against Ophiucae’s impenetrable shield, then ducked to miss a return blow.
I called on Montios magic to shift the rocks beneath his feet, and only succeeded in sending him tumbling on top of me and pinning me down.
The rest of the fight was a scrappy, all-out brawl. On a better day, I would have had him, but I was distracted, still tugging on threads, searching for my mate. When my heart fluttered with something that felt like Luther, I couldn’t stop myself from glancing its way.
It was the opening Francis needed. I looked back in horror to see him slide Sorrow’s Edge free from its scabbard.
“Go,” he panted. “Run. Now.”
I carefully pushed to my feet. “Francis, you have no idea what you’re holding. That is not just any sword.”
He pointed it at me. “I’m giving you a chance to run.”
I shook my head. “I can’t leave that sword. The mortals’ future depends on it.”
“The mortals,” he sneered, “or the Descended?”
“Both.” I held up my hands. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m supposed to believe you? You betrayed the Guardians, now you want to betray your mother.” He started toward me. “Nothing you say can be trus—”
He froze.
I edged a step closer. “Francis?”
The sword fell from his hand. His head swiveled to stare at something behind him. No, on him—a plumed black arrow protruding from the nape of his neck.
“Got him,” a woman called out.
Francis sank to his knees as two women came running toward us.
They were muscular and laden with weapons, and they moved nimbly over the slippery rubble.
When they reached me, their dark red eyes skimmed my body in a methodical path.
One of them reached for my wounded eye, the other grazing my broken arm.
My skin shimmered as my godhood absorbed their healing magic.
“You’re healers?” I said. “You fired that arrow?”
The women looked dismayed at my confusion. “We serve in battle, Your Majesty. We would not survive long if we could not defend ourselves.”
I felt a little ashamed. I’d long known the healers of Fortos were trained to fight if needed, but these women looked as competent as any soldier. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. I was a healer—could I not be a warrior, too?
“I need your help,” I begged, frantically looking around. “I have to find my—”
My eyes stopped on a head of black hair laying against a bloodied rock. I staggered forward a step, then stopped again, crying out in horror. The skull was gruesomely misshapen, and the body attached to it was missing from the rib cage down.
No chance of survival. Not even for a Descended.
My eyes fled the horrible scene, only to spot a torso feet away—and further, an arm, still clutching a sword of Fortosian steel.
My ears began to ring. My legs wobbled. The world teetered on the edge of freefall.
I sharpened my gaze on the dismembered hand.
And then . . . I laughed.
My hands tightened over my mouth to suffocate the sound. A man was dead—brutally, violently dead. This was not a time for laughter. And yet I could scarcely remember being filled with this much joy.
Because that sword, its handle plain and unremarkable, was not the Sword of Corbois.
And that man was not Luther.
I sent up a prayer for the dead man’s soul, then surveyed the rubble, knowing my mate was somewhere beneath it. And knowing, somehow, that he was alive.
I closed my eyes. Forced my lungs to slow. Healed the last of my wounds to quiet my gryverns’ anxious pleas. Closed my ears to the murmurs of the healers and the sounds of warfare coming from Fortos City. Slipped a hand beneath my leathers and laid it on my mating mark.
Then I did the thing I’d been fighting for weeks: I opened my heart, fully and without reserve, to the man I loved. I let my feelings for him flow free, filling the empty cavern chiseled in my soul with his brilliant, calming light.
My godhood shivered with joy, rolling and stretching like a cat in a spot of sun. It seemed almost amused as my feet instinctively began to walk toward Luther, my true north. I would have found him much sooner, had I not locked up my love so tightly even I couldn’t reach it.
I pulled his body from the rocks, unconscious and badly battered. It was nothing magic couldn’t mend, but it wouldn’t be quick, and the sound of fighting was growing nearer.
“Heal his wounds, then make him rest,” I ordered the healers, knowing he would allow no such thing. Even after our fight, he would run to my side the moment he awoke. “Tell him I’m safe. Lie, if you must.” I ran for the city, shouting over my shoulder. “And don’t you dare heal his scar!”