Chapter 77
DIEM
“Your Majesty? Are you alive? Are you hurt?”
I answered with a groan. Two strong hands gripped my shoulders and shook. The movement sent my stomach flipping as if I was tumbling through the air. Confused thoughts and attempts to answer were overridden by a desperate need to make the free fall stop.
“Diem, are you alright? Are you still . . . you?”
Then it hit me—where I was. The war, the battlefield. Ophiucae. My mother and my mate, somewhere in the thick of combat. And my brother . . .
“Teller,” I rasped.
Alixe helped me sit up, and nausea churned again. I drew in air through my nose to keep it down, and the lingering traces of a cloying, spicy fragrance dragged a memory from the haze.
“That little shit drugged me,” I mumbled.
“Your brother?” she asked. “Why would he do that?”
A different kind of sickness rose as a gnawing suspicion began to grow. I looked at the forest, searching the trees. Lily’s face, wrecked with concern, peered out from between two trunks.
“Where is he?” I shouted at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lip trembling. “The healers were using it on the wounded soldiers. He asked me to give him a vial. He said . . .” Her body shuddered as more tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Where is he?” I yelled again, panicked and shrill.
Her eyes shifted beyond me, and I swiveled toward the battlefield. At its center, a shock of auburn hair bobbed through the clashing fighters.
“He told me he was going to stop Ophiucae,” Lily cried. “I didn’t know he was going to use it on you, I swear.”
I spun back to her, heart seizing in my chest. “Lily, if Ophiucae sees him, he’ll kill him.”
A horrible grief fell over her stare. “I know.”
I tried to stand, but the sleeping draught Teller had used on me was slow to fade. I crumpled to my knees as the world reeled around me. Alixe hauled my body against her side and dragged me toward the forest.
“I have to stop Teller,” I protested, feebly trying to push her away.
“You’re in no condition for that. And we have a bigger problem.” She glanced to her left, where a group of riders approached from the west. “The rest of the Unhoused Descended, I’m guessing,” she said. “I don’t think this half came of their own free will.”
My heart sank. “Alixe, Ophiucae got to the Montios Descended, too. He claims they’re headed to Lumnos.”
Her face drained of its color. “I’ll send a rider to warn them, but . . .”
She trailed off, and we shared a look of helpless anguish. Montios was closer to the palace than the Fortos border. Even at their fastest pace, there was no chance our rider would beat the Montios Descended. For all we knew, they were already there.
If they were, the final pocket of safety in Emarion had vanished. Every single realm was either emptied of its people or under siege. The future the Kindred had feared was dangerously close to coming to pass.
“Rest here until the draught wears off,” Alixe said, setting me at Lily’s feet. “When it does . . .” She fell quiet again. Alixe had gotten us this far, but we both knew the next part was up to me.
“Hold them off for as long as you can,” I said. “Retreat, if you must. Whatever it takes to keep our people alive.”
She hesitated, her eyes lingering on mine. We both seemed to sense what this moment signaled.
My relationship with Alixe had always been complex.
I’d admired her from the start, but her insistence on hierarchy put distance between us, preventing the casual kind of friendship I shared with Taran and Eleanor.
Though her loyalty to me as Queen had been faultless, I found her obedience hard to admire, considering the years of brutality the Royal Guard had inflicted on Mortal City under her supervision.
I’d been tough on her, sometimes unfairly so.
I’d demanded more of her than anyone else—and more than anyone else, she had risen to the challenge.
No matter how harsh my words, she never hid behind excuses.
She used her shame as fuel to confront the wrongs she’d once defended, and she had gone beyond my orders, seeking out her own ways to use her titles for good.
Descended like her made me believe that change could be more than just a dream.
And that gave me hope that this war was worth everything we’d have to sacrifice to win it.
“I believe in you, High General,” I said. “Let’s go save our people.”
She placed her fist against her chest with a deep, slow nod. I returned the gesture, then Alixe ran for the west. Lily helped me lean against her as we shuffled to the mortal healers.
“By the Undying Fire,” Maura said when we arrived, fussing around me. “What happened?”
“Winterwood,” I gritted out.
Her eyes flared in surprise. “Smelled or consumed?”
“Smelled,” Lily answered for me. “Only for a few seconds.”
Maura gave her a curious look that had Lily’s gaze taking a guilty drop to her feet.
“I need . . .” I winced, struggling to steady my spinning head long enough to pull the antidote from my memories. “Need . . .”
Maura leaned on her cane and gave a sidelong glance at the other healers. “Can someone help Her Majesty? What substance can counter the effects of winterwood?”
“A tea of dried sunrise splendor mushrooms,” a trainee said excitedly.
Another shook her head. “Not a tea. You have to grind them into a powder and have the patient breathe it in.”
“Ah, but sunrise splendor has no effect on Descended,” Maura corrected. “Their healing abilities cleanse it from the body too quickly. What must you use instead?”
“Maura,” I said impatiently, but she clicked her tongue to cut me off.
She and my mother had always insisted that, to develop a healer’s calm in the midst of chaos, the best time for a lesson was when things were most urgent.
Maura’s own wife could be dying in front of her, and she’d still use it as a chance to teach.
“Anyone?” she asked, looking around. The trainees hung their heads in defeat.
“Lumnos pine,” Lily said quietly. “The roots have healing qualities when they’re burned.”
Maura beamed. “Very good, Lily. You’ve been studying.” She glanced up at the canopy of leaves above us. “Unfortunately, the trees in this area are mostly oak, but I’m sure there are pines around here somewhere . . .”
“I’ll find one,” Lana said. Her voice was small as she edged out from behind Maura.
She’d been hiding from me, I realized. I wanted to tell her that Henri’s shame was his alone, not hers.
I also wanted to scold her for risking her pregnancy by coming, but knowing the threat Lumnos was under, perhaps she’d made the wiser choice.
And, despite everything, I wanted to ask her if Henri was here somewhere, too.
She ran off before I got the chance, and other healers left to help her. When they returned, she hurriedly tossed the roots to the ground in front of me and backed away. Lily set them aflame with a spark of Lumnos light.
The warmth of the fire was bizarrely entrancing. I leaned in, gulping in as much of the smoke as my lungs could hold. Something stirred in my chest, luring me closer, then closer, then closer, even as the flames singed strands of hair that had come loose from my braid.
Maura pulled me back with a nervous chuckle. “Careful, dearie. Any closer, and you’ll burn.”
My mind began to clear, and I managed to rise on my own as strength slowly returned to my limbs. I reached for my sword, staggering toward the battlefield.
“Wait a while longer,” Maura urged. “Those roots take time to work, even for your kind.”
I flinched at those words—your kind. Maura was like a second mother to me. Hearing her label me as something other was an unexpected blow.
She scowled. “Don’t you look at me like that. I love you as deeply as my own girls. We don’t have to be the same kind to be family.” I threw my arms around her neck, pouring my appreciation for everything she’d done for me into the embrace, and she fiercely squeezed me back.
“I knew you’d never stop being a healer, Diem Bellator,” she whispered in my ear. “You just found a bigger wound to mend.”
She let me go with a weepy smile. I threw Lily one final look, wishing I had time to thank her for loving the two most important men in my life when they needed it most. The best way I could thank her now was by saving their lives, and that’s what I set my mind to do when I turned and marched for the fighting.
In my current state, entering the front lines was nothing short of suicidal. I had no magic, no shield. I was still unsteady on my feet, and it was a struggle just to lift Sorrow’s Edge. The way magic flew back and forth around me, I had to be vigilant even from my own soldiers’ errant attacks.
I called my brother’s name as I moved through the chaos. Blood was everywhere—dripping from head wounds, seeping through tunics, smeared across hands and faces—camouflaging Teller’s coppery hair in a sea of red.
I ducked to miss a bolt of shadow. Would he even respond, if he heard me? Could he? Gods, if I was too late . . .
“Teller,” I shouted again.
Deep within the brawl, two familiar brown eyes locked on mine, then turned away. I set off at a sprint, bouncing off shields and tripping over corpses. A spear glanced off my armor and sliced my cheek, but I barely felt the pain, consumed by my race to stop my brother.
I nearly collapsed with joy when I finally caught up to him—until I saw his state. He was covered in an alarming amount of blood, and I couldn’t tell whether it belonged to him or the horde of enemy soldiers that had him trapped on every side.
“A little help?” he grunted, deflecting an axe meant for his neck on the right as a spear of fire crashed against his godstone breastplate on the left.
I stormed toward the soldiers, who watched me approach with unsettling apathy. They didn’t raise a shield or run away. They showed no emotion, even as I struck them down. They were no more sentient than swords, abandoned by their wielder and left to tumble, forgotten, to the ground.