Chapter 78
AURALIE
It was unbecoming of a healer to wish a man dead, but I allowed myself an exception for Remis Corbois.
He and his brother Garath were the puppeteers who had pulled King Ulther’s strings.
They had the power to loosen the noose around the mortals’ necks, and they had used Ulther to tighten it instead.
When Remis usurped my daughter’s throne, and after Luther opened up to me about his past, my grievances against his father went from political to personal.
It was always just a matter of time until I stood across from Remis in battle, sword raised and ready to strike.
I never imagined it would be to save his life.
“Thank you,” he wheezed, tugging away the vines encircling his throat.
I slid my sword out of the freshly lifeless corpse of an Arboros Descended. “You could have killed them yourself if you’d stop trying to raise a shield every time someone attacks.”
“Old habit,” he muttered. “Behind you.”
I swung my sword as I spun, landing it deep in someone’s side, then froze as I met the dying stare of a foggy-eyed mortal woman.
Between mortal army soldiers, mortal spies sent by the Crowns to infiltrate the Guardians, and the Mortal City residents who betrayed their neighbors in the hopes it might spare them from the Royal Guard’s abuse (it never did), I’d long ago accepted that my own kind could be my biggest threats.
But with every mortal life that ended on my blade, a piece of me chipped away—a stone hammered by a chisel, sculpted into a form I never wanted to take.
After all these years, and all these deaths, sometimes I couldn’t recognize the woman I’d become.
“Down!” Remis yelled.
I dropped to my knees, and a whoosh of flying magic shot over my head. Remis ran past me, deftly gutting its owner. “You could have done that yourself,” he echoed, offering his hand, “if you didn’t lock up every time you killed a mortal.”
I ignored his help and climbed to my feet on my own. “I didn’t join this war to kill mortals.”
“Neither did I,” he said under his breath.
He turned away, I did the same, and we resumed our reluctant back-to-back dance through the fighting.
Though it stung my ego, I let him lead the way.
He was surprisingly perceptive, and he took no unnecessary risks, something my time in the Guardians had left me unaccustomed to.
It made our progress slow, but it kept us both alive.
I crashed into him to avoid a flying spear. “Why did you join the war, Remis?”
“The same reason you did.” He pushed me off and straightened his tilted armor. “Penance.”
I bristled. “I’ve dedicated my life to bringing the Old Gods back to Emarion. I have no reason to earn their forgiveness.”
“Not from the gods, Auralie. From our children.”
With that, my lips pressed closed.
“Any sign of him?” Remis asked.
I scanned the fighting, searching for a glimpse of Taran, and caught a brief, distant flash of auburn-red hair. I squinted to confirm what I’d seen. In the same spot, a swinging white braid flew by.
My heart raced. I knew Diem and Teller would eventually join the fight, but a voice inside me, a mother’s instinct, warned that something about this was wrong.
My distraction cost me—a broadsword came swinging, moving too fast for me to deflect.
I seized up, bracing for its impact, and a loud clang rang in my ears as the blade smashed against my chest. I stumbled back, staring down in shock at the godstone breastplate Brecke had crafted from Andrei’s ashes.
Without it, the blow would have been instantly lethal.
Even in death, my Andrei was still protecting his family.
“Over here,” Remis shouted, “I think I found them.”
I made quick work of the broadsword’s owner before they could strike again, then glanced over my shoulder and balked—a few feet from Remis, Taran knelt beneath a shimmering dome, while Diem stood beside him, casting light and shadow magic at anyone who came near.
My head whipped back to where I’d spotted her moments ago. It was too far away for her to have made it here so soon.
“What happened?” Remis asked her. “Is Taran hurt?”
Diem shook her head.
“He’s gone,” Taran said hoarsely. Cradled in his arms, clutched against his chest, was a motionless body covered in burns. Only a patch of glossy golden hair revealed the man it had once been.
“Oh, Aemonn,” Remis murmured. He knelt at Taran’s side and placed one hand on Aemonn’s head, the other on Taran’s shoulder. “May the Blessed Mother guide him home.”
Taran’s body shook with sobs. “It should have been Father. He should have been here. He should have died instead.”
Remis sighed, then gave a slow nod.
“Jean Hanoverre—he was going to kill Zal,” Taran stammered. “Aemonn took the blow instead. Why would he do that?” His anguished eyes turned to me, head shaking, as if he couldn’t bring himself to believe in his brother’s love, even as he held the burnt, bleeding proof of it in his arms.
Remis took Aemonn’s hand and clutched it between his. “Jean will pay for what he’s done.”
“He already has,” Diem said, gesturing to a nearby corpse. Her voice sounded strange. Lower, almost masculine.
“Then House Hanoverre will pay,” Remis swore. “I’ll wipe every last one of them from Emarion soil.”
Taran nodded, fists clenching, and I frowned. Remis and Garath had many sins as fathers, but I feared the gravest was teaching their sons that violence and vengeance were the only ways a man could prove his love.
As Luther soared overhead on Sorae, I wondered with growing trepidation what that meant for my daughter.
“Teller!”
My daughter’s voice—her real voice—called out from somewhere nearby, sounding angry and harsh. But I’d been standing right beside her . . . and her lips hadn’t moved.
“Auralie,” Remis whispered. His eyes went wide as he gestured to Aemonn’s hand, lying limp in his lap. I frowned, not understanding—until Aemonn’s finger curled in an almost imperceptible twitch. “I think he’s . . .”
I cut Remis off with a strong shake of my head. It wasn’t unusual for bodies to spasm after death, and I couldn’t bear to worsen Taran’s grief with misplaced hope. I looked back at Diem, trying to make sense of what I’d heard, but Remis hissed my name again.
He pointed to Aemonn’s shoulder, where the plates of his golden armor had melted under the heat of the light magic that had killed him.
The fabric of his shirt had burned away, and the skin beneath was brutally charred.
Then my breath caught—in the center of the gruesome wound, a patch of new, pink skin was beginning to grow.
Remis’s eyes shot to mine in mutual realization: Aemonn was healing.
And dead Descended couldn’t heal.
I rushed to Aemonn’s side and grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse.
Each beat was so faint and far apart that if he was a mortal, there’d be nothing anyone could do for him but say the Rite of Endings.
Even for a Descended, the odds were grim.
His wounds would take hours, maybe days, to heal, and his heart might only last minutes.
I ran to Diem and lowered my voice. “Thank the gods your magic returned. I think we can still save Aemonn.”
Her brows flew up. “He’s alive?”
“For now. He needs healing magic.”
“The healers are in the forest.” She turned toward Taran. “I can shield if he can carry Aemonn.”
My frown deepened, both at the strangeness of her voice and the illogical words she spoke.
The mortal healers from Lumnos were in the forest, waiting until it was safe to treat survivors, but the Descended healers of Fortos were on the battlefield.
They deployed with the army battalions, saving lives while simultaneously fighting for their own—a fact that Diem well knew.
Teller used to find great fun in suggesting she enlist, knowing it would bait her into a passionate rant about the (mostly female) healers doing twice the work of the (mostly male) soldiers.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him. “You have to heal him yourself.”
“I can’t heal him, Auralie.”
I bristled. Diem had never called me anything but Mother. “Diem, remember your healer’s vow. Aemonn is our patient. Put your feelings about him aside and—”
“I’m not Diem.” Her fingers twitched, and her face began to ripple, revealing flickers of ebony skin and short black curls.
“Zalaric?” I asked.
She—he nodded. “It’s an illusion. Works better than a shield. They don’t even try to attack her.”
My mind began to spin with the strategic potential of his discovery. “Can you do the same to me?”
His hand flexed, and a tingling sensation crept over my skin. His eyes roamed over me, then he gave a short nod. I took a few tentative steps into the fighting. As soon as the enemy soldiers saw my face, they wandered past.
I leapt to take advantage, striking down as many of them as I could as I looked for a Fortosian healer. Their bright white tunics were designed to be easy for wounded soldiers to spot, but in the bloody mess of war, neither shirt nor sword nor soul had been left unstained.
Finally, I found a woman bent over a crumpled body, palms glowing as she pressed them to its throat. The light at her hands went dark, and her shoulders drooped.
“I need your help,” I shouted.
Her eyes rose, bleary and bleak. “Your Majesty,” she mumbled, weakly saluting. “As you command.”
I took her hand and squeezed it as we fought our way back to Aemonn.
I had criticism in abundance for the Descended of every realm, but the healers of Fortos had earned my pity, not my scorn.
In my years in the army, I’d seen how their work wore on them.
Fortos soldiers thrived on bloodshed, but for the healers, every life lost was a defeat.
“Teller, stop!”