Chapter 80 #2
My fall ended with a crash against unforgiving stone.
Bones popped, agony erupted. Something that felt both cold and broiling pressed against my skin, and a sensation of hopelessness draped over me, luring me toward the darkest corners of my thoughts.
There was something disturbingly familiar about this feeling, the way that everything good in the world shrank from my grasp.
Diem’s cry cut through the daze. My bloodsworn oath to her pulled taut, dangling me in the twilight before the glittering night of death. I roared with pain as I pushed myself upright.
I blinked through bloodied eyes, and the archways of the Kindred’s Temple came into view. I ripped my hand away from its godstone platform, shuddering at the reminder of the toxin that had ravaged both my spirit and my flesh, and the bleak sensation instantly faded.
I frantically searched for my mate. She was still in the sky, pinned to Sorae, who was struggling to stay airborne.
The feathers of one wing had burned away, the delicate skin beneath them blackened and raw.
Only Sorae’s sheer strength of will was keeping them moving, but even that was fading.
Her ruined wings beat slower and slower, the fatal soil growing closer and closer.
Blood poured from the wound in her chest, raining onto the mind-stolen Merosians below. They raised their arms, eager to claw her to shreds the moment she came within reach. Their arrows sank into her side, but still she fought. She flew.
And then . . . she fell.
With a broken whimper, her wings gave out. Her body careened, and she and Diem sank like a stone. She thrashed her unburnt wing to slow their fall, but it only succeeded in sending them into a spiral.
I threw my hands out, pleading for my godhood to answer.
No magic came. I begged the gods to help them, offering up my soul to the Kindred, the Old Gods, even Ophiucae himself.
Their voices were silent. Even the Merosians paused to watch the Queen of Emarion and her guardian hurtle toward their grisly end.
Sorae let out a last, desperate shriek, and the world went terribly quiet.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Not the sound of bodies hitting soil.
The sound of wings.
A blur flew past me as an enormous black beast shot overhead. My hope died in its wake, knowing Ophiucae’s gryvern would destroy whatever was left of them—but when the creature’s dark wings spread wide, they were absent of Xipherus’s distinctive red.
With a roar loud enough to hear from Lumnos, Tybold’s talons closed around Sorae and yanked her toward the sky. The sudden jerk of movement snapped Diem free, and she tumbled off Sorae’s back into another free fall.
Thump, thump, thump.
Thump, thump, thump.
Thump, thump, thump.
The sky turned thunderous. Four gryverns emerged from the clouds and raced in a line toward the island.
A blue-scaled beast I recognized as the Meros gryvern ducked beneath Diem to catch her on his back.
The others swooped around them, spewing plumes of pink, green, and yellow dragonfyre at the island below.
I stared at them, stunned. Though Diem had insisted she was happy to see the gryverns freed, I’d sensed her heartbreak when the others left.
Sorae choosing Diem over a future with Tybold had been devastating for all involved.
But as I watched the Ignios gryvern now, snapping his jaws with snarls that sounded like orders as the other gryverns grumbled and fell in line behind him, I realized he’d never left Sorae at all.
When I couldn’t spare the woman I loved from war, I’d raised an army to fight at her side.
And so had Tybold.
He glided beside the Meros gryvern, and Diem yelled something to him I couldn’t hear, though when she pointed toward the continent, I sensed her plan.
One way or another, her fight and mine would end on this island, but even Ophiucae’s death might not stop his puppet army from ravaging the mainland.
The people of Emarion needed the gryverns more than we did.
A curl of smoke puffed from Tybold’s snout, and the Meros gryvern split off from the group and swung toward the Temple. He hovered just above it as Diem slipped over his side, swinging from his talon before dropping onto the platform beside me.
She stared up at the gryverns, eyes lingering on each one until they stopped on Sorae’s mutilated body, still clutched in Tybold’s grip.
With her wings this damaged, he’d have to carry her all the way to the mainland—a grueling task, even for a strong gryvern like him.
An energy-draining, muscle-snapping, body-destroying task. Maybe an impossible task.
I knew he’d do it.
And I knew he wouldn’t stop fighting until the home Sorae loved was safe.
“One last fight?” Diem shouted.
Sorae gave a trembling howl, followed by Tybold’s roar. The other gryverns flew in silence, and Tybold nipped at the edges of their wings until they each gave reluctant-sounding chuffs.
I pulled myself to my feet and limped to Diem’s side, taking her hand as we watched them soar away—Vexes of Sophos, Arilloc of Meros, Onaar of Arboros, Rosha of Faunos, and our treasured Sorae of Lumnos, led by the fearsome Tybold of Ignios.
“Goodbye,” Diem whispered, tears sparkling on her lashes.
“We’ll see them again,” I insisted. “Ophiucae’s army is no match for six gryverns. Once they arrive, the war is won.”
“Only if he dies.”
Her skin glimmered brighter.
I held up her hand, studying the shimmer overtaking her bronze skin.
Even if her godhood had somehow escaped the effects of her broken bonded bargain with Doriel, it should have vanished once she set foot on the island.
Seeing the evidence of her power shine so defiantly was the final piece of a mystery that had been lingering in my thoughts for some time.
“Diem, look,” I said, stroking my thumb over the back of her hand.
She turned her palm upright, forehead wrinkling. “I still can’t feel my godhood.”
“But you feel something, don’t you?”
Her gaze cut to mine, searching, shadowed with doubt, though she didn’t deny it. She looked out at the Meros Descended. They watched us with foggy, vacant eyes and outstretched arms. Something kept them from breaching the Temple—perhaps the godstone it was built with, or perhaps Ophiucae’s orders.
“What if this means Ophiucae still has his magic?” she asked. She scanned the island’s rolling landscape until her eyes stopped on an area near the eastern coast where a circle had appeared in the Merosians’ midst.
She looked back at me. “Swear to me that you’ll do exactly what I say. If we don’t do this right, we’ll both end up dead. Everyone will.”
I frowned. “Tell me your plan.”
She shook her head. “There’s no time. Please, Luther, I need your promise. Now more than ever.”
My heart, and all my better instincts, screamed their answer: No.
But when my Queen needed me, I could not refuse.
“I promise.”
She pulled her hand from mine and ran for the stairs.
I swore and pulled the Sword of Corbois, following behind her on legs that cracked with each painful step.
She stormed into the crowd without slowing, but unlike on the mainland, her presence among Ophiucae’s army did not go unnoticed.
They swarmed her like ants, and she disappeared inside the throng.
At her surprised cry of pain, my wounds were instantly forgotten. I roared as I hacked through Descended bodies to find her, heart hammering each time I bellowed her name and she didn’t answer.
I finally caught a flash of blood-streaked white hair gripped in the fist of a snarling Merosian. One second later, his hand thumped to the ground, no longer tethered to his body. Another second later, his head did the same.
I managed to clear her attackers enough for her to draw her sword, but her face looked pale, her confidence shaken. If Ophiucae’s fondness had protected her before, it had apparently met its end.
That left us insurmountably outnumbered, two against a thousand.
We tried to fight our way back to the safety of the Temple, but a surge of mindless Merosians trapped us in place.
They swung at us without mercy, more vicious than any we’d faced on the mainland.
It was as if Ophiucae’s rage at her betrayal had permeated their minds, too, infusing them with his determination to make her pay a brutal price.
My calling to protect my mate turned me feral, and I lost myself to a killing frenzy that left me feeling as much an empty husk as the Descended I slaughtered.