Chapter 29
MAGDA CHARGED at Honey. “Go!”
Honey nodded and raced away, whistling for Anqa.
Magda seized Kaelan’s arm. “There’s an old fortress on the peninsula, high on the cliffs, the tower still stands. Crane-on-the-Rocks. If we don’t meet you there in two days . . . don’t wait any longer.”
Down at the stream, Damion planted his feet.
“Hello,” he said casually to the Elf. “Who might you be?”
“You just murdered a member of an endangered race and one of the King’s Pride. The penalty for both crimes is death,” the Elf told him.
Kaelan gripped Magda’s arm. “I can help you.”
“No arguing—”
Before she could pull away, he drew her back into the Shadow Realms. They reemerged behind the Elf and her attendant manticores.
“He didn’t—” the Elf was saying. She whipped around as Magda and Kaelan reappeared, her eyes narrowing at them. “There!”
Magda shoved Kaelan away. “Go!”
She leapt towards one of the towering hemlocks, using her daggers to skitter up the tree’s trunk.
High overhead, Anqa shrieked. Her shadow blotted out the light between the tree branches.
Damion seized the distraction and attacked. Before he could reach the Elf, one of the flanking manticores headed him off. Swiping at him first with her claw, the manticore’s stinger curled up over her shoulder and lunged at him.
The second manticore took flight, lofting up to follow Magda, who finally reached the lowest branch of the tree, fifteen feet above the ground.
“Take her alive!” the Elf ordered from below.
“Like hell,” Magda muttered, leaping down and slamming onto the manticore’s back, plunging the spear of her dragon blades into the beast’s shoulder.
Flailing and screaming, the manticore fell.
Magda tumbled away as they crashed. Its stinger smashed into the ground inches from her nose as the manticore thrashed to right itself.
Magda whipped her wolf blade up and around, slicing through the manticore’s tail as she rolled over onto her stomach and then pushed up to her feet.
A roar of agony, a half-human, half-lion sound, erupted from the manticore as her tail flew upwards, spurting blood, while the stinger remained lodged in the ground.
Blood flowed down the manticore’s side. Magda’s initial shoulder strike had been off target, wounding but not deadly.
As soon as Magda was on her feet, she sighted the arrow nocked in the Elf’s bow. At that moment, a swirl of shadow swept around the Elf. Her manticore’s tail swiped at it. The Elf released her arrow just before she was swallowed by the black miasma.
Magda dodged the arrow, but threw herself in the wrong direction, towards the injured manticore.
The stinger-less beast thrust back her wing, which sported fang-like barbs, and jabbed Magda just above the shoulder blade.
Magda screamed and stumbled. The pain quickly turned from sharp to searing, staggering her, but she kept her legs.
Gur roared, barreling out of the sky and onto the stinger-less manticore, tearing into its throat.
Damion and the manticore he’d been fighting were nowhere to be seen.
The last had been stripped of her Elf and was circling, searching for her mistress.
Behind Magda, an oomph.
Twisting, her teeth clenched against the pain, she saw the Elf reappear from the Shadow Realms with Kaelan, his sword at her throat.
“Call them off,” he said to the Elf. His face was pale and sheeted with sweat.
“It’s too late for that,” the Elf said, “Brother.”
The ground quaked. The leaves and needles on the trees trembled.
Kaelan yanked the Elf’s head back. “I’m not your brother.”
“Then why did our father send me to kill you?” she asked through her teeth.
Gur leapt from the fallen manticore and roared at the riderless one, who was side-prancing anxiously, watching Kaelan and the Elf who claimed to be the King’s daughter.
“My name is Ilene,” the Elf went on, “and I believe, based on the slowing rate of your pulse and the clamminess of your skin, that manticore venom is now working its way through you. And so you shall soon be dead, and I will have completed my mission.”
She grabbed Kaelan’s wrist, flipping him over her shoulder and onto his back.
Magda surged forward, leaping over Kaelan. Tucking one leg, she twisted, kicking out. Her heel cracked against Ilene’s temple.
The Elf’s head smacked against the tree behind her. She crumpled to the ground unconscious.
Magda landed, panting and cursing, blood thudding through her, sheeting her throbbing shoulder.
Kaelan rolled over and tried to push up, but collapsed. A bloody wound showed across his back. He had been stung.
The last remaining manticore screamed, rearing up.
Gur lunged, jaw latching around the manticore’s throat, throwing it to the ground.
“Wait!” Magda hollered. “Don’t kill it!”
Damion barreled into the trees, covered in blood, though it didn’t appear to be his.
Gur held the manticore pinned to the ground. It thrashed, tail whipping wildly.
Magda plowed to her knees next to the manticore’s human face, pointing her dragon spear at the creature’s temple.
“Be still,” she ordered.
The manticore’s jaw snapped, but its body settled.
“Is there a cure?” Magda demanded breathlessly.
The manticore laughed, tongue flicking through the spikes of her teeth.
“Tell me.”
“No cure,” the manticore purred, blood bubbling up through her lips.
Magda’s throat constricted, her heart seized.
She thrust her dragon spear into the manticore’s temple. It jerked and twitched and then went limp.
Anqa fluttered down over the stream. A moment later, Honey appeared next to Damion.
Gur released the manticore’s throat. Magda leaned on his shoulder as she pushed up to her feet and returned to Kaelan.
She eased him over. His skin was chill, his lips violet and trembling, his eyes filming with haze.
His quaking hand groped for hers. “Magda . . .”
She clasped his hand, touching his hair lightly.
Honey dropped down next to them. “What’s happened?” she asked.
“Manticore venom,” Damion pronounced, remaining at a distance, blood drying in smears on his face.
“Is he dying?” Honey’s eyes remained as glassy blank as ever.
The bones of Magda’s chest felt as if they were turning brittle, collapsing. She bowed her head, unable to speak as Kaelan’s pain plied her empathic senses.
“It’s venom,” Damion said as if it were taking all of his strength not to strike Honey. “Deadly poison.”
“Oh.” Honey sprang up, like she was afraid venom might be catching, and dashed away.
“Unbelievable,” Damion muttered.
Kaelan’s eyes shut. The press of his emotions sank from her as his body gave up. She wanted to pull her hand away, so as not to be dragged down with him, but she couldn’t let him die alone.
His grip tightened as the poison worked on his body.
Suddenly, his eyes opened wide. An explosion of pain burst through him—through her.
She dropped her forehead to his, fingers clenching in his hair, growling through a scream that was his—one he couldn’t release because the poison was swelling his throat closed.
Tears burned her face. Her lungs hitched for air; unconvinced they weren’t suffocating, because he was. She wanted to break their connection, and yet, couldn’t.
From somewhere in his mind, deep beneath the turmoil of pain and confusion and frustration drowning him, she heard him call her name, pleading, as his body began to convulse.
But she couldn’t reply. She didn’t know how. She wanted to give him comfort, but didn’t have any to offer. Fury and guilt kept flaring up, preventing her.
Why hadn’t he listened to her and fled? Why hadn’t she kept up her training all these years? She would’ve been faster, deadlier, she could’ve done something. She should’ve done something. Why couldn’t she do anything?
Although she had lost many people in her life—her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, even a boy who was meant to be her Prince—she had never experienced their deaths with them in a telepathic way.
Never had the pain torn through her as it was now, the oxygen fled.
The frantic helplessness of his body losing its battle overwhelmed her.
The cascade of his emotions, intense and clear and yet a tempest—so much fear and anger and regret—hurt all the more because they were ebbing away.
He was ebbing away. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
He was falling and she was plunging after him, trying to catch hold, and failing
His free hand groped at her, digging into the thin skin above her breasts. His eyes were open and clear, even as the blood vessels in them burst.
A jolt passed through her, from his fingers into her chest. The forest around them disappeared.
His inner storm ceased, as though they’d come into the eye of it.
Free-fall stopped and she drifted, weightless, quiet, lost in some silent space that existed only between the two of them.
In that dream-like place, Kaelan appeared before her. His hand pressed to her chest.
“I wish we could fly one more time,” he said with a smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said, clutching at his hand with both of hers.
He opened his mouth to speak, but a gale shoved by, hooking him around the waist, ripping him away. Her shirt tore as his fingers were pulled from it.
Back came the storm. Freezing rain slashed like swords, bleeding her. The wind pitched her up and out and over until she didn’t know where she was anymore. Lightning blinded and thunder deafened, and then . . .
She was back in the forest.
The storm had only happened inside. Her shirt hadn’t really torn, and yet, somewhere deep in her chest, she felt as if she’d been gouged. And that empty space seemed to be growing, as if an invisible creature were gnawing away at her with icy teeth.
“That was foolish.”
She gasped, refocusing on the living world, where Kaelan lay limp. His eyes were vacant and lightless, body sprawled in a damp hemlock forest on a small island in the gulf.
Dead.