Chapter 16
KAELERON
Iwas in the great hall, holding audience with the concerned citizens of my court, when it finally happened.
Unprepared for the pain that tore through my soul, the suddenness of it seeing me double over on my throne.
I clutched my stomach and chest as I snarled, onyx claws punching from my fingertips as they turned ashy black.
“Brother!” Jenavyr rushed to me, her hands gripping my shoulders as I clenched my teeth, fighting to hold back a roar as the pain came again, robbing me of breath.
Shredding my heart.
Panic speared me and I shoved at her, pushing her away from me. The signatures of the people who crowded the great hall drummed at me, hammering at my soul as darkness roared up on me and my shadows exploded outwards, streaming like great wings from my back.
I tried to stand, and grunted as my left knee buckled, sending me to the floor.
“Brother.” Vyr reached for me again.
“No!” I snapped, shadows lashing at the polished stone tiles, several sharpened spears launching towards her and others.
On a violent bellow, I pulled them back to me, refusing to let them hurt her or any of the people gathered here to witness their king breaking.
I cast a look at her, pain blazing through every inch of me, my voice a soft whisper this time. “No.”
Her silver eyes widened.
Understanding flaring in them.
I gripped my throne as the agony tore through me again, sharper than before, a thousand searing yet freezing lances that had me desperately trying to hold on to the bond as it stretched taut. My bond had been broken before, but it had never felt like this.
An unholy snarl tore from my lips as my claws cleaved into the stone arm of my throne, and I almost lost balance as that arm cracked, leaving me holding a chunk of it.
“Out!” My sister rushed towards the people, waving her hands.
Looking as desperate as I felt as I struggled to muster my strength and focus through the riot of pain.
“Keep them safe,” I muttered.
And then I was gone.
Consumed by inky night flecked with golden starlight.
I landed hard on Dagger Overlook high on Noainfir, my legs giving out again, sending me crashing to the pebble-strewn weatherworn black stone. I clutched it as I fought for breath, for control, my gaze straying to my right.
To my court as it trembled.
As crimson lightning lashed at it once again.
To that point where I had sat on the edge of the stone ledge with Saphira.
The pebbles around me began to bounce, higher and higher, as the mountain shook.
Not here.
I grunted and stumbled to my feet.
I could not do this here.
I clung to the bond as I staggered forwards, sinking my black claws into it, refusing to let them break it and take her from me.
Tears stung my eyes as I hurried forwards, towards the boundary of the ward, my steps urgent as the quake worsened.
I would not hurt my court. I clutched the rocks to my left, hauling myself forwards, each step I took away from my court a relief.
Fear coated my tongue, bitter and acrid.
Fear that if I stayed here, I would obliterate the Shadow Court.
The barrier I had helped cast along the border of it would protect it, and if I was lucky, the sands of the Forgotten Wastes would dampen my magic enough that this world would survive my wrath.
I stumbled down the narrow path, heading with all the speed I could muster towards that land.
Praying to the goddess that it would do as I needed.
Praying to her to let this bond between myself and Saphira last long enough for me to reach the glittering grey sands.
I felt the edge of the ward as I passed it and immediately teleported, leaping as far into the Wastes as I could manage. I landed hard on the sands, spraying them in all directions, and looked back at the mountains that formed the border of my court, so far away.
Good.
Pain tore at my chest again like vicious claws, cleaving the bond into long tendrils. I desperately reached for the other end of those tendrils, clutching them tightly, pulling at them to keep her with me.
The sands vibrated with my rage and my anguish as I sank to my knees, as I dug my claws into them and snarled through my fangs. They would not take her from me.
They could not.
Great pulses of power rolled outwards from me, growing stronger and stronger, until the sands rose as waves towering fifty feet high, crashing over the bone-white trees and devouring them.
Each pulse matched my heartbeat as I sank deeper into the bond, as I silently begged them not to take it from me.
The first tendril snapped.
I felt her pain.
I felt her fear.
I threw my head back and roared at the sky, until the stars hid and the moon blanketed itself in the inky veil of darkness.
I cracked that inky veil when the next tendril gave, surrendering to them.
A brilliant scar shot across the night, leaking aurora that spilled like great drops of blood from a wound. Wherever those drops struck the Wastes, jagged towers of glass shot upwards, as beautiful as they were dreadful.
The sand around me stilled and then fractured as I bellowed again, screaming until I was hoarse, until I felt I might pass out from lack of air, breaking into a stilted series of rings around me.
The grey sands poured into them, and I glared at the sky as I sank into the darkness, as the pain devoured all of me, plunging me deep into the dark abyss until it shrouded my every thought and darkened my every desire, wrenching control and any semblance of sense from me.
Narrowing everything down to a single, violent urge that consumed me.
I swore to the heavens and the lands that none would survive this.
All would pay.
The markings that tracked up the underside of my fingers glowed as white as the moon as I pressed my hands to the rock that had been revealed beneath me, as the fissures around me widened.
Those markings gleamed, bursting to life on the plinths of stone within the broken rings, chasing around the circles until the air rippled with power.
No one took her from me.
She was mine.
The sand that had fallen into the cracks shot into the air, a wall of glittering grey that caught the raging wind and swirled around me, rising higher and condensing above me. Drops of aurora-coloured energy fell onto the orb, chasing around it, gilding it in places.
I poured all my dark and wretched power into that sphere, ancient words spilling from my lips as I held on to the bond, as I refused to let it break. Let the world break. Let it all fall down. I did not care.
I bared teeth at the stone beneath me, at the sands whirling violently around me, shadow talons flickering over my hands and wings flowing from my back, extending high into the air to cradle the sphere as it shrank under the force of my will, the power in it condensing.
If they took her from me, I would end them all.
I sat back on my heels, head falling back, and gazed up at my creation.
My beautiful rage.
My infinite pain.
It beckoned me.
I lifted my hands towards it, palms shining like moonlight.
Aching to embrace it.
To wipe clean this dreadful world.
My hands stilled as warmth spilled down my cheeks, startling against the cold of them.
That warmth seemed to unfurl inside the icy abyss within me too.
Saphira.
My light. My warmth. My heart.
I did not stop the tears from spilling as I reached for her, as I pulled her to me, our bond clearer than it had ever been.
There was no cold touch of fear on the other side of it. There was no fire of agony.
There was only that glittering light and bewitching warmth.
My love.
I reached for her instead of the orb, shunning the magic spun from my agony and my fear, from my darkness, pulling up the fragile light and warmth that existed within me.
That she had rekindled in me.
I knew what she wanted, felt it through the bond, but I could not do it. I could not let her go. She could not ask me to do that. A flash of her pain hit me, stealing the breath from my lungs, as another tether between us snapped despite how fiercely I clung to the bond.
And I knew what I had to do.
I could not let her suffer. I could not be selfish, forcing the bond to remain between us, not when it was hurting her. I could not hurt her. I had vowed to protect her. To keep her safe. To keep her free of pain. Not inflict it upon her like this.
Great Mother, it would be agony to live without her, to be without this connection between us that I had been a selfish prick to bestow upon her but one I had come to love, but I had to do as she wanted. I felt it in every whispered word through the bond.
I felt her love. Her hope. Her sweet promise.
I answered her with my own promise that I would find her. My own hope that we would be together again soon. My own love that burned within me, so deep and fierce it was unbreakable.
One by one I felt those tethers fray and snap, each one that broke leaving me colder, darker, stealing a shred of my sanity with it.
Tears blinded me as I held on to the last one, as I found I could not let go of it because I did not possess the strength to go on in this world not knowing if I would see her again.
I could not live without her.
Warmth and love flooded that straining final tendril of my dark power that connected us.
Warmth and love that felt too much like a goodbye.
A wave of light swept around me, brilliant and blinding, every symbol I had imprinted on the stones of this land blazing like azure fire.
“I will not let you go,” I snarled.
The orb above me trembled with my dark vow.
I raised my hands to it.
Shadows swirled around it, pulled up from the sands around me, shrouding it.
Not my doing.
My momentary distraction cost me greatly.
The final tether ripped and tore, severing the connection between us.
Black rage boiled through my veins as I lowered my gaze to the lone male who stood a short distance in front of me, his hands in his pockets, his onyx hair whipping in the gale that whirled around us.
Oberon.