Chapter 39 #3
Before Damien had time to land one last blow, hellfire roared from Kane’s hands.
Hot and blinding.
It singed the ground beneath it, burning the air in close proximity. The force of it all sent Erinna to her knees. If she had been any closer, it would have peeled her skin off.
Damien grunted against the onslaught, redirecting his Talent to form a shield around himself. Most mages wouldn’t have lasted that long against Kane’s attack.
Hellfire spread in all directions; the flame wrapped around Damien, danced on the nearest trees, and burned everything it touched to ash.
Damien’s face flushed an unnatural red, and his veins bulged from his skin. He wasn’t going to last. Although she had never seen it, she knew—Damien was seconds away from Burnout.
The wind whipped and screamed around them, and even Kane started to suffer from exertion.
Still, it was clear who the winner would be. The mage had used up far too much control. The witchstone focus on his singed robe was cracked and splintered. Damien was pushed to his knees, breath ragged and strained.
“Stop.” Erinna moved as close as she could to Kane, gritting through the oppressive barrage of flame. He would raze this entire place to the ground.
The acrid stench of charred flesh hit her nostrils. Damien’s protection faltered. “You’re going to kill him!”
Kane’s gaze flickered toward her. Cold and deliberate. That was his intention.
Erinna didn’t think. She plunged forward into the flames, felt them lick and curl around her fingers, her forearms, hungry and searingly hot against her skin. Her hand closed around his wrist.
The fire died instantly.
Kane went rigid. His eyes locked with hers, wide in shock. Not at her audacity for grabbing him, but at something else entirely. His gaze dropped to where her hand gripped his wrist, then traveled up her unmarked arms.
No burns. No blistering. Not even reddened skin.
She should have been screaming. She should have been on the ground, flesh peeling away.
But she wasn't.
Erinna refused to think about it. Her life had become an endless deluge of surprise and ruin. What was one more unexplained phenomenon?
“Please,” she begged.
Kane’s arms went limp at his side.
Damien thudded to the ground; a soft gurgle of struggling breath escaped his throat.
“No!” The word tore from Erinna’s throat as she bolted to his side. Anger surged hot beneath her ribs, tangled with fear and guilt and something sharper.
Betrayal, maybe.
Damien had come here to arrest the people she was traveling with, to drag Inez away in arcanum chains. He’d rounded on her, too.
But he was her friend, and she couldn’t bear to let him die.
“Erinna, if you’re coming with me, we have to go now.” Kane’s voice cut like a knife.
Damien’s eyes rolled to the back of his head. She could smell the blood and charred flesh as it oozed from the gaping, burning hole in his chest. The color drained from his skin, leaving only the pallid coating of death.
He ushered Inez away, in the direction of the ship, before turning back to her. “He’s not dead yet. He may make it until his friends arrive.”
Erinna felt Damien’s pulse. Soft and utterly too slow. No. That would take too long. If Damien was going to live, she had to do something now.
Her eyes blurred with tears, but she forced them back. Instead, she dug into the emotion she was most comfortable with. Rage.
“You killed him!” she sobbed, cursing how weak she felt.
“He was going to take you, Erinna. Or worse.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That spell was for you.” Kane’s jaw tightened; his words came out measured and controlled. But Erinna could hear the simmering frustration beneath each syllable.
“You don’t know that. He’s an abjuror. It could have been something else.
” Denial fought its way through as the more palatable reality than betrayal.
The bracelet was no longer warm, and if she tried hard enough, Erinna could ignore what it meant—that Kane was right, and Damien had aimed a spell her way.
Talent bloomed at her fingertips, different from its usual icy flare. A thin, quivering lifeforce wrapped around her digits like a spiderweb, warm but faint.
“Whatever you’re about to do. Remember, there is no going back from this.”
She filtered out Kane’s warning. Erinna willed the threads to wrap around her fingers, forcing her own control over its nature.
Cold crept deeper into her veins in response.
Ice lurked beneath her skin, surrounded her heart, and drank the warmth of her body.
There would be a trade. Erinna breathed and succumbed.
The threads of arcanum knotted stronger around her hands, connecting them to whatever part of Damien’s soul still remained. At least something was still there, clinging to the hope that wove between her fingers. She could do something with that.
She stretched her hand wide and kept the other on the wound. Warm, thick blood seeped into her palms. She closed her eyes, focused, and let the cold of death sink into her bones as it called for the life around Damien’s body.
“Don’t reach too deep, Erinna. Don’t risk yourself for him.” Concern marred Kane’s usual composure, but Erinna refused to listen to the rest of his warning.
Her own thread mixed with Damien’s, both knotting around her fingers, growing stronger in connection. She grabbed them and pulled.
Warmth and light traveled along the sinews of arcanum, directed by her Talent to flow back into her dying friend.
It would be enough. She would trap the life inside him, weave the arcanum around his soul, and bind him from the clutches of The Reaper.
He would live.
But would she?
Her own soul felt like it was being ripped apart, a pain so profound pierced her chest, and she cried out.
The force between them pulled out her own breath and refused to let air back into her lungs. Something else would claim her.
Cut it off, she told herself, panic setting in. Cut it off, cut it off! Another pair of icy, ghostly hands wrapped around her own, helping to bend arcanum.
“I’ve missed you. What a glorious thing you can become.”
It was her.
The Weeping Queen.
Erinna pushed back at her Talent, clenched her teeth, and forced it back down into its slumber. The silence that followed was deafening.
Damien took in a labored, staggering breath before slipping back into unconsciousness.
Erinna tried to get to her feet, but her body was frozen in place. A barren darkness clutched at the edges of her mind. Sharp fingers dug into the edges of her soul. Threads wound tight around her heart, threatening to stop it.
Kane’s expression twisted into one she’d never seen before—raw, desperate fear. He lunged for her, hand outstretched. But the darkness was faster, as it pulled her under. Swallowed her whole.