CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
I slam into my target, my blade burying to the hilt in its back. Its body slams into the ground and absorbs most of my momentum. The rest of it sends me ass over head.
I shift before my wings get a brutal reminder of how hard the ground is, but I’m back in Stone by the time I stumble to my feet. A smug grin slides over my face. “Can’t believe that worked,” I mutter, but my only audience is a field of corpses.
I unleash a firestorm on a da’kai sliding its spurs from a human’s abdomen.
It screams and turns, its beady black eyes homed in on my outstretched hand.
I shove a river of fire down its open gullet, and it collapses.
The human sinks to his knees, a trembling hand clutching his ruined stomach.
He draws in one, wet breath and smacks the ground face-first. I turn away and rip my blade from the first beast’s back.
I search for my next kill, but the legion has already eviscerated the da’kai in the courtyard. Griffon yanks his sword out of a da’kai’s face and stalks to my side. Laney and Alexei join us a moment later.
“Not sure what the point of trying to teach you to land was,” Alexei quips. But his eyes search the rooftops. The skies.
“I like her method better,” Laney adds. A faint smile tips her lips, but her body is taut. Black ichor smears the front of her armor and the sword in her hand. Not a speck of it mars her white-blond hair, arranged in a coronet around her head.
Griffon sidesteps toward me, the right half of his body blocking my left.
My heart. The sword in his right hand splatters ichor on the ground at his feet.
The dagger in his left reflects the gore-soaked courtyard on its still-pristine blade.
He doesn’t sheath either weapon. Doesn’t offer an opinion on my acrobatic prowess.
His gaze only sweeps the side streets, the windows, the buildings, just like the twins’ beside me.
“Too tired,” I say quickly. I can feel it; the tension that chokes the legion in an iron grip. The pall of death that thickens the air and suffocates the courtyard. The screams and moans of the dying still sound around us.
“I’m going to find Charlise,” Alexei says. “And see where I can help.” He disappears.
I throw a questioning glance at Griffon.
“Field medic.” His tone is clipped. “They triage those waiting for a healer.”
Council Hall’s front doors fly open and rebound off the stone. My gaze snaps toward them. A man toddles down the steps, long white robes tangling around his feet. My brow knits together. He is a lunar priest. But they never leave their temple.
Davina, Sorrell, and Aris pick their way through the carnage, saving him the trouble of sullying his crisp white shoes in the gore that coats every inch of the square. The priest’s wild gaze flutters between the corpses, his saggy face draining of any color but green.
Aris steps in front of the others. “Bellan requested our aid. Here we are. But where is he?” He cocks his head.
I take a step closer to the stairs. Griffon shadows me.
The priest turns his horror-stricken face on Aris, the bare wisps of his hair not so much as stirring in the stagnant soup surrounding us. “Out of his mind, is where he is!” he hisses. “Ranting and raving for hours. He banished us from the gods’ sacred temple and barricaded himself inside—”
A buzzing fills my skull, drowning out the rest of his words. My head snaps towards the mountains. Toward the tiny speck of a building I can’t see but know perches atop the highest peak.
Bellan is up there.
“Lydia,” Griffon warns. He reaches for my wrist.
But I’m fast. So fast, with this immortal strength.
I sprint up the steps and leap off the top.
My wings fill with the heavy air, and I dart into the waiting sky.
Race toward the conclusion of fifteen years’ worth of carnage and lies.
Toward righting that horrible mistake that still smothers me in endless guilt. Toward revenge.
For Them.
Twin wingbeats cleave through the air behind me. It is thinner up here. Colder outside that courtyard drowning in hot blood and death.
“Lydia!” Griffon shouts. “Stop!”
“I can’t!” I call back, flapping harder. I can outrun him. I have to. “He’s right there! My family gets justice tonight, and no one is going to stop me. Not even you.”
The mountain grows closer, the unforgiving sea below beating against its tall, sheer sides. A fresh dusting of snow blankets the peaks, glittering a faint orange in the light of the carnage below.
Griffon’s smoky whips coil around my body and jerk me to a stop. My strangled howl echoes through the icy expanse surrounding us. He flies in front of me and my lips peel back, a hiss snaking through my teeth.
“The Archon ordered me to bring you back,” he says, his voice drenched with remorse.
“Then you have a choice to make,” I spit. I strain against his bonds, but they don’t budge. “Me, or your precious obedience? You’re not getting both.”
He jerks back like I’d struck him.
“I’d burn anyone else out of my way.” Even in Stone I’m drawn to him. Am keenly aware of the depth of my feelings, despite them being caged within a granite heart. “If you weaponize that against me, we’re done.”
He bares his teeth right back at me. “I choose you every time! Every. Fucking. Time. But I am begging you to come back with me. Begging. I would ask it on my knees if I could.”
He flies closer, a soft breeze wafting his scent over me in a wave. My eyes briefly flutter shut.
“We still don’t know what is happening here.
And every instinct is screaming that they sent you up here to die.
Like they sent you to Dray’s to die. Please.
” His voice cracks on the word, his typically guarded face a book with its spine split wide open.
It almost breaks me, that desperation painted in such broad strokes across his beautiful face.
“He’s right,” Laney says softly. “I feel it, too. Something isn’t right.”
My gaze shifts between them. And then hardens. I level my icy stare on Griffon. “Let me go.”
A crystalline tear slides down his cheek, so pure after the gore of the past minutes. “I choose you. Choose me, too.” His magic dissolves in a mist of glittering black.
Gravity drags me down a dozen feet before I snap my wings out. I surge toward the temple, Griffon’s plea lost in the chant that holds the power to anchor me above all others: For Them, for Them, for Them.