Chapter 17
VALEN
Idrop down the narrow shaft, falling swiftly until I drag my fingers along the stone and slow to a stop as I step into the manor, the hell my father created. One that I’m damned to occupy.
“You’re back.” Druin is waiting, his posture strained, a silver dagger in one hand.
I stride past him. The anger that raged inside me when I’d realized he let Georgia walk right into Captain Howard’s trap has faded to a dull sliver.
It’s barely a cut compared to the loss of my entire world.
My mate. My heart. Gone. I hesitated before I renounced our bond, before I was able to give her up completely.
I was weak, desperate to feel her one last time, one more moment of her warmth, her brilliance.
That’s all gone now. Never to return. Everything is muted. Even my seething rage, my hate, my instincts.
“Aren’t you going to …” Druin’s voice fades as I return to my thoughts. He’s a child in a game of ancients, and I owe his father many debts, the same as he owes me. I won’t take Druin’s life. Not tonight. He’s prepared for a battle I don’t intend to wage.
My time here is short. I can feel the tug beneath my skin, the pull toward Gregor. He’s summoning me. An endless call that demands blood. Indiscriminately. Constantly. A hunger that will never be sated.
Mindlessly, I descend the steps. Druin is at my back. Perhaps it would be a kindness if he plunged that blade straight through my heart.
“Where’s my sister?” Juno blocks the entrance to my rooms.
I flick her away as one would a fly, a gnat, a rodent. She crashes against the wall.
“Hey!” she screams and comes at me, claws out. “Where is she?”
Druin grabs her shoulder. “Juno, I wouldn’t—”
I stab my claws through her and slam her to the floor, pinning her there.
She screams and writhes, a spider on its back.
“Do not speak to me of her. Do not speak her name.” I yank my hand free, her blood and gore hot and smeared up to my wrist.
I continue to my bedroom and slam the door, then lean against it.
My mate. My Blood. How I’d loved sensing her unbridled emotions, her fits of pique, her burning desires and timid curiosities. Now there is nothing. A long, silent darkness. And just as it is empty, so am I.
The itch under my skin grows, Gregor pulling my strings, dragging his puppet back to him.
Atlanta is done. Blood Tantun was decimated, the humans winning a decisive victory in their bid for survival. Only Corvidion and Dragonis remain strong enough to prosecute Gregor’s war. One I intend to end tonight. Gregor will die, and Georgia will finally be free. Safe. Alive.
Our bond severed, her tree will flourish and grow as mine blackens and fades to dust.
“Valen?” Coal’s voice outside my door.
How long have I been standing here?
“What?” I bark.
“Let me in.”
I sigh and go to my sink; Juno’s insides congealed on my hand. I wash it off and strip away my bloodied shirt.
“He’s summoning me.” I splash the cold water on my face.
“For the assault on the base?” Coal watches me in the mirror.
“Likely.” I wipe my face with a towel and catch her scent on it. Faint. So faint. But it’s there, my mate is somewhere here in these looping fibers. Parts of her. Parts of me.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No.” I place the towel on the counter, my fingers hovering over it for a moment, the longing in me so strong it almost breaks me. Georgia. A phantom now, a piece of me that’s gone. I had to break our bond. Even if it killed part of me. Because it’s the only way she’ll survive when I die.
“You can’t do this alone. You’ll need—”
“He’ll already have his guard up. If you’re there, it’ll be up even more.
” I drag a black shirt from a hanger and pull it over my head, then open a lower drawer and pull out two silver blades, the handles in black walnut, inlaid with golden dragons.
Shrugging on a holster, I conceal the blades beneath a black coat.
“And I’ll need you somewhere far enough away to avoid his fury if his compulsion gets to me before I can finish him.
You’re the only one who’d stand a chance of taking him down. ”
“Or taking you down, you mean?”
I finally look at him, meeting his familiar gaze, the face of my only friend, as Georgia put it.
“If he compels me to kill you, you’ll be dead.
Don’t let it come to that. Take him down before he can use me against you.
” I button my coat and check my mental walls and locks, ensuring I’ve blocked out anything with Georgia or the human resistance.
I can’t falter now, not when I’m so close to ending Gregor’s reign.
Coal shakes his head. “Your arrogance is one of the many things I can’t fucking stand about you.”
“Just as I can’t stand your dogged optimism.
” I sweep past him. “You’ll never beat me in a fight, and you know it.
Always aim for the weakness, for the chink in the armor.
Take his head or more will suffer.” Gregor’s hooks are embedded deeply now, his displeasure growing with each moment he has to wait for my arrival. I must go.
“What’s your plan?” Coal walks along with me as I descend the stairs.
“Simple. Get close enough to him to plunge my dagger through his heart before he can compel me to eat the fucking blade.”
Coal makes a discontented noise but doesn’t argue.
“He’s mad. Erratic. All I need is an opening, a moment when he’s ranting about Theo or the humans. Some way to break through his awareness and take him down. Only a fraction of a second when he isn’t prying at my mind. If I can find that, I can avoid his compulsion.”
“Has he ever given you an opening before?”
I drop the final step at the bottom, the darkness around us complete.
Juno waits at the tracks, her rage barely contained as she glares at me.
I stop and turn to Coal, his expression utterly impassive despite the worry in his voice. An excellent dissembler for a Corvidion, his poker face is what’s kept him alive so long despite Gregor’s penchant for killing anyone who might challenge him for power.
“No,” I answer his question. No, there’s never been a moment when Gregor hasn’t been on his guard against me, when his icy fingers haven’t been poised to tear apart my mind and impose their will upon it. No.
Coal faces me and holds out his hand.
I clasp his forearm.
We stand in silence for only a moment before parting.
Nothing needs to be said. Not between us.
I go to my death.
He will wait for word and make his move after. I can only hope I’ll have weakened Gregor enough to give Coal a chance at a death blow. But even if he fails, Gregor will die. The scourge of him will be wiped from the earth and washed out to sea, forever buried under the shifting tides.
“Where is she?” Juno holds a silver knife, though it’s a ceremonial one from one of the antiquities rooms. Barely sharp enough to cut butter.
“She’s with the humans. Safe. Away from Gregor and, as far as he knows, dead.
He will die, either by my hand or another’s, or by time.
Georgia will live a long, beautiful life, one you should have no part in.
” I’m tired, too tired for Juno’s bullshit.
The will it takes to create two of myself—one who is the brutal Specter, and one who has found his entire reason for being in the heart of a human—has worn me down even more than Gregor’s impossible demands in his war against the world.
“You think you can kill Gregor?” She lowers the knife slowly.
“No.” I shrug, re-settling the blades at my sides. “But I will try.”
“Then you’re already dead.” She smiles.
“Let Georgia forget about you. Be nothing but a memory to her. Give her peace.” I step around her and sit heavily in the train car, even the air around me weighing on my shoulders.
The cart screeches to life, moving rapidly into the close, dark tunnels.
Juno fades. Everything fades.
Only Georgia remains.
Smiling. In tears. In agony. Laughing. Terrified. Curious. Amused. Every facet of her gleaming like polished ruby, her entire being more precious to me than anything else on heaven or earth.
My love. My only. Kedves verem.