Chapter 46 Quil #3
“Quil—get away—the flames—”
“No!” He clawed at the boulders. Smaller stones. Make space, then use something to wedge the larger stones out of place.
“Elias!” he screamed. “Tas! Shrike! Help me!”
Hadn’t his aunt fought like this, crazed and desperate?
Hadn’t she won? He would get her out of there.
Already, smoke filled the space, the scrub oak and brush within blazing with so much heat that his hands burned.
He felt the fire everywhere—above, behind, around, an enemy that would not tire.
Everything in the ravine was burning. But by the skies, he would not let his aunt burn too.
Wind wrapped around his waist and yanked him away. He landed on his back, stars exploding before his eyes as he tried to stand.
Aiz stood before him. Her dress was scorched and blood-soaked from the wound on her side. Her hair stuck to her face, pink from the heat of the fire raging around them. Her teeth were bared like a wolf’s.
“He doesn’t want you dead,” she snarled at him. Then she rose upon the wind like a harpy from the hells. Moments later, she was gone, but before Quil could puzzle over who the hells he was, screaming echoed behind him.
Aunt Hel.
The flames surrounding the fallen arch were enormous, chewing every dead thing in sight, years of dried brush and timber feeding the fire’s insatiable hunger.
Through the roar of flame, Quil heard it again, his aunt’s screaming.
He sprinted toward the flames, heedless—he would find a way through, somehow.
She’d saved her friends, her comrades in arms, platoons, legions. She’d saved villages and cities and a capital and ultimately the people of the Empire. And now she burned, all because she had tried to save one child. He was nearly there, if he could just get through the damned fire—
But a strong arm caught him around the shoulders, holding him back.
“No, Quil.” Elias’s voice, shaking and raspy. His face was covered in soot, eyes blood-red from the smoke. “You can’t reach her.”
“I can hear her!” He shoved at Elias with all his strength, but then the Blood Shrike was there, yanking Quil away from the flames instead of letting him go toward his aunt, who was screaming, screaming, screaming, damn them to the hells.
“Quil, you cannot save her!”
His magic flared and he touched Aunt Hel’s mind, but it was consumed by fear as she burned—fear of the flames and fear for him, her blood, the boy for whom she had given up everything, the reason around which she had built her entire existence.
If he could not reach her, if he could not save her, then at the very least he would not let her end be full of fear. And so through the despair that roiled through him, he reached deeper for all the memories that lived in his body, his blood, his bones—
—trembling at her side before he formally met the Illustrian nobles for the first time, and looking up to see reassurance in her eyes. Do you mind if we wait a moment? she’d said. Sometimes I’m nervous before I go in and—
—sitting beside her in Navium, sadness choking him as he looked at the statue of his mother and asked, Do you think she would love me, Aunt Hel? Do you think she would like me? And his aunt’s fierce conviction as she said, She would hang the moon for you, my boy—
—floating on his back beside her in a warm lake near Tiborum, and asking shyly what she would be if she could be anything other than Empress, and she smiled and said, A baker—
—his joy and pride at her delight the first time he’d outwitted her and snuck a note into her pocket without her realizing he was even in the room and—
—the peace in his heart as he walked with her in the fresh snow of Antium, counting animal tracks, the city quiet and glowing around them, the only sound the crunch of their boots, the huff of their breath, and—
—the relief on the faces of the children who escaped Aiz because Aunt Hel kept fighting, because she refused to give up, and—
The scents, the sounds, the sights, the love that wove the tapestry of their lives together—memory after memory, Quil poured them into her.
Until he felt Aunt Hel’s mind fading, and he gave her the last memory that he could think of: That moment earlier in the day when he’d felt so calm amid the chaos of the camp and he knew he could lead his people.
He knew he was ready to take his aunt’s mantle, the burden she had carried alone for so long.
She did not have to fear, for he cared for the Empire’s people as she did, loved them as she had, and he would devote his life to them, as she had hoped. He would not fail.
And then he saw her last memory—swift, too swift—
Staring down at him in a crib, her warm hand on his curls. Her heart breaking, and her gaze flinty with a promise she had lived for the last twenty years with every fiber of her being.
“I promise I will keep you safe,” she said. “Whatever the price. I will protect you as I didn’t protect them. This I vow, by blood and by bone.”
As quickly as the memory had flashed into his mind, it was gone.
And so was she.