55. Nothing Less Than Everything
Nothing Less Than Everything
Mariana
I’d left my satchel with the ledgermasters.
Unfortunately, they were at the center of a standoff.
Brom had a dagger to Warner’s throat. Castor had a crossbow aimed at Oderin.
Phina—surprisingly—had a crossbow aimed at Castor.
A former Morta was shaking his antlered head with frustration and waving a greataxe at the ledgermasters, who were huddled on the ground in a clutching embrace.
Archer Loth—flanked by three haggard-looking Lothgaimian Mighty—was trying and failing to negotiate with the Valiant, a sword in one hand and Volume 7 in the other.
And Heris held the Ledger of the Sovereign with a look of smug triumph, my satchel resting unassumingly mere inches from his feet.
In my logical mind, I was aware that the Fate of the realm was at stake.
Countless innocent lives across Fenrir, Lothgaim, Marona, and beyond were suspended in this moment.
My freedom—everything I’d worked toward over the past twenty-four years—would be determined by the winner of this standoff, too.
Yet it all seemed paltry compared to Faren bleeding out on the marble floor.
Then again, what future would we have, if the realm was thrust into chaos?
Posed with such an impossible choice, a selfish fury heated my blood.
Fate had continually forced me into self-sacrifice, but no more.
I refused to allow Heris to control me with my family as collateral.
I refused let Faren die. I refused to let the realm fall into ruin.
Fuck accepting anything less than everything I wanted.
It was time I take Fate into my own hands.
None of them saw me coming.
Caught up in their argument, no one noticed my hurried approach or the sparking of my sword.
I brought it down on Brom, first, cutting into the crook of his shoulder, right along the neckline of his breastplate.
He went down, and Warner stumbled forward—right into Castor.
His crossbow discharged, sailing past Oderin and nicking one of the Lothgaimian Mighty in the arm.
Phina aimed her crossbow and shot true, skewering Castor’s groin.
Archer and his knights sprang into action, attacking the former Morta, allowing the ledgermasters to scramble out of harm’s way.
I set my sights on my satchel, weaving between flailing arms and swinging steel.
When I was near enough, I threw myself forward on my hands and knees, grabbing the strap and slinging it over my shoulder.
Then I whirled—and was shoved sideways by an errant elbow in the melee, causing me to stumble directly into Heris.
The Ledger of the Sovereign slipped from his grip. Enraged, Heris screamed, snatched an arrow from his quiver, and made to stab me in the face with it. But without any of his cronies to defend him or the hierarchy, he didn’t scare me. Not anymore.
Windthorn was a blazing extension of my arm, familiar and weighty in my deft grip.
I’d slain many monsters with this weapon, but never the one that counted.
I’d never had the chance—not as a girl, when I needed his safety, nor as a woman caught between his threats and promises—but I had my chance now, and I wouldn’t waste it.
Heris’s eye widened with shock as I swung, clipping him in his black breastplate.
He staggered backward and tripped over the Ledger; I used the opportunity to kick the book away from him, sending it sliding across the floor in Archer’s direction.
Then I leveled Windthorn at Heris’s throat, right below his faded Oath tattoo.
On his ass with his back against the wall, the man who’d ruled so much of my life looked small and feeble.
I’d always wondered why Heris had stayed in the Valiant in spite of his sentence ending.
Why he’d invested his time into rescuing an eleven-year-old girl from death and controlling her for twenty-four years.
Now I knew the truth: he’d had his sights set on more than just riches or revenge.
He’d sought Fenrir itself. And he’d shaped me into a weapon to wield for his own gain.
A blade capable of stealing the sovereignty, so long as there was enough chaos and destruction to keep the castle guards and Mighty Knights distracted while I did.
Ever the egotistical bastard, Heris stared up at me and smiled in that way he always had, a dominant, self-satisfied expression that’d kept me in line since I was a child.
“Mariana, my secret weapon,” he cooed, his voice distorted and muffled through my injured hearing.
“We can still win this. We can take it for ourselves.”
“You mean yourself,” I said, angling my sword’s tip against his windpipe.
“I mean us,” he countered. “All of us.”
What would he have done upon taking the throne? With his army of former Morta, I imagined he would’ve had the same ruthless, power-hungry ambitions as Lord Haron. It infuriated me to think that these selfish, remorseless men were willing to make so many suffer for their own gain.
I shook my head and spat. “You never would’ve let me go, would you?” I snarled. “You would’ve kept me at your disposal like a dagger at your hip.”
“You’re a weapon,” Heris said simply. “What good is a weapon if it isn’t used?”
Used. I had once viewed the Valiant rebellion as my only chance to escape Lord Haron’s sentence and disappear into the countryside, but it was clear now that that had never been a possibility.
Heris would’ve wielded his leverage over me in exactly the way Lord Haron had.
For so long, I had hoped that Heris would one day succeed and set me free; his lies had been the only thing for me to believe in.
Until Faren.
He had taught me how to hope for something far better than my own narrow imaginings. He had challenged me to fight for more.
“Tell me, Mariana, what would you have done with your freedom, hmm?” Heris taunted. “Would freedom offer you the purpose and protection that I do?”
Behind me, Oderin and Warner were overtaking Heris’s last remaining fighters. More Valiant were streaming into the Great Hall, but without a leader, they wouldn’t stay united for long.
Windthorn’s flames lapped against Heris’s chin, singeing his skin. He winced but did not cower. “Mariana,” he chided. “Who saved you from a darker Fate? Who kept you safe and raised you to be strong? Have I not given you so much? Have I not taught you so much? You owe me—”
I pressed the blade under his jaw, a red bead of blood welling under the steel. “I owe you nothing.”
His expression went slack, and for the first time in my life, I saw true fear on Heris’s face.
I relished it.
“I’ll give you credit for one thing, Heris,” I said, taking in the monster that’d loomed larger in my life than any Morta, the abominable man who’d haunted my every step for twenty-four years.
“You taught me how to be ruthless.” Then I leaned into Windthorn with all my might, driving the blade through Heris’s jugular.
For a fraction of a second, the weight of what I’d just done kept me rooted in place—then I dropped my sword with a clatter and ran for Faren, fearing that I was too late, fearing the worst.
When I reached him, I pressed my fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. His skin was clammy and cold, but my magic found it: a faint beat that gave me the smallest spark of lingering hope. He was breathing shallowly, with long moments between each rise and fall. There wasn’t much time left.
“I’m here,” I told Faren, scrambling for the potions in my satchel. “I’m here, Faren, hold on.”
Warner arrived behind me, sinking to the floor at the sight of Faren’s wound. “Oh, my friend,” he said. “Oh, Faren, you don’t deserve this.” He cradled Faren’s head in his lap, not bothering to look up as two more Might Knights arrived on the scene.
“Is he—oh,” the female knight said. “Oh, Fates.” She covered her mouth with a blood-speckled hand, tears welling.
The second knight—Lee, I recalled—placed his hand on Faren’s shoulder, squeezing tight. He bowed his head and shuddered.
“This isn’t over yet,” I told them. “We haven’t lost him yet.”
I yanked Faren’s tunic up, holding in a nauseated cry as I took in the full extent of his wound.
His blood was slick and hot under my fingers, and there was an excess of it on the floor around him, a dark and worrying shade of crimson.
He’d lost so much, and saving him didn’t seem possible, and yet—and yet—
I grabbed Hattie’s vial of Morta cure. Faren had not been turned, but there was enough black blood on his clothes to infect the wound, and there had to be something to this. There had to be something in the potion that could help.
“Oaths. Magic. Alchemy,” I whispered, uncorking the vial with my teeth.
“What’s she doing?” the female knight asked her fellows.
“All that I can,” I answered.
I dumped the shimmering liquid over the raw scarlet slash across Faren’s stomach. Purple stained his skin and soaked into the wound. His body was beginning to slacken and lose its vigor. We waited for something to happen, but nothing did.
Groaning through my teeth, I went for the second vial—the one with the water of the Well of Fate.
I poured half on his wound and half into his mouth, not sure which was needed or if any of it would work, and cursing myself for not asking Hattie more questions when we were in Waldron.
“Oaths. Magic. Alchemy.” I repeated it like a spell.
Like the words alone could do something.
When still nothing happened, I set my palms on either side of the opened flesh and pressed it together, as if I could will it shut. As if my desperation alone could mend him. “And love,” I said, thinking of Hattie’s theory. “I love you, Faren. We love you.”
“That, we do,” Warner said, and the other two chimed in with their own wobbling whispers, touching Faren’s head as if to heal him with their contact. “We love you,” they repeated.
“We love you,” I insisted.
Closing my eyes, still holding Faren’s wound together, I imagined my love mingling with the water of the Well of Fate, soaking into his body and giving him the healing he needed.
I was no alchemist, but I pictured it in my mind as clearly as I could, shaking and tearful and already grieving—but hopeful, too. Hopeful for the both of us.
Because what else was there left to do but hope?
Time ebbed like a tide, and I drifted out of all awareness except for Faren’s body beneath my sensitive hands. The best feeling in the world, in spite of all this suffering.
“What in the Fates?” Warner whispered.
“The fu—?” the female knight breathed.
“I don’t…” Lee trailed off.
Their voices roused me from my imagining, leading me back to solid ground. Back to my body hunched over Faren, the hard marble bruising my knees, the blood making my wrists feel sticky. I braced for what I would see when I opened my eyes, fearful that this was it: the end of him.
But when I did look, I did not believe the sight.
Faren’s wound was shrinking. Suturing, all on its own. As if the Fates themselves were mending his flesh with an invisible needle and thread.
“It’s working,” I whispered. “Fucking Fates, it’s working!”
“I don’t believe my eyes,” Lee said.
“And you have the best eyes,” Warner remarked.
I pushed through their huddle, pressing my palms to his chest to feel the increasing beat of his heart and the strength of his next breath.
Then he shuddered. Gasped. His forehead creased, as if he were rousing from a terrible dream.
Light brown eyes opened, landing directly on me. “Mariana?” Faren mumbled.
Relief was a landslide in my chest, knocking me off balance. I slumped over him, fingers curling in his shirt, my nose pressing against freckle under his jaw—that safe place I’d found all the way back in Waldron. “Fates, Faren,” I muttered into his neck.
A shaky hand found the back of my head and held me against him. “You scared me,” he said hoarsely.
Despite myself, I chuckled, pulling back to look at him. Through tears, I noticed something different about his neck—his tattoo. There was a new gap in the black ring.
“You broke your Oath,” I realized.
He huffed. “For you.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “No, you did all you could for the realm. You fought that Morta, and—”
“I did it for you,” he insisted. “I broke my Oath for you.”
There was nothing that mattered more to Faren than his duty. I couldn’t stand the thought of him giving up his principles and purpose just for me. Fenrir’s next sovereign was yet to be determined, but the Order of the Mighty remained. They’d need him in the coming transition.
I began to shake my head, to protest, but Faren’s fingers curled against the back of my neck, steadying me as he looked into my eyes. Even as he did, I noticed his Oath tattoo beginning to fade, disappearing into his tan skin as his color returned.
Hattie had been right. It wasn’t a potion that dissolved Oaths—it was the water from the Well of Fate, along with the alchemy of love. A sacred combination that was maddeningly simple.
“But the realm…” I murmured.
“You are my realm,” he said, shaking me just a little, just for emphasis. “Mariana, you are my realm.”
His words were everything I wanted and far more than I deserved.
Overwhelmed and overstimulated, I dropped my head to Faren’s chest, sagging with relief, gratitude, exhaustion.
As I did, one of the knights grumbled. Then I heard the flick of a coin, and the distinct smack of it being caught in someone else’s palm.
“Told you he’d fall for her,” Warner said smugly.