70. Everett
Everett
“Help!” I cried out, twisting and turning in my bonds.
I was strapped to the top of a rough stone altar, with magical rope cutting into my neck, wrists, and legs.
The three High Elders loomed above me like shadowed demons.
Their lips moved as chanting filled the air, and fire erupted along the wall at their backs.
I choked on the smoke, struggling to draw breath through the rope tied around my neck.
“We call upon the power of the sun,” Arcadia said over me. He raised a dagger and lowered it to my forehead. The tip sank into my skin as he dragged it down. A stinging pain lanced through me, and I sucked in a breath.
He moved the dagger to my hands and repeated the motion. “The flame,” he continued, then sliced it through my shirt, right over my songbird tattoo. “And the heart.”
I gritted my teeth together to keep from crying out. My back arched off the altar, straining against my bindings. The amulets around Arcadia and Maeve’s necks began to glow. Some sort of magical light erupted from them and plunged into my chest.
The pain was so immense, so sudden, that it stole the breath from my lungs. My vision went in and out of focus as their magic pulled me, like it was sucking something from inside of me.
An icy emptiness mixed with the pain as my limbs began to sag, no longer strong enough to hold themselves up.
I could feel it draining every inch of me.
I called out once more, but it was weak.
The light connecting me to the Elders grew brighter, along with the fire behind them.
Colors swam across my vision, growing darker by the second.
But then—the fire moved.
The flames shot upward and shifted into a bird, sharp wingtips blazing as it nosedived for Arcadia. He stumbled backward, and the beams of light surging into me stuttered.
The fire bird slammed into his chest. It dissipated on impact, encasing his body in an orange inferno. Julius muttered a spell, and a rush of wind cycloned around Arcadia. It made the fire scatter away from his body.
But then the blaze reformed into three burning swords. They spun in the air toward the High Elders, flames dancing from the handles. The Elders reeled backward off the platform, and the magical light flowing into me went out completely. I inhaled ragged breaths as my magic ricocheted back into me.
“What is this?” Julius snarled, battling a fire sword with his own wall of shadows.
“Where is it coming from?” Maeve echoed. She ducked away from an oncoming blow and erected a shield charm.
But Arcadia’s keen eyes landed on the opening of the cavern. His lips parted on an exhale. The very air wavered, my chest tightening in anticipation as I slowly turned my neck.
“She’s here,” Arcadia murmured.
Fire and smoke licked along the floor, rising upward until they revealed a form. Standing in the firestorm was Vera with her flaming wings outstretched, her gold eyes lit with fire. Blonde hair whipped around her face.
My mouth opened in slack-jawed surprise. She was wrath incarnate. She was magnificent.
She was mine.
“One more step,” she growled, “and I will burn you to the ground.”
Behind me, the Elders formed a line. Arcadia banished his magic and held his hands up to her in a motion of peace. “Vera,” he said, “I know what this looks like.”
“Do you?” Her wings flexed dangerously, fire spitting from them.
“We understand your confusion.” Arcadia took a step forward, coming up from behind the altar.
Vera’s fire flared in response. “Oh, I’m not confused. I’m murderous.”
“You must listen to me,” Arcadia urged. “Everything we have done has been in service of something greater than you can imagine. That has been our goal all along, you know that. Our kingdom restored, a thousand years of suffering ended.”
“You’re delusional,” Vera spat. “How does killing him restore your kingdom?”
“You’re right,” Maeve conceded, moving to Arcadia's left.
Julius drifted right to the other side of me without a word, the three of them slowly fanning out around the platform.
“We never wanted it to come to this,” she continued.
“He became a threat to our vision, to your purpose, and we were simply doing what needed to be done to ensure our freedom. We are not your enemy, Lightbringer. We—”
“Enough.” The word hit the chamber like steel on stone. Vera’s eyes moved between the three of them, and a muscle in her cheek twitched. “You became my enemy the moment you took what’s mine.”
She slashed a hand through the air, sending sharp bolts of light to me. They cut through my restraints, and I lurched upright on the altar, gasping as blood rushed back to my hands.
The Elders moved instantly. Julius flung a wall of shadows across the chamber. They slammed into Vera, sending her skidding sideways across the floor. She caught herself on one knee, wings fluttering to absorb the impact.
“Do not let them leave,” Arcadia commanded.
I swung my legs off the altar as Maeve lunged forward, vines erupting from the ground and coiling around my ankles. I grabbed the edge of the altar and wrenched myself forward, but her magic was strong. I grunted, “Vera—”
She was already moving. Pulling a dagger from her waistband, she tossed it toward me. I caught it and sliced the blade through the vines in one smooth motion. She ran to the platform and helped me stand. “Can you walk?” she rushed out.
I nodded, even as my legs trembled from shock. Arcadia raised both arms, and the shadows in the chamber thickened and funneled around the two of us, forming a billowing barrier. I could barely see past it, but I made out three wavering forms on the other side as the Elders converged.
“We don’t want to hurt you, daughter,” Arcadia’s voice called above the rustle of wind.
“That makes one of us,” Vera muttered. She shot a beam of lightning through the shadow wall at one of the silhouettes.
It sliced through the shadows, but the figure moved quickly, and her lightning struck the cave wall.
Every time she attacked, the darkness grew thicker, pulsing around us close enough to suffocate.
With a snarl, Vera flexed her wings and drove both hands into the ground. Flames erupted outward in a ring, racing along the floor and up the shadow wall, consuming the magic caging us in. Her fire ate away at the shadows to reveal the three Elders on the platform.
Arcadia’s composure finally snapped, golden eyes that matched Vera’s now filled with rage. “Subdue her!”
They threw shards of both shadow and light at us, but I batted some away with my dagger as Vera’s fire devoured the rest. The entire cavern shook with the force of their combined magic wreaking havoc on the chamber.
When the ceiling trembled, Vera’s head snapped upward.
I followed her gaze, eyes landing on a network of old, dusty support beams running through the rock above us and over the platform.
She met my eyes. “Do you trust me?”
“Always.”
She grabbed my hand, then sent a burst of flame straight at the central beam.
The crack was deafening. Stone and wood groaned as the first section of ceiling came down between us and the Elders in a cascade of rock and dust. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard their muffled shouts behind the wall now separating us.
The two of us raced down the tunnel, past more chambers identical to the one I was held in.
We reached the end of the corridor where a set of stairs led upward. I paused to catch my breath, leaning an arm against the wall. “We should keep going,” I panted. “That won’t hold them for—”
Vera barreled forward, colliding into me and throwing her arms around my neck. I caught her and staggered backward into the wall with a grunt.
She immediately released me. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” Her hands roamed over my chest, then up to my neck, and her eyes landed on my forehead. I could still feel blood from my wound trickling down my nose and catching in my eyelashes.
Her lips parted on an exhale. “Oh, Everett, I’m so sorry.
” She raised a hand and gently brushed her thumb along the gash, whispering a healing spell.
I felt it snap into place around us, felt the skin on my forehead stretch tight as it mended itself.
She took my hands and repeated the healing spell over the dagger wounds there, then the one on my chest.
I balled my hands into fists at my sides, trying to hide the way they shook. Even though they were healed, I could feel that dagger carving the runes into my flesh. Could still see the burnt bodies around me, could barely breathe through the sensation of life being sucked from my chest.
“Just breathe, Swift,” Vera murmured, hands cupping my neck.
“I’m right here. I found you.” I lifted my gaze to hers and let out a shuddering exhale.
Ash and dirt clung to her skin, and her hair was in a fierce, wild frenzy around her head.
But her eyes were steady. Grounded and sure, tethering me to her.
I nodded, then pressed my forehead to hers one last time, taking another deep breath to push away the images.
“We need to go find the others,” she said gently.
I leaned back. “Others?”
She laced her fingers through mine, lips curving into a small smile. “What, did you think I was the only one who wanted to rescue you?”
We started up the steps when an enormous boom rang through the tunnel at our backs. I whirled to find a wall of fire racing toward us from the collapsed chamber down the hall. My eyes widened when figures emerged from the smoke.
It wasn’t the Elders.
But Arcadia’s voice thundered from the cavern, echoing in the fire even though I couldn’t see him. “Do not let them get away!”
Dozens of floating forms appeared in the flames. They all had contorted faces with eyes like coal and hair like a forest fire. They rushed us, leaving an inferno in their wake that consumed the hallway.