Chapter 31
Amelia
“You don’t have to leave with them,” General Atwood said after Tharos had gone. He was serious, and for a moment, she considered his offer.
She remembered five bowls crowded among the maps and bloodied bandages. No one had asked whether she belonged at that table. They had simply made room.
She appreciated it, but couldn’t leave the fae, couldn’t leave Casyl’s men. Somewhere along the way, they had become her people too.
She shook her head slowly. “Take care, General. Maybe you and your men can escape when the monsters attack us.”
He was sending the fae to their deaths. The fae had a better chance of escaping than the humans did, but both Amelia and Atwood knew that survival was unlikely for either group.
The fae were ready. They’d waited long enough for the monsters to attack and now was as good a time as any to face them.
The humans stood on the walls watching them as the gates opened and the fae filtered out into the open.
Amelia looked up at her city one last time. The humans had gathered to watch their departure.
“We need to draw them away from the city,” she said. She had chosen to remain with the fae, but that didn’t mean she wanted any harm to come to the humans.
She stood ready to fight and, if need be, accept her death with Casyl’s people. They were her people now.
The monsters became alert. Their tendrils of smoke travelled across the ground before them as the fae stood battle-ready, swords drawn, for what good it would do them.
A creature lunged for Tharos, then recoiled before its tendrils reached his chest. The blue fragment beneath the skin of his arm flared. The creature circled him and fixed its attention on Amelia.
She stepped back.
“The Lifesource… it repels them.” She’d wondered why they hadn’t attacked the city. The memory of the stone walls reacting beneath Casyl’s grip came to her mind. “It’s in the walls, too.”
The monsters gathered, as if they would overpower them. Another tendril reached out but this time it barely recoiled.
“It doesn’t seem to be stopping them completely,” Tharos said.
Of everyone gathered outside the city walls, she was the only one without fragments buried beneath her skin.
She watched the creature turn towards her. “They want me. We can use that to draw them away.”
The fae stood around her in a protective stance.
The earth trembled, and black smoke rose from the gaping chasm in the distance.
The monsters stopped as if waiting to see what monstrosity would arise to join them.
The trembling increased, cracking the dry earth beneath them.
A figure rose from the chasm, cradled by smoke.
When it cleared, a man stood before them.
His raven-black hair melted into the shadows that swirled around him.
Deep blue veins subtly spidered across his skin and travelled up his neck.
His blue eyes glowed with a different light, but it was still him.
He looked directly at Amelia as a sob escaped her.
It was him. The thought repeated in her mind. But how could it be?
The shadows carried him closer, drifting along the ground. Her knees gave way, but before she hit the ground, he was there, his strong hands holding her.
“Amelia,” he breathed. “You’re alive.” He raised his hand towards her face. His touch was like ice.
How was he here? She didn’t understand. The rift was closed.
“Yes,” she cried.
A memory flashed through her mind: Casyl screaming her name as she plunged the dagger into her chest. He’d believed she was dead.
“But what happened to you? How are you here?”
“Did you think that death would keep me from you?”
Everything else disappeared. The army, the monsters, the city. None of it mattered.
Words stuck in her throat.
“Casyl,” she cried. “How?”
He followed her gaze down to the black tendrils of smoke that surrounded him.
“I kept thinking I’d imagined your voice, that you were dead,” he said.
The creatures behind them became still. They hovered, as if waiting. The iridescent veins beneath his skin dimmed.
Tharos noticed it too. His grip tightened on his sword. “What happened to you?” he asked quietly. “What are they?”
Casyl followed Tharos’s gaze towards the waiting creatures. His jaw tightened.
“I belong to them now.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?” she asked. Her eyes traced the blue veins that travelled up his neck like the branches of a tree. They glowed, reminding her of the lights in the mine, how they’d been powered by the Lifesource.
“The mining opened wounds deeper than the rift. One of them reached the Shadowlands. There isn’t much time. I don’t know how much longer the shadows will obey me.”
What had he become?
“The Shadowlands?” Tharos asked, his eyes going wide.
Casyl turned his gaze upon him and slowly nodded.
“You’re dead?” The words escaped her before she could stop them. “No. You can’t be.” Her hands shook.
He paused. The silence stretched as she watched his mouth, waiting for him to deny it. “I’m not sure. I don’t know what I am.”
“But I closed the rift!” she yelled. “I saved you!” The certainty she had clung to for a month collapsed. For weeks she’d mourned his loss, not his death. She’d told herself that he was safe, and that had made it easier.
“I had to know. I had to find out what happened to you. At any cost. Stay with her, Tharos.”
“You’re going?” she cried.
He couldn’t just turn up like this and leave her. She couldn’t lose him again.
“You sacrificed yourself to save me. Now it’s my turn to keep you safe.”
The words wouldn’t come; there was so much that she wanted to say to him, so much she wanted to ask, but they died on her tongue.
The gentle caress of his shadows enveloped her before she felt the embrace of his arms. The world turned black as he shrouded them in privacy. She clung to him tightly. His hands cupped her face, and she covered his hands with her own.
“In five hundred years, you were my only peace.”
Her body trembled in his grasp. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force back the tears. His lips lingered on hers in a bittersweet, bruising kiss. He pressed his forehead against hers for one last breathless moment, and then he was gone.
The shadows trailed behind him like a low fog as he went towards the rift. The creatures followed obediently; one by one they drifted into the fissure before him.
The human soldiers gathered on the city walls stared in disbelief as the creatures they had feared obeyed Casyl.
Casyl turned back. For one final moment, the distance between them seemed to disappear as his gaze held hers.
The azure glow of his power flashed as the shadows consumed him, dissolving his body into ash and smoke.
The last thing she saw of him was the ash drifting into the fissure before the earth shuddered and sealed it.