17. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
Isoria
By the time we arrived in Blackshore, heavy clouds shrouded the stars, and exhaustion clung to me like a heavy blanket. After the night’s revelations and training, all I wanted was to curl up in bed with Onyx again and sleep the hours away.
But the weariness began to slough away, tension creeping into its place, as our carriage rolled along the main road and an eerie stillness greeted us.
At first, I’d hoped that maybe the town was simply sleeping, until I realized the windows were barred with boards, the doors themselves secured too. They were hiding.
As our carriage creaked to a stop, shouts carried to us. My mouth soured.
“The graveyard,” Owen muttered, sounding tired and sad, as if this was routine for them. The boarded-up towns. The suffering citizens. The fae finding their dead rising back up to kill them.
How many times had they been out here, trying to save their people? And how could King Wystan be so monstrous as to turn his back on them?
“Stay close to me,” Archer murmured to me as he pushed open the carriage door and we leapt out, one by one.
He slipped me a dagger with an ornately bejeweled hilt.
My hand shook as I unsheathed it, clinging to it like it was a lifeline.
If I was attacked, I couldn’t use my fire magic without revealing myself. This was my only defense.
Cliff leapt down from the driver’s seat, unhitching Gorgeous and Fluffy, who walked obediently at his sides as he drew a sword.
Together, we trod carefully through the deserted streets of the town toward the graveyard on its edge.
It wasn’t large, making it easy to see the forms struggling in the darkness.
The bodies of the dead, some clearly long dead and hardly more than skeletons, rising up to attack the living.
My stomach swirled with disgust. “The ones who’ve been dead longer—their souls should have departed into the afterlife long ago. I don’t think I can heal something without a soul,” I warned Archer.
“We’ll bring you one of the recently dead,” he’d said.
My companions drew their weapons. Cliff made the earth ripple and shift beneath us as his jaguars charged toward the nearest undead creature.
Unlike fae, they didn’t seem perturbed by the magic the revenant hurled at them.
The creature must have used earth magic in life, because it sent tangling vines and a wall of earth toward them, but they leapt them easily, working together to fell the revenant and tear into its throat. I glanced away in disgust.
Owen summoned a ribbon of water that swirled around his free hand, ready to follow his commands, while he lifted his blade in the other.
Lily hadn’t told me what her magic was, and she didn’t call on anything that made it obvious as we pressed past the first of the graves.
The disturbed dirt indicating its occupant had recently joined the group of attacking revenants.
Nearby, a female crouched behind another gravestone.
“Your Highness!” Her eyes were wide with the horrors of what she’d witnessed, her face smeared with dirt and blood. “We weren’t able to burn our bodies quickly enough. They’ve claimed more and they’re swiftly outnumbering us. We can’t—” Her voice broke. “We can’t resist their magic.”
Archer’s expression hardened. A revenant tore toward him, and I sucked in a breath, holding my position near him and tightening my grasp on my dagger.
But it didn’t run toward him. It ran past him, like he didn’t exist at all.
My eyes widened as Owen lashed out, his blade pausing midair as a wall of swirling shadows rose to meet it. His water fell harmlessly to the ground, and suddenly, the shadows formed tendrils that lifted him into the air. He grunted in pain, struggling against the revenant’s awful magic.
With strangled cries, Lily and Cliff were engulfed by more churning shadows.
But Archer and I were untouched. He marched forward, swinging his blade in a clean arc, removing the revenant’s head from its body. It flew deeper into the graveyard, rolling somewhere into the shadows, and its body teetered and fell.
Abruptly, Owen collapsed to the earth in his puddle of water, barely catching himself in time to land on his feet. “Thanks,” he grunted. “Maybe a little faster next time?”
I shot Archer a glance, confused and slightly in awe.
“They won’t notice me as long as my magic is strong.”
“You can influence them when they’re dead?”
More screams punctuated the night as villagers on either side of us, trying to bar the revenants from pushing into the town, were swallowed in shadows.
“I can’t influence their emotions or actions, but for the more recently deceased, I can manipulate how they see me—or rather, make myself invisible to them.
Their souls are still trapped in their bodies.
That’s what you need to try to reach and heal—if there’s some part of them still alive,” Archer said.
My mind buzzed with thoughts. If I could heal that part of their souls, would I bring them back from the brink of death? Or were they too far gone?
Archer was already charging into the graveyard, so I shook off my thoughts and fears and raced to keep pace with him, scanning the grounds for wounded fae.
As Archer leapt between a revenant charging toward a male swinging his blade toward a living shadow, I caught sight of a female leaning against a grave, blood smearing the stone behind her.
“It’s all right,” I murmured as shadows swirled over us like storm clouds, not sure if anything would ever be right again.
My hands trembled as I reached for the bloody gash in her chest. Her chestnut eyes were already glassy as they met mine, and though her complexion was naturally dark, there was an ashen sheen to it and a pale tint to her lips.
No no no, I thought, my healing magic rising to find her wound and stitch it back together. She’d already lost a lot of blood.
“I’m Isoria. What’s your name?” I asked the female, mostly to keep her distracted, to give her something to focus on.
“Cassia,” she gasped.
“Hold on, Cassia; I’m going to heal you,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
The battle was a blur around us, and I wasn’t sure if the prince was still nearby to offer us safety, or if he’d been shoved deeper into the fray.
All I could do was focus on what I knew.
Mend. Heal. Save. I breathed deeply to steady myself and focus, willing every ounce of strength into this female.
Cassia’s chest rose and fell beneath my hand, a reassuring sign. Slowly, slowly, life sank back into her. Her eyes sharpened; her lips regained color. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
Instantly, I could feel the pain radiating in my own chest, an echo of what she’d endured. My vision blurred and I feared I’d collapse.
I ducked behind the gravestone with her, praying the revenants wouldn’t target us.
But we weren’t so fortunate. A wall of shadow slammed against the grave, splitting the stone and forcing us backward.
It was faster, swallowing us in its grasp.
Either I was too far from Archer’s side, or he’d already lost his hold on his magic, because suddenly, I was no longer invisible to this awful magical darkness.
Consumed, I was aware of nothing but cold and blackness and even more pain.
The world turned hazy and colorless, shutting out the growing light of dawn and leaving us in something else, something that made me fear death had come to claim us.
My body shook, the cold seeping into my bones, so intense it was like fire melting away flesh and piercing into my marrow, my organs, my very soul.
I couldn’t hold back my scream, couldn’t think clearly to focus on my magic.
Fire, I thought, my mind wild with desperation.
I couldn’t remember why I’d been holding back before.
If I wielded my magic, I’d have light and warmth.
And yet, I didn’t have the strength. Not only from healing the female I couldn’t discern in the mass of shadows crawling around and over and through me, but also from the absolute pain paralyzing me.
Mama, I’m sorry, I thought, my mouth filling with the bitterness of blood.
Had I bitten into my tongue because of the agony, or was the pain shredding through me, destroying vitals and ruining me from the inside out?
In these conditions, my magic would never flare and bring me back to life, would it?
I won’t be able to save you. I can’t find a cure.
As abruptly as the shadows had seized me, something else joined me in the darkness.
A hand, calloused but deliciously warm, grasped my wrist. Then there was a flash of light, brilliant and shockingly silver.
It illuminated Lily’s face, reflecting in her eyes and highlighting her red-gold hair.
I caught my gasp of awe and relief as the darkness fell away.
My pain, except for what I was cursed with for healing Cassia, vanished as abruptly as it had consumed me.
Cassia was on her knees beside me, weeping but alive.
I glanced up to find Archer hovering over us, his hand still on my wrist, his jaw tense, and his blade smeared with blood.
Lily was at his side, already hunched with exhaustion after the wondrous magic she’d just performed.
“You have to try to save him,” he said, his eyes blazing with determination and the golden light of the rising sun.
I couldn’t form words—wasn’t sure I had an ounce of strength or magic left in my body. But I accepted Archer’s help and rose on unsteady feet.
The graveyard was strewn with beheaded bodies, all the attacking revenants defeated, yet also many dead fae. My eyes burned at the sight.
“Please!” a female was sobbing beside a male sprawled out on the earth, his body spasming with pain.
Blood leaked from his mouth, from his chest, from his torso, and from countless other points and injuries I couldn’t discern in a simple glance through his shredded clothes.
The side of his neck was torn half-open. They devour flesh and soul.
“Get her out of here,” I ordered Lily, Owen, and Cliff, who had formed a circle around the male as Archer, Cassia, and I approached. I nodded toward the sobbing female.
They helped immediately, holding her firmly yet gently to give me space to work.
I could tell immediately this one wouldn’t have the strength to tell me his name, if he even heard us at all.
His stare was vacant, probably lost in a haze of pain and blood loss—or perhaps so far gone he was already numb.
Clenching my teeth, I drew on that well of power. The sunlight on my skin gave me hope—if enough could sink into my skin, it could help restore my magic and give me more strength to work with.
But time was short.
The male gasped beneath me as I pressed my already bloody palms to his throat and chest, the most devastating of his wounds. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying to the sun goddess, to the goddess of healing, even to the god of death to hear me and spare this male’s life.
He shuddered. My magic poured into him, warmth and comfort and strength. I just wasn’t sure it was enough.
I could feel skin pulling back together, could sense his heart pumping. But it was pushing more blood from his other wounds, leaching him of life. “Come on,” I muttered beneath my breath. “Help me. Fight with me,” I pleaded with him.
His body had to heal itself with the magic I poured into it. What if he didn’t have enough strength, enough life, enough willpower left?
The more I called on my magic, the more exhaustion and agony clung to me.
My muscles shook like I’d been exerting myself for hours.
Sweat beaded my brow. Joining with Cassia’s, his pain also became mine—fire in my neck, agony in my abdomen—pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced, searing me with unrelenting fury.
My own fire never pained me, couldn’t injure me, but the heat of this reminded me of it, except consuming. Angry. Ruinous.
Slowly but surely, my strength began to fizzle out.
I searched for the healing power within me and found nothing left to answer.
No, no, I thought, over and over, my eyes burning, my body shaking, and my vision tunneling.
I was going to pass out from exertion, going to fail this poor male and the female that I could still hear sobbing and screaming in desperation.
The body beside me startled, the male sitting up. For an instant, wild hope blossomed, making me think I’d performed a miracle. Then his empty gaze locked on mine and he bared his bloodied teeth, snarling and lunging for me.
A flash of silver and his rolling head were the last things I saw before darkness consumed me, my strength finally giving out.