58. Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Isoria
King Wystan sneered as he stepped forward, nothing about his movements hurried or concerned.
If he feared me or the fire I’d summoned, he showed no sign of it.
“I see you’ve seduced and corrupted Archer past the point of him seeing reason ever again.
” His ugly face twisted with something that might have been grief.
“Your kind is abominable, disgusting, though I’d expect nothing less.
It must be true: you are the one Maris spoke of, the one prophesied to assassinate my heir and destroy the throne? ”
Prophecy. Maris. His words reminded me of my earlier realization, that I didn’t need to harm Archer. Just one royal would do. I was supposed to ruin the throne, the royal family. But hadn’t I already ruined it by altering Archer’s beliefs and swaying Briar’s mind?
There was only one too stubborn to change. He’s the one I’m meant to kill.
“Step back, Archer.” I placed my hand on his arm. I didn’t want him to have to fight his own father, to bear that sort of pain.
He shook his head despite the sorrow in his eyes. “I won’t let him hurt you.” He took my free hand in his, threading our fingers together.
As the king stepped closer, my flames dancing in his orange irises, I tried to force confidence into my voice. “We have a common enemy, and you’d waste your time attacking me?”
“I know what you phoenixes are. Vermin to be exterminated. There will be no peace in Emberglade until you’re all wiped from the earth.” He raised his sword, and my heart stuttered.
“The bond snapped back into place,” I continued. “If you hurt me, you hurt your son.”
King Wystan’s eyes shuttered as they met Archer’s gaze.
“It’s true,” Archer said. “Vithenna stole some of my memories as the price for breaking it. Isa returned those memories, and so the deal is over and the bond is restored.”
“And you’ll side with her? Against your own father?” King Wystan bit out.
“I don’t want to stand against you.” Archer’s confession was raw. “But if you threaten her, I will. I’ll always choose her.”
The king’s orange eyes burned with fury and pain. “So be it,” he said, dipping his chin. “Then you are also my foe.”
Gritting my teeth, I tugged on my well of power. It was considerably weak again, my strength flagging from the work of wielding both my healing magic and Mortius' power. But it wasn’t depleted yet. The spark was strong enough to half-shift, fiery wings forming behind me.
I glanced at Archer, who understood my look and released my hand. He trusted me to do what I had to.
The king sliced his blade toward me, and I barely had time to take to the sky. He was already moving again, his sword flashing with the swiftness of a striking snake. Archer charged with only his knife, ducking beneath his father’s blade to scoop up his abandoned sword from the cobblestones.
They clashed together in a flurry of flashing steel, my flames the only thing keeping the shadows at bay and the revenants from seeking them out.
Every one of their movements was precise and graceful, strong and sure.
My heart pounded in my throat, the ache of sorrow traveling through our bond and forcing me to live Archer’s grief with him.
He was battling the one who’d trained him first, who’d handed him a sword and raised him to be a ruler, to carry on a legacy.
When I looked at King Wystan, I only saw a monster. Archer saw a father, the male who’d raised him.
Fire swirled around me, chasing away shadows as I rose higher, but not high enough to completely avoid the king’s blade as he took advantage of a break in Archer’s attacks and lashed out.
It caught my calf, slicing at my boot. Though Orchid’s magic turned its strength away so it didn’t pierce the leather, the force of it knocked me off balance.
With a cry, I tumbled toward the earth and King Wystan’s waiting sword, glowing red in the reflection of the flames I still held aloft.
Stretching my wings, I struggled to move them quickly enough to move out of Wystan’s path.
I could feel my strength sputtering out, my hold on my wings growing weaker until I could barely use them.
With a grunt, I dropped to the ground as they fell away, disintegrating as if they’d never been.
Archer prowled closer, but the king parried his moves, whirling easily to defend himself from behind as he pressed his attack on me.
King Wystan’s sword swung again and again, Orchid’s shield continuing to protect me when I failed to move in time. I used the final shreds of my strength to launch my flames at him. He dodged them easily, and they snuffed out.
The king spun to meet Archer’s increasingly vicious and desperate attacks now that my magic was failing.
They clashed and spun in a flurry so swift their blades were a blur.
Meanwhile, shadows were already coiling through the air toward us, warning me that the revenants wouldn’t be far behind.
We’d have more enemies to fight, more to weaken us.
A grunt of pain prefaced Archer losing his hold on his sword, the blade clattering to the cobblestones. Blood trickled from a wound in his shoulder, deep enough that his arm hung uselessly at his side. An echo of the same wound screamed through my own arm.
As he stepped toward Archer, preparing to make the killing strike, King Wystan’s orange gaze was cold, the ruthless look of someone who would do what he thought was necessary without remorse, even if it was clear he took no joy in it.
I swallowed my scream of desperation. Now wasn’t the time to lose myself in panic, but to act.
Inside, I was cold, no power left within me but Mortius’ shadows. Forcing my arm to move through the pain, I drew my blade, letting the sound ring out through the air and draw King Wystan’s and Archer’s attention.
I didn’t want to kill, but I would do what I had to for the prince I loved and his people. Our people.
“He’s not your enemy. It’s me you want to fight.”
King Wystan laughed, looking at my weak hold on my sword, my face grimacing with the pain I shared with Archer. But he took the bait, stalking toward me with confident steps.
I was determined, but my footwork was uncertain and my movements amateur, not to mention I was fighting through pain that made me clumsy and distracted.
King Wystan easily dodged every swing and responded with one twice as hard.
The force of his blows shuddered in my bones and made my teeth snap together.
I stumbled as I retreated, nausea climbing through me. Sweat made my palm slick. I wouldn’t be able to keep holding my sword much longer, wouldn’t be able to ignore the screaming pain in my arm soon.
My mind screamed for gods that weren’t listening or didn’t care. Solea was too distant. Vithenna wanted me dead. And Mortius had already offered what he could.
I steeled myself as King Wystan slammed his blade to mine again, swiping my weapon from my hand. It went flying into the growing shadows coalescing nearby. When I turned defiant eyes on the burning orange ones of my enemy, I drew a deep breath and prepared to meet my end with courage.
Archer
I’d been here before, finding my strength and skill wasn’t enough.
I couldn’t use my magic against my own father, and the truth was, he was a more talented warrior than I was.
His brute strength from his half-troll heritage and his grey skin, which was thick and leathery, able to repel blades in a way our fae skin couldn’t, gave him additional advantages.
As I had countless times before, I thought of the Emberglade royals’ tether to the land, and how I, as the usurper’s son, possessed none of it.
The land didn’t know me, didn’t recognize me as a worthy ruler.
I wasn’t part of the bloodline the gods had chosen; I was merely the son of a thief and murderer.
Now, in my desperation, I tried to call on the magic of the land anyway. I couldn’t get to Isoria fast enough, not with Father already looming over her. Blood loss had made me weak and slow, and I’d barely gotten to my sword.
So I cast my thoughts toward Grey and his men, toward Lily and Owen and Cliff and their unshakable loyalty.
They’d all chosen me, time and again, when I’d defied my father and his choices.
They looked to me for leadership. And then so had our people outside Rainsong and its protective barrier, seeing me as a figure of hope, a future ruler who cared about their wellbeing.
Maybe the land hadn’t chosen me, but my people had. Didn’t that count for something?
Please. Save Isoria.
Father had been determined to pit our people against one another, for us to split into camps of fae versus phoenix, us versus them, when the true enemy had been marching toward us.
Vithenna saw only bloodshed, but I saw the countless innocents caught up in it, victims of Father’s greedy and paranoid choices.
Please let me save her. I didn’t know if I was begging the gods, who’d graced the land with magic and who’d chosen the royal bloodline that would wield the strongest of it in the first place, or the magic buzzing through the earth and air itself.
All I knew was that if Isoria died, life would lose all meaning. Please.
The earth rippled beneath me. At first I thought it was a fluke, some new attack from the revenants or a trick of the blood loss as I weakened, swaying on my own feet.
But it moved again, a crack opening between Isoria and Father and rapidly splitting wider.
Father tumbled backward, forced away, as the chasm shot right down the city street, revealing a yawning void.
It was too wide to leap and too long to see the end in either direction.
But that wasn’t all. When I imagined roots springing from the earth, they obeyed, breaking through dirt and stone and leaping like living creatures that twisted around Father’s limbs. Tight enough to force him to drop his weapon, to cry out in shock and pain as they held him fast.
Isoria froze in shock, her eyes locking on mine, realization dawning in her expression.
I did this. The land obeyed me. The land has chosen me.
“Wh—what is happening?” Father shouted, fighting furiously but to no avail against the roots.
But Isoria ignored him. “You need healing!” she cried, scanning the crevice desperately. I could feel her worry through our bond, her determination to run to me.
My strength was flagging rapidly, but I called on the land one more time.
Cliff’s jaguar, the one named Princess, came bounding from the shadows, her maw bloody and her eyes fierce and focused.
She heard my mental call as clearly as if I were Cliff, and sprinted without hesitation for the chasm.
She crossed it in one mighty leap, her huge paws planting in the dirt on the opposite side.
She paused, turning to Isoria, who only hesitated a moment before she realized what had happened.
She climbed on the jaguar, clinging tightly to Princess’ fur.
For a wild moment, I thought maybe they wouldn’t manage to outrun the wall of shadows swirling toward them or feared the added weight would throw off the cat as she charged for the crevice, Isoria holding on with every ounce of strength.
Her dark hair flew behind her like a banner, starlight from the glimpses of sky the revenant shadows hadn’t yet blotted out sparkling in the strands of violet, teal, and indigo.
But then Princess leapt, the strength and grace in her legs apparent as she sailed across the divide with a passenger.
They were majestic and breathtaking, filling me with hope that we’d win this battle.
Isoria dismounted and ran to me.
“Save your strength. I’ll—I’ll be all right.”
“You’ve lost too much blood,” Isoria snapped, reaching for me. But when she pressed her palm to my shoulder, nothing happened. She grimaced, pulling a hand slick with blood back and swallowing thickly. “I have nothing left.” Her gold eyes darted to mine, fear widening them.
“I’m weak but I’m not going to die yet,” I insisted.
Howling and shouts pulled our attention back to Father, still trapped near the crevice.
The shadows coiled around him in a painful, chilling embrace.
Revenants slunk forward in the darkness.
One hurled a ball of water across the crevice.
It slammed into Father and hovered there, silencing his cries. Drowning him on land.
My stomach twisted. I could call off the land. Already my hold on the magic was tenuous. It was taking more effort to keep the roots still than to command them to recede into the earth.
But when I lifted my horrified eyes to Isoria, I remembered the way Father had leered over her, prepared to strike her down when she was defenseless.
Adding to the wound was the fact that he’d believed that slaying Isoria would kill me too because of our restored bond.
He’d already cut me open and left me to bleed.
He’d lived in constant fear of supposedly demonic phoenixes, of assassins, of foreign invaders taking his throne. Of trolls storming from the mountains he’d left to demand a piece of what he’d stolen. Of the revenant army invading the capital. So many monsters, real and imagined.
Father, you’ve become more monstrous than the monsters you feared.
I turned away, not wanting to watch his end, even if I was partly to blame for it. I would let the revenants he refused to fight wield their magic against him. I would let this mark the end of his brutal reign and the start of something new.