Chapter 18 #2
Ayla bared her teeth, reading the decision on her face. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Serenna seized Ayla’s wrist.
Ayla twisted and slammed her knee upward, punching the breath from Serenna’s lungs. Serenna held on and wrenched her sister’s hand flat against the sand. Shadows writhed from Serenna’s fingertips, slicing a dark line across Ayla’s palm.
Blood spilled fast and bright. Ayla thrashed beneath her, her free hand raking at Serenna’s face, nails catching skin. Serenna pinned her arm with a knee and drove the diadem’s metal setting down, forcing the Starshard into the cut.
Ayla screamed.
Blood slicked Serenna’s grip, the gem threatening to slide free. Ayla didn’t have to accept it—the Starshard would bind to the offered life force.
Serenna kept her fingers away from the crystal and bore down harder until she felt the moment it caught.
The core flared, light bursting through the facets, sinking through blood and flesh until it rooted deep in Ayla’s Well. Then her sister fell still, eyes wild, breath rasping.
Serenna pulled the blood-soaked diadem away. Every instinct in her recoiled before she pressed her fingers to Ayla’s Starshard.
No jolt of numbness seized her arm like it had in the Spire.
Instead, Ayla’s magic opened beneath Serenna’s touch, every talent mapped and defenseless.
The binding felt nothing like reaching across a bond, where magic flowed both ways.
This was a fist closed around her sister’s throat, and Serenna felt every beat of her pulse.
Serenna stretched her awareness further through the gem, just enough to test her control.
Ayla’s arm lifted when Serenna thought it. Ayla spat a curse as it jerked upward, fingers splaying at nothing. Resistance shuddered through the gem—Ayla refusing, her muscles obeying anyway.
Serenna withdrew, and Ayla’s arm dropped.
Ayla’s breath came in ragged, shattered pulls. “You have no idea what—”
Serenna yanked through the gem, clamping Ayla’s jaw shut. Ayla’s eyes went wide, horror breaking across her face as she strained to form words that belonged to Serenna now.
Serenna braced the diadem against the sand and drove a thin sliver of force through the setting. Metal cracked and the Starshard slipped free into her palm, still slick with blood.
She shoved the gem into her leathers with the other two and tore her hand away, but the feeling of Ayla’s pulse lingered in her awareness.
Shadows spilled across the sand and lashed Ayla flat. Serenna flinched, sparks jumping to her palms as she twisted toward the magic.
Fenn knelt three paces behind her, swaying. He planted one hand against a fallen rock, the other extended toward Ayla, Essence streaming from his fingertips. Blood had dried in a dark line down his temple, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
“Saw you fighting,” he slurred. “Took me a minute to make my magics work.”
Serenna crawled to him and cupped his face between her trembling palms. She sank a mending lattice deeper this time, sliding beneath bone to ease the swelling.
He blinked, the glaze clearing from his eyes.
His hand landed on the back of her neck and pulled until their foreheads knocked together.
Neither of them moved. After days of being denied even a simple touch, this one—clumsy and blood-smeared—closed Serenna’s throat.
She braced her forehead harder against his and shook once, silently, before she steadied herself.
Then she withdrew, fumbling for his Starshard in her armor.
“I killed Taryn,” she whispered, curling his fingers around his gem. “I’m sorry. I…”
“She made her choices.”
Fenn grew quiet as he tucked the gem away. He studied his hands—no longer claws, the talons blunted into nails. He brushed a strand of hair from Serenna’s cheek with a knuckle.
“I told you before that she hasn’t been clan for a long time. You don’t owe her your sorrow.”
His palm lingered at her cheek. Then the bond flared with his concern as his gaze dropped to her boot. The leather had split along the seam, blood darkening the edges.
“Your ankle,” he murmured, reaching for her leg.
“I still have my wings,” Serenna said. “I’ll fly if I can’t walk.”
Fenn tilted his head as stone groaned overhead. Muffled sounds bled through the rubble—distant screams, the low thunder of Essence in the city below, a battle still raging beyond them.
“We need to get you to a healer,” he said.
“Ayla…” Serenna rasped. Her sister hadn’t moved, pinned with Fenn’s shadows, her breath still coming fast and shallow. “We have to take her with us. What she knows could help us. I—”
The words shattered as sudden light flooded the bond, Vesryn’s presence crashing into her mind—so close she felt like she could touch him. Relief struck fierce enough to knock the breath from her lungs.
“Serenna.” Vesryn’s voice came clipped and urgent, his words wound tight around the fear underneath it. “You’re hurt. Hold on. I’m—”
“Wait!” Serenna said before he risked opening a rift blind to retrieve them. “Fenn can portal us out.”
Fenn shouldered into the bond with the subtlety of kicking open a door. “Knew you’d come for us, princeling.”
Vesryn’s irritation spiked through first—familiar and sharp, meant entirely for Fenn. “What the fuck are you waiting for? Portal out in front of the caverns. Now. The city isn’t going to hold.”
Serenna glanced back at Ayla, who stared through the darkness, the imperious angle of her chin gone slack.
“We’re bringing someone with us,” Serenna said.
Fenn followed her look and nodded. He tore a rift open across the sand, the portal lying flat like a dark mouth.
“Can you carry her?” Serenna asked, even though she had the Starshard. She could make Ayla crawl through the rift on her hands and knees. Puppet her sister’s body the way Ayla had puppeted hers.
Something vicious had stirred in her when she’d clamped Ayla’s jaw shut, but Serenna would rather drag herself across glass than feel that satisfaction again.
Ayla flinched when Fenn released his shadows and gathered her against his chest, but she didn’t fight. A whimper left her as tears cut pale lines through the blood and dust on her face.
Fenn motioned Serenna through first, and she hauled herself into the void.