Chapter 44
He betrayed me.
I promised I wouldn’t think about him again, but the reminder of the night, and the sinking feeling of discovering him gone, won’t go away.
Not as I chew the leaves from the sprig he left for me to find, a flower I recognize, a remedy for afterward.
Not as I claw my way up the side of the mountain and sink to my knees when I reach the peak.
My blood-crusted eyes prickle, watching the world from this height, because it is beautiful, and that just makes everything so much worse.
I don’t have my sword anymore.
I don’t have a partner.
I don’t even have clothes.
There are just days left of the Questral. At this point, I won’t make it back to the gates, especially without my sword. I know that.
All that’s left for me is this one purpose, and I don’t know how to reach it. Not alone.
I look up at the sky, my chin trembling.
The only thing of mine I have left is this diamond necklace.
It was waiting, on a rock next to that sprig.
Raker must have held it for me and left it.
It’s almost like a message. Go to him instead.
But he doesn’t get to do that, he doesn’t get to leave and then tell me what he thinks is best for me, he doesn’t get to growl at me to take the necklace off then leave it for me to find.
Besides. I don’t want it anyway.
With a shaking hand, I offer it to the skies, and say, “Please. Please, come back for me. I—I need you.” Tears fall, blurring my vision. “I won’t make it without you.”
I cry, letting my agony spill out, my shame, my everything, every hope and want that shouldn’t belong to me but did and is now in tatters. It all comes out in raking sobs, tears falling and falling and falling, until something sparkling blocks my vision.
But it isn’t my dragon. No, it’s a beam of light melting into the form of a woman. I lift my arm, blocking my eyes against the brightness.
When I drop it, the woman in silver is tilting her head at me. “You look lost,” she says.
The diamonds tremble in my palm. “I am lost. I have been lost. I have lost everyone I have ever loved.”
The star on her brow glimmers as she studies me. “You remind me of myself.”
I laugh without humor. “We do look so much alike, don’t we?” Me, covered in blood, my hair knotted with it. Her, glowing with ethereal beauty.
She doesn’t laugh at all. “At one point in my life, I looked just like you,” she says. “Covered in the blood of my enemies. Bellowing to the sky for someone to help me.”
“Then help me,” I say through my teeth. She says nothing, and I sink deeper into the ground, the fight leaving me. I will beg. I will plead. I have nothing else left. “Please, show me the way. Like you did before.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t need to. You already know the way.”
“I don’t.”
“Ask me a different question,” she says. She says it quickly, like we don’t have much time, and I suppose I don’t.
I have so many. So many. Very few will help me now.
But … but there is one.
“How did he take my sword while I’m still alive? Did it—did it choose him?”
Her eyes gleam. “Do you care for him?”
“No,” I spit. But it’s a lie.
She seems to know it too. “Let me tell you something about great swords, Aris. Swords forged by the elements themselves, by the gods, by the strongest emotions. Forged by love and fury.”
“Godswords,” I say.
She nods. “Great swords meld to your soul. To your heart. And when you let someone into it … they can take what’s yours.”
And let him in I did.
My hands shake with anger. My cheeks redden in shame. Did Raker know that? Is that why he’s been working with me this whole time? To wait for me to fall for him, like a fool, so he could take my sword?
Why not just kill me, then? Why not claim my sword that way? It doesn’t make any sense.
“Why mine? Why not any other godsword?” We came across a few. The one that was thrown in the mud. The one in the mists. He could have gone after either of them, but he didn’t.
She nods again, like this was another good question. The star on her brow gleams as she says, “Your blade and his—they used to be one.”
Even the pounding in my ears stops.
My word is a whisper. “What?”
“Your swords are two halves of the same blade. That’s why they glow the same color.
Long ago, they were split, for their power was too great as one.
Your swords connect you.” A shadow passes over her face.
“If he seeks to merge them again, you must stop him. Those swords, joined, will lead to millennia of ruin.”
I don’t want that. I do want to stop it … but my only purpose is revenge. The Astral Queen seems to know it too.
“The connection to your swords binds you. He is a map. Follow him, and you will reach the gods you seek.”
He is a map.
Even if that were true—even if I knew what that meant—how am I supposed to get there? Who knows when he left? He could already have reached the Land of the Gods. “But I … I have nothing.”
She smiles. “That’s where you’re wrong. You are not alone, Aris.”
You are not alone.
Raker said those words. He meant him, and he was a liar for saying so.
But he was not wrong.
A distant shriek lances through the sky. I know that shriek. In the far distance, past the clouds, shines a creature brighter than all the stars combined.
My dragon. Her eyes glimmer when she sees me. As if she’s been searching too.
Light blinds me for just a moment. And in that moment, my skin hums as all the blood is washed away by some curious magic.
Soft fabrics and sparkling armor cover my naked body.
When the light fades, the Astral Queen is floating there, shaping a beam of light into a sword of pure starlight. She hands it to me.
“Anyone can start a journey, Aris,” the Astral Queen says. “Not everyone can end it.” She shoots back up to the sky just as my dragon lands before me, shaking the mountain.
I fall back from the force, then lunge forward, throwing my arms around her. Our foreheads press together, and the star on her shines. It shines. And I feel something being seared into my skin too. I tremble with a sob.
Then she lightly pushes me back with her nose. Sniffs.
I laugh, knowing exactly what she smells. “Right,” I say, tossing up the diamond necklace.
She catches it in her mouth. The diamonds crunch and shatter against her superior teeth. She swallows.
I tuck the starlight sword against my back, and it stays there, humming. Ready.
So am I.
I mount my dragon, and say, “Let’s finish this.”