Chapter Thirty-Three Run
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
RUN
Caelan,” she choked out, dropping her glass as she dove after him. It shattered, sending the liquor splashing over the cabinets. Terror like she’d never known consumed her from the inside out as she watched his lips darken like a bruise.
Her mind raced through the possibilities. Was it his curse? No, the Kraken blood had worked, hadn’t it? His eyes were still moving, wide and roaming over her face, but his body was utterly still.
It wasn’t a curse.
She knew what it was, understood the signs because she had been subjected to the poison before.
Twilight.
Reya looked at the bottle on the counter, the liquor pooling on her floor, the wax seal that had fallen, stamped with the year Lennox had taken her on as his charge, and knew.
He had never planned to let her go.
“Caelan,” she repeated, clutching his face.
But why not kill her? Twilight didn’t kill, only paralyze. It didn’t make sense.
Lennox did nothing without reason, and this had been years in the planning. He wouldn’t poison her just for the sake of it—he would find a way to profit from it.
Unless she was the profit… and he’d simply needed a way to subdue her.
Sudden, blinding clarity yanked a sob from the very core of her.
Lennox knew what she was.
All this time, she’d thought she’d kept her heritage a secret.
When Lennox plucked her out of that alley, she’d imagined he’d seen something in her, a spark of resilience that had endeared him.
But he’d known she was magic-born. Known what an advantage she would have and what she might do with proper training.
And if all else failed, what price she might fetch.
“No, no, no, no,” she said, clutching Caelan’s cheeks.
There is no honor among thieves.
How many times had Lennox told her what he was capable of? How many times had she not listened?
Stop it. Work the problem.
Twilight had an antidote. But she didn’t have the ingredients to make it here. Kraken blood might neutralize the toxin, but she didn’t have that, either. She’d hidden it with her trove to keep it safe from Lennox, halfway across the city.
There was an apothecary not far. It would probably be closed for the festival, but she knew what to grab; all she needed to do was break inside—
Reya heard horses on the street outside, footsteps on the stairs, and immediately understood.
Imagine every possibility and prepare for each one, her memories mocked.
Lennox would never simply trust her to drink the poison—she hadn’t.
He’d always planned on a fail-safe. And he knew his window was about to close.
She had maybe five minutes until the Silver Guard was on her stoop.
And if Lennox had hinted to them that she knew the identity of the Guardian, they would insist on taking her alive.
Reya was going to end up just like Stellene.
How long had Lennox’s eyes been watching them?
She wanted to rage and scream and raze this city to the ground.
Lennox could have handed her over to the Silver Guard all those years ago.
But instead, he’d gambled on a greater trade.
The years of her training—years she’d paid for—were nothing to what he’d gained.
He’d turned her into a weapon, all the while waiting to cash in on her secret.
She was a ten-year investment that had finally paid off—with interest. And she’d dragged Caelan, Omira, and Thance into the deal.
I’d love to meet your friends. Lennox’s words came back to her in sharp bursts of memory.
He’d all but warned her.
“Come on,” she begged, throwing Caelan’s arm over her shoulder and struggling to stand as she bore his weight.
“We need to get out of here.” They needed to get to Omira and Thance.
Lennox no doubt knew what they were and where they were staying.
It was only a matter of time before the Silver Guard came for them, too.
Reya collapsed to her knees, knowing that even if she could get Caelan up and across the room, the stairs were still blocked, and she would never get him out of the window. She began crying then, halfway between helpless fury and grief, trying to work out a problem she knew she couldn’t solve.
Because she had been played by the man who taught her how.
Closing her eyes, she listened to the footsteps, counting the rumbles they made on the stairs. Roughly twenty men, whose voices surrounded the building.
She could fight them. But she had no Aether to plunge them into darkness, no backup in the Bluehoods, and no tricks up her sleeve—only her dagger and sword against twenty hardened fighters armed with Kellstone who knew how to deal with Sages.
If she lost, they would take her right along with Caelan, likely injuring her in the process, and she would be helpless to do anything about it.
She could use the God Power, but when the dust settled, she and Caelan would still be stuck in this room. And if she went into a Rage and he wasn’t there to pull her back, she could take down the building and kill them both.
Caelan understood her options, and the command in the general’s eyes was clear, just like the words she heard loud and clear in his thoughts. Go now.
She shook her head.
The soldiers were already at the door. Desperately, Reya lifted him under his arms again and collapsed beneath his weight. “Come on, fire fingers, I can’t do this by myself.”
Despair stole the fire from his eyes. Her nostrils flared, and she turned to see a thin layer of smoke drifting under her front door.
She knew the scent, the taste. They were going to try and smoke them both into unconsciousness.
She had less than a minute to get clear of the flat before she was blacked out on the floor.
Caelan’s eyes turned pleading, watching the tears spill over her cheeks and the panic in her face like he’d raze the city to ash if he could.
There was still a way she could save him. But Reya knew there would be no coming back from it. Even if she succeeded, she would hate herself forever.
Smoke drifted across the floor, creeping closer by the second, and she screamed in frustration. Even with all her power, all her so-called gifts, she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop what was about to happen.
She clutched both sides of Caelan’s face before lowering her mouth to his as the smoke curled at her feet. “I will come back for you, I swear it.”
The door to her flat shuddered. And there was her father’s sword, propped in its spot by the armoire. The battering ram landed again, and the door splintered and caved. Reya covered her mouth as the smoke filled the room, until she could no longer see the blade.
Choking on a cry, Reya sprinted for the window and flung herself out into the night as the door burst open.
Men below shouted as they saw her leap from her windowsill and grab the metal edge of the roof.
She pulled herself onto its slope with a hiss of pain, muscles straining.
And then she was moving. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop at random to lose the guard.
This was her city, and she knew it better than they ever would.
She’d left him.
Sobbing in earnest, Reya savored the pain in her muscles and bare feet. She wanted it to hurt. It was what she deserved.
She’d left him.
Without an antidote, the Twilight would last days. Days that Caelan would remain alive. Because they would want to question him. Reya had to believe that. More than their deaths, the king wanted information.
I will find you. She sent the thought out into the world like an extension of herself, the same way she had on the ship when she thought she was losing him, wishing she knew whether he could hear it.
Wishing that she’d accepted Thance’s offer and learned how to access that part of herself. I will come back.
Never come back, her ghosts whispered in reply.
With the eyes of everyone she’d lost bearing witness to her shame from the stars that were so close overhead, Reya Connery did what she’d always done.
She ran until she bled.
Until her legs nearly gave out. And then she kept going.
Only when she was sure she’d lost her pursuers did she slide down a drainpipe, flying around corners and down alleys, murmuring the street names until she found one near where Omira and Thance were staying.
She had to reach them before Lennox triggered whatever trap he’d laid for them.
Together, they could get Caelan out of this.
She wasn’t alone. Not if she didn’t want to be.
When festival-goers saw her whooshing past in a nightgown, they stopped to gape, only jolting from their stupors when she screamed “Move!” and they leapt out of her way with a cry.
Arms pumping, she ran through every puddle she passed, splashing the soles of her bare, bleeding feet to hide her blue footprints.
A carriage came to a screeching halt as she tore out in front of it, narrowly missing its stamping horses as the driver shouted curses at her back.
All the while, her magic pulsed beneath her skin.
Reya didn’t stop running until she reached a familiar inn, practically slamming into the side of a nearby building as she tried to take the corner at a run.
Until she saw the two Sages draped head to toe in Kellstone being dragged into a prison cart by a unit of Silver Guardsmen, their blue Ire like a beacon in the darkness.
Inching back to shield herself in the alley from which she’d just emerged, Reya wiped her eyes and began calculating. Her mind raced through the risks as the twins were dragged closer and closer to a caravan identical to the one that had set this whole chain of events into motion.
As she crept around the corner, a faint glow at her fingertips, Thance caught her eye amid the chaos and struggle.
Recognition flashed. And he shook his head once—just for her.
Why?
He lifted his chin toward the nearby buildings, and she followed his gaze.
One building on every corner had an open window on the top floor, drapes drawn to the sides.
It wasn’t out of the ordinary for a summer night in Edris.
But then she noticed the green-tipped arrows of crossbows just visible in the shadows.
Either the hidden marksmen were intended to prevent the twins from escaping, or they were set there as a trap with the twins as the bait.
It was clever. And they were too high and too many for her to do anything about it in time.
Thance searched behind her, and when he didn’t see the general he was looking for, her heart shattered at the understanding in his eyes. He nodded once in acceptance—a soldier through and through.
No. She mouthed the word.
Leave, he mouthed back, facing his sister, but Reya knew the words were for her. She could see the panic on his ceaselessly optimistic face that he couldn’t reach her mind-to-mind. Don’t come back. Then they shoved him into the prison cart and shut the door.
Reya stumbled back into the safety of the shadows like he’d struck her.
She stood there and watched until the marksmen left their nests.
Until the innkeeper finished talking to the captain in silver armor and accepted a purse full of coin from his outstretched hand.
Until she could no longer hear the horses transporting Omira and Thance toward Southgate.
Until the city resumed normal movement as if none of it had happened at all.
She began walking, unsure of where to go or what to do. People bumped her shoulders as they passed, whistling, shouting at her to put on some clothes. At some point, she climbed back onto the rooftops.
It was only when she’d reached the very edge of the city, looked out at the bay she’d stared at every morning over coffee from her flat window, at the castle gleaming in the starlight against the mountains she had been named for, that she dropped to her knees and screamed.
Hands over her eyes, she screamed until her throat was raw and it turned into a keening wail.
Caelan, whose touch she could still feel on her skin, was gone.
Thance, quite possibly the most hopeful person she’d ever encountered, who had never been anything but kind to everyone, was gone.
And Omira, who had wholly redefined ferocity for Reya, a commander who had chosen the compassionate All-Goddess of fertility for her patron over deities of might and battle, was gone.
Did the All-Gods think this was good entertainment? Did they revel in her misery?
How had she thought things could be different with Caelan, that she might finally taste peace? How could she think Caelan was somehow immune to the destruction she brought to everything and everyone she touched? She was such a fool.
Above her, stars shot across the sky, searching for home. And Reya felt the weight of a hand squeeze her shoulder.
Never run. Never bow. Never die.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” she screamed at her ghosts, hands tangled in her hair like she might pull it out. She rocked back and forth, knees tight to her chest. But the presence didn’t leave. It just waited there like an old friend while she spent her tears. A silent guardian.
“You’re not real,” Reya whispered at last, when the urge to scream had died.
Reyanwyn. The name was little more than a whisper.
A familiar cold bit into her skin. Her breaths curled in front of her, and a pine-scented wind filled her lungs. When she opened her eyes, she was standing on a mountainside before a cottage with a crooked chimney.
Snow crunched beneath her boots as she walked to the cracked front door. At long last, Reya Connery put her hand on the doorknob and stepped inside.