Chapter Fifty-Two
Sweat beaded Archer’s brow, matted his hair and beard, stuck his clothes to his back. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs even as he slashed at the creatures and waded further into the city. His soldiers fought beside him through all of it, protecting the citizens.
But they could do nothing against the magic.
Buildings crumbled. Several gaps had opened in the wall surrounding the castle, though Archer couldn’t see how the structure itself fared.
The earth beneath them continued to shake and rumble and spit out the deathless creatures.
More and more crawled out of the destruction and all they could do was try to hold them back.
Every blow from one of the creatures was heavier than any Archer had taken from a human.
Every time he struck back, his sword glanced off a rock or stuck in the dirt of the creature’s body.
Fighting them was an endless task of breaking each one down and moving on to the next, hoping to destroy them faster than they put themselves back together.
A creature lunged and Archer raised his sword to block. The stone fist slammed into his forearm, and for a second, Archer’s grip faltered. His sword clattered to the ground. Pain radiated through his arm—the bone possibly broken.
The stone creature swung again, aiming for Archer’s head. He barely dodged in time. But the fast travel, the long fight, it all caught up to him. The next time the mountain shook, his feet fell out from under him. He collapsed, his knees slamming hard into the ground.
The creature raised its heavy arms above its head.
Archer struggled to stand, but his limbs were jelly. He could barely lift his head to look into the creature’s pebble eyes, and he gritted his teeth, bracing for the blow. He had done his best to defend his people. His only regret was leaving Silas behind again.
A pebble struck Archer’s cheek. Then another rock tumbled from the creature’s head and bounced onto the ground. The creature stood still as a statue for a moment before the whole thing slowly toppled over and shattered into a hundred pieces.
Archer blinked in shock at the mess around him. Several long minutes passed before his exhausted mind understood what had happened. He slowly raised his head to look up the mountain. Did Penn succeed? Did he defeat Alistair?
Penn sat with Valerian’s head in his lap, stroking his golden hair off his sweaty forehead.
Blood streaked from Val’s eyes and nose, staining Penn’s clothes and hand, but he didn’t mind.
Val’s eyes were wide open, staring at the sky, flames flickering in his huge black pupils.
Since there was no other fire atop the mountain, Penn assumed this was something magical, a sign of Valerian fighting back.
Val gasped in a shuddering breath. Penn tensed and raised the dagger over his chest, prepared to plunge it into his lover’s heart. But then Val’s eyes closed, and his body went limp. The rapid heartbeat pounding against Penn’s palm faded to nothing.
Penn traded the dagger for the potion bottle, his hands trembling the whole time.
He wanted to rip the cork out and pour the contents down Val’s throat, but he had to wait.
If he administered the potion too early, Alistair might still be clinging to Valerian’s mind and would be revived alongside him.
Using his own racing heart to measure, Penn counted the seconds.
When he reached sixty, he finally pulled out the cork.
It fell from his shaking hands and rolled off somewhere into the darkness.
He forced Val’s mouth open and put the edge of the bottle against his lips, then carefully poured the contents inside.
For a moment, the potion pooled in his mouth, swirling like a black galaxy trapped inside him.
Only then did he remember something else Adelaide had said: “He won’t be able to swallow, so you’ll have to force the potion into him.”
Penn carefully massaged Val’s throat, mimicking the movements of swallowing. The galaxy drained away, leaving a black stain on his tongue. Penn poured more of the potion inside and repeated the process until he’d emptied the whole bottle.
Then all he could do was wait.
“Come on, Val,” he murmured. “Come back to me.”
The air around them was still. The mountain had stopped rumbling. The wind had stopped howling.
And Val’s heart was not beating.
Tears spilled from Penn’s eyes, dripping onto Val’s cold skin.
He bowed over Val, clutching him tighter.
“I’m sorry,” Penn whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.
I tried so hard, and I—” It hadn’t worked.
Penn had clung onto this hope, this dream, and what had it gotten him?
Nothing. If any Arnsveldian citizens had died during the attack, Penn was responsible for their deaths as much as Alistair.
And in the end, he hadn’t even saved his lover.
A shuddering sob poured from his mouth. “I wanted to be with you. To”—his voice broke but he forced himself to continue—“to love you. But everything is fucked up. I failed, and you’re gone, and I—”
He almost didn’t hear it—the gasp for breath, the sudden thump of a heart startling back to life.
Penn blinked and sat up straighter so he could look down at Val’s face. His eyes were still closed, golden lashes fluttering rapidly like he was fighting off some dream.
Penn’s hands tightened on Val as he watched, waiting for the moment those eyes opened. He couldn’t blink, couldn’t breathe, until he saw what color they were.
When Valerian’s eyes finally snapped open, his gaze immediately met Penn’s. The two warm, hazel eyes were the best thing Penn had ever seen.
Valerian gazed up into a pair of bright blue eyes.
Neither icy, nor cold, nor crazed with magic, these were the blue eyes he’d longed to see for—damn, he couldn’t remember how long.
He reached up and tentatively cupped the man’s stubbled cheek.
“You’re …” he began, his voice croaking as if he hadn’t used it in months.
Something broke in the man’s gaze. “Val?” he said the name uncertainly.
Valerian blinked slowly, his mind a confused, black haze. “I …” he tilted his head to one side, feeling the man’s firm thighs beneath him, then to the other. Nothing surrounding them looked familiar. “Where the fuck am I?”
“Arnsveld,” the man said with a rough laugh. “You’re in Arnsveld.”
He said it so confidentially that Valerian didn’t have the heart to ask where Arnsveld was.
He just went back to gazing up into those beautiful blue eyes.
They were something he could focus on, at least. Black hair clung to the man’s forehead and blood smeared over his cheek, though it’d been clean before.
Val looked down at his own hands in shock, finding them covered in blood.
He spread his fingers wide, then furrowed his brow in confusion. Something felt … off, missing.
Carefully, he removed the silver ring from his right hand. Ah, there’s the problem. As soon as he did, he could see the dozens of scars covering his hands, and there on the left one, a gap where his last two fingers were missing.
Don’t remember that happening. Then again, he couldn’t remember much of anything. Every time he tried too hard to focus on something, it was like sticking his face into a pile of ashes—charred, dusty, and extremely unhelpful. “When did that happen?” he asked, holding his injured hand up to the man.
The man’s face crumpled in despair. “It was when Niall and Alistair … well.”
Niall? Alistair? Neither of those names meant anything to Valerian. But that wasn’t important. There was only one name he cared about. “What’s your name?”
The man stared at him in shock. “You don’t remember?”
Time to come clean. “No offense meant. It’s all a bit blank right now.”
The man hesitated before asking, “What do you remember?”
Valerian thought back, but all he could see in his mind’s eye were flames consuming everything. “Fire.”
“There was a fire,” the man said carefully. “But that was weeks ago. It was when your satchel burned.”
“My satchel,” Valerian repeated. Suddenly, an image flashed in his mind—hunching over a leather bag, back aching as if he’d been at it for hours.
The pain didn’t matter, only the results.
He was determined to perfect an expansion spell on a satchel before the next time he had to pack up his whole life again.
“I’m a mage,” he said, wonder filling his voice.
“Yes,” the man replied, trying to smile even as tears dripped down his cheeks.
“Yes, you’re a mage. You’re Valerian Sommers, mage and retired mercenary and—” his voice broke off even as he tried to suppress the sob.
“I’m sorry, I—” He wiped roughly at the tears with one hand, the other still cradling Val’s head.
“Oh, don’t cry, darling, I’m really not worth the tears,” Val murmured, cupping the man’s face with both hands. It probably wasn’t pleasant to have the mutilated hand caressing him, but the man didn’t seem to mind.
“I thought I saved you,” he gasped. “I tried so hard, and I’m too late and I—”
Valerian leaned up and pressed a kiss to his lips, not necessarily to shut him up, but just because he thought it might bring him a little comfort. Then in a low voice he said, “Penn, darling, I really don’t know how to handle your tears.”
Penn’s shoulders stilled and his eyes widened. “What did you say?”
“I’ve really never been good at it, that much I can remember.”
“No. You … you said my name.”
Val blinked at him, realizing for the first time that his thoughts had shifted from calling him ‘the man’ to ‘Penn.’
The flames in his mind died down slowly, the smoke clearing.
There was still damage, still black patches of his own memories burned away, but he could think a little clearer now.
If he focused on Penn, he could see the young man leaning against a counter, lips spread in a slow smile as he proposed a deal that would change Valerian’s life.
“Penn,” he murmured again, rubbing his thumb over Penn’s lips. The name only conjured one memory, but Valerian guarded it jealously, protecting it from any lingering fires. “I remember you.” Not much, not enough, but it was something to hold onto.
The tears flowed freely down Penn’s cheeks again, but before Valerian could panic about what set him off now, Penn pulled him into a tight embrace and kissed him deeply.
For a moment, Val wondered if this was another dream, another soft death.
But the fact that he could remember any soft deaths was encouraging.
His mind wasn’t quite the blank space it had seemed when he’d first woken up.
He shoved those worries aside, deciding that he would just enjoy kissing Penn, relearning the taste of him, for as long as he could.