49. Chapter 49 #3
Less than a heartbeat later, the air-mage struck with a telekinetically strengthened blade of wind.
The steel of my breastplate groaned at the impact.
My feet slid backward. But the bond surged ahead of me, power snapping into place like a reflex.
My connection to Lunette strengthened my pushback, driving him into the wall until all the breath left his body in a sudden, final exhalation.
His pulse stopped beneath my conjuration a moment later.
Yet I cared with the level of contempt a wolf has for the lamb as he rips out its throat. The mage’s death was irrelevant. I only cared that Thibault saw the suffering he’d wrought.
The shadows tightened around the bound mages, forcing their slack-jawed attention onto the troop. They needed to see what their greed had caused. Their eyes moved over the bodies now scattered across the floor, over the men they’d ordered to take her away from me.
More and more shadows poured out of me. My magic pressed into the stone, into the air, into the men themselves until the space felt claimed, saturated with Nocthel protective fury. A low rumble filled the tunnel as my magic pressed against its walls, writhing and roiling with seething rage.
The air thickened with the iron tang of blood and smoke. The tremor became a low, rolling force that traveled up through my body and outward again as Death followed my will’s lead through the darkness.
The remaining soldiers tried to regroup, but I was growing impatient. A spear punched through one man’s spine as he turned. Another tried to run. A filament slipped through his visor and ended him where he stood.
I stepped past the bodies without slowing, leaving the mages bound, and moved toward her with the certainty that nothing left in this tunnel would be allowed to stand between us.
This was what I’d been born to do.
The evoker managed to tear a hand free for the briefest instant. Lightning cracked toward my back. The scent of ozone bit sharply against the stagnant smell of death.
What should’ve been a smooth wall emerged as jagged obsidian—shaped influenced by my near-insanity. It surged upward between us, intercepting the strike and shattering it into fragments of blinding light. The impact echoed through the confined space as dust rained down from above.
End him, the power urged.
This time I gave in.
And then there was only Thibault. For now.
One moment I was considering my infiltration into the room above, the next my guiding moonlight flickered out, plunging me into a type of darkness so complete I understood why the loss of a mate was fatal.
The sensation was so violent it felt as though my heart had been physically torn from my chest.
I reached for her, but nothing answered. A terrifying silence filled the space where her soul connected to mine.
For one staggered second, I forgot how to breathe without her. My pulse became a war drum in my ears. The deliberate coldness I’d clung to with both hands to put down every man in that tunnel fell away beneath a terror more devastating than the battle.
I moved before I had a plan, shadows hauling Thibault from the wall and dragging him behind me like a fish on a line. His body caught on the stone as I climbed, each jolt tearing another broken sound from his throat. I smiled and pulled harder.
The iron rungs carried me toward the latch. Whoever waited beyond it would be prepared. The noise and tremors had made certain of that.
So Thibault would go first. If there were blades, spells, or men waiting to strike, they would spend themselves on him. He would buy me one heartbeat. One opening. One chance to reach her.
I paused at the top and flung him through. He struck the floor with a satisfying crack. I hoped he’d broken something essential, dooming him to a slow and agonizing end.
I came through the opening fast, rolling clear of the entrance and rising to my feet in a single motion. My gaze was drawn inevitably to her.
Alive.
Relief didn’t hit all at once. It splintered through me in sharp, disbelieving pieces, too immense to be contained in one coherent thought.
Lunette was the only thing in this world I hadn’t been able to talk myself out of wanting.
She’d become the very foundation of my continued existence—the thing my magic, blood, and every feral, territorial instinct I possessed had recognized long before my mind caught up.
The other half of my heart was standing fifteen feet away.
But Vaustin Maeron’s dagger was poised at her throat—one shift of pressure from ending my world. And Lord Coryanthus was smirking like he’d won something. I wanted to tear out his throat with my bare teeth.
“Owain.” My name—not my title—came out of Coryanthus’s mouth. An insult. “You took longer than expected.”
Across the room, Lunette’s lilac eyes found mine, burning with a banked anger. She choked back her fear, but as the blade pressed nearer, the terror slipped through.
I knew her. She wasn’t anywhere near done fighting.
Then my eyes dropped to Vaustin’s other hand.
The device was cradled in his palm. Yet it wasn’t faintly humming with stored magic like it had before. It lay silent—too silent.
Dread arrived like a knife to the gut, parting something vital on its way in.
He’d already used it. The Assembly had their weapon.
And I had to go through him to get to my mate.