50. Chapter 50 #2
He spun on his heel to face Coryanthus and pointed at nothing at all. “Order your man to stop fidgeting like an imbecile,” he said with perfect sincerity, “or I shall make him.”
There was no one near Coryanthus. There hadn’t been for some time.
Now Owain was staring at him like he was looking for the first place to cut. I’d already identified five.
An inhuman blankness passed over Vaustin’s face as we stared.
Then his carefully constructed mask snapped back into place.
I could dismiss one strange lapse. But his eyes were too intense now, like a lamp burning brighter than its wick was meant to allow.
He smiled at nothing for just a half-second too long and said, “Caervorn will reward your loyalty.”
I didn’t know what the magic of a dying king felt like from the inside, but I suspected it wasn’t something that belonged within a living human mind.
Coryanthus stiffened. “Yes…of course,” he murmured. His voice was laced with the quiet contemplation of every selfish choice that had led him into this room.
The pawn discovering he was never the player. Discovering that he’s been played by madmen just like the rest of us.
I saw Owain’s almost imperceptible shift, the slight slide of a single foot back. Positioning himself for the inevitable break.
The metal of the ring on my finger pressed suddenly into my awareness—dormant power I could use to make a move of my own. Reina had said it wouldn’t knock down a stone wall, but it would kill a man and anyone too close. Too volatile to be anything but a last resort.
…or a carefully aimed move that would alter the balance of power.
In the quiet, another strike hit the door hard enough to rattle the frame. A third followed almost immediately. Even through the ward’s dampening, the rhythm was unmistakable. Vaustin and Coryanthus were running out of uninterrupted time.
Something shifted low in the shadows near the latch. At first, I thought my eyes had betrayed me. Then another small shadow moved. Owain? Or something else? I set it aside and kept my eyes trained on the man still holding my power suppressed, even as his mind began to fracture.
Vaustin flinched as his gaze jerked toward the hearth. The smooth assurance he’d worn so easily since arriving at the keep vanished. His voice rose. “Stop. Talking.”
My eyes found Owain’s for just a moment. The black had bled further across his face, shadows rising from his shoulders in malicious coils. His fingers unclenched. Like he was waiting for the moment he could summon a weapon in the newly opened space.
Coryanthus’s hold on me remained firm, yet I sensed his focus waver, his body tensing as he reassessed the situation because it was only getting worse.
Vaustin pressed two fingers hard against his temple. His jaw worked as he stared at the empty space he had just addressed. A low sound scraped up from somewhere deep within his throat that wasn’t quite a word nor a cry of pain—something between the two. A heartbeat later he barked, “Quiet!”
The corner, as expected, said nothing back.
Vaustin started toward it. Something small and fast and deeply committed to his own sense of justice came barreling at him at maximum speed.
Muffin launched himself at the backside of Vaustin’s legs with the full weight of his convictions. The attack was so beneath Vaustin’s dignity that his concentration broke for just a fraction of a second from sheer incredulity.
It was enough.
My magic came back with the force of a door flung open in a gale—sudden, immense, and furious. There wasn’t time for subtlety.
I leaned into Coryanthus and sent a pulse of rending magic shrieking into the hand holding the dagger to my throat. As fast as thought, the tendons controlling his fingers ruptured all at once.
His grip went completely slack, his fingers splaying open with a reflexive shock his body hadn’t yet translated into pain. The dagger hit the floor with a clatter. I didn’t wait. I drove my elbow back into his gut with everything I had.
Coryanthus folded behind me. I kicked his blade as I moved to get away from him.
Muffin displayed excellent survival skills. He immediately let go of Vaustin and bolted for the porch.
Owain’s darkness swept through the room like an avenging storm. Bindings made of wrath coiled around Vaustin’s arms, ankles, and throat as he recovered from the shock of being bitten.
Whatever he’d taken from the device fought back against the attack with frantic, ugly bursts of power that had no technique behind them—only force. The fire guttered sideways in its grate as air compacted between Vaustin’s hands until it shimmered like glass.
He hurled it at Owain.
The blast ripped Owain off his feet. His armor was already dented from his fight in the tunnel, but this time I heard it bend. Owain’s breath left him in a short, brutal exhalation before he was thrown violently into the wall by the blast, a sickening crack reverberating from the stone.
He slid halfway down the masonry before bracing one hand against it and forcing himself upright. Blood made tracks down the side of his face from his scalp.
His ribs. A concussion at the very least.
He rose back to his full height, slower than before. One arm pressed against his side as if he could hold himself together by will alone.
Vaustin still hadn’t used his suppression on Owain because my mate had given him no time to do anything but react.
The ability that had subdued me required precision, and what Vaustin had now was neither precision nor control.
He was throwing power like a man trying to bail out a flooding boat, relying on force because he hadn’t yet learned how to use his stolen abilities.
The problem was, force alone could still win, and he had plenty of that. Once Vaustin got his wild magic under control, he’d snuff Owain’s shadows out as surely as he had mine. He only needed one moment of stillness to remember to actually do it.
From the other side of the room came another impact on the door. They’d never reach us in time. Owain needed a distraction.
My thumb brushed the ring.
One chance. That was all I’d get. I pressed myself to the wall and dragged air into my lungs, waiting for my chance.
Coryanthus had backed away, coughing to get his breath back. His expression flickered then fixed into one I knew. He was losing, scrambling for a way out. His gaze dropped to the dagger on the floor. Then moved to Owain’s back.
He rushed to reach for it with his left hand.
I sprinted across the gap, heart hammering against my ribs, fueled by nothing but instinct.
My mate.
Coryanthus’s expression never landed on the snarl of revenge he’d been planning. I pressed my power into him as I made contact with his back. Like a giant reaching into his chest with two hands, my will ripped a jagged slash through everything vital inside him all at once.
The sound was horrible. The sensation of sheering through him with my will…the stuff of nightmares. I’d remember it until my dying breath—but I’d never regret it.
Coryanthus had one moment to look up at me. Even in death he thought he was being wronged. His life was over before his body hit the floor.
But I couldn’t afford to think about that yet. Coryanthus’s illusion had disappeared with his last breath. Across the room, Berian sat in his chair again, gray-faced and too still for life.
Vaustin followed my glance. And for the first time, purpose cut cleanly through his madness. One shaking hand held a shield, the other rose. Vaustin’s fingers squeezed as though closing around an invisible throat.
Owain’s shadows disappeared silently and all at once.
The bond didn’t sever cleanly this time.
It dragged, like something clawing through flesh rather than slicing.
The floor didn’t move, but my body stopped trusting it.
My knees nearly buckled. Every instinct reached for the steady, familiar presence of Owain, but found only a raw, aching hollow once again.
No.
They couldn’t take him from me like this. I’d only just found the man who treasured me and fought to protect me. Who loved me despite my stubbornness. Who made me finally finally feel like I was valued for so much more than what I could do for others.
Grief at so much loss hit me first, followed closely by a burning anger at their atrocities.
But it was frustration that finally broke me—the agonizing certainty that I wasn't strong enough to step into Owain's place and save him.
Together, they swept over me in a gray tide of defeat, making me want to crumple to the floor.
Owain’s gaze locked onto Coryanthus’s body for a fleeting moment. His expression closed off instantly, like a door slamming shut. His gaze meeting mine held me upright. But it held a profound sort of understanding that I wasn’t ready for yet.
He loves me even as he sees my darkness, as he looks Death in the face.
Then Owain turned back to Vaustin, staring down a monster while stripped of his power.
“And in the end, you’re just a man.” Vaustin’s voice was raspy with greedy anticipation, as if he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth in. With ragged breaths, he let out a noise that sounded like a laugh cut off by an involuntary flinch. He moved to grab the device off the mantel to drain Owain.
The moment he turned his back was all the opening I was going to get. I slipped the ring off my finger and hurled it straight at the heart of the ward.
We were far enough away to escape the worst. Fire erupted outward in a violent, concussive blast. The ward shattered in a rain of stone shrapnel. The force cracked the wall and nearly blew out my eardrums. Heat slammed into me, followed by a rush of choking dust that flooded the room.
The next blow from outside struck a door no longer reinforced by the ward. It burst inward half a heartbeat later.
Camrick moved into the room with deadly decisiveness, his eyes scanning for threats even before he was fully inside. His sword was drawn, his men a half-step behind, ragged from fighting.