37. Chapter 37 #3
The blade punched through the soft flesh beneath his chin, tore through his mouth, and drove on until I felt the jolt of bone giving way behind it.
For one savage heartbeat, I had him.
His body jerked. Blood burst hot over my hand, and sprayed across my face. His head snapped back, the force of it staggering him another step as I ripped the blade free in a wet arc of red.
He reeled.
I threw my head back and released a war cry that reverberated over the entire battlefield—raw, savage, and primal.
Fury blazing, blood on my hands and face, Dawnrender dripping red at my side.
My fist struck my chest once, hard enough to bruise—and I roared again—the dragons at my back joining me.
Rage tore out of us so violently it became force.
It slammed into the King and blasted him several more feet backward, his boots gouging through the blood-soaked dirt.
For one glorious heartbeat, I bathed in it.
Until the ruin I’d carved through his jaw began to close. Flesh knitting. Bone sealing. Blood sliding backward over skin that had no right to be whole. His stagger shortened. His balance returned. Strength flowed back into him like it had only ever stepped out for breath.
No. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but this was absurd.
His eyes found mine.
Amusement. And then a malicious smirk.
I suddenly couldn’t breathe. The force hit all at once—an invisible grip crushing my windpipe, locking around my neck with cold, clinical precision.
My feet lifted off the ground. His invisible fingers tightened.
Dawnrender dropped from my fingers as both hands flew to my throat on instinct, clawing at nothing.
The King watched me choke from three paces away, head tilted slightly, as if studying the quality of my suffering.
Behind me, Eryndor let out a low, splintering sound, restraint cutting through him.
“Better,” the King said softly.
I searched wildly for Caden. He caught my eye and nodded. It was time.
I forced every instinct to fight—to obliterate him—down into silence, went limp, and let the Fury simmer. I kept my eyes on the King’s face.
Don't you dare look away. No matter what happens. You hold the line.
His fangs elongated in pleasure and the grip tightened. Black crept in at the edges of my vision.
He stepped closer. Smiling now. Certain.
Then an enormous shape passed between the sun and the fields, casting us in shadow.
The King's smile stuttered.
I looked up. Seven shapes cut through the sky. Massive. Wings spanning wide enough to shade a battlefield.
The griffins. Storm-winged and patient. Eagle eyes that could see through any deception. Lion bodies that moved with the coiled grace of creatures who had never known fear.
They circled above the battlefield in a formation that hadn't been seen in two centuries.
They weren't looking at the King.
They weren't looking at the army.
They were looking at me.
When such a soul walks the earth, the griffins come.
The King's face paled. For the first time since I'd met him, something cracked behind his eyes. Something that looked like fear.
"No," he breathed.
Justice without compromise. Courage without cruelty. Will that bends to truth but never to force.
I lay before him with all my violence leashed and gave him surrender instead.
The griffins cried out.
The sound split the sky—sharp and ancient and terrible, cutting through the void-silence like a blade through smoke. The void dragons scattered. The battlefield froze. Every face turned upward, fae and dragonborn and soldier alike, watching the impossible descend.
The King stared at them.
I took pleasure in knowing this would be his last living sight. The proof that he was never the true Crown. Never could have been. The thing he'd hunted, banned from histories, tried to erase from existence—it had chosen the girl choking in front of him.
The King snarled and advanced.
He drew both swords in one smooth, furious motion, black steel flashing as he pulled them back—one aimed for my heart, the other for the soft center beneath my sternum.
I lifted my chin. Threw my shoulders back. Offered him the target.
Take it if you can, you piece of shit.
He bared his teeth, his entire frame coiling for the kill, a murderous growl ripping out of him. Black crept farther across my vision, the edges of the world closing in—but I still saw Caden.
Two steps.
One.
The King swung with everything he had.
Caden hit him first.
A silver blur. A flash of steel. Then the King’s head tore free of his shoulders and went spinning through the air.
The First Vow drove it home. A child's promise, kept through years of torture and breaking and remaking, finally fulfilled in one clean thrust.
Then I hit the ground. Air tore back into me in ragged, burning gulps. I rolled onto one elbow, coughing, my whole body shaking with the violence of breath returning. Black receded from the edges of my vision in pulses. The battlefield swam, doubled, then sharpened.
The King was still standing. He was staggering and convulsing… but standing.
Headless, but then wrong again—neck knitting in wet, twitching strands, he staggered sideways as if death had only inconvenienced him. His swords hung loose in his hands. His body jerked, caught itself, lurched forward, swayed again.
No.
Across the torn ground, Eryndor looked at me. Not panic. Not hesitation. Just that terrible clarity that lived in him when loving me required something ugly and there was no time left to pretend otherwise.