Chapter 40 Ember
EMBER
Rain pelted my body as I stumbled a little in the puddles that were forming on the Gallery’s manicured lawn.
Cromvale was surprisingly good with the thrysos.
If I had to guess how he got that good, it would be expensive LARPing camps.
The other option, fencing, wouldn’t have given him skills with a long weapon. Had to be LARPing camps.
I was tempted to say something about it, to see if he was sensitive about it, but he was keeping me on my toes.
If that thing got me one more time, it might kill me.
Already, my strength was waning. He’d kept me on the move for at least ten minutes, striking me not one, but three times.
Once in the shoulder, rendering my dominant arm useless.
And twice in the abdomen. I was bleeding profusely, but I was still moving.
If he got me again, I would go down. It hadn’t been long enough for them to get the swords. I had to keep going. I staggered, but kept moving. Typically, the wounds he’d inflicted would hardly slow me down, but something about the thrysos drained me. Every time he nicked me with it, I felt worse.
And he was just so damn calm. In fact, he smiled now as I tried to regroup, my vision blurring. “You’re wondering how I got so good at this,” he purred.
“Not really,” I quipped, sounding better than I felt. “Just wondering if LARPing camp ever got you any ass.”
Cromvale smiled, undeterred by my petty comments as lunged forward again, narrowly missing my left arm as I ducked him. “Haven’t you been wondering how I knew all those dates? How I’m beating you now?”
I shrugged, dodging another of his strikes, but he was getting closer every time. Was he playing with me? “To be honest, Chad, I haven’t spent much time thinking about you.”
“Chase,” he hissed, nicking me again, this time in the thigh.
“Whatever.” My brain struggled to find some sort of nasty remark. Something that would bother a man like Cromvale enough to slow him down. But it felt like I was moving through a sea of thick honey. Every movement I tried to make was slow and sticky.
Suddenly, he was standing closer to me. Too close. “I know every move you make before you make it. I’ve seen the way this ends.”
His words weren’t enough to scare me, but the shift in his aura was. Chase Cromvale’s mask of humanity fell away, suddenly, revealing something much, much worse. He was Cognoscenti. The Cognoscenti.
Cromvale was the one who’d been helping the Authority.
The one who’d predicted the powerful parapsychs.
And he was a Chioric. This all made a horrible kind of sense.
His smile stretched over his face. It was odd how non-descript he was.
How mildly handsome. How forgettable and trustworthy he looked.
Shock ricocheted through me. Not because I couldn’t believe it, but because I hadn’t even considered he might not be what he seemed. That was the trick of that brand of slippery goodness the Authority loved. The way what they called “normal” acted as a mask for evil. A mask that had fooled even me.
“Why?” I breathed. “Why would you betray your people?”
Cromvale chuckled. “My people? What people? Parapsychs are weak. Losers. I’d rather win for once.”
He was one of those. There was no way to argue with his type, no way to reason with them or change their minds.
Speaking was a waste of energy, so I stayed quiet, trying my best to see a way out of this that could surprise him.
Without knowing exactly how his power worked, I had no way to fight back.
But I knew enough about seeing the future to know that there were infinite possibilities.
That no Cognoscenti, no matter how powerful, ever really knew what would transpire.
Lux had always said that the worst quality a Seer could have was hubris—that keeping humble made it easier to trace the threads of what might come to pass.
But how could I use that against Cromvale?
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said, his voice syrupy sweet now. “Nowhere to run that I won’t find you, your cohort, and that sweet little girl. She’s going to make the best sacrifice, Ember.”
Bile rose in my throat at his words as I ducked away from him.
It was time to run. But before I could gather the strength to move, a frigid wind cut straight to my bones, driving me to my knees.
No, not wind. A murder of spirits. Spirits of all kinds.
Shades, Poltergeists, Riders. Even a few Echoes, though they lagged a bit behind.
Though I could barely see them, the spirits were impossible to miss.
Most were Shades, unable to affect anything physical, but their mere presence seemed to distract Cromvale.
And then they began to drain him. The process was slow, but as they became more visible, they fed off whatever power the thrysos gave him.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I got up off the ground and stumbled away from him, using the last of the energy I had.
I was too used to my wounds healing fast enough that there was no risk of bleeding out.
But even non-fatal wounds from the thrysos were different—they simply did not close, nor did my blood begin to clot at even a normal human rate. The weapon was utter destruction.
The more energy he had to use to fight the spirits, the better off I would be.
Right now, I was just buying myself and my friends more time.
I had no real hope of living through this, but audacity thrummed through me, a drumbeat of delusion that said I could make it.
That I would see my sistren again, and feel Ares’ arms around me before the night was through.
I just had to make it long enough for him to find me.
Because if there was one thing I knew for certain, it was that somewhere, no matter what complications there were, Ares was trying to get here.
To get to me. He wouldn’t leave me here to die alone.
That much I knew. I just had to live long enough for him to get here, for my friends to arrive and end Cromvale together.
I moved as quickly as I could towards the darker part of the river, hiding in the thick brush along the steep banks further down.
I peeked back at the National Gallery to survey the damage the Ceti had done.
The building was stronger than I’d assumed it to be, but it was most definitely caved in at its center.
That would take millions to fix. I was spiraling, losing my grip on reality. There was a pool of blood growing around me that should probably concern me, but I was too lightheaded and dizzy to really grasp what was happening.
Ares, get here faster.
It was difficult to stay conscious, but I was grateful for the dark, grateful for the fog that descended on this cold autumn night, obscuring the blood I most certainly trailed behind me. A spirit appeared at my side, a young man dressed in a tunic, perhaps nightclothes.
He was a Shade, but there was something odd about him, something almost solid as he pressed his hand into mine. Spirits usually drained the living of energy, but apparently this one had found a way to give some back, because I immediately felt clearer, more conscious.
Ares is on his way, the boy said, not aloud, but in my head.
I smiled. Some spirits could read the surface thoughts in your mind, and this one was kind and had obviously read my plea for my lover. It was a kind thing to say, but it hadn’t been long enough. Ares couldn’t be on his way. Not yet, anyway. The spirit smiled again, before fading from sight.
Above me, Cromvale screamed, frustrated with my disappearance. Why couldn’t he predict where I was? The ghost child… Had it done more than pass energy along to me?
The thick, heavy feeling of the spirits disappeared in a flash of sickly green light. “That was cute,” Cromvale called down to me. “Getting spirits to help you. But I have tricks of my own.”
Obviously, I wasn’t going to respond. I could never figure out what it was about the despotic types that made them want to talk so bloody much while they tried to kill you, but it was practically a stereotype at this point.
Those that lived to oppress also seemed to have a desperate, fucked up need to tell you their plans as well.
In fact, Cromvale was blathering on still.
Rhi would be so annoyed with me. He was giving away all the secrets of Project Hierophant.
Something about the way power was more important than parapsychs or humans, and that he was going to usher in a new age of something-or-other…
It wasn’t altogether that tough to understand.
Just the usual selfish bullshit I’d come to expect from the Authority.
His type were all the same: bullies with very little imagination, but a shitload of energy for their bizarrely oppressive passions. It wasn’t worth paying attention to with my last bit of life and energy. I wasn’t going to fade out of existence while absorbing that hogwash.
Besides, I’d been distracted by what might be a hallucination. I’d never been injured like this before. Maybe hallucinating was a part of things. But I was certain that something was moving in the river. Was it the Ceti? It would make sense that it might be in the river now, looking for me.
If I could lure it onto the riverbank, it might be able to distract Cromvale long enough for me to get away for real.
I glanced at my phone. It had been nearly twenty minutes.
If they didn’t have the swords by now, something had gone very wrong, and I’d be better off finding my people and helping them than dying here like a godsdamned martyr.
I dragged myself down to the river and waited.
A great reptilian head emerged from the water, not one of the Ceti, but a sea dragon.
The hallucination was beautiful, a dream, really.
I’d longed to see a dragon again since I left the island.
Four more heads followed, and then finally, Ares Necroline strode off the beast’s back, carrying my sword.
Yes, this was most definitely a hallucination. It had to be. Sea dragons no longer existed near the Three Cities. These were Ceti waters and the two species were mortal enemies, the sea dragons ending up as food more often than not. Still, I smiled at Ares as my vision blurred at the edges.
“Hi,” I murmured as I stumbled towards the water. “So glad you could make it.”
Ares rushed off the dragon’s back, which sank back into the water, out of sight.
Only the heads remained, creating a ring of safety around us.
Yes, this was a divine hallucination. The best my brain could conjure up, I reckoned.
Might as well say what was on my heart. I was surely about to die if I was seeing my sword, sea dragons, and Ares Necroline.
I stumbled into his arms, getting blood all over his wet dress clothes. “Didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier,” I blabbered. “But I am stupid in love with you.”
“Verona,” he breathed as he drew me close, his body warm, though his skin was chilled from the water. “Shut the fuck up and let me help you.”
“She has lost much blood,” one of the dragon heads said.
“Press her sword to her back, where she would carry a sheath in the days of old,” another added.
Was this not a hallucination? Or had the blood loss addled my brain into the kind of creative storytelling that typically only happened in dreams? “Ares?” I whispered, as he held me to him, pressing cold metal to my back. “Are you really here?”
“Yes,” he murmured, awe in his voice as warm red light engulfed me. “And I am so fucking in love with you, too.”
My eyes locked on Ares’ as warmth went through me.
I had been so cold moments ago. Colder than I realized, now that I was warm.
The pain of my wounds faded, and the feeling that I was drained dry receded as something greater flowed into me.
This was not just my sword returning, but more.
Ares’ face was open, innocent in its awe as I rose into the air and floated above him.
“Tanith,” he breathed in a voice I didn’t recognize, so full of love that tears flowed from my eyes.
I was myself and not. He was himself and not. We were both who we had always been, and more. So, so much more. Memories that were not mine flooded me, of a home I’d never known, an archipelago that included my island, but that did not exist, of a race of divine beings I’d never known.
And the face below me was the one I’d been missing for all eternity. I reached towards Amarante, smiling. “My darling. You came.”
“I will always come,” Ares-and-Amarante responded. “But you must destroy our enemy. Chiore’s weapon must be disabled.”
“Yes,” I replied. I was both myself and Tanith. Death and immortal life, entwined in one as I floated up over the riverbank.
Soldiers rushed out from behind the ruins of the National Gallery. Ares-as Amarante rode the sea-dragon, now a hydrae, into battle. I smiled as Cromvale approached me, brandishing the thrysos.
The weapon struck fear into me, but I was more than my fear now.
More than a lonely immortal. I had the love of a good man, the surety of a good weapon, and the power of two gods rushing through my veins.
As my body finished healing, I felt it as Tanith left, watching as she and Amarante rose together into the night, forever entwined, forever in love.
And as I fell to the ground, I drew my sword.