Chapter 25 #2
I turned away, unwilling to witness their easy demise. When I passed the bodies, I took the coward’s way and did not look down.
And then as swift as autumn surrendering to winter, we were there.
The war room.
A flash of light—Renn moved so swiftly I could scarcely track him. The guards fell. With one heavy kick, Renn sent the locked door off its hinges.
One of our soldiers cried, “Go, go, go!” and they flooded the space—a place I had never before seen, and did not see now.
Pushing my tongue hard to the roof of my mouth, I pressed back into the cold stone outside the room, forcing air in and out of my chest. My cold hand again grew slick against the hilt of my sword.
I became painfully aware of the empty corridor, tuned into every sound and draft, terrified that more Sestan men would find us.
Death slid, slick, over my mouth. Plunged into me like a lover. I cringed at the sounds of ringing steel and thumping flesh, of gurgled cries and severed screams.
A blow to the hip on Renn; it echoed in my own. Dull and hard, not piercing the flesh. Gods protect him. Help us. Help him.
Something like furniture breaking near the ruined door made me cringe and duck instinctively. I held my sword ready, scanning the corridor—
Gasped as the mimicry of a cold knife slid between my ribs, carving me from just under my armpit to my breast. Shock pebbled, but pain took over quickly, sharp and hot.
Renn!
I rushed to the door, taking in everything at once.
The war room was larger than I’d pictured.
Longer than it was wide, with great triangular windows cut into the stone of the far wall, large enough to let in light, high enough to be difficult to breach.
A giant table, meant to take up the center of the room, had been cast onto its side and knocked askew.
Blood-spattered papers and maps littered the stone.
No carpeting. And bodies. Red uniform, blue uniform, all of them fallen, all but Renn and—
Nicosia.
The sight of the Allmaster slammed into me like a battering ram.
Memories of him had begun to feel more like a nightmare than anything substantial, and yet here he was, flesh and bone, terror and horror.
For half a breath, I found myself again in Rodsfell, unable to move from the soul-lashing to that tree, this viper walking circles around me, playing with his food before devouring it whole.
Renn bled from his side, breathing hard, a sword—one of Sestan make—in each hand.
Nicosia, appearing uninjured, crouched, ready for an oncoming attack. But the blood on his clothes—not all of that was from attacking soldiers. Renn had hurt him. The bastard had merely healed himself.
Great wings of light sprouted from Renn’s back; he soared up toward the high ceiling before diving—
A wet cough to my right.
I spun. A man in red reached weakly toward me—the same Renn had appointed to keep an eye on me.
Dropping to my knees, I clutched his face and dowsed into a realm riddled with death’s shadows, his lumis a cabin with a dirt floor. In the center, a single bed with a badly cracked frame. The mattress was torn, hay spilling out, and blankets and pillows littered the floor.
I went first for the frame, reconnecting its splinters, pouring in magic to glue it into place. I imagined the craft as a breeze and sent it to gather hay and tuck it away, then circled my finger to mimic stitches to reseal the mattress.
The shadows lightened. I grabbed the blankets and threw them on the bed, imagining great ethereal hands smoothing them for me. Then the pillows.
I returned to the war room as glass shattered behind me, hard enough that little shards of it lodged in my hair.
“Go to the donjon,” I urged, pulling him up. “Get help.”
He nodded and launched to his feet, racing for the door—
A dagger flew into his back, and the phoenix dropped before breaking the threshold.
I gaped, frozen for a second before whirring around to see his hateful face, his venomous green eyes shifting to me. The subtlest hint of surprised recognition flashed there before my husband slammed Nicosia into the wall.
Several things crunched with the impact.
And yet as Renn moved to strike again, he couldn’t. His body had become plastered to Nicosia’s, keeping the king inside Renn’s reach. Renn growled and tried to beat at him, sliced open the Sestan king’s calf with the tip of his sword, but the close quarters made it impossible to do serious damage.
Soulbound. All the while, Nicosia healed himself.
Healed. Pain blazing across my ribs, my hip—
Jumping the table, I bolted toward Renn, feeling his alarm before he turned to look at me. “No—”
I grabbed his neck and fell into the realm of baubles. General Cuplend was right—I knew it better than any. Found the broken baubles immediately and eased them back together, re-forming them like a puzzle I’d done a thousand times—
Renn shoved me, breaking our connection just as Nicosia withdrew the soulbinding and barreled into him, knocking them both to the floor. I felt the impact of stone on Renn’s shoulder blades, felt the tip of a knife piercing near my navel, dragging upward, as Renn pushed it away.
Renn kicked out, dislocating Nicosia’s leg. Nicosia took it with a grunt, his hands hooked in Renn’s hair—
He was going for Renn’s lumis.
Again.
The image of an ethereal room filled with nothing but shards whipped across my memory. A broken man on a couch, one who wept the first time he walked outside by his own strength.
On my feet, I launched myself at Nicosia, latching on to his back, anchoring myself with one hand around his neck, the other clawing onto his ear.
I dowsed, too.
The basalt wall, similar to mine, still guarded his lumis. I tore at it, wringing magic from myself and into it. It didn’t disintegrate so easily, now. Each blow took out a little less without Ursa’s strength—
“Why is it so smooth?” I asked my mother as I crouched at the edge of the stream, cool spring water licking the toes of my boots. “The rocks in the garden aren’t smooth and pretty like this.”
“The water brings out the colors.” She picked out a stone and traced its edges with her finger.
“These ones have been in the water a long time. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The water washes over them constantly, again and again, taking off their edges and corners. That’s what makes them so lovely. ”
I stepped back from Nicosia’s wall and summoned a storm.
I molded magic as whipping rains, as ice-laden winds. Imagined overflowing riverbeds and waterfalls beating across the wall from all sides and angles. Basalt chipped and cracked, its edges growing soft until it seemed I might fit my fingers in and pull the shell away—
Nicosia swung his elbow, striking me in the mouth.
His lumis ripped away from my hands as I flew back, copper pooling around my tongue, stone bruising my tailbone.
I’d been so utterly focused on his lumis I hadn’t noticed the way my bones—Renn’s bones—had begun to crack, or the sharp pains bursting in my gut—
Grabbing Nicosia’s other arm, Renn flung him bodily across the room, but not before Nicosia’s eyes locked on the great pearl hanging from my wedding pendant—a gem loosed from my collar.
Nicosia crashed into the far wall, something that could have killed a normal man. He hit sideways, his shoulder taking the impact instead of his head. He fell, but so well-practiced with craftlock was he that his shoulder mended almost instantly, the blindness caused by healing brief.
“Nym.” Renn dropped to one knee, pain radiating through the bond in the same places it radiated in me.
Nicosia had broken things in his lumis—things I couldn’t heal on myself.
Standing poured pure agony into my legs.
I limped toward him and collapsed, but close enough to grab his hand.
Golden-bound orbs burst to life before my eyes.
I demanded magic sweep over them like the wind, picking up shards and fitting them into place—
My body moved, breaking my focus. Renn hauled me behind him as Nicosia approached us, perfectly healthy, his lithe body moving like a predator’s, making me think of the wolves in the wood.
The Allmaster smiled.
“I think I understand now.” A dampened delight edged the words and flared in his eyes.
In this lighting, they looked so much like Renn’s.
“Why you wouldn’t accept all I could offer you.
Why you’re limping so badly when I broke his leg.
” A slight chuckle, and his countenance darkened.
“But I want to see exactly how the magic works.”
He lunged, but not for Renn.
For me.
He snatched my hair and wrenched me away from Renn, popping my neck; I gasped as a dagger slid easily into my side, my skin, my intestines. Flinched when Renn, charging for me, faltered with the same wound.
“Found your little secret,” Nicosia whispered into my ear, just before he twisted my hand and broke my wrist.
I screamed; Renn echoed the sound, not just from the injury but from watching me break. The thorns pierced through our bond so thickly I thought they’d shatter my merlons.
“Let her go!” he bellowed, and never had I heard such hatred in his voice. “She’s not part of this!”
Nicosia dragged me away, out of reach. I dug my heels into the stone, but the effort proved wasted. “Oh, but she very much is, my boy.”
Renn pushed to his feet. Nicosia ripped the dagger out of my side and plunged it into my thigh. My body shuddered at the damage. Renn tripped, feeling every torn fiber.
His weakness. The only balm I had at being his demise was that I wouldn’t have to live through the guilt of it.
“But”—Nicosia ripped the blade out, causing me to whimper—“one thing I want to know before the knowledge is forever destroyed.” I realized only distantly that he addressed me. “What unhallowed trick did you use on me in that dungeon?”
The answer flitted through my mind through the white haze of pain. Ursa.