Chapter 25 #3
The moment I thought her name—the moment Nicosia repeated it on his lips, for he had delved into my thoughts—I realized something. My connection to my sister had been so very similar to my connection to Renn.
So very similar.
I acted before the thought truly formed. Before Nicosia might find some way to stop me.
I grabbed his fist, the one closed around the dagger, shoving my nails between his fingers so he could not pull away. Reached through the blind agony of my wounds and grabbed his ear for a second hold.
Dowsed.
And this time, I pulled from Renn.
I demanded strength from the golden threads vining through my heart.
I tugged and jerked, wrenched and pulled from his strength, from the gods themselves, and the magic in my ethereal hands burned as golden fire.
I thrust it into Nicosia’s wall, melting it away like the wax of a candle.
He tried to twist away, but I dug in with nails and teeth, breaking skin as his three icelike pillars rose before me, just as I had seen them before.
Just as I had once re-created in my own lumis.
Beneath the brilliant gleam of gods-touched magic, the Sestan king’s death lines snapped sharply into place.
I struck those first.
I shaped craftlock into a massive hammer and slammed it into the first where a thin, black hair whispered the Allmaster’s weakness.
I made it a hefty spear and threw it upward where the three sculptures met, just off-center near a mark of green, to another thread of death.
In the war room, my ankle gave out as Nicosia attacked me in return, but I didn’t let go.
Couldn’t let go. I pulled every ounce of strength I had, fueled by the gods-touched savior of Cansere.
I swept it out in spinning rings of power, rippling from the ghost of me as a boulder cast into a pond.
With the first, the lumis shook. With the second, the sculptures cracked and darkness welled.
With the third, I shattered him, breaking him as he had broken a babe in his cradle twenty-one years ago.
My half-heart shuddered. Though I did not release my grip, my vision faded to that of the war room. I hit the stone floor, my head barely protected by Nicosia’s bicep as he fell with me. The ceiling filled my senses—it was the only thing I understood. Dark stone. Cold. Distant.
Exhaustion crept into my limbs as death cooed in my ears.
The beat in my chest grew too weak, too erratic.
It hurt, hollow and echoing. My side pulsed, my leg burned.
My bones ached and flared. I shifted to move the anvil off my chest, but there was nothing there but a failing half-heart.
So hard to breathe . . . I couldn’t breathe . . .
Nicosia lay unmoving beside me.
Renn.
A chore to move my eyes, like they’d become clay marbles in dry sockets. He lay only six feet from me on his side, arm outstretched as though reaching toward me . . . his chest barely rising. His eyes closed. His body broken in all the same places mine was.
I didn’t need to see my lumis to understand we were dying. I couldn’t fix it—I’d used up everything we had. There was nothing left to give.
My eyelids fluttered—dark, light. Dark, light. Dark, light.
Two of Nicosia’s fingers curled around mine, sending a weak jolt of panic through my core. Alive? No, he couldn’t be. I’d seen the shadow of death. It pushed me out of his lumis—
The first hard beat of my heart was like an arrow to my breastbone. I gasped.
The second sent warm blood rising through my neck, down my abdomen, and into my limbs. With the third the pains faded. With the fourth, my thoughts cleared.
But this was . . . this was craftlock. Healing. Why would Adoel Nicosia heal me?
How could he know to start with my heart?
Nicosia’s fingers went lax and lifeless.
I shot upright, hissing at the pain in my head, bruises in my hips, a broken rib still unmended. I looked first to Nicosia—to his pale skin, blue lips, half-lidded eyes. A corpse.
Then a whisper, almost like a spring breeze, drew my attention to the window.
I saw her. I swear I saw the outline of her against the sun, her curling hair and innocent smile, her delicate hand as she waved. Her voice gracing my ears one last time as she murmured, I’ll always be with you, Nym.
Tears pooled in my eyes, enhancing the prismatic vision even as it faded.
“Ursa,” I croaked.
But she was gone.
All this time . . . had she been with him all this time . . . ?
Green among the sculptures. I’d seen green—
The softest groan from Renn had me blinking, tears running down my face.
I scrambled to him, injured but healed enough, healed enough, and I grasped his calloused hand and dowsed into his lumis, soothing the worst of the breaks, lifting two orbs back into their golden orbits before saving my dwindling strength and shifting back into the war room.
He lifted a bloodied hand to my face and wiped away a tear. “Nym, what—” Then, pushing up, he saw Nicosia.
The king of Sesta, dead.
“Ursa,” I whispered, new tears following the paths of their predecessors. “Ursa was here. She saved us, Renn.”
Surprise, shock, warmth through the bond. A glimmer of light kissing his skin, disappearing into his hair. “Nym, in the sunlight. I thought I saw—”
Footsteps thundered outside. Renn launched to his feet and grabbed me, ushering me to where I could hide—
But it was the soldiers sent to the donjon, minus one. A phoenix cried out, “Your Majesty!” as they poured into the wrecked war room. “What ha—?”
They froze at the sight of Nicosia.
Renn pressed a quick kiss to my forehead. Later, it whispered. Everything for us, later.
Another soldier blurted out, “Antsan is here!”
My core sparked. Fingers tingled. “Wh-What?”
The soldier rushed, “We saw their flag over the wall. An army of them, heading this way!”
The utter relief, like lapping sea-foam, that spread from the bond nearly liquefied my knees. I grabbed Renn’s elbow to stay afoot. Already? They’d come already?
The emissary had been honest in his promises.
“Then we’ve no time to waste.” Golden light surged from Renn’s skin.
He stood tall, though I knew his fifth rib on the left pained him as it did me, as did his hip and tailbone, the throbbing beneath the back of his skull.
Knew he was healed enough to function but would soon fatigue. Yet such was the cost of war.
“Let’s finish this,” he announced.
And within three days’ time, Rove was ours.
Broken, but ours.