22. Chapter 22 #2
His mask remained fixed on me. The rest of him had locked in place, rigid, unresponsive. His sword arm shook, muscles straining against an invisible resistance.
A sound leaked from behind the mask. A forced exhalation. Sharp. Mechanical. Like pressure venting.
He adjusted his grip. Raised the blade again.
The strike came down harder. Faster.
It veered. Struck six inches from my other shoulder, the impact jarring the ground beneath us.
Again. Another miss. Another explosion of rock.
He was trying to kill me. His body coiled for it, his arm shaking with effort. He wanted the blade to find me.
Some force wouldn't let it.
What in unholy hell—
The Hunter made a sound like tearing metal. His body convulsed once, twice—fighting an invisible compulsion, a war inside him—
Eryndor hit him like a battering ram.
They went down together, Eryndor driving his shoulder into the Hunter's midsection, slamming them both into the rocky ground. For one brutal second, he had the advantage—weight, leverage, the element of surprise.
It lasted exactly that long.
The Hunter moved like a snake uncoiling, liquid and sudden. One moment pinned, the next on his feet, all that fury redirected.
Eryndor barely got his sword up in time.
The blow drove him backward, boots skidding on loose stone. The second blow knocked his blade aside entirely. The third—
The third opened his shoulder to the bone.
Eryndor went down.
I screamed his name—or tried to. My voice came out broken, shredded from the pain ripping through me. I reached for my swords, fingers scraping stone, still too weak to grip them properly.
The Hunter stood over Eryndor's crumpled form. Blade raised.
This time, nothing stopped his arm from descending.
No—
The rubble behind us exploded.
Dreadscale came through first, stone shattered around him like he'd taken personal offense at its existence. Maxx was on his heels, glamour already blazing and long sword drawn, and Serenya—
Serenya, bless her, had her hands raised, her mirror ready.
The Hunter’s head snapped toward them.
For a single heartbeat, everything locked.
Then his attention dragged back to me.
The moment our gazes aligned, fresh pain erupted from my chest, radiating out through my entire body. My Griefweaver Mark flared so violently it stole my breath, white heat ripping through me, trying to tear its way out.
The Hunter staggered.
His sword arm spasmed. The blade dropped an inch, then jerked back up, then froze midair like it had struck an invisible wall. His body convulsed, sharp and brutal, metal rattling as if a caged animal inside him was trying to rip itself free.
A sound tore out of the mask.
A fractured, choking burst of noise—cut off mid-force.
He took a step toward me. Dreadscale drew up beside me, axe raised.
The Hunter tried to take another step. It was misaligned. Like the ground no longer agreed with him. It reminded me of when the Veil glitched and reality tore in and out violently.
The air around him warped. Shuddered. His outline blurred, not fading so much as slipping, like reality was rejecting the shape he was trying to hold.
His “gaze” stayed locked on me, fixated, and one more convulsed shudder ran through his body, rattling the metal.
Then—a sound like a whip cracking against the sky.
The air where he stood split open. A tendril of the Nullatheon tore through the world, revealing the same static-colored void that had swallowed the Dead Zone. It hung there for three heartbeats—a wound in the air itself, pulsing with that familiar, sickening absence—before snapping shut.
He was gone.
"Where—" Maxx's voice cracked. "Did he just—"
"Eryndor." I was already crawling toward him, shaking, barely upright. "Eryndor, are you—"
"I'm fine." Blood pooling beneath him said otherwise. He was already trying to sit up.
Serenya shoved him flat.
"Stay down." She dropped beside him, pulling bandages from her pack. "The wound is deep. You'll heal, but not if you bleed out first."
"The Hunter." Eryndor's eyes were still on the empty space. "Did the Veil take him or did he—"
"I don't know." Dreadscale hadn't lowered his axe. His gaze swept the ridgeline, the pass, the rubble. Waiting for the air to crack open again. "I've never seen the Nullatheon do that. Not to a person."
Did it take him? Or did he use it?
The questions circled, but Eryndor was bleeding and the Hunter was gone—for now—and that had to be enough.
He turned back to me and held my gaze.
"The rune."
"I saw it."
The same rune. The same brand the King had used to make Eryndor into a weapon. We both knew what that mark cost the person wearing it.
"He is not acting freely." Eryndor's voice was steady despite the grey in his face. "The King holds his will."
I thought about the blade going wide. The trembling arm. The sound of baffled rage when he couldn't make himself strike true.
"He couldn't hit me." I said it slowly. "He tried. Over and over. The blade just... wouldn't land."
Eryndor's expression flickered. "I saw."
"Command runes don't do that." Dreadscale hadn't stopped scanning the ridgeline, but his voice was heavy.
"I've seen the King's slaves before. They follow orders.
They kill efficiently. They don't—" He paused.
"They don't move like that. Fight like that.
No fae does. Whatever's controlling him, it's more than a rune. "
More than a rune.
Maxx had positioned himself at the mouth of the pass, watching for signs of return. The dust was settling around us, revealing the full scope of the destruction—the rubble wall, the shattered stone, the blood.
He came for me. Killed his own soldiers for slowing him down. Separated us. Did everything right.
And still couldn't finish it.
Something was driving him forward. Something else was holding him back. Two forces ripping him apart from the inside, and I was standing in the middle of the wreckage.
Serenya's hands worked on Eryndor's shoulder. Maxx cracked a joke I didn't hear. Dreadscale stood guard like stone.
I kept seeing it. The tremor in his arm. The confusion palpable even through the mask. The way his body had fought itself just to keep me breathing.
What are you?
And why can't you kill me?
The smart thing was to stop asking. Curiosity was a good way to end up dead.
But my hand kept drifting to my chest, pressing against the mark that still hummed with the echo of what I'd felt.