Chapter 41
SEAN
Battling the horrid impression of a hole through his chest, Sean left David and Isobel in the hands of each other to sprint toward the fight. His body fought for oxygen it already had, his pristine lungs pulling it in, but finding no relief.
At the other end of the connection, David fought for his life, but Sean forced the thought—the panic—away.
Isobel would save him.
She had to.
His pixie comrades needed him as they battled the Indies. Their party was outnumbered threefold, and one of the pixies—Biren, Sean thought his name was—already lay motionless on the floor.
Kiana, another of their pixie warriors, leapt onto an advancing Indy. Sean raised the gun David had thrown him as a man pulled a pistol from his jacket, aiming for her. He’d never shot a gun, never even held one, but David’s knowledge zapped through their connection.
With a squeeze of the trigger, the human was felled.
Trystian disbanded the Indy within. Sean threw himself into the chaos, firing his gun at any Indy who drew close enough.
It only held seven rounds, but it was enough to improve their odds.
Once empty, Sean threw the weapon to the floor and yanked out his knife.
None of the other Indies possessed firearms. A lucky break. Most attacked with fists or knives. Blades carved through flesh, spattering the dirty floor with crimson.
Sean tried to spare the humans. He shifted the dagger to his left hand, sparing his dominant to blast the Indies with Luster. First one, then two more, the humans screamed in agony as the Indy inside was torn from their consciousness. They blinked, confused and frightened amid the madness.
The other members of his party, however, killed at will.
Sean’s mercy only left the human bodies free to possess when an Indy’s current host died.
He thought of the life growing in Isobel’s womb—the one he wasn’t sure was protected by her magic.
With a heavy heart swiftly covered with David’s ice, Sean revised his strategy.
He drove his blade into the stomach of a man barely older than himself. Crumpling to the floor, the man whimpered as Sean sheared the Indy from his body.
He left him there to bleed to death.
David’s ice slithered, numbing Sean to it all.
“Ashanta!” Bowenn shouted.
Sean spun in time to catch a woman as she leapt at him. They tumbled to the floor, his knife clattering away. She scrambled on top of him and sank a small blade between his ribs. A white hot sting seared through his flesh. Sean grunted, twisting and grabbing until he rolled on top of her.
Weaponless, he had nothing except his hands, but they were enough. He slammed his fist into the woman’s temple. Her head struck the concrete floor with a thud.
She blinked, dazed, her body softening beneath him. One more blow, and she was out.
Sean lurched to his feet, bright sparks of pain striking from the knife wound between his ribs. He took stock of the room. Bodies littered the floor. Another of the pixie warriors had fallen, blue eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Sean shoved that beneath the ice.
His father, Bowenn, and three of the pixies still brawled the remaining Indies.
Only a dozen left.
Sean swiped up his knife and dove back into the fray.
He felled one with a quick jab to the stomach, another to the throat, and Trystian took care of the Indies within their bodies.
With only a handful left, he and Kywyn paired up, leaving the others to the rest. They stood back to back, knives out, facing down a circle of Indies.
“Sean?” his father said.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t hesitate.”
Sean had no time to contemplate what he meant. The fight exploded in a blur of silver blades and ragged breath. The two of them moved in sync, backs pressed together, carving through the swarm. His father’s presence was a tether, a reminder he wasn’t alone in this deadly dance.
A blow caught Sean by surprise, but he parried with a strong drive of his blade. Hot blood pulsed over his hand as he struck something vital, and his victim gasped. With a blast of Luster, the Indy was dead and the human collapsed, heaving, to the floor.
Kywyn stood from his own victim, and their eyes met a moment. An Indy darted for Kywyn, but Sean jumped in the way. A fist landed in his stomach, and he barely managed to dodge the swing of a blade. Kywyn grabbed his shoulders and shoved him out of the way, facing the Indy himself.
The fight turned savage. Breathless, Sean turned to his own enemy. Swing, feint, block. In a few practiced moves, his opponent was bleeding on the floor. He turned to help his father.
Blades flashed between the fighters, neither of them making headway. Heart pounding, Sean ran to join his father. They fought as one, like they’d been doing it forever, until suddenly…
A slight misstep on Sean’s part left him open to attack. With the pain between his ribs, the pounding in his chest, the fear for his other half, Sean was too slow to dodge. He tried to lunge away, but Kywyn had already moved—right into the path of the blade.
The knife arced and buried deep in Kywyn’s chest.
His gasp was louder than anything else in the room.
Sean’s entire world slowed.
The wet, sickening noise his father choked out as the Indy yanked the blade from his body would haunt Sean’s nightmares. Kywyn dropped to his knees, and the Indy rushed Sean.
Powered by adrenaline and vengeance, Sean gripped his knife.
The Indy sprang, uncoordinated, and Sean ducked the blow.
In a move he’d practiced hundreds of times with Anna, Sean snatched the Indy’s wrist and twisted it behind his back.
Immobilized, the Indy fought for freedom, but Sean yanked hard, slamming the man to the floor.
The Indy rolled, but Sean was on top of him in moments. He crushed his blade to the Indy’s throat.
Purplish, haunted eyes widened as Sean sliced through the delicate, vital tissue. A blast of Luster dragged from Sean’s magical core and sheared the Indy in two. The human gasped, clutching his throat.
Leaving him behind, Sean stumbled toward his father. Bowenn and the others had the last of the Indies in hand.
“Sean,” his father gasped.
“Let me get Bel,” Sean said, pushing away.
“Wait.” Kywyn reached for his hand. “The baby. You can’t.”
Sean glanced up to watch Bowenn face a single remaining Indy, who turned and ran. Trystian gave chase.
“It’s fine. It’s safe now. Find Isobel!” Sean shouted at Kiana.
Her blue eyes widened as she spied Kywyn on the floor, and she took off to where Sean had left David wounded.
Kywyn lifted a weak hand and set it against Sean’s cheek. “I…l-love you.”
Sean gripped his hand. “No. Don’t. Isobel will be here—”
“I’m…sorry. For everything.”
His heart clenched, like it was trying to shut its eyes against this. “No, Dad. Stop.”
“You”—Kywyn coughed, staining his lips red—“are…the Light, Sean. Never forget.”
Sean took his father’s face in hand. His father, who he hadn’t known long enough to lose. His father, who was the only remaining blood he had left.
“Just hold on,” he whispered.
But David must have taken Isobel somewhere well-hidden because Kiana didn’t return.
“Sean…listen to me.” Kywyn took Sean’s hand, but his grip was weak. His breath rattled with each inhale. “Take…care of…your daughter.”
“I will. Of course I will. Just save your energy, okay? Isobel—”
Kywyn gazed into Sean’s eyes, his face lined with pain, and gasped a wet breath.
It occurred to Sean then, in the distant reaches of his awareness, that death was uncontrollable, that even when a girl existed to kiss away the end of life, it could still come. He remembered his mother’s blood spinning down the bathtub drain, and a chill spread from his heart outward.
This man, his father, had become a foundation to stand on, his love boundless and unconditional. He couldn’t die. He just…couldn’t.
“Please don’t go,” he whispered. “I just got you. You can’t go.”
Something hot splashed down his cheek, but Sean ignored it.
Kywyn blinked heavily. “You…are strong,” he slurred. “Take the crown. Be the Light.”
“I’m not the man they think I am,” he said again, his voice scraping against ragged valleys of grief he didn’t want to feel.
“You are not bound by fate,” his father rasped, his grip tightening on Sean’s. “And you are not alone. Protect what matters. Do not bow to something because they told you it was right. Love fiercely, and when your instincts speak to you, listen to them.”
“Please,” Sean said. “Don’t leave. Just wait. Isobel will be here.”
Kywyn’s gaze grew distant. “I love you,” he said one last time, and then the air whooshed from his lungs, and his body went still.
“No!” Sean shook his father’s shoulder, but it didn’t make a difference. His chest didn’t move. His blue eyes stared, unseeing. “No. No! Wake up!”
He shook harder despite the logic that told him to stop, to accept it. His fingers gripped tight into Kywyn’s shirt, and then he was begging.
Please. Please bring him back. Please!
Bowenn reached out, but Sean shoved his hands away. He didn’t want to be soothed. He didn’t need comforting.
He needed his father back.
“Ashanta, please—”
Sean bent over his father’s body and took a shuddering breath. “His body is still warm. We just need—”
“No, Ashanta,” Bowenn said. “He is gone. Come with me. You don’t need to see any more of this.”
It couldn’t be.
His father wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t wearing his father’s blood on his hands like morbid finger paint.
His father.
The only family he had left.
Flashes of his mother’s body attacked, spiraling with this new tragedy, and something in Sean’s soul cracked in two. No ice could hold it together, no frost could numb the pain.
He split apart. A silent plea to make it stop ripped from his throat.
His father had died protecting him.
“Please,” he whispered again.
“Sean,” Bowenn said, gentle but firm. It was the first time that name had ever passed the pixie’s lips, and Sean looked up with scratchy eyes to match his stare. “You must grieve later. We are not safe here.”
Sean gazed around at the fallen bodies, thrown about haphazardly like an errant child’s toys. The Indies could come back. They could bring reinforcements.
Footsteps pounded through the office space behind him, but Sean didn’t retreat. He knew who it was by the shortening of the cord between them.
David skidded to a stop. Blood had soaked through his shirt, but he appeared unharmed. His stare landed on Kywyn, and though his face remained blank, the connection inside wrenched hard, ripping away a portion of Sean’s grief to entomb in David’s heart. “No,” he whispered.
Isobel approached more slowly. She gasped at the scene, and her eyes filled with tears. “Kywyn?”
Sean shook his head. “He’s gone.”
“Braddock and Naerys as well,” Kiana said, checking the pulse of their fallen comrades.
“Aye,” Bowenn said gravely. “We shall carry them to our conveyance on the roadside.”
Sean nodded, moving to stand.
“No, Ashanta,” Bowenn said, staying him with a hand. “Allow us. Take a moment.”
While the pixies set to work, Sean sat back on his heels, his gaze on his bloody hands. His mind retreated to a dark, isolated place.
How could this have happened? What should he have done differently?
Both of his parents were dead…because of him.
I’m truly alone now, he thought.
No, whispered a voice through a magical bond in his chest. You’re not alone.
Sean lifted his gaze to find that steady green.
David’s face remained unlined, his mouth a straight line, but the connection was not so stoic.
It sprouted new vines, steel-coated, drawing them closer together despite the yards that separated them.
The unbreakable tie that bound them held Sean steady, allowed him the room to breathe, to yank himself from the brink of endless grief.
“Til the end?” Sean asked, voice miraculously firm.
David dipped his chin. “Til the bitter, lonely end.”