28
Raiden
Move, Raiden! Move now!” Kordelia yelled over the torrent of cannons, black powder exploding in a rhythmic sequence. Rain battered his skin, the heavens cracking open as the gods’ outrage threatened to submerge the very world they’d created.
“I’m not leaving them behind!” Raiden vaulted over the ship’s railing, his knees slamming into the blood-stained shore of Aldara. Or was it the sand? Red was all he could see, an expanse of coarse droplets of blood.
They’d been ambushed. Someone had told the empire they were coming. A last, desperate attempt of rescuing rebels from the Silent Tundra, but once they’d arrived at a quiet port within Scarlet Bay, the Blackstone’s ships had emerged.
All twenty of them, against their two Galenite warships.
“We’re under fire! Get back now!” Kordelia crashed into the railing, glaring down at him. Her long, wet, white hair whipped within the storm, lightning crackling across the grey sky. Raiden trudged through the sand, slowly turning into sludge as the deluge continued.
“We leave no soul behind,” he voiced into her mind. Her anguished scream in response was chilling as a cannonball soared past, splintering the dainty port deck in two.
Fires raged in the market stalls, the earth crumbled and split, air was laden with smoke, and the rain came down like shards of ice. The gods were angry.
Raiden coughed, reaching out as branded rebels ran towards him, their clothes soaked and torn, burns lacing their arms as they screamed. Children stumbled and tripped, and Raiden’s magic rushed to their aid, his power supporting their spindly legs, helping them race to the ship.
“Hurry! To the ladder!” He aided as many as he could, his infinite well slowly becoming finite as he used every drop in his arsenal to propel them up the side of the warship. White sails billowed, stained black with debris.
“Thank you! Thank you!” a female sobbed, her bloodied hands clasping onto his flight suit, her tears blending in with the rain streaking clear tracks down her dirtied face. She was gaunt, haggard, and Raiden blanched at the fresh, bloodied brand on her forehead. A four-pointed star banded together.
The fucking empire.
He exhaled slowly, crisp cool air brushing against it and her eyes shuttered, her relief palpable as he soothed the sickly burn.
“Go, we must leave,” he ordered, and she scrambled up the ladder, the last rebel spared.
“Raiden! Fucking get up here!” Kordelia’s command grated him, and he spared a final glance back to the quaint village. Barely a few houses, mostly market stalls, and a fishery. Beyond was the expanse of the desert, a tidal wave of brilliant red dunes.
As he hooked onto the ladder, the warship creaking away from the shore, a wail cut through the storm.
No. Please, no.
A young child stumbled from the fires, their thin clothes shredded, their blonde locks sodden. She cried, reaching out for the ship, a small toy clutched in her chubby hand. A brand marked her tiny forehead and his heart plummeted.
Raiden leapt.
A cannon fired.
“No!” Kordelia bellowed, a wave of choppy ocean ascending towards him.
Raiden soared, the last dregs of his power lifting him over the cannon ball, his determination to save the child overwhelming him.
He would save them all. He had to save them all.
The child shrieked as Raiden opened his arms, wrapping himself around her. This was going to fucking hurt.
In an instant, the port exploded, wood shattering around them, burning debris cascading. Raiden roared through the pain, his power forming a barrier as the child cried in his arms, her tiny fingers grabbing onto him so hard they pinched.
His defensive magic was nowhere near as good as Aerion’s, but Raiden weathered the wood biting into his back.
As the chaos settled, Raiden unfurled, the child shivering in his arms. Without wasting a second, he sprinted back to the shoreline, propelling into the air, and landing onto the deck of Flying Pegasus.
“Gloria! My Gloria!” a female ran towards them.
“Mumma!” the child whimpered as Raiden handed her over.
“Thank you so much!”
He nodded in return, staggering back until the railing supported him. The ship took off, sailing across the seas with speed, as all Galenite warships did. He held his breath until the cannons from the Blackstone’s faded away, until they were a black speck on the horizon.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” Kordelia approached, jabbing her finger in his already tight chest.
“They needed us,” Raiden murmured as his hands curled around the railing.
“We cannot risk our lives for everyone! This war is more than a few rebels in Aldara. We are the only ones who can stop this.” Kordelia’s blue eyes raged, her irises churning like the seas.
“Every life we save is a life for the future. Every life we save is a win against the empire,” Raiden repeated, as he’d always done since Kordelia had become heavily involved in this war.
She huffed, and he did a double take as she rolled her eyes.
Each day that’d passed in the peak of the Galenite War, the icier she’d become.
Her intentions more misguided, her priorities tarnished.
Barron, acting as Admiral Darkon’s replacement, had become the singular in her life.
All she could talk about, all she could focus on, was his death.
“We cannot help those who cannot help themselves. Barron has everyone in his pocket, we can’t trust anyone outside of Galen,” Kordelia spoke with finality. This was her new truth.
“They’re human! Who else is going to help them? Mages have been rounded up for slaughter, we’re some of the last ones left.” Raiden flinched at the coldness in her stare.
“Perhaps if there were less humans in this world, there would be less death.” Her eyes narrowed on the rebels quivering around the main mast. “I’ll be questioning them before we return home.
Any of them could be a spy.” She walked away without another word to the quarterdeck where Aryn hovered, his golden stare pinned to Raiden.
He swallowed the sickening fear down until it was locked away, as his love took her place at the helm. The admiral of the Galenite fleet. Thunder rumbled, greeting the lightning flashing in the dark and gloomy sky, and Raiden’s power quivered in return.
A dark shadow leered behind Kordelia, a glint of purple eyes and thick black talons clawing at her waist. Raiden lurched, lightning breaking again. As the bright flash faded, the shadow vanished, leaving Kordelia Jones alone, sailing them home to Galen.
Kora had slept the rest of the day. She’d summoned too much magic all at once, even channelling water from the far-off river running from the Aurora Gap to the ocean through the nearby forest. It was an impressive feat, but had left her back to square one in recovering her full strength.
Raiden stretched, his spine cracking as he shifted on the stool beside the bed in the infirmary.
He rolled his shoulders, the cries of innocents haunting him from his dream last night.
Aerion had deemed it better for Kora to be placed under a twenty-four-hour watch, but Raiden’s blood silently simmered at the figure in the bed next to her.
Erick fucking Cadell had seen better days.
Bruises mottled his wan skin, now faded to yellow, and the slash on his head was a wrecked mess of scabs, scar tissue, and stitches.
His chest rose with shallow breaths, and Raiden imagined how easy it would be to release his air, to deprive his lungs of the essence of life.
Raiden rubbed the ever-present ache in his chest that he couldn’t shift since Talmon Island. A ring shot through his ears and he hunched over, focusing on Kora’s own breathing, how every inhale was a gift.
“If you kill him, she will kill you.” Aryn sat down on the other side of Kora’s bed. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and dark circles lined Aryn’s luminous eyes. The infirmary was grand, with a towering ceiling interspersed with columns hand-crafted from the foundations of the earth beneath Windspire.
Low-hanging black chandeliers hung from the ceiling in a straight row, casting a sombre glow on the smoothed walls, cascading through the glass doors of each ward erected within the naturally formed caverns.
Built beneath the castle, the infirmary spanned the length of it, also doubling as a shelter in case of another full-scale invasion.
“I could blame it on you,” Raiden joked. Almost.
A light sheen of sweat coated Kora’s skin, and her fingers fluttered in her sleep as her brow furrowed. Uncomfortable heat rose within Raiden as Erick’s breathing turned ragged, and he wiped his own sweat from the back of his neck.
“I’ve made my peace with Erick,” Aryn sighed as he inspected Kora, his hands swift and methodical as he checked her pulse, her temperature, and her breathing. “His morals are true now, however his past still haunts him.”
“Nothing can change what he did,” Raiden growled, glaring at the unconscious male.
“He lost his wife, Rai. Apparently, there’d been a rebel attack on the islands some years before the Mist,” Aryn said as Raiden stilled. “She’d been with child.”
“Fuck,” Raiden groaned. “I don’t recall any attacks on the islands? We never wanted to put civilians in harm’s way. We only fought on the ocean, or at the Citadel.”
“Me neither. But it’s possible. It’d all been such a mess back then.
The empire was campaigning, the islands were suffering.
We couldn’t put the fires out faster than they appeared.
It’s possible one of our groups led a covert attack to push the empire back.
” Aryn rubbed his eyes. “It all blurs together for me now.”
“So, what happened . . . we were his revenge?” Raiden’s anger ebbed away like a slow tide.
Aryn nodded. “He thought it was vengeance for Eleanore. Taking one life for another.” He gestured to Kora where she curled onto her side, fidgeting in her sleep. Raiden’s chest squeezed and he leaned forward, pressing his thumb against her warm browbone until it relaxed.
“I still don’t like him,” he muttered. He exhaled slowly, glancing at the betrayer. Erick’s chest rose in time, slow and deep. Raiden winced as his mind dizzied momentarily, the heat overcoming him notching up a couple degrees.
“You don’t like anyone,” Aryn chimed, twiddling with his bowstring as his eyes bore into Kora.
“How much does she know?” Raiden asked quietly. There was still so much to unpack with the Huntress, for her to understand the gravity of her role within the islands—within Raiden’s world.
“Nothing. Erick hid her well, he also trained her well. There were moments where . . . where I thought it was her again. A quick look and it’d be like she’d recognise me, remember me for who I was to her, and then it would disappear in a flash.
” Aryn rubbed his hands on his legs. “Now we know, it was a twisted version of Kordelia underneath, all this time.”
“I fear the truth may break her,” Raiden replied, his stomach hitching. “That last day . . . the history of this place. What we once were.”
“She’s not as fragile as you may believe.
” Aryn pointed to the scar on her beautiful face, then to the ashen streaks on her arms. “Kora survived the Darkoning Trials. She nearly won them. She’s suffered more than any person I know.
Kordelia was strong, she was cunning and calculated in her plans, but she was a cold person, Rai. She loved to her own advantage.”
Raiden swallowed, his jaw working. It’d been ten years without Kordelia.
He’d been so dead set on reuniting with her, on rescuing her from the empire, from the horrors he’d witnessed in his dreams, that he wondered whether his perception of her had warped.
Had he forgotten who she truly was? Did he only remember a version he desired?
Last night’s dream echoed, a chill skittering through him.
“Kordelia only cared about one thing, which was Barron’s death,” Aryn continued. “She may have loved you in her own way, but you never came close to her true love of violence.”
“I . . .” Raiden sighed, rubbing his aching jaw from clenching it too tight. “I feel like I’m forgetting her. Like the version of her I remember isn’t the same as who she was.”
“You were in love,” Aryn shrugged.
“I still am,” Raiden admitted sheepishly. “But with a shadow that I can never seem to grab hold of.”
“You need to look to the present.” Aryn’s eyes flashed, the gold appearing and disappearing within a second.
“Kora has passion. She still cares for this war, but she cares because of the people involved, the people suffering. She wants to save everyone, and she would put her life first if it meant someone else would have a chance. That’s why she took the deal.
In her mind, Barron’s death means everyone lives—including Erick. ”
Raiden pondered in silence. Aryn was right, there were similarities between the two, and perhaps he was holding onto something his mind had twisted to remember differently.
Recalling only the great moments with Kordelia.
Moments in private, with tangled limbs and sweet kisses, the way she laughed, and her hair flowed across her body like pure moonlight.
How they would fly across the ocean, playing with their elements until they were in a cocoon of water and air, shielding them from the world.
He regularly forgot how ruthless she’d been, how cunning she was in her attacks on the empire.
How she’d been prepared to sacrifice droves of innocents if it meant she’d get one step closer to the Citadel.
How she’d often embarrass Raiden in front of his father, ridiculing his lack of title as a reason not to listen to his advisement on strategies.
How many times she’d spoken of humans being less than, scarily bordering on the same mentality as Barron himself.
“I won’t force her to remember,” Raiden conceded. “If Barron has tainted any of her past, it’s not worth the risk.”
Aryn’s gaze softened, observing how Raiden’s body tensed, his fist curling besides Kora’s limp hand.
“Are you prepared to let her go? To accept that she may never remember?” They both knew that, with time, Barron’s remaining magic within Kora’s mind would absorb what was left of Kordelia, eventually dissolving in the void, the memories along with it.
Raiden nodded sharply, his heart thundering with the realisation. Kordelia had been gone all along, and she wasn’t returning. He’d spent a decade in darkness holding onto a mirage, and in turn had been gifted with a new soul, full of fierce loyalty, and gods-damned sexy defiant temperament.
“When did you get so wise, skildaj?” Raiden thumbed the single tear away from his cheek before Aryn noticed it.
“I have an abundance of time,” he spoke blandly. “Speaking of . . . when are you going to tell Kora her real age?”
Raiden drew a sharp breath. “She doesn’t know? Does she know anything at all?”
“I told you, she knows nothing.” Aryn raised his hands. “I, for one, will not be having that conversation with her. Skildaj or not.”
Well, fuck.