Chapter 16 #6
He pitched forward over the loft railing, looking for Elloven, but she was gone.
Jesstin slapped his chest, then his face. Something was wrong... so very, very wrong.
The door crashed open. Sesto rushed in.
“We have a big problem,” he said.
“There’s a raid on Rivenholde! They’ve come in the night, so many of them!” Daire cried from behind him.
Jesstin swung around, looking for his clothes, but most were still in that tent, along with his sword. He grabbed the skintight leather they’d left for him, yanked it over his flesh, and raced down the stairs, skipping several before landing on the ground floor.
Sesto reached under his cloak and withdrew Jesstin’s sword and scabbard. He nearly toppled from the heft of the steel.
Jesstin nodded with relief and fastened the belt. “Where’s Elloven?”
“You’ve been keeping things from me for years, Taven.”
“No. Ellie, no—”
Elloven backed up a step. “You tricked me into this bond because you knew I’d never consent to it. You knew I was leaving. Leaving you.”
“That’s not what happened.” Taven’s head shook through his words. “What did you say... leaving me?”
“You knew they would bond us when we got here.” She was suddenly freezing cold. “You knew all along.”
“I had hoped they might see the wisdom in it and offer their support,” he said in the tactful tone he used when he wanted her to feel like a histrionic woman who couldn’t keep her emotions in check.
“No, Taven.” Disgust burned in her fingertips, which felt full of literal fire.
No, not felt. They were flames. She could end him, right then and there, same as she should have done to Fabrien the first time he’d assaulted her.
“You think I can’t see through you? That I’ve always been this na?ve little kitten unable to survive without your infinite wisdom?
” She laughed a guttural, unnatural sound that came from somewhere deep within her, where her darkness lived.
“It’s my own fault for not standing up for myself sooner. ..”
His eyes moved to her hands in alarm.
She looked down and saw them glowing, pulsing red. “You’re wondering if I would, aren’t you? You wonder if I have it in me.”
Taven swallowed. “Do you, Ellie? Could you?”
“I could,” she said, breathing in and standing tall. “I have.”
“You’re upset, and you’re not... You’re not thinking logically.” His fear smelled like copper, sharp and bitter and unwelcome.
Elloven squeezed her hands into fists. A hiss heralded the quench of fire retreating. She slipped through the gap in the door and into the hallway, swarmed with esguards, but most wore dusk-colored uniforms, not the threads of Rivenholde.
“She’s there!” one cried, pointing a sword at her. His next words were forced through a mouthful of blood. A sword tip jutted from his chest, then disappeared as it was extracted.
He crashed to the floor, his weapon clanging onto the stone as it fell from his hands. Where he’d stood was Jesstin, drenched in far more blood than what had come from one esguard.
Jesstin wiped his sleeve across his face, but it was just as messy. It left a path of crimson from his temple to his jaw, then dripped down his chin.
“Your left!” Elloven screamed.
Jesstin’s eyes locked with hers for a single instant as he spun and arced his sword across the man’s neck. He clashed with another man behind him, locking in place for several seconds before he bellowed and kicked him into the thick of esguards battling.
There was no time to think. She had nothing to defend herself with. Even her chaos was silent in the commotion, in the devastating awareness the esguards wearing dusk had come for her.
“It’s Curia Eversong, the silver tongues,” Taven said as he dragged her away from the melee, but she planted her feet and launched herself away from him. “Elloven, come on!”
“I won’t leave him.” Elloven drew Taven’s sword from his scabbard before he could stop her, but Jesstin was still fighting, and the esguards of Rivenholde were not his allies.
“You’re insane, Elloven Hawthorne. You are not... No, no... Ellie, give it back... Ellie!”
“You promised we would get him out of Rivenholde alive.” She panted, lifting the sword to her side with both hands, her arms shaking from the heft. It was lighter than Jesstin’s but still more than she could handle for long. “If you won’t keep your word, then you’ll get the fuck out of my way.”
She followed Jesstin’s feral cries, wildly swinging the sword as she howled and crashed into the fight.
An elbow struck her head, and she turned, sending Taven’s sword into the side of an Eversong esguard.
He gaped down in horror and then up at her, malice dawning.
She held the sword out in front of her, backing away as the man closed in, still gripping the wound she’d inflicted.
Over his shoulder, she saw Jesstin preoccupied with two Eversong men.
“Did your mother not teach you what happens to little girls who play with swords?” the wounded esguard taunted.
Elloven raised the sword higher, screaming, and crashed it into his shoulder, where it stuck. He screeched and she jerked to free it, but he writhed away, taking the weapon with him.
She charged after him, squeezing through a small gap of men. She saw Jesstin again. He was looking right at her, whipping his head at her furiously, yelling something she couldn’t hear.
She tried to read his lips, but all she caught was behind before her breath collapsed through a sting of pure fire in her chest. She whimpered, rasping as she gaped in horror at the blood blooming across her dress—
The hallway spun until she was staring at the ceiling.
“Move, move!” Taven swatted his way toward Elloven. He’d watched, helpless, as an esguard ran a large dagger through her chest... through her heart. Her heart. His heart.
He clutched his own chest in pain, staggering toward where she lay bleeding her precious life onto the stones. On his knees, he rolled her over, and what he saw stopped time.
There were things a healer could heal, and there was what he was looking at.
Mixed with the blood was a vibrant, glowing green liquid he recognized from his last trip to Rivenholde.
Ryquin had shown him his fel arsenal, filled with concoctions to thwart magic healing.
It was a private collection, available to no one else.
It’s always the poisons I reach for. Simple. Clean. Irreversible. Un-healable.
“No, Ellie, please. Please, maybe the answer lives inside of you. Maybe your chaos can fix what I cannot. Please.” Taven turned her head, tried to pass his magic to her, but it was as though she had a thick shield around her. “Ellie!”
Jesstin dropped beside them, bathed in death. There wasn’t time to fight with him. Taven watched through a hollow void of devastation as Jesstin’s bloody, shaking hands slid over her cheeks. “Don’t do this. Don’t go, El. Don’t leave, I didn’t mean... I didn’t mean...”
“You... were... right.” Blood bubbled from her lips, every word a greater struggle than the last. “Leave, Jess. Go before they...”
Elloven died mid-sentence. It happened so fast, Taven struggled to believe there wasn’t some other explanation for her complete stillness, but he didn’t just see the bond tearing him in half as it left him, he felt it.
Taven crashed onto his ass, stunned immobile.
“NO!” Jesstin reared back and howled the word again through his teeth.
He stared down at her, his chest heaving and his throat jumping in a violent swallow, and hurdled to his feet with a visceral roar.
He charged back into the fight like a rabid bear, slashing and thrashing like he was ready to join her in the netherworld, so long as he took them all with him.
Taven knew he should help him, but he preferred to sit right where he was, remembering the first time he’d ever seen Elloven’s golden-red hair catch the sunlight on a springtide morning, and had known it belonged to him and only him.
The Virtue and the Vixen Volume 2 awaits.