Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Thyra
Sharp pain strikes through my neck, shooting down my spine as Antony’s fangs drive deep.
My knees buckle and my head swims, the fight draining out of me along with my blood, a raging torrent emptying me of all hope.
An endless moment.
My heartbeats push my blood to his mouth. A betrayal of my heart against my body and my life.
Just as I’m about to black out, a sudden tearing sensation leaves me unanchored, teetering on the spot.
Antony jolts away from me, his arms flying wide, releasing me, his breath seething, but his eyes…
Draining of darkness and returning to savage green, widening behind the strands of his black hair.
His whisper crashes through my hearing. “Thyra—”
A second later, with a ferocious shriek, Azul crashes into him, knocking Antony away from me in a frenzy of feathers and talons.
I’m left standing free and clear of restraint, mentally screaming at myself to move. To run.
But blood now flows down my neck from what must be open puncture wounds, a strong enough stream that my legs are giving way.
Slapping my hand against my throat, pressing as hard as I can, and willing my weakened arms and legs to work, I fight to stay lucid, fight to stumble to the other side of the tunnel, where I can brace against the rock and keep myself upright.
Now behind me, Antony gives a furious shout, but he’s obscured behind Azul’s attacking body, the sounds of their struggle turning my stomach. The tearing. Ripping. Of skin or feathers or maybe both.
I take three stumbling steps before I collapse against the rock wall, nearly sliding down it before I force my legs to straighten.
Lurching forward, I set one foot in front of the other, somehow stumbling ten more steps, all while it’s impossible to stop the blood flowing down my neck, the warm liquid continuing to flow, seeping through my fingers, leaving me barely able to think.
Azul shrieks. And then—
Thud.
I shouldn’t risk looking back, but fear turns my head, my focus dragged to the giant eagle.
One of Azul’s wings spreads across the tunnel floor while his body slumps to the ground, his head lowering to the rock.
I want to run to him, help him, but through the darkness, his gleaming, red eyes are still open, and he glares at me. Glaring even as his eyelids begin closing.
Azul…
He’s fallen between Antony and me, his body creating an obstruction that will give me a few more seconds to get away.
I tear my gaze from Azul’s, one hand remaining pressed to the tunnel wall, the other clamped around my throat as I push myself to move toward the tunnel’s exit.
One blurred step in front of the other.
Even if I’m moving toward my end.
A terrible death waits for me within the darkness outside this corridor.
Already, the vampyrs are closing in around the distant opening, edging into it, crying for blood.
“Blood.”
“It comes to us!”
“We will feast.”
Their gleeful laughter skitters through the air.
They’ll tear every exposed part of my body from me. My right arm, my left hand, my head. It won’t matter that Lethian silver covers the rest of me—the vampyrs will hollow me out from within this silver armor.
It would be easier to stop walking. To die by Antony’s hand.
But if there’s any part of him that still exists…
Killing me will destroy any sliver of his soul that might still survive.
And perhaps the vampyrs will make it quick. Not like the long, torturous draining from Antony’s fangs in my neck.
A horrifying choice, but better to be torn apart by mindless creatures than destroyed by a man who might have loved me.
A lifetime of remaining heartbeats thump through my chest while my feet meet the tunnel floor over and over, and the dark night yawns up ahead.
One final step brings me close to the tunnel’s mouth, where the swarm of undead rushes forward once more, a ripple of movement surging toward me.
The silence behind me is confusing. I’m not sure how I made it this far, but I can’t look back now.
I sway at the edge of a sheer cliff face. Barely a ledge.
Another step and I’ll plummet into endless night.
I doubt I’ll hit the ground before the vampyrs tear me apart.
Cries of anticipation cascade through them, their fleshy mouths wide open and yellowed fangs bared. “Fresh blood!”
Before they reach me, wind rushes around me from behind, and a form flies past me on my right and out of the tunnel, into the air opposite me.
“Get the fuck back!”
My heart leaps as Antony levitates in front of me, his body like a shield.
Then he turns his head, his commanding form casting me into renewed darkness, and whatever bitter hope was rising within me shatters again.
His irises are too black.
With a sinking heart, I realize I must have imagined the moment when I thought his eyes had turned green again. A hallucination from shock and fear.
He’s naked to the waist, every muscle gleaming, wearing only black pants that perfectly match his inky hair, the jagged strands clumped with sweat and blood.
New cuts rake across his bare chest, slashes that can only be from Azul’s talons, but—my forehead creases—they don’t appear to be bleeding…
The converging vampyrs shriek to a halt behind him, a silence descending across them while they pile in behind each other, filling every inch of air until they form a cocoon of waiting death.
They keep their distance from Antony.
My hand remains planted on the rock wall, my fingers curled around the rim, my vision blurring so badly now that I can barely focus on Antony any longer.
A chorus of needy voices echoes around me as the swarm presses inward.
“Do not deprive us,” they cry.
“Let us drain her.”
“Let us drink—”
Antony’s roar silences them. “No.”
At his shout, they jolt backward, but only for a moment before they quickly crowd in again. Yellowed tongues peek between their fangs while their hungry eyes are feverishly bright.
“You can’t stop us,” one of them croons.
“Not this time,” another hisses.
Within my ears comes the memory of vampyric voices, the first time we flew across the bloodlands, begging to drink.
Let us drink her.
They’d come for me. Not Antony. Just another piece of the puzzle I didn’t put together until now.
He spins to them. “You will not touch her!” he roars.
With a savage wrench, he grabs the nearest vampyr and rips its head from its shoulders, spraying black ooze into the air like inky diamonds.
Sparkling… Distorting in my fading vision…
His roar comes from a distance now, mingling with sounds of tearing, struggling, splattering…
“She’s mine.”
I sway forward, unable to stay upright, trying not to fall, but it’s no use.
Before I can right myself, my left hand slips from my neck, and my right hand slides from the rock wall, both limbs too heavy to keep upraised any longer.
I anticipate the long tumble into darkness. The same fall I foresaw in a vision on the first day I held the Dragonstone Blade. The first day I laid eyes on the three kings.
To two of them, I gave a command, telling them to wait.
Wait.
Wait…
No more time.
My body weight carries me forward, tipping me over the edge, and I prepare myself for the pain of teeth striking and tearing at me while my last lifeblood flows down my chest.
Before I can fall, a quiet arm wraps around me from behind, anchoring me, and a frozen whisper sounds in my ear, bringing with it a melody so calming that the sheer force of it shakes me to my core.
“I’ve got you.”
Strong arms. The ring of steel being sheathed or drawn, I don’t know which. The shimmer of icy-blue snow glimmering as my breath suddenly frosts in the air around me.
For a moment, I’m enveloped in chilling safety.
But whatever new hope blossomed to life within my heart shatters when an icy hand wraps around my throat.
Wrenched against a hard chest, my head tipping back, I catch sight of heartless eyes so pearly gray, they could be made of stone.
Razor-sharp cheekbones, pointed ears behind which icy-white hair is tucked, forbidding lips.
An ethereal face that belongs…
Not in this world.
With my last conscious breath, I inhale the deadly scent of winter before darkness takes me.