Chapter 8 Antony, King of Iron
Chapter Eight
Antony, King of Iron
Air roars into my chest, an agonizing breath defying the darkness that consumed me.
I lurch upward, only to lose my footing and crash back to the ground, my knees banging the rocks, my right palm planted at my side, my ears ringing and my head spinning.
For the shortest moment, a blood-red thread extends across the air in front of me, wrenching at my chest where it’s attached to my heart, attempting to pull me upright again.
And then it’s gone.
Leaving me unanchored and disoriented.
Ice rises at my back, chilling my spine while a black mountain ridge stretches out before me, shrouded in inky air.
Where…?
Where am I?
Another painful breath rages into my chest as I recognize the bloodlands and with that recognition—
Memories roar back at me.
Rushing back in flashes, disordered and chaotic, each one agonizing. More painful are the gaps between them, blackouts during which I have no recollection of what I did or what might have happened.
Thyra’s fearful form dominates my mind, her cheeks pale and blue eyes filled with terror, the image of her reaching for me, her callused palm upraised, outstretched, trying to connect—
“Thyra!” Once more, I try to find my feet, try to shove myself upright, only to end up where I was, my knees kissing the ground, the crack they make against the rock sharp as the buzzing in my ears abruptly stops.
My roar echoes into the unsettling silence. “Thyra!”
She’s gone.
And now another memory assaults me, driving me back into the ice as if it were happening right now, the gleam of Stellen’s sword delivering a blow that pinned me to the ice wall, incapacitating me.
My left hand flies to my heart, where my blood is tacky on my bare chest.
How am I alive?
Stellen’s blade should have cleaved my heart apart.
I was certain it did…
Unless the sword traveled the path left open by the iron blade that used to rest within my chest.
Stellen struck at a downward trajectory. The same angle that my mother used when she tried to end me.
That fluke of fate must have kept my heart intact during Stellen’s attack.
Monstrous heart that it is.
My hands leave my chest, rising to grip my head as I rock forward under the weight of heavy impulses and memories I want to tear apart—shred them, make them not real.
A nightmare I need to wake up from.
I groan against the nauseating reality, a sound drowned out in my mind by the memory of Thyra’s strangled cry. She’d tried to crawl toward me through a snowstorm, her speech thready and plucked away by the wind while Stellen had prepared to cleave my head from my shoulders.
She begged him to spare my life.
A life I don’t deserve.
My hands drop away from my head, and my shoulders slump.
Stellen was right to refuse her. I would not have shown him any mercy had our positions been reversed.
But something saved me…
My forehead creases at the blank in my memory.
Stellen raised his sword for the killing blow, and that’s all I remember before everything went dark and—
My focus snaps up to the ice wall behind me.
Azul sits silently on top of it, right where I couldn’t see him without turning, a location I’m sure was a deliberate choice on his part.
His wings remain folded, but in contrast to his quiet form, his crimson eyes are fiercely narrowed at me, glaring and accusatory.
My head bows under the weight of his silent judgment.
I deserve it.
Aside from what I did to Thyra, I tried to sever Azul’s wing from his body—I remember that part—although the gash appears to have healed, the flesh knitted back together.
His talons scrabble at the ice, shattering a chunk of it as he spreads his wings and lifts into the air, gliding down to the ground in front of me, his glower unrelenting.
I want to ask him where Thyra is.
I need to confirm that Stellen has her. The very fact that Azul is here with me tells me Thyra can’t still be in the bloodlands—if vampyrs had somehow overpowered Stellen and taken her, Azul wouldn’t waste his time with me.
I swallow my questions.
The threatening scrape of his talons along the ground warns me he won’t give me any information until I acknowledge what could now be the most painful truth of my life.
“I hurt her.” My voice is a rasp, my vocal cords strained. “I betrayed Thyra. She gave me kindness. I gave her pain.”
The memory of my worst sin strikes back at me, the sickeningly euphoric descent of my fangs into Thyra’s neck and the warm gush of her blood in my mouth.
The way I’d asked her: is this monstrous enough for you?
Her blood tasted like roses before it burned my mouth, scorching my throat and my insides, cutting across my tongue like knives.
Sweet knives.
A wave of nausea billows through me, and my stomach heaves.
Wrenching myself to the side, I retch onto the rock, wishing I could expel all that I drank.
Nothing comes up.
Instead, my chest tightens like claws gripping my heart, squeezing until I can barely breathe, choking me before the sensation eases.
I drag in a shaky breath. Rise back to my knees. Acknowledge a final truth. “There’s no coming back from what I did to her. No redemption for me.”
The blue bird may not be able to converse with me, but he understands my speech and can respond with nods and shakes of his head.
At my admission, he inclines his head, a firm agreement.
“I shouldn’t be alive.”
Again, he nods. As decisively as before.
Then I ask a question whose answer I fear. “What am I now?”
I test my eyesight, finding it even sharper than it was before the vampyric poison took over me. My vision is unhampered by the darkness around me. Vampyric eyes. As fully powerful as if the poison had completely claimed me.
My fangs descend, their response to my mental call, near instant before I retract them.
Then I rapidly check the abilities that are new to me…
Holding up my hands, I extend my fingernails, checking how fast my claws snap out, their edges razor-sharp, before I retract them.
I focus on the heaviness of the air around me, the push of gravity, and the opposing sense of buoyancy growing in my chest. A sharp contrast to the heavy weight of the black armor I wore around myself for most of my life, caging my body and my vampyric nature for years.
Allowing the lightness to fill my mind, I lift upward, levitating off the ground.
As for my thirst for blood…
My heart sinks.
My thirst remains.
But…not as strong, nor as volatile, as before. The craving is contained. Controlled. For now.
Lowering myself back to the ground, I test the strength in my legs. Feeling has returned to my thighs and calves, and sensation resumes in my toes.
More than the changes to my body, most astonishing is the fact that I’m not mindless.
How am I even remotely lucid?
Why did the poison not completely claim my thoughts and impulses?
And what the fuck caused me to stop drinking Thyra’s blood?
Because I did stop. Something made me stop, and it wasn’t Azul. He collided with me after I pulled away from Thyra. I’m sure of it.
I don’t expect him to have an answer, but I ask, “How am I me?”
He eases toward me, his sharp beak lowered. I anticipate he’ll snap at me and tear a chunk out of my flesh. He would be entitled to cause me as much harm as I caused him.
Instead, he nudges his head to my chest, his beak brushing the back of my hand where I’ve once again pressed it to my heart.
Slowly, I lift my palm, refocusing on the splatters of blood down my torso, sticky and deep red.
A stunning possibility occurs to me.
“Thyra’s blood.”
Her Oracle blood must have stopped the vampyric poison from fully claiming my mind.
It’s the only explanation I have for why I’m in control.
Why I’m not mindless anymore.
But Thyra…
She told me to fight for my soul, and I terrorized her, bruised her, traumatized her, ripped her throat like the fucking monster I am.
“Is she safe?” I raise my gaze to Azul, trying to breathe through the silence as he remains still and unmoving, giving me neither a shake of his head nor a nod.
Sudden, sickening dread washes through me.
I wounded her. Badly. Before I passed out, she was alive. She was moving and speaking. But what if…
The longer Azul’s silence extends, the harder my newly blooded heart thuds in my chest.
I raise my voice as if I could command fate. “She’s alive.”
Stellen wouldn’t willingly let her die. He needs her as much as I do, even if his reasons will be vastly different from mine.
But what if…he can’t save her?
Azul’s continued silence is an answer I can’t stand.
I launch myself to my feet, preparing to race along the mountain ridge in the direction I’m sure Stellen would have taken her, fear driving me forward.
What if she’s already dead?
A roar pushes to my throat, and I lift off the ground again, levitating without effort.
Azul is faster. In a flurry of feathers and outstretched talons, he shoots off the ground before I can get past him, colliding with me and knocking me back to the rock.
Thump. I land on my back, one of his sharp talons impaling my left side, a strike that should collapse my lung but does nothing more than wind me.
“Get off me!” My fangs shoot down, and I attempt to gnash at him. “I have to get to her! I have to give her my blood. I have to turn her.”
Azul’s deafening shriek rips through my hearing as he risks the cut of my sharp fingernails to lower his head to mine and scream into my face.
His forward movement impels his talon all the way through me, pinning me to the ground as surely as Stellen’s sword jammed me against the ice wall now melting behind me.
Azul shakes his head at me, a slow side-to-side motion, his crimson eyes gleaming fiercely.
His intentions are clear: he won’t let me go.
I thump my fist on the rock at my side because he’s right to stop me.
Even if I could reach Thyra in time and fight my way past Stellen, turning Thyra into a vampyr would be an unforgivable crime.
She doesn’t have the Vividari ancestry that I have. She would be condemned to the bloodlands, mindless and starving. Or, worse, her Oracle blood could combine with the vampyric poison in terrible, unforeseen ways. I have no idea what she could become.
“Fuck.” My voice rises as I thump the rock again. And again. And again.
I don’t care that I split my skin with every strike until my fist is a bloody mess and my voice is a choked rasp and the moment comes when I force myself to ask Azul for a truth that could break me.
A truth that Azul has every right to hate me for.
“Will Thyra… The woman I love… The woman who gave me hope… The woman I would fight to the death to protect… Will she die because of me?”