Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Antony
My end comes for me in a burst of flame.
Maxim’s fist collides with my chest, and in that brutal heartbeat, my bones implode.
My skin strips from my flesh, which in turn splits apart.
Fire crackles through the fissures, lighting up my entire body, turning me amber.
I am a fucking dazzling shimmer of broken pieces flying back through the air.
I welcome the fire that will put me to rest and turn my sins to dust.
Then I’m tumbling across the rocks, every burning piece of me clinging to this monstrous frame that won’t…fucking…forget the smell of Thyra’s hair, the sound of her voice, the powerful press of her hand to my face…
Or the punishing taste of her blood.
As I skid to a stop, my heart, constricted with fire, gives a thump.
Blood pulses around my body, a savage push, flushing my limbs with strength.
The flames licking through my flesh extinguish. The fissures seal. My peeling skin heals, and my head rises, my thoughts once again clear and sharp.
I am alive, after all.
Maxim crouches opposite me, his right arm extended, feet planted, his tall frame backlit with fire.
“Fuck,” he says.
He doesn’t waste another second.
Leaping toward me, he uses his fire like punches, flames bursting from both of his hands, knocking me toward the other side of the mountain ridge.
He’s trying to keep me at a distance because if I get close, I’ll tear his fucking throat out.
He succeeds.
Every hit tears me apart, over and over again.
I may heal, but that doesn’t stop my body from ripping to pieces first.
A mess of pain fills my mind, fire cutting through me, my world turning to flames, but no matter how hard he hits me, this body…my body…
Thyra’s blood thumping through my heart…
It’s like she won’t give up on me.
Through the intense pain, I’m aware that Maxim is beating me back along the ridge, closer to the end of the ravine and the tunnel where Azul retreated.
I’m certain the eagle will have sought refuge beside the thick ice wall Stellen created to seal the far end of the tunnel.
Even if the frozen wall is half-melted, it will cool Azul’s feathers and offset the heat waves rippling through the air.
Such intense heat that the rocks around me are dripping with lava, and the distant vampyrs are on the move again.
I can’t let Maxim force me closer to the tunnel. Even though the opening is in the middle of the cliff face now off to my right, the heat could travel through it.
Stifling, suffocating heat.
A wayward stream of fire could be cast directly into the tunnel, burning everything inside.
I nearly killed Azul, and I won’t forgive myself for it. Sickening is the memory of Thyra’s tear-streaked face as she stumbled away from me, covered in blood, daring to look back only to see the eagle with whom she’d bonded lying, near-dead, on the tunnel floor.
If I do nothing else, I’ll protect Azul from the fire.
Taking the next punch of fire, I launch myself upward, knowing full well Maxim will anticipate it and punch me down from the air. He won’t want me airborne where I can attack him from above.
The second his fire knocks into me, I let the fire push me backward, using the momentum to tumble to my left. As far as I can get from the tunnel. All the way to the edge of the ridge.
I expect another fireball to hit me from behind, no matter what Maxim claims about abhorring a strike in the back, but there’s a pause.
I can only assume it’s because he can’t see as well in the dark. It didn’t matter when he was hitting me with fire because he was creating his own light right in front of himself, but I’ve exited his circle of flames, and his eyes may not have adjusted fast enough to follow me.
Particularly because I’m now fucking fast.
Preparing to roll back to my feet, I twist, only to discover Maxim leaping toward me, his arc carrying him high, and now he’s crashing down on me, a silent assailant, his right fist flaming.
He’s right on top of me. As fast as I am, I don’t have time to evade him.
His knee smashes down on my chest, snapping my ribs all over again. Before I can get my arms up, his right hand wraps around my throat.
Fire sears through my neck.
He’s a heartbeat away from tearing off my head.
Certain death for a vampyr.
I brace for it. Fucking welcome it.
Retribution in the form of a fiery end.
Amber fire billows around us, turning everything golden and glittering across his silhouette, but for some unfathomable reason, he doesn’t carry through.
I’m lying right at the edge of the mountain ridge, the jagged rocks pressing into my shoulders, wind rushing across my head.
“Do it!” I roar up at him. “Burn my crimes to ash. End me! But do it now, Maxim, or I swear I won’t spare you.”
My fist is already rising, my fingernails sharp, my healing muscles bunching, preparing to slash open his neck where he looms over me.
Without a word, he sways and tips forward, and it’s only because my other hand is wrapped around his shoulder that I stop him from toppling past me, over the edge of the mountain ridge, and into thin air.
I halt the killing blow, but he doesn’t react.
His eyes are blank.
What the fuck?
As quickly as I can, I push him off me and onto the rocky surface beside me. Now he’s the one with his head at the cliff’s edge.
Crouching, I stare down at him, waiting for him to revive. Any second now…
A memory flashes back to me. Cassia breathlessly telling me how Maxim nearly killed her. She said he had his fist around her throat, he was about to end her, but then he appeared to black out. He fell to his knees. As if he weren’t there anymore.
That’s how he appears now, staring sightlessly upward.
Well. He may prefer to look his enemy in the eye when he kills them, but I am far more monstrous than that.
My fingernails extend, once again primed to slit open his throat.
Just as I swing my arm, another golden blaze streaks around me.
Impossible. Maxim is unconscious.
Then I realize…
It isn’t fire.
It’s energy. Golden energy. The same color as the magic that would streak along Thyra’s arm before she had a blade vision.
Somehow, it’s coming for me.
A heartbeat later, sharp pain strikes through my chest, my body seizes up, my hand an inch from slicing through Maxim’s neck, and then—
I’m on my hands and knees in dust. No longer crouched on the black mountain ridge.
Now, ash swirls around me, and a field of dust extends in front of me. A barren land as dark as the bloodlands, the sky muted with gray clouds.
A dust storm swirls in the distance.
I recognize this place.
It’s just like one of the illustrations in the Chronicle, a magically protected book in the royal library. Thyra had opened the book to a page depicting a field that looked exactly like this one.
She was struck by the sight of it.
She told me she could hear a shrieking sound, and I can only imagine it was the same spine-chilling shrieks now piercing my hearing.
The screams are coming from behind me.
As fast as I can, I twist to the screeching sound, my knees grinding in the dust.
The breath catches in my throat.
“Thyra!”
She’s here!
I launch myself forward, only to hit an invisible force, my legs sinking deep into the dust, bogged down while I push against whatever energy is keeping me back.
Thyra floats in the air only five paces away from me, her eyes closed.
Asleep? Unconscious?
I can’t tell, and it’s filling me with dread, a sensation I shove away with all my might.
Behind Thyra’s floating body, an enormous tree rises up, its trunk so vast that I have to turn from side to side to take in the full width of it.
Likewise, the tree is so high that even when I tip my head back, I can’t see the top of it, more so because ashen-brown boughs stretch out above me, twisted and gnarled, the largest branches I’ve ever seen blocking my view.
The air around the tree churns with gray ash.
But that’s not all.
Shadows move around the tree’s trunk and flit across its branches.
Blurred shapes. Fae, maybe. Beasts, maybe.
A group of forms has gathered along one particular branch—the branch directly above Thyra.
Whatever they’re doing, their sharp movements tell me they’re working furiously, and the harder they work, the louder the air screams.
“Thyra!” My roar barely breaks above the shrieking.
I punch my fist forward, as hard and as fast as I can, trying to break whatever invisible force is keeping me from her.
Unlike the shadowy forms, Thyra’s shape is sharp and clear. A bright spot in the darkness.
Her face is turned toward me, and her hair wafts around her head. She’s wearing a white dress I’ve never seen her in before, which clings to her slight frame, plastered to her curves.
Ivory ribbons slither around her waist, chest, ankles, and wrists, trailing through the air around her body.
She’s wearing her highborn face.
Is she having a blade vision right now?
But…is this where she is? Or am I within her vision?
I shake my head, trying to cut through my confusion.
Stellen has her, but this isn’t the Frost Kingdom, and in the time that’s passed since he took her, there’s no way he could have traveled into the far east.
Assuming this is the far east?
Fuck, but I don’t have any answers.
All I know for sure is that she’s vulnerable, and the shadowy forms working on the bough above her…
My eyes widen.
They’re cutting the branch.
The heavy bough screams louder as it splits halfway, not yet fully severed. The end of it drops toward Thyra, stopping only a few feet above her floating body.
If it falls on her, it will crush her.
Punching my fist forward, I try again to break through the force, pushing against it. I heave with all my might, my muscles tensing until they threaten to tear.
My heart thumps in my ears, straining within the cage of my body. Blood fills my mouth, but I ignore it.
“Thyra!” I angle my shoulder and ram myself forward, trying to make ground.
Another scream shatters my ears.
The bough drops further.
The memory of Thyra’s voice echoes back to me through my fear. The moment she asked me: have you ever grabbed hold of the bough of a tree and forced it to bend until it splits?
She told me she saw this landscape in the blade vision she experienced when she read the Chronicle. She told me she could hear a sound like screaming. She couldn’t see what was causing it.
This tree.
These shadows.
Her vision.
The bough drops even farther, and now the branch is hanging on by threads.
I’m pushing and pushing, and the harder I push, the more my chest feels like it’s tearing apart, the more my mouth floods with blood, choking me.
Ripping me apart.
I don’t fucking care.
I won’t let anything hurt her. Never again.
Roaring through the pain, I tear through the barrier.
As it breaks, I finally comprehend that the barrier wasn’t outside me.
My chest cracks open.
A crimson-red thread shoots from my pounding heart, spearing toward Thyra, the same thread I once tried to cut.
Even as pain threatens to crush me, I run toward her, the thread streaking ahead of me, striking her heart, faster than I can reach her.
I close my hands around the cord because, as fast as I am, I won’t get to her in time.
All I can do is pull on her sleeping body as the branch comes crashing down—