Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Antony
What grace is this?
After everything I’ve done. The blood I’ve spilled. The lives I’ve taken. The hurt I caused Thyra.
How can my mother be alive?
How can she be here?
Maxim draws to an abrupt stop opposite me, his arms closing more tightly around the fae-shaped bundle he’s carrying.
But I need proof. I need to beat back the sudden fear that I’m wrong.
“Show me her face,” I demand. “I need to see her.”
Even if her light scorches my vampyric flesh.
I’m prepared for Maxim to fight me, but his response is quiet. “It’s her, Antony. It’s Aeliana Vividari.”
My fangs descend, and I take a deliberately threatening step toward him, far easier now that the light is diminished to a gentle beam from the open end of the hide. “How do you know?”
“Because I saw her once.” Bright starlight continues to play across my vision as Maxim adjusts his hold. “She met with my aunt in secret when I was a boy.”
My lips draw back. “In the Ember Kingdom?”
Maxim gives a nod, difficult to see behind the renewed bright spots in my eyes, the starlight streaking across my view every time he shifts even a little. “I was only seven years old, but I will never forget the face of the most powerful Vividari to ever walk this world.”
I take a threatening step toward him.
My mother’s power was stronger than any Vividari before her. But if he saw her when he was seven, then it wasn’t long before I was turned.
Now he’s confirmed that somehow, she stayed alive. She is alive.
But how?
I scratch and claw at the memories I’ve long buried, the flashes of mindless thirst on the night I was turned against my will, the splashes of blood, her running form, the moment she tripped—or appeared to—before she scooped up a dagger and struck my heart, and after that…
I came back to myself covered in blood.
The bodies lying around me were unidentifiable.
Whatever power kept my mother alive, however she came to be here in this tunnel, becoming a source of light in this oppressive darkness…
A source of light in the place I would have had to escape into if the dagger she plunged into my chest hadn’t halted the spread of vampyric poison…
My chest squeezes. My heart had no hope.
And then Thyra came into my life.
Fuck… Thyra brought me right to this tunnel. The first time I ever ventured inside the bloodlands, she led me here. And then she brought me back here.
When I was at my darkest point, Thyra brought me to this light.
My knees buckle and I fight to stay upright, reaching for the tunnel wall, my suddenly extended fingernails scratching against the rock.
Maxim approaches me, mere steps away now, a startling move on his part since I could try to take my mother from him.
Mother.
A word I’ve misapplied for too many years.
A word I can’t seem to speak aloud now, not even at a whisper.
Maxim watches me carefully. “I heard about how your father treated her.” He remains exactly where he is as he clarifies, “Not when I was little. I heard about it later. When my aunt considered that I was old enough to understand. What he did was beyond me. But then, my father was no fucking better.”
He drags in a breath. “Have you ever asked yourself: what if that’s our future? What if this fucking curse will devour our hearts and minds, and we’ll become what our fathers became? Dishonorable. Greedy. Tyrants.”
I’m barely listening, and I’m certain he knows it. I fight my buckling knees, fight to accept the burn of starlight.
I don’t know if my mother’s sleeping, unconscious, or in some kind of hibernation.
She may never wake up.
Maybe I did kill her.
Maybe a final surge of her power allowed her to crawl into this darkness, enter this state of perpetual light, and—
But I can’t know anything for certain, and the questions will only tear me apart.
Maxim’s voice breaks through my whirling thoughts as he asks, “Now that you know what I’m holding, do you intend to break our deal?”
My head bows with a weight I no longer try to fight.
I accept the burden of my past. I accept its heaviness.
I will hold it while I fulfill my new purpose.
“Maxim,” I say with all the fucking dark ferocity of my monstrous nature. “Take my mother and keep her as far away from me as you can.”
His jaw drops, but I don’t give him a chance to respond.
“I hurt what I love.”
He gives me a solemn nod. “She’ll be safe with me, Antony.”
I back away, making my feet move farther inside the tunnel.
Until I realize there’s a big, fucking problem.
“You can’t carry her safely across the ravine.”
He won’t be able to jump the distance holding my mother.
I consider Azul for all of two seconds, but the eagle can’t help. At the smallest blaze of Maxim’s power, Azul’s feathers will catch fire.
If this problem is only just now occurring to Maxim, he doesn’t show it. “I’ll find a way.”
My scowl returns. The only safe option is the one that will be most painful for me.
“I can fly her across the mountains,” I say. “I can take her as far as the southern plain and hand her back to you there.”
Maxim shakes his head at me. “And give you the chance to break our deal after all? Give me some credit, Antony.”
He’s right not to trust me. I feigned sincerity before when I was talking about his burning pants. Although when I got him to douse his flames, it wasn’t all a ploy.
He was only a child when his father sent that assassin. Maxim had nothing to do with it. Just as I had no control over my malicious father.
Maybe Maxim’s right. We’re destined to become tyrants.
I’m certainly well on my way to becoming one.
Tyrant or not, the only way to get my mother safely across this ravine is if I hold her. “Give her to me.”
“No.” Maxim lurches backward and strides to the tunnel’s entrance, keeping his eye on me even as he passes Azul, who shuffles away from the glow of fire already threatening to blaze around Maxim’s form.
I follow slowly, stopping at the other side of the opening.
Maxim’s scowl deepens as he scans our surroundings.
“You barely made the jump when your arms were empty,” I say.
Maxim’s narrow-eyed gaze slides to Azul. “I’ll hand her to you. But only if you ride the eagle.”
My brow furrows. “Why would that make a difference?”
“Because the eagle has a mind of its own.”
I glare at my bird.
Azul gives a snide squawk, bouncing his head at me.
Gruffly, I capitulate, quickly checking that the amulet and the knife’s hilt are safely tucked into my pocket. “If that’s what it takes.”
I catch my breath when Maxim doesn’t hesitate, closing the gap between us. “Support her head,” he says. “Her knees are here. The hide is thick, so it’s hard to tell. Make sure you keep that end open so she can breathe.”
I can’t breathe.
My mother barely weighs a thing. She must be extremely thin. Incredibly depleted. An absence of weight that brings a sudden crushing wave of pain and grief.
My eyes burn. “Fuck.”
Maxim heard about how my father treated her. Surely, he also heard that she died a savage death during a vampyr attack.
But he hasn’t asked. Hasn’t said anything about it.
I try to rid myself of the pain before it shows, but it’s no fucking use.
“Is she—” I clear my throat. “Before you wrapped her up, could you tell if she was sleeping? Or unconscious?”
“She was curled up on her side, arms to her chest. Knees bent. Her eyes were closed. She’s breathing. She has no visible wounds, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Yeah. That.
If Thyra were here, she would know exactly what to say to me right now.
She’d fucking reach for me, press her palm to my face as carefully as if she were holding my heart in her hands, and tell me that it’s okay to believe in this moment.
It’s okay to accept the mercy of hearing my mother’s quiet, steady breathing.
But instead, I’m here with my mortal enemy, an uneasy truce between us that could break at the slightest provocation.
Maxim’s expression is unreadable as he gestures to Azul. “You go first.”
I glare at him, grateful for the distraction. “I thought you’d like a head start.”
“I want to keep you in my sights.”
I snort. “Azul could fly far ahead of you before you’ve even left this tunnel.”
“Not at the speeds I can run.”
I cast him a doubtful stare. “Let’s see if that’s true.”
Turning to Azul, I find him already crouched low to the ground. I guess he’s still getting used to the fact that I can fly.
I float upward, holding my mother safely as I lower myself onto Azul’s back.
Quietly, I murmur to him. “One last flight together, Azul.” Then a command. “After this, forget I exist.”
He nods, as if he’s way ahead of me on that.
In a flurry of feathers, he takes to the air, and I fight to adjust my balance, to enable my weight to settle so I don’t lift off him.
Within seconds, we soar toward the nearest mountain ridge and then beyond it.
Behind us, Maxim disappears briefly into the tunnel before reappearing and taking the jump at full pelt, throwing himself across the distance, reaching the ridge without incident this time.
I humph at his success. He won’t be able to keep up with us.
He leaps from ravine to ravine, choosing the outcrops with the narrowest distance between them. He becomes a blur of flames, the air around him feeding his fire.
He’ll be fucking naked by the time he arrives at the southern plain.
I’m fully aware that Azul takes the most circuitous route, circling back multiple times to make sure we don’t fly too far away from Maxim. I imagine the Ember King scowling about it as he runs.
Meanwhile, the vampyrs stay in the west, but I consider them carefully. They’re regrouping. The way they gather in a controlled murmuration like a flock of birds tells me that many of them have fed. They’re stronger than they were before.
If I weren’t holding my mother, I’d take them on.
Well, I won’t be holding her forever.
Just at that moment, a little of the hide slips away from the top of her head.
Her light burns across my shoulder, but I don’t flinch.
I accept the pain. The least I deserve.
I dare to press my face closer to hers, the briefest contact with the top of her head before I lean back again.
Finally, Azul begins our descent, soaring toward the southern plain, landing lightly on what would have previously been the bloodlands’ southernmost point.
I scan the darkness farther and farther south.
Just as Maxim claimed, the dark column I’m perceiving extends all the way into the Ember Kingdom. Even with my sharp eyesight, I can’t see so far as the towers that sit along that border, but I don’t doubt the devastation that lies in that direction.
I slide slowly from Azul’s back, holding my mother carefully.
It takes Maxim long moments to catch up, but he finally appears on the mountain ridge behind us, throwing himself from the edge and landing at a crouch, a small explosion of flames around him.
He slows as he approaches, butt naked, as I expected.
“Clothes,” he snaps at me. “You’ll find them under the first layer of the hide.”
“No point,” I say. “You’ll burn them up.”
He paces back and forth. “Well, I don’t feel right carrying your mother while I’m fucking naked.”
He has a point.
“Take a breath. Walk it off. Whatever the fuck you have to do. If I hand clothing to you right now—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll burn them up.”
Backing away from me, he smacks his fist against his heart, as if that would make a difference. “Fucking fire.”
The gritty earth melts beneath his feet, and a trail of lava extends from the mountain behind him, marking his path.
My forehead creases as he moves back and forth. “How do you sleep?”
“Badly,” he retorts. Then, more quietly, “Alone, obviously.”
Well, that’s an admission.
Not that I’m surprised, now that I think about it. I never really considered what life would be like with perpetual fire. “I guess, once you got older, you didn’t get to hug your mother, either.”
He comes to a stop, his face turned away and his voice more strained than I was expecting. “I don’t know who she is.”
My brow crinkles. “Why not?”
“My father had a harem. One of them gave birth to me. Nobody will tell me who.” He shrugs without turning back.
“Not that anybody else knows. As soon as one of the women became pregnant, they were all secluded. Nine months later, I was presented to my people. When my father died, I thought the women would give me answers. But they wouldn’t speak to me. ”
“What about your sister?”
He shakes his head. “We don’t know if we have the same or different mothers.”
I keep my distance, wary of this new tension in his hunched shoulders. “What did you do when the women wouldn’t speak with you?”
“What do you think I did? I made sure every one of the women was cared for. Given a home. An income. A place among my people.” His eyes blaze, the fire that was settling down rising again, as if he were daring me to scoff at him. “They are all my mother.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Maybe that was the point.”
“The point of what?”
“Of not telling you. Until you made clear your intention to look after them, maybe they feared what would happen to the rest of them. Maybe your mother feared what might happen to her.”
His fire flares. Then fades.
He stares at his suddenly cold hands. “I, too, hurt what I love.”
His flames finally flicker out.
Crouching and carefully resting my mother across my lap, I reach beneath the top fold of the dragon’s hide, sweeping my hand along it until I encounter material.
Sliding out a pair of pants, I throw them to Maxim.
Within moments, he’s pulled them on.
He reaches for my mother. “It’s time.”
I cast aside my feelings, pushing my lingering grief away, and hand her over.
Swallowing past the constriction in my throat, I make Maxim a promise. “Next time I see you, I’ll kill you.”
“Likewise.”
Without a pause, he walks away.
Sensible. He needs to move while his fire is cold.
Azul rises into the air and glides after him, all three of them disappearing into the dark.
My arms are empty, and the hollow is deep.
My journey must take me east, back to the kingdom that used to be mine.
Before Thyra came into my life, I only loved my siblings.
Now I must go into battle with my youngest brother—a brother I would have once willingly died for.
Fury tightens my fists as I turn my back on the mercy my mother represents. I abandon the loyalty Azul once showed me, and I close my heart to the hope Thyra gave me.
It’s time to unleash the monster I am.