Chapter Forty-Seven
Emelyn
I didn’t have time to let the revelation sink in that Atreya was Kade and Rhet’s mother, the Empress of Ember. I had to keep fighting. Fire rained down from the skyships, Woodhaven was burning, and we were losing. There were too many soldiers and not enough of us.
I wouldn’t hold back this time.
“Awataro, I call for you.” I said it almost to myself as I continued slashing through men. The magic in my chest poured out of me. My eyes began to glow, and I could feel the raw power of the Peacebringer take over.
Suddenly, screams louder than the rest came from my right, and when I looked, it was him.
The Kappa was ripping Ember soldiers apart and feasting on them the moment their eyes went wide with fear, while others just started running from him.
He must’ve felt my eyes because he looked to me then.
His sharp-toothed, bloodied smile flashed my direction before he pounced on his next victim.
Dirty water sloshed from his cap as he leapt from soldier to soldier, tearing through their throats and eating their innards.
He was a living nightmare on the hunt, and the sight made my stomach churn, but I shoved that down and kept going.
Kade stayed at my back, and we fought in perfect motion together as more soldiers surrounded us.
Then, Woodhaven lowered their front wall with their earth bending, the ground trembling so roughly that it made my joints crack from the force.
And then I saw them. The golems. Hundreds of them that they had created over the last few months.
They charged toward the battle with Shay and Baron leading them and hope filled my chest. We might have a chance.
But then something clouded my mind. Cold, icy dread coursed through my veins, and I realized I was surrounded by the enemy.
Rage filled me, rooting me where I was, and then I wasn’t thinking anymore.
I was attacking. The Peacebringer inside me stirred with a hunger for blood that wasn’t mine.
It was someone else. And I couldn’t stop it from taking me.
All of me. The monster was unleashed, and I would kill everything in my path.
Shadows gripped me, but I fought them. Whoever this man was would die with everyone else.
I tried to attack him, but he blocked my blows.
He was trying to say something to me, but it didn’t make any sense.
I moved to attack again, and he pinned me and stilled behind me.
I knocked him back and was ready to attack when he took a few steps back.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and then he was gone.
No bother, I had plenty of other enemies to deal with.
I let my power free. Tendrils of water lifted me, air wrapped around me, fire blazed in my fists, and the earth shook under me.
Any rebel that came near me got speared through with my tendrils of water, and if they made it past that, then they were swallowed by the ground at my feet, I moved through them slowly, plucking their lives away one after the other.
I realized the golems in the distance were gaining ground on the field, smashing and destroying my men left and right, but I smiled to myself.
With a flick of my wrist, the hundreds of golem soldiers turned back to dust, and then I moved back to the rebellion soldiers.
I’d kill them all.
A man with wings attacked me from the sky, tackling me to the ground, knocking me off my stilts of water. Refusing to let me mow down any more of their men. No matter. I’d kill him too.
“Emelyn!” he roared. “Stop this! It’s me, Ace!” I didn’t listen to him. I thought it was odd hearing his voice though. I liked the sound of it. Shaking the thought away, I grabbed my battle axe. He blocked my moves efficiently, and I realized we fought similarly. How strange.
I needed to end this quickly if he was as skilled as I in battle.
We danced around each other fluidly, and I thought his movements were beautiful.
His wings so graceful. But I was growing tired of this back and forth.
I swung at him with my battle axe, but he dodged it and flipped the weapon out of my hands, using his air bending to knock it far away from me.
As I was bending it back to my waiting palm, he rushed me so I couldn’t get it back, but I was still quicker.
I grabbed a blade from a fallen soldier and speared him straight through his center.
He grabbed my hand on the hilt and squeezed it as if to . . . comfort me?
Something was off. This was wrong.
My brow furrowed as I pushed through the haze in my mind. Someone was in my head. I shook it, trying to get them out. But they pushed back harder. No. Get out!
“Hey,” Ace said, his voice graveled. “If I’m going to die, I’m happy it was by your hand.” That snapped something in me. I shoved the intruder out of my head and blinked away the confusion.
“There she is,” Ace said as I looked down and saw the blade through his gut, and I was the one wielding it.
“No,” I cried. “No, no, Ace.” He gurgled then, and I pulled out the blade in my panic. He dropped to his knees in front of me. “Ace, ACE! No!” I was still thrumming with power, my eyes bright with light as tears free fell from them.
“ Mai lou kai,” he whispered, and I dropped to catch him as he fell to the side, but then I saw a light in my peripheral that wasn’t mine. I stood quickly to defend Ace because I needed to save him. I had to. But it was too late. Valla’s lightning was hurling straight for my chest.
One moment, it was there, and in the next shadows had replaced it.
Kade was in front of me, his face gnarled with pain, and then he dropped to his knees.
I could hear the sizzle of his flesh where he’d been hit.
My brain was still groggy, catching up with what was happening, but I dropped to my knees and cradled his face in my palms as his body went slack.
“Every time, mei wynsoara ,” he vowed with his last breath. Suddenly, the bond between us snapped like a thread and was nothing but a void. A barren wasteland where I was completely and utterly alone.
Ace was dead.
Kade was dead.
And I would destroy this world if I couldn’t have them back.
The monster inside me screamed with me as the world paused.
I began floating. Every Ember soldier fell as I sucked the air from their lungs or swallowed them with the earth beneath their feet.
The battlefield ripped apart like the cavern inside my chest. The fire Ember used to keep the skyships afloat ravaged them as they all started to fall from the sky, and then Valla was in my line of sight, her manic laughter filling the quiet inside my head. She did this.
I felt the blood rushing through her veins, pumping in time with her heart.
Lifting my hands, I pulled and pulled and pulled.
All of it. Her laughter shifted to screams as I ripped her apart from the inside out.
Blood leaked from her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, and I kept bending it until she was nothing but a pile of skin and bones on the battlefield. Our last enemy was officially dead.
Once the battlefield fell silent—truly, devastatingly silent—I collapsed to my knees beside their still bodies.
As if moving too fast might shatter what little of me remained.
The weight of it all crushed my chest, like I was being held under water with no hope of surfacing.
My arms trembled as I gathered them into my lap.
Their armor was cracked and scorched, their faces bloodied and streaked with ash. Their chests didn’t move.
Glowing tears poured down my cheeks, splattering against their skin, their armor, the dirt beneath us. I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop it. My body shook with each sob, and I couldn’t seem to draw in a full breath. My ribs felt like they were splintering from the inside out.
I held Ace and Kade tighter.
The two people I loved more than life itself were gone.
Gone.
“No,” I whispered, voice cracking like broken glass. “No, no, no—”
The word became a chant. The emptiness inside me spread like frostbite, curling into my limbs, my heart, my soul. I could feel the light in me dimming, flickering like it didn’t know how to go on without them. Like I didn’t.
I pressed my forehead against Kade’s then Ace’s and whispered their names like maybe if I said them softly enough, they’d answer.
But there was nothing.
Just the silence of death. The worst kind of quiet.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. All I could do was cry and rock them in my arms, as if love alone could bring them back. My glowing tears smeared across their faces as I tried to wipe away the blood and dirt, only making it worse. My hands shook too hard.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please wake up.”
I clutched at them like I could keep them here with me, hold them down in this world before their souls drifted too far away.
“I’m not ready,” I sobbed. “You weren’t supposed to go. Not like this. Not without me.”
I felt hollow. Like something had been scooped out of me, scraped raw. I kept reaching for my mating bond, but there was nothing. I screamed then. This wasn’t just grief. It was devastation, ruin. And it was mine to bear.
The Peacebringer pulsed inside me, but I barely felt its power compared to this pain. I had never tried healing while it was fully unbound. I didn’t even know if it was possible. But if there was ever a time to try, it was now.
I leaned over them, placing my hands on their chests. Light surged beneath my fingertips, humming with sorrow and love and the last remnants of hope I had left.
“Please,” I breathed. “Please come back to me.”
I poured myself into the connections.
Not just magic or bending—but everything.
My memories. My love. My guilt. My desperation. The nights I’d lain awake with Kade’s arms around me. The way Ace’s voice had sounded on the battlefield. I wanted to hear it again. The promises we’d made, the battles we’d survived, and the family we’d found in each other.
I gave it all.
"Please," I cried again, louder this time, voice breaking. "Please don’t leave me. Not now. Not like this.”
I didn’t know how long I sat there with light bleeding from my hands, pooling over them, but I was fading. My body swayed. My mind began to blur. I’d given too much and it still wouldn’t be enough.
And then a calloused hand touched my cheek.
I blinked through tears and glowing light. My vision was blurred, but amber eyes looked back at me. Kade. He had his forehead pressed against mine.
“Hi,” he rasped.
I sobbed, choked on it, and laughed all at once. My breath caught in my throat. And then a groan came from the head still in my lap. Ace’s eyes fluttered open, hazy and confused.
“Eme . . . ?”
His voice was rough, barely audible, but I loved the way it sounded. A moment ago, I thought I might never hear it. He sat up.
They were alive.
I couldn’t speak. I wrapped an arm around each of their necks, tears still flowing even as relief slammed into me. My body wouldn’t stop shaking, but they held onto me until it subsided.
“It’s over,” I whispered hoarsely.
Kade pulled me into his arms, holding me like I might disappear.
I collapsed against his chest. We all rose, swaying slightly.
Luana barreled into Ace with a cry, her sobs muffled against his chest as he caught her and held her tight.
We turned and saw the rebellion in the distance, Atreya, Shay, and Baron at the front.
Everyone began cheering with tear-streaked faces.
“It’s over,” Kade repeated, pulling me against his body.
We were alive.
We were together.
And the war . . . was finally won.