Lucille
Chapter
Fifty-Four
Ronen
I’d never prayed before. Even the act of looking toward the heavens felt forced and unnatural. But I gave myself one moment, ignoring the fighting around me to scream at the Weaver I didn’t know if I believed in.
I will give you anything you desire, but I beg of you to save her. Please. PLEASE.
The words didn’t breach my lips, but they filled my mind and body. They were soaked in my desperation and throbbed with the agony of feeling her heartbeat slow.
“Guard me!” I shouted at Alexei and MJ, and I dove into Rune’s mind.
I had to see what was happening.
And the moment I did, I felt my body freeze.
Disbelief rang in my ears, and a cold hand of dread captured my heart in an agonizing vice.
She lay in Aspen’s arms with Tsal-mawet glowing in her chest. Blood seeped from the wound, dripping down her Hell Squadron uniform to pool in the mud.
So much blood.
So much fucking blood.
At the distance Rune lay wounded, I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, but why wasn’t he seeking help? Or moving her? Bringing her to me?
She couldn’t survive much more blood loss.
Her heartbeat stuttered with each thump.
A beat I never wanted to feel.
A beat that didn’t dare stop.
“Bring her to me!” I bellowed at Aspen as if I were standing beside them.
Rune, help her, I begged. Use my shadows.
But what I didn’t realize until now was that my hellion wasn’t the only one fatally wounded.
And the shadows Rune pulled from me were holding her wounds closed.
Between my shadows and Hadrian, they were the only two things keeping her alive.
She had no energy to help Lucille, and if she tried, she’d die.
Rune whimpered, and I broke.
“Why the fuck isn’t he doing anything?” I raged aloud in a panic, spreading my wings and releasing the wall of shadows around them without a care for the danger.
“Ronen!” I heard Alexei shout just after something sharp pierced one of my wings.
But I barely felt the pain.
Someone—or something—tackled me to the ground right as I ripped myself out of Rune’s vision.
Alexei straddled me, his lightning flashing through my shrouding darkness. My shadows continued to pour out of me, untethered by my restraints.
They sought her.
So they’d find her.
Still, the infected came, unbothered by the darkness ruthlessly ripping apart their minds.
“What the fuck are you thinking?” Alexei demanded, glaring at the dagger protruding from my wingtip. “Cover them!”
“I have to get to her,” I said resolutely.
Nothing would stop me.
But I didn’t need to shove Alexei off me because even if my tone didn’t waver, he saw a truth I couldn’t voice written all over my face.
“Fuck,” he whispered, grasping the dagger in my wing and ripping it free.
I didn’t even wince.
“MJ,” he called, his expression hardening. “Fire tunnel, then up and out.”
His tone prevented her from asking questions.
“It’ll take the last of my reserves.”
“Then it’ll take the last of your fucking reserves,” Alexei declared, rising and pulling me up with him.
The two of us seamlessly took out a large portion of infected, then MJ circled us in flame.
A fiery red tunnel slowly formed, sweat beading down MJ’s forehead. She raised her hands into the air, pushing the tunnel higher.
I waited for Alexei to unleash his wings and watched as he turned to me with regret in his gaze as we both remembered.
“Bring her back to us,” he murmured, lightning crackling in his hands.
I nodded.
Hold on, Hellion. I’m coming.
I gazed up at the dark opening at the end of MJ’s swirling fire.
Do not take her away from me.
Before I flew through the twisting fire tunnel, a massive, familiar water dragon eclipsed the opening.
Water hissed as it dove toward us, its massive body colliding with MJ’s flames as steam billowed around us.
“Ichi!” I bellowed, unable to comprehend why she’d try to stop us. Why she was here and not with my hellion—her squad leader. “MJ, drop your flames. We’ll rip open another gap and hope they won’t fill it long enough for me to gain altitude.”
If a few daggers hit my damp wings, so be it.
She dropped them, and we found ourselves enclosed in an orb of rushing water.
My shadows were two seconds away from knocking Ichi out and letting the infected have her when I heard her.
Ronen?
Her voice was a surprising harmony in my ear.
Lucille? Hope surged through me.
If our bond was strong enough for a mind-to-mind connection, then my hellion was strong enough to pull through before I got there.
Hang on. I’m coming for you, gorgeous.
I tucked in my wings, and I luscelered through Ichi’s water, determined to reach my hellion by any means necessary.
But Ichi stopped me mid-run, her large blade nicking my neck and sinking in deeper while she held me there, her sword tugging on my soul.
“We will all die if you don’t protect us,” she said gravely, her eyes telling me a story I wouldn’t hear.
“No,” I seethed, shoving my shadows into her soul.
But nothing happened.
Ichi’s mind wasn’t a fortress. It wasn’t blocked at all.
Instead, her thoughts flowed with an invisible wind, my shadows blowing away, unable to take root and knock her out.
She drenched my wings in her power, rendering them useless.
“She’s gone.”
I ripped out my Soul Sword, and the pain in my chest lessened.
Lucille’s heart finally pumped with a stronger beat.
My gorgeous hellion would survive.
Lucille
I will give you anything you desire, but I beg of you to save her. Please. PLEASE.
His voice sent a shockwave of agony through my soul.
I had accepted the bond.
He needed my power, and I wanted to feel him one last time.
“Rip it out, and don’t kill each other,” I whispered.
“I promise, sweetheart,” Aspen said on a sorrowful breath. “I’ll keep your cordistella alive and hope one day I’ll be worthy of someone’s love, like I wished I’d been worthy of yours.”
Aspen grabbed the knife.
A jolt tore through my chest and flung him backward. He slammed into the ground with Tsal-mawet still clenched in his palm.
Then he began to glow.
Not the pale blue I knew.
The deep, bruised color that ringed his eyes.
When he rose, wings of living fire erupted from his back, beautiful and terrifying.
He was power.
He was flame.
The first born Seraphim.
The gates fully opened, and demons poured through.
Do not take her away from me.
Ronen, I whispered in his mind.
Lucille? he answered, shock rippling through our bond. Hang on. I’m coming for you, gorgeous.
Aspen detonated, shaking the land as dark blue fire tore outward, consuming everything it touched.
And every silence after, I vowed.
Ronen
The warmth in her voice sent me to my knees.
No.
It wasn’t her warmth.
It was the lack of it.
There was a ripping in my soul so profound that I felt like I was dying—or that I wished I was.
It was the feeling of my entire world, our story, being ripped away from me.
My shadows dissipated, losing their will to fight and revealing a fierce blue flame ripping through the forest in the distance, demolishing trees and everything in its path.
It came with speed.
Without mercy.
Once it hit the Spinewalkers, the infected realized it was over.
Some fled.
Others were unable to.
Alexei knelt in front of me, taking me by the shoulders.
“We will die.”
He didn’t say it with fear, but certainty.
And I could tell he’d go down with me if that were what I chose.
But it wasn’t.
Not for them.
We both stood.
I forced my shadows out, creating a thick wall.
Aspen’s immense flame barreled toward us.
I shoved more power into the barrier, feeling even a touch of my hellion’s. Purple and white flickered in the dark depths.
His flames slammed into my darkness with a resounding boom that shook the earth.
The flickers of her colorful power faded as the remnants of her essence left my soul. I poured more power into my shadows.
And more.
And more.
My feet grew heavy.
Still, I gave more.
I swayed.
Alexei gripped my arm.
“That’s enough. We’re safe.”
I ignored him.
“Ronen!” he shouted, shaking me. “Stop.”
“She’s dead,” I said numbly.
My legs gave out, Divine Wasting setting in.
“Lex,” MJ snapped, some unspoken conversation passing between them that I didn’t care about.
Aspen’s flames dissipated, and still I gave more of myself, hoping to follow my hellion into the silence after.
Alexei clutched the nape of my neck, his expression drawn as he pressed his forehead against mine.
“I’m sorry, Ro.”
Then a jolt of electricity speared into my neck, and everything went dark.
Lucille
Miriam’s prophecy had been right.
There once was a daughter of seven circles. Her mother hid her, protected her, kept her away from the shame of her words. She stepped into a world vibrant with color. Met a prince who changed her life. Met a general who changed her soul.
And found a home.
Some would say the king who ruled over the palace of crystallized ice sacrificed his daughter. Some would say they had no hope. That they had no tomorrow.
But I wanted to set the prophecy straight.
The daughter wasn’t sacrificed. She sacrificed herself to give the kingdom and the people she loved the hope of a tomorrow.
Because without hope, Etan and his council would win.
And I did not die to let them win.
There would be retribution for what they had done.