Chapter 42

42

Arwen

I was a healer. And for the last five years of my life, my village had been war-torn. I'd seen death. So, so much death. I'd built up a strong stomach, and kind eyes. A warm comforting voice, which I used often to say I'm so sorry and No, they didn't feel any pain.

And yet every part of me that had learned to withstand the heartbreak, the devastation, of human loss disintegrated as I held Briar.

I could not quell my grief.

Not again. Not another—

Nor could I shake the images that kept scraping across my vision. My mother, lips pale and mouth coated in blood, telling my siblings and me goodbye. Dagan, gray and cold, the light I'd always found in his hooded eyes gone—

Suddenly my leathers and my boots and wool socks and gloves and fox fur weren't enough to stave off the frigid winter chill. The sun was fading, nightfall beckoning to us. And with it, more carnage…

Briar's slender chest shook with her uneven, labored breaths. Her blood soaked through the leather at my knees. Mari's frantic breaths rang in my ears as she held the invisible ward around us, hidden in plain sight among the gnarled, snowcapped trees. Griffin was brushing his thumb over her hand so slowly I wondered if I'd imagined it.

Kane tried his best to stanch the bleeding, but his hands were coated in Briar's blood. There was too much—

And the ice…The ice that Lazarus had shot through Briar's chest had melted, and in its place gaped a ragged hole through her velvet bodice. Through her entire sternum. My lighte had just begun to pour out of shaking fingertips when Briar grasped my hand and breathed, "Stop."

"Don't stop," Kane ordered, his hands pressed once more against Briar's wound.

Fear—that was what laced his stern, unflinching words. For the loss of his friend, but also—

If we killed Lazarus but Briar didn't survive…all of Lumera— millions —plunged into an eternal abyss of poison air, bestial creatures, and suffocating violence.

My lighte delved into her chest cavity, illuminating torn muscle and pulp and gore.

Briar winced, those violet eyes almost gray. "Stop," she said again. A wet cough. "There is nothing to be done."

"Why not?" Kane thundered through gritted teeth.

But I already knew, as did Briar. She'd been around long enough. She understood what my healing power told me back in that tent. The minute my lighte reached her ancient flesh, enchanted to appear supple and young.

"Her body is held together with a spell," I murmured.

Mari's gasp of horror finished the thought for me. She understood, too, what Aleksander had told me about Ethera—I couldn't heal magic.

I could hardly think past the loss that ripped through me. Tears slid down my face and landed amid twigs and dirt in the blood-soaked snow. Griffin helped me prop Briar against the boulder's surface. We had found a small, shadowed alcove between an outcropping of rocks and a handful of elm trees, the few Fae men who had run by looking for us rendered blind by Mari's magic.

But with Briar's impending death…the ward around the keep had evaporated. A spell Mari couldn't do. Likely could never do.

I knew it had fallen as I heard Lazarus's army converge on Shadowhold. Sickening sounds of slaughter rang out. Horses whinnying in agony, boys and men—

"Hey," Kane hushed against my temple. "We're going to—"

"We aren't." I wept, wrenching away from him. "It's over. "

The reality had sunk in the moment our plot to trick Lazarus had failed. We'd been foolish—the answer staring us in the face, ever since Aleksander made his offer back in Revue.

My eyes dipped to Kane's blood-soaked hands as another hot tear slipped down my cheek.

"Eardley," I said quietly. "You need to get back to the keep. To the raven house. Can you do that?"

He knew what I meant. Could he make it there alive .

"Of course. Who do I send for?"

"Hearken Sadella," I answered.

"No," Kane bit out, rage roiling through him like a torrent.

"There is no other way." I held Kane's eyes with sheer, unbending certainty. "Do you hear that?"

Kane fell silent. Agonized cries sounded off the trees, the clash of metal on metal, the toppling of sentry towers…

"That is the end of this war. That is the end of Evendell. Beth told us as much. We have to make the deal."

"Arwen." Kane's brows pulled together in anguish.

"We won't bear children anyway," I whispered, smiling through my grief at the wretched, twisted irony. "Because we both cannot live." More tears spilled down my cheeks. "And while we have no control over our lives, we can at least try to save everyone else's."

Kane said nothing, his mouth a grim, furious line.

I wasted no time waiting for a rebuttal. "Send word to Hearken," I said to Eardley. "The fastest raven we have. Tell him we agree to his terms. Tell him…to send them all."

Eardley nodded once and took off through the snow-packed forest. His urgency—and the death toll yawning before us—was at odds with the late-afternoon sun that glinted softly off his jet-black armor and warm, dark skin as he disappeared into the blur of snow and branches. I hoped for all our sakes that he'd find a weapon fast. He'd never make it to the keep without one.

Raising my head to the winter sky, I tried to brace myself. I'd never be able to take that decision back. I offered a quiet prayer that it had been the right one.

A single arrow whizzed through the trees behind us and we all ducked instinctively.

Briar coughed, fishing with a frail yet still elegant hand through our bodies until she grasped the hem of Mari's skirt. "You," she guttered.

Mari nodded, guilt already gleaming in her eyes. "I know, I shouldn't have followed after you all and I'm so—"

"You were spectacular , little witch."

Mari's mouth quivered until she couldn't hold in her tears a minute longer. She laid her head across Briar's chest. "Tell me what spell to do," she pleaded. "Tell me how to save you."

Briar's chest rose and fell too slowly. "One last lesson."

Mari sat up and clutched Briar's hand in both her own. "Tell me."

"Find Adelaide ."

"Who is she?"

"You will free them," Briar said on a rattling inhale. Wet and waning.

Her pulse was slow under my fingertips as I held her wrist. My lighte ricocheted off the inner walls of my hand, the need to heal so great I worried it would slip out of me against my will. Out, with nowhere to go.

"Free them—?" Mari's brows pulled together.

"They won't know…" Briar's eyes dimmed. Another pained breath.

Mari gripped her shoulders. "Briar…What are you saying? Who?"

But she just reached for Mari, fingers settling on her arm.

More tears slipped down Mari's freckled nose. "Yes. I'll find her. And free them. It's all right, Briar…" Mari started to weep in earnest. "Thank you for teaching me so much. Being so patient with me…never making me feel—"

Without warning, a booming sound tore through our shadowed alcove, shaking the snow from the trees above us.

Cannons—

I dove for Mari. Kane braced his entire body around us.

No, not cannons. Mari—

Mari's eyes had rolled back in her head, only the ghostly whites of her eyes showing, her cheeks hollowing out, her body levitating—

"What's happening?" I yelled over the whipping, swirling wind.

Griffin lunged for her, and after a moment, with an incensed grimace, released her calf with a hiss. I watched him rub his fingers, singed as if he'd plunged them into a boiling pot.

Mari floated higher, lifeless, head hung like a ghost. And then she fell to the ground in a heap.

The wind halted.

Flakes of snow drifted down from where they hovered around her body in a column.

And on the ground—

My own gasp of horror sounded through the woods as Briar's body decomposed before our very eyes. Fair skin became leathery and wrinkled, then paper-thin, then disintegrated altogether. Tendons shriveled, bones cracked. Until all that was left was dust.

The most powerful witch in history. Mari's mentor. Our friend.

Gone, like smoke in wind.

Griffin was already kneeling, scooping Mari into his arms. Feeling her pulse and listening to her heart. When I cut my eyes sidelong to Kane, his dark brows were knotted across his forehead. "Is she—"

I could not endure losing Mari. I would—

"She's fine," Griffin breathed out in a rush. "She fainted."

Kane looked to Griffin in silent question. And then, a rasped "You don't think—?"

"Yes." Griffin cut him off. "I do." He looked down at Mari's mass of curly copper hair. Her serene expression. Her pert nose and all its sweet freckles.

I thanked every Stone for the breath that funneled softly in and out of her lungs.

But Griffin's warm, sea-green eyes…they brimmed with more than relief. Something else simmered there.

"What is it?" I asked, though some part of me knew. And knew in turn that I had to hear them say it. That I wouldn't believe it until they said the words.

"Briar transferred the spell to Mari," Kane said. "The one that kept her young."

About a hundred thoughts slammed through my mind at his words. But chief among them, despite everything around us, was the look on Griffin's face. It was hope wending through his eyes.

Hope that one day, if any of us made it out of this alive, and if they ever found their way to each other, they might not have varying lifespans to contend with.

We had lost everything. Dagan, Briar, Shadowhold, Kane's and my future—

And with the sounds of clashing swords and zings of lighte, only more and more and more loss stood to follow, likely long before night swept over the keep.

But that—that hope on Griffin's face as he cradled Mari in his arms—that was one thing we had won.