Chapter 44

44

Kane

It was hardly a fair fight.

The savage Hemolichs were untouchable. Wild and ruthless, tearing heads from spines with their bare hands. Drinking the blood, growing stronger…All the while precise Onyx warriors unleashed havoc on the legions of Amber and Garnet men. King Gareth's mortal soldiers hadn't stood a real chance against my battalions . Black, baleful artillery crashed into their weaker, poorly forged weapons. Golden armor fell like marigolds wilting in heat.

And together…an undulating wave of men charged the creatures convening on Shadowhold's gates. Hundreds of razor-sharp arrows shot on Lieutenant Eardley's command, and that savage blood lighte, their sheer numbers —the salamanders were no match for that kind of violence. The Hemolichs used the Onyx men's arrow wounds to strangle the beasts with their own blood.

The salamanders fell within minutes. All of them— minutes.

My chest nearly caved at the onslaught of reinforcements. How Aleksander had come so quickly, I didn't know, and didn't care. They were here. They'd saved us.

A Fae soldier before me, down one helmet and bleeding from his temple, charged, and I swung the Blade of the Sun, grunting as he deflected the blow. He parried, advancing on me. Clipped my breastplate. My shoulder.

Lunging to swerve from another blow, I allowed ribbons of thorny shadow to flow from the weapon and down the miscreant's throat. The Fae choked and sputtered, falling to his knees, his neck bulging and engorging with shadows as he heaved for air that would never come.

War cries at my back, blistered skin across my shoulder healing steadily, I ran for the Fae encampment.

I hurtled past the body of a mercenary—greenish scales already turning gray, long split tongue lolling outward—past torches that had been lit by both sides as the last dregs of sunset muted to black and drowned us all in darkness, past horses on their hind legs, Garnet soldiers falling on swords.

I'd only made it a few more feet when a high-pitched shrieking split my eardrums. The unexpected sound did something traitorous to my heart, and I found I'd clutched at my chest. It was the cry of a strix.

Not Acorn, please Gods—

My eyes scanned the trees above and landed back in the direction of my keep. There, high in the sky, amid clouds and snow and rich, heavy moonlight, was the rounded face of a strix, once-scarred eyes now clear and bright. That low brow and those thick gray plumes and wild wingspan…Shrieking and yowling. Not in pain but in fury—

For in her gnarled clutches—

Were screaming Fae soldiers.

Clawfuls of them.

She was larger than the runt I'd adopted, but just as menacing as I'd remembered—the strix that had birthed my own pet. One my father had won from a nasty Solaris breeder decades ago.

Acorn's mother.

She squawked and swerved in midair, and Acorn took flight out of a broken stained-glass window, shooting out into the smoke-filled night to meet her.

A vengeful grin split my face.

Arwen told me how she'd freed the creature. How she could have chosen to see the darkness, the suffocating fear, but she hadn't. And now, the mighty, healed strix had flown across the channel—the single most treacherous journey that existed—to come here. To her child. To help us.

The two of them shrieked happily, devouring men left and right, and I took off once more, farther and farther away from my keep. Deeper into the night-shrouded woods. Through the gnarled trees, the snow-packed earth chilling my bones, my body, my breath—

The Blade of the Sun solid and mighty in my grasp, I could almost feel my grin as the blade and my lighte worked in tandem, slamming into anyone who was foolish enough to find themselves in my path.

Each whip of my darkness sure and swift and steady.

Each lash precise and lethal.

One such motion sliced through another Fae, already half-ravaged by a shirtless Hemolich drinking the blood from his very neck as he swung at me.

By the time I reached Lazarus's encampment, it was a mere shell of what it had been hours ago. While my men had converged on the walls of Shadowhold, cutting down the lizard beasts from Garnet and fortifying the keep, it seemed most of Aleksander's men had come here eager to partake in the gory, gleeful bloodletting of the Fae who had once enslaved them.

I almost felt sorry for the pitiful souls.

But not sorry enough to slow my pace. All I could see was my own blinding determination. That, and the feeble wood structure that had hastily replaced what was once my father's tent. And if he wasn't there…

I'd scour the earth for him.

We'd won the war. I had the blade. I wouldn't stop.

I'd hunt him down until—

"We can't find him, either."

I scanned the smoking, ashy remains of the camp, torchlit and pillaged. Relief I didn't know I'd needed wheezed from me.

Griffin. And Mari.

"What are you two doing here?"

Mari frowned. "Same as you. Looking for Lazarus. Onyx and the muscly guys who drink blood have the Fae soldiers beat."

Griffin exhaled hard, eyes on the burns down the left of my face. "I should have been fighting beside you."

Mari brushed a hand down Griffin's arm and his shoulders softened.

But all I could think was her name.

Arwen, Arwen, Arwen—

To see her face once more before I ended this. That pinched brow or elegant nose or her full lips curling in a smile.

"I'm fine," I told him. "Where's Arwen?"

Mari chewed her lip and my blood ran cold. "We haven't seen her. Maybe she went back into the castle. For Leigh and Ryder? It was getting close out there…"

It had been. The walls had all but fallen.

But I knew Arwen like I knew the fabric of my own soul. She would never have retreated. "No. She's around here somewhere."

I canvassed the destruction. The overturned wheelbarrows, tents glowing a soft blaze in the darkness of the woods. Creatures had begun to prowl through the wreckage, drawn to the smoke and scent of blood and fear. Wolves and vultures sniffing at the carcasses, pawing through the dirty snow…Far more vile beasts would be arriving soon. The remaining soldiers didn't even move to shoo the creatures. There were so few of them now…

"They're fleeing," I realized. "He's likely run with his men."

"He has no witch to portal him back," Griffin said. "They'll head for the channel."

We took off north through the woods. Evendell's side of the channel was accessed in the Blade Moors, which was days and days from here, but we could track them long before they got too far. We knew these woods. We knew this land.

The sky shifted from violet to blue to black. Wind battered us as we ran. Branches whistled. Snow fell.

Until there, twined in the heavy, snow-laden woods, away from the pillaged encampment of Fae and hidden from the Hemolichs that hunted them and the scavengers that would follow, was my father and a small convoy of his men, hurrying for the channel.

One trembling moment of utter stillness as they saw us discover them—a moment of total silence before—

"I should have known you'd fight alongside the filth ."

The promise of violence curled my lips from my teeth. I raised my hands to unleash daggers of my roiling power into him and his weakened men.

When lighte, sudden and blinding in the night-dark forest, cut through my vision and slammed into my father. Lazarus was thrown—no, blasted —back into the shedding trunk of a tree.

His soldiers aimed their own power and weapons at the unseen assailant, but Mari was way ahead of them. She froze the remaining men in place with a single uttered spell. I'd hardly noticed the spinning, magic-tinged wind.

Arwen emerged from the tree line.

Black onyx leathers. Loose braid down her back.

A beautiful goddess of fury, bathed in moonlight and poised to kill.

No sooner did my father move to stand, to ready his palms wide with his own power, than another blow of her lighte smashed into him. Lazarus thrashed as it cut into his chest, his neck, his arms.

Mari sucked in a ragged breath. And Griffin shot me a look. Her spell on the Fae soldiers wouldn't last much longer. We rushed the frozen convoy and made quick work of them—heads sheathed in red visors toppled to the frozen ground.

My gaze found Arwen's steadfast eyes.

Lazarus beheld us, outnumbered four to one. He stumbled backward in the snow. "You'll regret this, son," he swore, inching away from us and toward the tree line. "Just like your last rebellion."

"No." With the back of my hand I wiped Fae blood from my chin. The Blade of the Sun crested in my grip. "I don't think I will."

And then—I charged.

I didn't even see Arwen coming.

Griffin roared for her to stop, but—too late. Just as Arwen slammed into me, Griffin struck Lazarus in the knees with his emerald lighte.

Arwen and I both went down, sailing into thick snow. Pine and orange blossom filled my nostrils. Ice in my mouth. Ringing in my ears—

"It's not your fate," she pleaded. "You need to live . "

"That's," I barked out, heart pounding in my ears, " bullshit ."

It dawned on me—perhaps well before this moment—that I might have to subdue my own wife if I had any hope of saving her.

I love you , I thought as I swung my blade. The breath in your lungs is all that matters to me , as I slammed my sword into hers. Now let me end this.

And in the distance, Lazarus sent ice in a hailstorm toward us. Mari cast spell after spell, Griffin deflecting each blow, driving him back, each attack casting the night in sparks of vivid green.

I struck harder and faster, Arwen conceding step after step, fighting to maintain her footing.

I gritted my teeth, panting, shuddering with the effort—

Until my foot met hers in the snow. And I did not waste the chance.

My shadows drenched us both, a swirl of obsidian mist, suffocating her softly, lulling her into a sleep not unlike one I had offered her when she had been racked by wolfbeast poison. This, too, would be a mercy. I could only hope she would see it as such one day, many, many years from now.

Arwen struggled, but my shadows proved too strong. There was nothing she could do as her furious screams fell into whimpers. As my darkness, my wings and claws blended with the night and overpowered her like fog against the sun. I swore I heard my father's low laugh.

"Please," she begged, and my heart ripped from itself.

"Forgive me," I murmured, pulling her close, feeling consciousness slip from her. Smelling honeysuckle and orange blossom for the last time. "I love you. I'll love you wherever I am, whatever I am. Always."