Chapter 25

Dravyn

I ran, shoving my way through hordes of bodies, leaping over fallen debris, dodging fractured ground. It didn't occur to me—not until I'd nearly reached the imploding building—that magic could have carried me to my destination much faster.

I did not feel like a god in that moment; I was merely a brother racing to save the only family he had left.

And this time, I would be quick enough.

The closer I came to the fallen building, the thicker the dust in the air became, until I could no longer see more than a few feet ahead. I summoned a fiery wind to push aside what haze I could, as well as to better light my way through what remained. The magic came alarmingly slowly. Between the poisoned arrows and my separation from Karys and her magic, I feared what might have been happening to my power—but I didn't have time to think about it beyond that.

I pressed on until I found what looked like it might have been the main door to the fallen building. It lay on the ground, its metal shape crumpled as if it been made of mere paper.

Past it, there had clearly been a wide corridor; most of the debris seemed to have landed outside this hall, save for a few large slabs of the roof, so I was able to pick my way deeper into the mess with relative ease.

I heard shouting coming from my right. A frantic cry for help and— The king! The king is here!

I followed the noise, eventually stumbling upon a trio of distraught looking soldiers. One was injured, his leg bent at an odd angle. It appeared as though the three had been digging, trying to make their way into an adjacent room, and something had shifted free and landed on that leg.

The other two soldiers appeared torn between tending to their companion or continuing to dig.

"We think the king is inside this room here," one of them explained to me, breathless, while the other eyed me warily.

I nodded, stepping toward the pile of splintered wood and dusty stone blocking the entrance.

The wary soldier started to follow—whether to aid me or protect his king from me, I didn't know—but the sound of wood creaking, cracking, and shifting somewhere above stopped him in his tracks. His gaze shifted restlessly between me and the ceiling before finally settling on his injured companion.

"You should get him to safety," I urged.

The man didn't budge.

I didn't say anything else. I merely looked back in the direction I'd arrived from and, with a stiff, somewhat painful wave of my hand, I summoned another gust of fiery wind. This time I poured some sentience into the spell, so that the embers within it turned into living creatures who would be able to find the path of least resistance into clearer air. A trail of them swept around the three soldiers before shooting away, winding through the wreckage and beckoning them to follow.

" Will o' wisps, " I heard the one with the mangled leg whisper. "Following them leads to good luck."

"Not always," muttered the wary one, his eyes darting briefly to me once more, his expression dancing between skepticism and reluctant awe.

The third looked somewhat skeptical, too. All the same, they both helped their injured ally upright and dragged him along, following the lights and leaving me to the task of digging out my brother.

I wasted no time. My shoulder ached and itched to the point that I was beginning to lose the feeling in it. I had to move quickly, before it became entirely useless.

This time, I will be quick enough.

I found a spot that looked disturbed, as if the three soldiers had already started digging into it. I listened for movement and heard nothing. Scent was more helpful—I picked up the salt and metallic tang of human blood.

A large concentration of it.

I tracked that scent and, little by little, worked to uncover the source, watching carefully for signs of life, until finally—

There .

More slowly, taking care not to let anything else shift and fall onto him, I went back to digging. I pushed away the stone and broken glass around his head, first, making sure he had plenty of space to breathe.

And—thank the Creators—he was breathing, though each breath was more ragged and shallow than the last.

His face was a wreck of terrible colors: green and purple bruising across his cheeks, one eye swollen shut and circled in black, all of it streaked with dust and blood.

"Fallon."

He blinked at the sound of my voice. His eyes darted wildly around before finally settling on my face. Green eyes rimmed in gold, just like our mother's. They flashed with a whole range of emotions in the span of a few heartbeats. Confusion. Shock. Disbelief. And then they closed again, as if the sight of me was too great a burden to bear.

I didn't know what to say, so I just kept digging.

Eventually, I'd freed enough of him to manage a solid grip on his torso. I wrapped my arms around him and heaved his limp body the rest of the way out.

Dislodging him triggered an avalanche of debris, each shifting piece knocking another piece free. As a large section of the wall came crashing toward us, I swiftly repositioned myself so I caught the brunt of it with my back.

The avalanche settled with me hovering over my brother's still body. Several boards rested upon my shoulder blades. My palms were braced against ground that was covered in slivers of wood and glass, and several of those slivers had slid into my skin. Part of the ceiling had fallen away, allowing moonlight to illuminate the swirling dust all around us.

With a grunt, I shoved the fallen pieces away from Fallon and myself before rising to a crouched position.

When I looked to my brother once more, his eyes were open again, staring at me with a dazed mixture of horror and wonder.

"So it ends in dust and rubble," he mumbled through dry, cracked and bleeding lips, his eyes fluttering shut, "and my brother, the god, comes to see me at last, here at the gateway to the heavens."

"You aren't dead, you dramatic idiot. Not yet."

He blinked again, disbelief flooding his features—but this time he kept his eyes open. Kept them on me.

With some effort, I managed to maintain my balance as I scooped him carefully into my arms and rose back to my feet.

"Dravyn—"

"Don't talk. Save your strength."

Throughout our entire childhood, I don't think he'd ever listened to any command I'd given. But he listened now. His body went disturbingly limp. His head lolled against my chest.

I carried him out of the dust, occasionally stumbling over bits of scattered stone and splintered wood. My own condition seemed to be deteriorating with every step. I was forced to reach deep into the wells of my power, bracing myself with all the magic I could muster just to stay on my feet.

A small company of soldiers met us outside, drawing up short as they caught sight of me.

They stared. At first, none of them spoke. Or moved.

I wouldn't have dared to approach me, either; I must have been an interesting sight. A frightening one. Divine symbols blazed on my skin, growing brighter every time I accessed my power in a desperate grab for strength. My vision was tinged in red and orange, which likely meant my eyes had taken on a glowing appearance—a powerful gaze of fury and hellfire.

But I still felt alarmingly weak. Far too aware of the blood and dust coating me. Of the poison emanating from the wounds in my shoulder. A ragged, angry god, bristling from too many losses and too many mistakes.

Yet their king was unconscious in my arms—and, to their credit, the humans didn't shy away, despite whatever terror my appearance invoked.

After several attempts to gather his courage, one particularly brave soul even stepped forward to meet me, his hands outstretched and shaking only slightly as he reached to pull the lifeless body away from my chest.

Others followed his lead. Soon, I was swarmed by humans, all of them reaching, trying to support their leader as best they could while also keeping one wary eye on me.

Part of me didn't want to let Fallon go.

The other part wondered if it would do more harm than good holding on to him.

With reluctance, I relinquished my burden. As he was carried away, a few of the soldiers lingered, watching me. They bowed hastily before they finally turned and hurried away, several of them calling for the attention of healers as they went.

I felt oddly unbalanced without my brother's weight in my arms. I started to follow him in a daze, but a sudden power overtook me after only a few steps, paralyzing my limbs and rooting me to the spot.

"Dravyn." Mairu's voice snapped like a whip, another force wrapping around me, holding me back. "Where do you think you're going?"

I shot her a cursory glance before shrugging off her power and returning to my walk. "The king must live." He was almost out of sight. "I have to make sure—"

"Never mind the king," Mai hissed, jogging after me. "He's in the hands of his subjects, now, and I'm sure every healer in the kingdom will be rushing to his side before the night is over with. You need to get back to the divine realm and deal with your own problems. That wound on your shoulder looks horrific."

I ignored her and kept walking.

She sent another wave of magic over me, stronger this time. It sank its claws fully into my legs, and then it was pulling, trying to drag me back rather than just holding me still.

I responded with a flare of my own magic, heat exploding backward and swallowing her up until she lost her focus—and with it, her hold on me.

She stumbled, cursing my name.

But that was the extent of our battle.

Valas dropped to her side an instant later, tucking his wings away, grabbing her arm and holding her back as she started to take aim at me once more.

He needn't have interfered; I was already done. The burst of magic had required too much of me. The sharp, needling pain in my wounded shoulder was now a hundred times worse. I didn't want to try summoning more magic.

I didn't even want to move.

So I merely watched.

And as my brother disappeared from sight, my thoughts expanded back to the bigger picture.

The whole bloody, massively fucked up picture.

I tentatively touched my wound. More daggers of white-hot pain stabbed through me. As they subsided, I couldn't help noticing I felt even weaker than before. Like I couldn't have summoned more magic even if I'd wanted to. It was as if every pulse of pain and every too-quick beat of my heart further activated the arrow's poison. And that poison was eating up my magic. Draining it.

Draining it .

Whatever they'd used against me…had they used it against Karys, too?

Was that why I couldn't sense her energy?

I didn't think I could feel any more sick than I already did, but the thought of Karys in the hands of our enemies, without even her magic to protect herself...

I never should have let her out of my sight.

I'd failed to protect her, just like I'd failed—

"We need to get you back to Nerithyl," Mai insisted once more, cutting into my thoughts as she reached my side, her eyes narrowing on my injury. "Armaros needs to look at that. Hopefully the Healing God can—"

"No. We aren't going back without Karys." I started walking again. I didn't even know where I was going. Moving might have been hell, but the thought of going back to the middle-heavens without her beside me was worse.

The Serpent Goddess followed once more. It obviously pained her to speak the words she wanted to— needed to—but after a pause she quietly managed to say: "You can't save her right now. Not in the state you're in."

"I'm fine."

"You're a fucking liar is what you are."

I would have argued, but for the sharp pain that shot through my injury at that exact moment, stealing my breath. It was soon spreading across my entire back—like someone was using my shoulder blades to sharpen their knives, scraping right down to the godsdamn bone.

The urge to drop to my knees overcame me. I somehow fought it off. But the dizzying pressure that had settled over me persisted.

Mai drew closer once more, but I ignored her, looking instead to the sky, losing myself in thoughts of soaring through it and getting a better view of the world below. I could transform entirely. Become a beast, ignorant of whatever damage this human form had sustained. It might not rid me of that damage—there was a chance it could aggravate it further—but as long as I could find out where Karys had been taken before the injuries overwhelmed…

Valas stepped in front of me, his expression serious for once, as if he could sense the mad, desperate plan half-forming in my mind.

"I'll stay in this realm and keep searching for Karys," he said.

Before I could answer, Mai added, "And you and I are going back to the divine realm, in the meantime."

Even when I wasn't gravely wounded, she was still a formidable opponent. With the poison continuing to spread and drain me, I had almost no chance of fighting off her magic. She knew it, too, and she showed no mercy; a tendril of controlling power wove its way around my chest, crisscrossing it like a heavy set of chains.

"Release me, you witch," I half-mumbled, half-snarled.

"Be quiet," she snarled back, taking a physical hold of my arm while her magic continued to bind me. "And don't fight me, or who knows where we'll end up transporting ourselves to."

Her grip on my arm tightened. Before I could utter another syllable of protest, the scenery blurred around us. Then we were moving, lifted by unseen hands, pulled into the space between realms.

I closed my eyes. Kept them closed long after we touched down in the divine realm once more. I didn't want to be here without Karys. I wanted to go back. To her, to my brother; back to the beginning of this night so I could fix all the mistakes we'd made and somehow make a new ending.

I heard Mairu say, "She'll be okay, Dravyn. Even if you can't feel her, she's strong enough to endure. I…I'm certain of it."

I didn't answer. Or maybe I did. I was no longer entirely aware of what my body was doing. Her words had triggered a memory of a conversation, and now it was all I could think about.

I know a wildfire when I see one, I'd once told Karys. And I don't think they would have put you out so easily.

As I opened my eyes and took in the divine landscape before me, I tried one last time to sense her energy. We'd reached across realms to one another before. Even when doing so should have been impossible, I'd felt her through whatever fire and chaos surrounded or separated us.

But this time, nothing but my own pain and exhaustion answered my reaching.

It felt as if every fire inside of me had gone out, and the middle-heavens loomed darker and colder than I ever remembered them being before.