Chapter 32

Karys

Hours later, I bolted upright in my bed, awakened by warmth flooding my body.

I thought I was dreaming at first.

Then, I felt it again. Not merely a nudging, dreamy warmth this time—but true fire shooting through my veins. Heavenly heat ballooning in my chest, lifting me onto my feet.

I'd fallen asleep with a hope that I would wake up alone, my sister long gone. Something I don't think I'd ever hoped for.

My wish had come true.

She was nowhere to be found.

I was burning, but the house around me sat as cold and empty as an expectant tomb, and I saw, now, that this was what it was—a place to bury things that no longer served me.

The God of Death had called it weeks ago, hadn't he?

If I was going to move forward, I would have to lay some things to rest. Those things could stay in this house, this grave.

But I couldn't.

So I made myself breathe and I made myself move, one foot in front of the other, heading for the door without looking back.

The burning in my veins became more powerful as I stepped into the yard and faced the walls of anti-divine wards caging me in. This burning went beyond my own power, I thought—like something building just beyond the wards, trying to reach through, just waiting for me to reach back.

Dravyn?

My pulse quickened.

I hurried to the edge of the yard before I could lose my nerve.

The grass along this edge was dead and gone, so there was no kindling to speak of—only the dirt and the rune symbols cutting deeply into it. All of the fire that would burn away those runes would have to come from, and be sustained by, me and me alone.

I recalled the notes I'd taken over the past days, sidestepping my way around the perimeter until I found one of the precise patterns of symbols I was looking for—a grouping I believed to be the most powerful.

The foundational pattern.

"Three rows of four triangles," I mumbled, trying to keep my mind focused. "Each with a cross in the center…"

This pattern was the only one that repeated multiple times along the entire encircling ward. It also did so with measured, equal spacing—much like the footings of a house.

My skin was already drenched in sweat as I knelt before one of these foundational points and summoned fire into my palm.

The familiar pulling sensation from the runes' power attacked immediately, making my surroundings spin and my balance sway.

My eyes watered from the growing intensity of it, but I pushed through the discomfort, thinking only of the other side. Of the warmth that had woken me up. Warmth that continued to reach for me in spite of the spinning pressure trying to hold me down.

The embers in my hand sparked brighter, forming a chain that wove deeper into the barrier. The links started to disintegrate as they pushed into the ward's magic, but I concentrated with all the strength I could summon, pulling the flames back into a line and sending it shooting toward the symbols at my feet.

Like the wick of a candle it burned down, down, down into the ground before surging back up and filling the grooves of the runes with a fiery glow.

The two powers battled, pressure and fire colliding and erupting, strange energy and smoke billowing wildly around me.

The world seemed to close in as I dropped to one knee, bracing an arm against the warm dirt. I bowed my head, focusing my weary, divine power into a more precise strike.

The pressure against my body grew so immense, I felt like I was sinking, the ground caving in beneath me.

But when I lifted my head a moment later, that ground was perfectly level, burned black—and scoured clean of runes and everything else.

Clean .

Tears welled in the corners of my eyes at the sight. I wiped them away, pushed back to my feet, and kept moving.

The opening I'd created was not much wider than my body. I could still see un-burned runes in my peripheral vision, and the anti-magic on either side of the opening felt as if it was pouring in, faster and faster, threatening to collapse in on me.

I pushed onward.

I refused to be denied at this point, even though it was like running through thick mud while thorn-covered vines caught at my body and tried to rip off pieces to keep. Several times it felt like I'd been caught—like I was suspended in place even as my legs continued moving.

But I kept going.

I kept running until, finally, I fought my way through the last of the barrier.

Blinding flashes of red and orange greeted me on the other side.

Fire .

The fields all around my former home were entirely ablaze.

My mouth grew dry, both terror and wonder battling for dominance in my pounding heart. These were not regular flames. They rippled and crackled with divine energy—energy I had not summoned.

As I staggered over the scorched and smoking ground, a warm wind swirled up around me, circling my body in a tight embrace as if eager to greet me. As if it had been looking for me.

Waiting for me.

I didn't see Dravyn, but I felt him in every lash of heat and spiral of smoke that caressed my skin.

The longer I stood among his wind and fire, the more I felt myself regaining my balance. My power. Power that was almost overwhelming after so many days of weakness, but still welcome—it would be much easier to carry myself back to the middle-heavens while wrapped up in this divine magic.

I walked until my old house and its memories were no longer in sight, letting more Fire magic seep into my body, my breaths, my very soul. Wind whipped my hair and clothing around. Symbols of power appeared on my skin. I stared at them, thinking of all the places in the Palace of Fire where I had seen corresponding symbols.

A little more concentration would bring me back to that palace.

I could do this.

My physical body began to fade, to move toward the path between realms. My fingertips went first, as they usually did, turning to smoke that trailed behind me like ribbons caught in the breeze. The sight still unsettled me a bit, so I closed my eyes and focused on what I could feel rather than see.

"All. These. Flames. And I wonder…what else do you suppose he's burned in his fury?"

My eyes flashed open as I spun toward the sound of Andrel's voice.

The transporting spell broke with the motion, thrusting me back into a solid form with jarring speed.

I rebalanced and braced myself, listening for his footsteps, trying to pinpoint him within the haze of smoke and magic.

I could only just make out his shape as he approached, his edges wavy and blurred by the fires between us.

A blistering wind rose to my right, lifting a smattering of embers from the ground and curving them into a whip-like line. I focused on it, taking a determined command of it, ready to wield it however I needed to.

"This is but a taste of what he's been doing since we took his trophy away from him," Andrel said as he approached. "The gods are benevolent until something angers them. Then all they know is destruction."

Destruction.

It was hard to deny this when everything was burning in every direction, for as far as I could see.

There was a village just beyond the borders of our land in one direction, and a beautiful forest lay in the other…were they on fire too?

Where did this end?

I knew Andrel was trying to plant that question—that fear—in my mind. I also knew there might have been some truth to what he claimed.

I would not listen to him, either way.

"You provoked his anger," I said, lifting my chin, "and now you're crying because he unleashed it. Make up your mind—are you prepared to wage a war against us or not?"

He didn't answer right away, too busy eyeing the whip of fire hovering in my control. Though I didn't actually grip any of the flames, they shifted about as if I had them by a handle, snaking back and forth in time with the movements of my clenched fist.

He continued to watch these movements with cold, calculating eyes until I cracked the makeshift lash, sending a line of fire across the ground between us. A deliberate breath and twist of my hand sent it shooting upwards into the beginnings of a shield.

Andrel leapt straight through it before it could reach its full intensity.

I stumbled back, surprised by his lack of hesitation. I clenched my fist tighter, holding my fiery whip ready but not yet striking. My emotions warred, torn between the desire to flee to safety and the desire to end him right then and there.

He brushed a few dying embers and ashes from his shoulder and said, "Last chance to choose the right side."

"I've already chosen."

"Yes, but I am a generous being…so I'm giving you yet another opportunity to change your mind."

"I will never be on your side again."

His gaze swept around us, taking in the roaring, destructive magic that now seemed brighter and hotter than ever before.

It was hard not to let my eyes be drawn to it all as well. Hard not to wonder, again, about what sort of fire and fury Dravyn had rained down upon this realm during his search for me.

But I couldn't let my mind wander over such dangerous territory. I just needed to get away from this place and back to a realm where I could think more clearly about everything.

I put more space between myself and Andrel, breathing in as calmly and deeply as I could, drawing my magic to the surface as I exhaled.

"You're prepared to fully walk away from your entire life?" he called, not moving from where he stood. "Away from your past, your kind, your home? Your sister ?"

My pulse skipped a beat.

My magic didn't.

I'd made my choice, and the divine power followed through where my aching heart could not, building up the fires around us while simultaneously pulling at my solid form, preparing to unravel it and whisk me away to the heavens.

"How disappointing," Andrel drawled. "I suppose you are nothing but a stubborn coward in the end."

I paused my spell casting long enough to fix my gaze on his one last time. "And you are nothing but a foolish little boy who never learned not to play with fire."

A throwing knife was in his hand before I'd finished speaking.

He flung it with no more warning than this. It spun from his fingers with blazing speed, grazing the sleeve of my coat as I dove out of its path.

As it soared through the air and struck the ground beside me, it left a trail of shadowy purple energy in its wake. That energy carved through my divine fire, devouring the flames with alarming ferocity.

A memory flashed into my mind: One from months ago, when Cillian had first shown me the true weapons they'd been creating for their wars. I still remembered the dark, rotting energy radiating from the anti-divine knife he'd handed me, and the way that energy shriveled up the stone I stabbed with it…

More throwing knives were strapped to Andrel's leg.

More sharp edges to cut through and extinguish my fires—and me.

I dodged a second throw that came as quickly as the first, leaping backward just as a fresh, warm wind stormed to life around me. Fiery wings exploded from my back to catch that wind, carrying me further toward safety.

I landed lightly on my feet. A whip of embers reformed and floated by my side, awaiting my command. My wings rose and fell with each flutter of wind, feeling surprisingly heavy and formidable against my back—like an extension of me.

I'd finally managed to shape them into something truly magnificent and capable.

I had little time to celebrate, however, as Andrel was closing the space between us with poised, confident steps, his hand resting on the sheath of his knives.

I braced myself, but he didn't draw a third knife out.

Instead, he stopped a short distance away and inclined his head—a tiny, barely perceptible nod.

A signal.

I rolled aside just as an arrow flew in from somewhere above, from a perch I couldn't see through the smoke and brightness. It didn't cut a path through the flames as the knife had, but I remained wary, watching for more projectiles; the arrowhead was almost certainly laced with something, whether runes or poison or who knew what else.

While I was frantically trying to spot the person from which the first arrow had flown, a second one streaked in from my left and struck a wing, cutting a clean path through it before impaling itself in the other.

Gritting my teeth, I jerked it out and tossed it aside. As it hit the ground, a stinging pain radiated from the marks it had left behind. A faint, mildly numbing sensation swept from my wings toward my spine, my shoulders, my arms.

Was this the same poison I'd been injected with in Mindoth?

Was my sister behind this attack, too?

I was stronger now. More certain of my magic and where I was going, and surrounded by divine fire that I continued to siphon power from—all things that better shielded me—yet I could still feel the toxin working, itching through my veins, slowly but surely.

More arrows showered down. I dodged some, incinerated others, knocked at least three aside with precise shifts of my wings. All in the span of a few chaotic moments.

But I couldn't keep this up indefinitely.

Couldn't risk even a little more poison slipping in, dulling my magic, threatening my ability to transport myself back to Nerithyl.

I needed to leave before I ended up right back in the prison I'd just escaped from—or someplace worse.

Another arrow flew in, distracting me. I knocked it away just in time to look up and see Andrel racing toward me, a knife flashing in his hand.

I tried to leap, to let my wings catch the wind and carry me away as before. But the numbing poison pumping through them was starting to eat more viciously at their shape and solidness, turning them into more of a hinderance than a help. The right one crumpled when I tried to beat it, showering me in ash and glowing feathers, making me stumble.

As Andrel charged toward me, I struggled for balance, trying to decide how to stave him off long enough to make my escape.

My sister appeared before I was forced to make a decision, bursting through a wall of smoke and flame, a sword in her hand and a wild expression on her face.

She sprinted straight toward me.

But at the last moment she veered, slamming into Andrel, instead, knocking him aside.

He landed in a crouch, somehow still graceful despite only having one hand to catch himself. He stared at Savna for a long, tense moment, clearly stunned.

I was equally stunned, desperately trying to reconcile what I knew in my head with what I felt in my heart.

" Run !" she shouted at me.

I had to run.

I meant to run.

Then Andrel leapt back to his feet and grabbed hold of my sister's arm.

His gaze was livid as he jerked her closer, words falling furiously from his lips. Whatever he was saying was lost in the cacophony of howling wind and crackling fire and my own raging heartbeat.

They scuffled, both struggling to throw the other to the ground.

He knocked the sword from her grasp, but she disarmed him a few seconds later. Neither seemed to have the upper hand, but Savna eventually managed to throw him aside long enough to look my direction, to see me still standing in the same place as before.

"RUN!" she bellowed. "NOW!"

Protecting me. Letting me go.

But at what cost ?

So many of my questions had been answered in the days we'd spent together, but now I had a hundred more.

Will she be safe?

Will I see her again?

Does it matter?

How can I leave her with him?

This last one was answered for me—I was already transcending into a smokier, less solid version of myself, some part of me still aware of what I needed to do, despite all my questions.

As the last of my body disappeared, my sister broke free of Andrel's hold and spun toward me, meeting my gaze one last time.

Of all the things I wanted to say, I only managed to mouth one of them: I'm sorry.

Divine fire engulfed all that remained of me an instant later, cutting me off from her response.

I tumbled through the aether, weightless and directionless, for what felt like a lifetime before finally landing on my back in one of the fields outside of the Palace of Fire.

My wings were gone, yet a strange heaviness and an alarming tingling persisted between my shoulder blades. I fought my way to my feet and staggered forward.

The palace didn't seem to get any closer no matter how many steps I took.

Was I even moving at all?

I couldn't feel my steps, my feet, yet I remained upright— somehow —until I heard someone shouting my name.

I looked toward the sound.

Streaks of fire and gold rushed in my direction, occasionally, briefly shifting into the shape of a horse-like creature and its rider. A familiar feeling of warmth overtook me as that rider drew closer, almost driving away the horrors of my escape from the mortal realm.

Almost.

But the last glimpse of my sister's face stayed with me long after I collapsed to the ground and everything else burned away.