37. Ella

Chapter 37

Ella

That’s the twins’ father at the gates, Kellen gasped.

Their FATHER?! Ella’s human eyes couldn’t distinctively characterize Ciaran’s face, but from where they were suspended in the clouds, she could make out a small figure by the opulent gold gates of Delmarth—small because she was so high up, not that she wanted to remind herself of how elevated in the sky they were—wrapped in the garb of the Dissidents. I thought he was in Terminus!

He’s supposed to be, Kellen snarled, his powerful body tensing beneath her.

If he’s here, then Miya is probably here too. Fear soiled Ella’s mouth. Adrenaline and desperation powered her limbs. We need to find the twins. NOW.

Ella tried not to make eye contact with the harrowing sight below, but her eyes kept sliding down to the devastation, her stomach twisting at every deceased child scattered across the campus, broken and lifeless, their blood staining the earth in dark pools. The metallic tang of blood and the acerbic stench of smoke sullied the air, a sickening combination that made Ella’s head swim with dizziness. There would hopefully be time later to question how the Sireres broke through the wards protecting the school, how the prisoners in Terminus were released to join the Dissidents, why the fuck they were even attacking the school or how the Sireres had reached Delmarth from the other side of the kingdom, where Aros’s army should have been blocking them. Right now, all her brain was capable of processing was that she needed to get Jarion and Laya to safety, latching onto this one task because taking in the totality of what was transpiring below her was too much.

As a human, she knew there was little she could do to protect all her students on that field, no matter how badly she wanted to. Focusing on the twins, on getting them far away from their parents, was something she felt capable of accomplishing.

Ella clutched Kellen’s horns as he veered them to the right, her fingers white-knuckled around his bulky antlers. She relied on Coz and Kellen’s heightened eyesight from above to survey the battleground in their search for Jarion and Laya. Beneath them, the Primordials fought the Sireres with unwavering courage, their battle cries blending with the roar of Varmin and the vociferous clash of steel. Everywhere she looked, there was destruction. Craters marred the once pristine landscape, buildings lay in ruins, and trees stood charred and blackened by fire. She watched students, young and old, throw themselves into battle, some running towards their enemies with reckless abandon, while others, primarily the youngest students, huddled behind whatever cover they could find.

It didn’t hit her how much she’d grown to love Delmarth until she saw it reduced to vestiges. Until she saw the chests of children she’d grown to care for no longer moving. Ella had to cover her mouth to keep the sobs clogging her throat contained. Demoralizing grief threatened to crush her bones into powdered dust.

Seeing the Sireres next to the Primordials, it dawned on her how similar they really were, apart from the speckled, multicolored varnish dappling the flesh of the Sireres, an indicator that their powers were different in some fashion. She couldn’t understand how these beings could inflict such pain and suffering on each other, on children, when seeing them side by side, it was so apparent how alike they were, if only they could overlook the conflict between their two kings to embrace that likeness.

I found Laya, Coz announced, dragging Ella’s eyes back to the battlefield, where her gaze caught a flash of long black hair lunging at a Dissident, cheeks smeared in perspiration and dirt, but fortunately no blood.

Lower me to the ground, Ella directed both Coz and Kellen. I’ll pass her to you, then go find Jarion.

Noella— Kellen started to argue, but she refused to let his disagreement escape into the universe.

Do not Noella me right now, Kilic. We don’t have time to argue this.

I am not leaving you down there defenseless, Rose, he snarled, his clenched muscles vibrating beneath her.

I can fight, Ella asserted, then assured more gently, I’ll be fine, Kellen. All that matters is getting the two of them to safety. Let me do this. Please. A mixture of Coz and Kellen rumbled an exasperated grumble, delineated by plumes of smoke.

Fine, Kellen spat before steering them downward and hurdling towards the battleground. Ella’s braids slapped her cheeks, whipping the tusks she clung to so she wouldn’t vault off Kellen’s back.

Out of nowhere, a gargantuan phoenix crashed into Kellen’s side and sent them tumbling into a cloud, the mist disintegrating from their immense volume. The phoenix’s feathers were a brilliant mix of crimson, gold and orange, flickering like living flames, each feather dancing with its own inner fire. With each beat of its wings, embers and sparks scattered in its wake, its blazing plumage painting the air in hues of red and gold. The subtle glitter outlining the surface of its feathers alerted Ella that this was a Sireres who breathed a stream of flames at Kellen, its amber eyes glowing like molten gold, the air around them distorting from being touched by the heat of its flaring presence.

Kellen countered the phoenix’s attack with a gust of icy breath that sizzled against the heat of his opponent. Their claws clashed and teeth gnashed as the two titans grappled each other, locked in a deadly dance of combat. Fire and ice collided in explosive bursts of fuming energy, creating dazzling displays of light and heat that ignited the ether like a raging inferno. The sky trembled from their massive forms, clouds splintering and evaporating under the force of their battle.

With one final, earth-shaking roar, Kellen unleashed a devastating blast of ice and engulfed the phoenix in a blinding flash of white light. As the smoke cleared and dissolved into the wind, only Kellen and Coz remained, the phoenix detonating in a savage explosion of crimson and smoldering ash.

Where did that ice come from?! Ella squeaked as Kellen directed them back towards the battlefield.

There are many of my skills you have yet to see, sweetheart, was all Kellen drawled before he alit on the ground and unfurled his wing for Ella to slide down, landing on her feet in the grass. She had a clear view of Laya from where they’d disembarked, still engaging a Sireres twice her size, though the twelve-year-old seemed to be holding her own, her sword drenched in violet flames. Ella took a single second to acknowledge her pride in Laya before she unsheathed her sword and sprinted across the field, winding between the various skirmishes. With the Sireres absorbed in combatting Laya, they didn’t sense movement advancing from their left, providing them no time to react when Ella came barreling into their side and leapt on them. On the ground, her fingers fisted a handful of the Sireres’ hair and yanked their head back so her sword could slice through the thick neck, sketching an angry, red line across the delicate throat. When the body slumped against her, their life dribbling out of the open wound, she let the limp carcass melt into the grass and rose to her feet.

“Your parents are here,” Ella told Laya before she could say anything. Laya’s eyes had never looked so big. “Go get on your brother’s back over there. I’m going to find Jarion. Where did you last see him?”

“I…I lost him in…the crowd…he was…” Ella cupped Laya’s cheeks when her voice fragmented into sobs.

“I’ll find him,” Ella swore, brushing a kiss on Laya’s brow. “Go get on Kellen’s back. Jare and I will be with you soon.”

Laya didn’t hesitate before dashing over to where Kellen—or Coz, it was hard for Ella to know who was doing what when Kellen was in his dragon form—snatched a Sireres off their feet and tossed the flailing body into his mouth, munching down on their bones before spitting the smashed limbs back onto the terrain. As Ella turned to go find Jarion, it suddenly occurred to her that she just killed someone.

Fuck.

She just killed someone.

Noella Rose. A girl who grew up in New York City in a one-bedroom apartment with a mother who never loved her and a big sister who swore her life to protect her, who’d chosen to dedicate her life to the protection of children, just took a life. Someone else’s child. Someone who may have deserved it, who would have killed Laya if given the chance, but maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were just like Ella and forced to fight for something that wasn’t even their cause because the circumstances demanded it.

The sensation of horror annexing her body felt like a cold, clammy hand gripping her heart and squishing it into pounded clumps. Shudders thundered down her spine. Her sword released a strangled, clattered whimper as it jittered against her leg, her hand refusing the steady, her palms slick with cold sweat, goosebumps pimpling her flesh, struggling to control the rising panic close to overwhelming her.

Ella? a voice that normally didn’t enter her head—Akio—croaked. Ella, where are you? I see Kellen but not you.

I’m looking for Jarion, Ella replied, his voice bringing her out of the distorted, twisted, nightmarish landscape of her dark and despairing thoughts. She didn’t have time to focus on her fraying nerves or the guilt enveloping sharp talons around her heart. She needed to focus. Did Jo find you?

Jo’s with me. If I see Jarion, I’ll let you know.

Thank you. Ella gulped. Take care of each other. Don’t let anything happen to either of my best friends.

She heard the love honing his words. The same applies to you, Rosie. His voice disappeared from her ears.

In the grip of battle, time seemed to slow to a crawl, each second stretching out like an eternity, resembling the feeling of being on the edge of a precipice, teetering on the brink of a yawning abyss. Ella scanned the smoke-crammed horizon, desperate to catch a glimpse of Jarion’s familiar form. With every step she took, the ground beneath her quaked from Kellen following behind her, protecting her rear from anything attempting to harm her. Ella’s hands were callused and bloodied, but she refused to look at them, refused to confront the evidence on her stained fingers that she’d been responsible for stealing someone’s life, that the Sireres died at her hand, that their life was forever vanquished because of her. She did everything she could to ignore the pain of that truth and the exhaustion and fear that threatened to subjugate her limbs and liquefy her into the grass, focusing only on the single-minded goal of finding Jarion. She actively tried not to look down at the fallen students beleaguered at her feet, a grim reminder of the stakes at hand.

After what felt like hours of stepping over departed children in her search for Jarion, her cheeks caked in tears and blood, she finally found him. The air was ripped from her lungs when she saw who he was with.

Jarion stood at Ciaran Ates’s side, his father’s hand on the young Varmin’s shoulder with a film of silver overriding Jarion’s green eyes. Seeing Ciaran next to Jarion made her confront how many of her favorite physical features of Jarion’s came from his father, like the volume of his curly black hair and the shape of his large, expressive eyes, though Ciaran’s gaze lacked his sweetness. Jarion’s wings were expanded behind him. He wasn’t moving, didn’t appear to be breathing as he flanked his father like an unresponsive statue, gauging his surroundings with no emotion.

Kellen, Ella gasped. What’s happening to him?

He’s fucking with Jare’s mind, Kellen answered in a gravelly voice. Ciaran has the power of Telekinesis. You see the silver in Jare’s eyes? Jarion probably has no idea what’s happening right now.

I need to get to him, Ella declared, squeezing the hilt of her sword.

Baby, you shouldn’t approach him. In the state he’s in, Jare could hurt you. Let me shift back and get him myself.

NO, KELLEN! Both Kellen and Ella were stunned by the vigor of her plea. What overrode her senses now wasn’t terror or horror—it was the rage of a mother whose child was in peril. I’VE GOT THIS. You keep Laya up there with you and cover my back. Kellen surprisingly didn’t argue.

Before Ella could complete a step in Jarion’s direction, Oliviana Bryan dove into her path and sent a cascade of vines at Ella’s face. Ella’s reflexes kicked in fast enough that she deflected the attack with her sword slicing through the vines, the boughs wilting onto the ground. She took in the black shawl wrapped around Oliviana’s shoulders, matching the fabric swathed around the other Dissidents, and coughed out a cold laugh that sounded nothing like her, raising her sword over her head.

“Not surprised in the slightest that you’re a Dissident,” Ella sneered.

“Not surprised in the slightest that you’re a raging bitch,” Oliviana snarled back, lunging at Ella.

Ella parried Oliviana’s blow by whirling away from the knife’s edge, then slammed the hilt of her sword into Oliviana’s temple, thrusting her onto the ground. Oliviana’s sword swung around and made contact with Ella’s leg, wiggling the blade inside Ella’s flesh to create a large, gaping gash. Ella bit her tongue through a yelp, then lifted her foot and jammed her heel into Oliviana’s chin, propelling her backward and thus separating Oliviana’s blade from Ella’s calf muscle. From her peripheral vision, she caught Kellen engaging a Sireres dragon-shifter, their fire tangling between them.

Ella charged at Oliviana, undiluted rage bellying her deadly skill. Oliviana met every attack with fierce, wild strength, her strikes turbulent in their brute force and sloppy, whereas Ella’s were precise and calculated, careful not to exert too much energy too fast, so as not to tire herself out. Oliviana threw everything at Ella all at once, and Ella let her, purposefully slowing herself down to give Oliviana the impression that she was fading, conserving her energy for when she started to see Oliviana’s strikes falter, less power driving her forward, her limbs shaking. Ella monitored the distance between them in finding her opening, keeping close enough to reach Oliviana’s sword, but not close enough to risk getting struck. At the first buckle of Oliviana’s knees, she disarmed Oliviana by using her own sword to redirect Oliviana’s weapon downward and moved in to grab the sword out of her hand, sending Oliviana’s rapier clattering to the ground.

Ella grabbed Oliviana’s arm when she tried to make a grab for Ella’s sword and rotated it in an upward arch, dislocating her shoulder. Oliviana fell to her knees in the grass with a strident cry.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Ella said, her eyes flitting between Oliviana and Jarion. “But I will if you don’t promise that, when I let you go, you won’t pounce on me again.” Oliviana cackled through her tears.

“Your human heart is pathetic,” Oliviana hissed, her smile bordered by encrusted blood. “Despite how badly I want to, Ella, and believe me, I want to, I never planned to kill you. You are the only person on this battlefield who our king told us to leave standing by the end of this assail.”

Ella’s brows furrowed together. “Your king?” she repeated.

“Edar Lantarian.” Ella’s hitched breath blocked her airway. Her blood froze in her veins and blanketed her bones in frost. Oliviana’s sinister smile stretched up to her ears, accompanied by a deranged, delirious laugh.

“What does your king want with me?” Ella asked in a low voice.

“Don’t think you’re so special. He wants your heart outside your body. He just wants to be the one to do it.”

Ella’s gaze sharpened.

“Unfortunately for him,” she growled, “he won’t get the privilege.” Ella shunted Oliviana into the grass and plunged her sword into Oliviana’s shin to keep her down, then left her to her screaming puddle of blood and tears. She passed Akio on her way to Jarion and Ciaran, Josefyn encircled around his neck.

I’ll take care of her, Akio promised Ella. You don’t need to shoulder her death. Ella’s eyes burned.

Ella could hear Oliviana’s wretched weeps and hapless appeals for her life before a choked resonance cracked through the ether, followed by the thud of Oliviana’s body hitting the earth.

The sound made Ella flinch, but she pressed onward.

Jarion’s gaze swerved to her the moment she stepped into their vicinity, no humanity flickering back at her, no trace of the young boy she’d come to love as if he were her brother. Jarion, blinded by the order to protect his father, lunged on her, their entangled bodies bumping into the grass. Ella cushioned his fall, whereas her collision with the ground was harsh and painful, her back throbbing from the force of his weight, made bulkier by his wings being out. Jarion rocked his fist in her face, but she blocked him by catching his balled-up fingers. She wasn’t fast enough to deflect his other fist before it blasted her cheekbone, her bone fracturing under the surface of her flesh, the sting reverberating through her whole body. Ella refused to fight him back, refused to land a single blow on the young dragon-shifter, simply matching his moves whenever she could and weathering the storm of his strength when she didn’t move quick enough to parry.

She wouldn’t hurt Jarion. Even if he killed her, she refused to lay a hand on him.

“Jare, it’s me!” she cried, spluttering wheezes when his fingers swallowed her throat and crushed her windpipe. “JARE!” she yelled louder, tears undulating from her eyes. “JARE, IT’S ME! IT’S ELLA! STOP! ”

Something strange happened when she bellowed that last word in vain.

What came out of her mouth wasn’t a puff of condensed air, but a smog of silver wafting in the young boy’s face, seeping into his pores and crawling through his veins to reach his head. A second later, the layer of silver overhauling his eyes deteriorated, replaced by their normal, sweet green color.

“Ella?” Jarion squeaked, looking down at his fingers wringing her neck in horror. “Ella, what is—”

“You’re okay,” Ella sobbed, stroking the side of his face. “You’re okay, Jare.”

“I hurt you.” His face crumpled with tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jarion buried his face in the crook of her shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered as she enveloped him in a tight, possessive hug, her eyes narrowed in a glower over Ciaran, her grip on the boy screaming mine. From the way Ciaran’s upper lip curled in a snarl and he brandished his sword, Ella slowly eased Jarion off her and scrambled to stand, pulling him up with her. “Go to your brother,” she commanded, settling into a fighting stance.

As Ciaran charged at Ella, Jarion hurried in the opposite direction and leapt through the air to land on the wing Kellen extended out for him to grab onto. Jarion chaotically swung his lanky body onto the wing before beginning his ascent up to reach where Laya sat on Kellen’s back. Once Jarion was secure, Kellen reared his head back, eyes glowing with otherworldly intensity, and opened his jaw wide, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth and a cavernous maw. He pinned his focus on Ciaran and unregulated a torrent of flames, which Ciaran dodged by crunching himself in a ball and rolling out of the way. He trundled right into Ella’s legs and caused her to lose her balance, collapsing onto the ground beneath him. Kellen’s flames clobbered the air above their heads, twirling and curling through the ether, devouring a Dissident who was engaging a student close by while missing the target of Ciaran, who now straddled Ella’s waist.

“You think you can take my son away from me?” Ciaran snarled, wrapping Ella’s braid around his hand and using it to bash her head into the ground. Black spots blemished Ella’s vision. She twisted her head to the side and sunk her teeth into Ciaran’s wrist. His hand retracted in surprise, giving her the perfect opening to whack her forehead into his and force him off her, punting him in the gut with her boot.

“He is not yours ,” she hissed, retrieving her blade from inside the stalks of grass. “You have never deserved that beautiful boy, or his beautiful sister. You lost the right to call them yours the moment you lay your hands on them.” Ciaran came at her full force with unbridled brutality, but Ella sidestepped his attack and retaliated by thrusting the blunt edge of her sword’s hilt into his face, finding the crackling noise that split through the air when his cheek fissured to be a satisfying sound.

Ciaran fell to his knees with a startled, callous laugh, stroking his fingers over the fractured bone.

“Do you not wonder how you’re able to do this?” he asked her, rising to his feet. “How a little human is capable of breaking the bones of a Primordial? Has it not crossed your mind how strange that is?”

“Maybe I’m just better than you,” she snarled, his own sword a lethal blur as he parried her attack with calculated ease. Ella dodged his counter-strike and wove herself around him to evade his next attack, placing her foot between his legs before prodding her heel straight into his dick. Ciaran doubled over with a garroted yelp.

From his position on his knees, he shoved his head into Ella’s stomach and knocked her to the ground, thumping his fist into her chest in a cyclic sequence until he heard a snap from somewhere inside her. Gales of gasps heaved out of her throat, her ribs smashed, blood gliding down her chin.

Through her now foggy eyesight, tarnished by dangerous black spots encroaching on her vision and threatening to shadow the whole universe, she saw Kellen fighting his way to get to her, clawing through the scorched earth and devouring every Sireres and Dissident in his path, flinging them into his mouth and grinding them into milled dust, as if they were the candy he kept in his classroom.

Kellen, she mewled, her lips forming his name in a silent cry for help.

I’m coming, baby, he promised, though every time he tried to lunge forward, someone new obstructed his path, preventing him from reaching her in time. I’m coming, sweetheart, he rasped again, spirals of smoke spilling from the sides of his mouth.

With his love shining unashamed in his eyes, his menacing form had never looked more magnificent to her.

“I thought your king gave an order not to kill me,” Ella spat out in a choked, unhinged laugh.

“Edar may have freed me from my prison, but I do not take orders from him. I am my own master.” Ciaran seized her chin and clambered for his sword in the grass. “You are na?ve, girl. You haven’t been paying any attention to what’s happening, and it’ll be your naivety that kills you in the end.”

Ella, in her vertiginous, wearied haze, saw an opening and took it, mustering all her strength to lurch her body upward and sink her teeth into the side of Ciaran’s neck. His flesh tasted charbroiled from the residue of smoke smeared across his skin and like metal from the bitter flavor of blood. Ciaran shook on top of her, writhing to free himself from her entrapment, but she clamped down harder, keeping him restrained against her long enough for her fingers to reach her sword.

“And it’ll be your hubris that kills you,” she mumbled against his throat before she speared her sword through Ciaran’s back, the tip of her blade peeking past his chest on the other side. His body floundered around the steel blade, fighting off the clutches of death, until finally, he folded over, whatever life remained pouring out of him, and buried her beneath his body weight.

I did it, she declared to Kellen, sinking into the pillow of grass beneath her head, giving in to the temptation to shut her eyes and drift far away from this gruesome wasteland that was once a school.

Noella! A male voice—Coz—hovered above her. Noella, wake up!

Ella opened her eyes when she felt hands slide under her back and wrench her into a standing position against her will. The hands were masculine, but smaller than Kellen’s, less hardened, more innocent.

Jarion. It was Jarion holding her, Kellen looming above in dragon form.

“I want to sleep,” she groaned, struggling to keep her eyes open now that she’d given them a taste of what it felt like to close. Jarion hugged her to his chest, keeping her from slipping back down to the ground like she wanted to.

“I’ve got you now,” Jarion whispered, crying into her hair. “We’re going to get you healed, Ella. Okay?”

“I just want to sleep,” she repeated again, hoping someone would listen.

You can sleep soon, Kellen promised in a tear-soaked voice. You’ve earned whatever the fuck you want, baby, from now until the end of time. You are a miracle. I’m so fucking proud of you.

“Can you walk, or do you want me to carry you?” Jarion whispered.

“I…I can walk.” She didn’t add I think, though it tickled her tongue.

Jarion let her go slowly, making sure she was steady on her feet before he put distance between them. Kellen and Coz extended their wing on the terrain to create a hill for Ella and Jarion to climb up to his back. Ella let Jarion go first, needing a second to regain her equilibrium before attempting to mount Kellen.

Jarion was halfway up Kellen’s wing when his eyes suddenly bugged out and he screamed, “MOM! NO!”

“Wha—”

Ella’s breath perished on her tongue when a sword met the world on the other side of her chest.