The bones of my kneecaps pressed against the hard, dry wood below. I was immobilized, merely kneeling on the platform’s edge, roaring until my throat was raw and bleeding. She hung there, limp and broken, pierced through by a jagged claw, suspended like a bowed ribbon dipped in a seductive waltz by Death himself. She was dead.
It was as if the candle of her life had been snuffed out, plunging my world into darkness and extinguishing my soul. I retched onto the knotted wood beneath me, again and again, crying out in anguish.
Please, no—
I shook, panting as my mind became a hollow void, filled only with the deafening echo of her final words: “Live, for me…” Her words, the rhythm of my heart, my devastated, shattered heart, and the crushing emptiness. When my gut was emptied onto the ground, and I panted on all fours like a wounded animal, my vision blurred by tears, teeth gnashing, I forced myself to rise.
But Lazarus was gone from the sky. I braced myself with steady breaths for the arrival of another of his mercenaries, expecting them to finish me off too.
Please, I thought. Kill me. I want to be with her. Please.
But it was Griffin’s hand on my shoulder, turning me to face him. His eyes were hard, his expression grim as he said, “We have to go.”
Ryder emerged from behind the commander, his face reflecting my wrecked state. “No,” he uttered, appalled.
Griffin’s eyes darted between Ryder and me. “Now.”
“No, no, no—” Ryder pleaded. “This is all my fault. I did this. It’s my fault—”
“Ryder,” Griffin cautioned, his voice sharp as a blade.
But Ryder continued, “I told her. I knew I shouldn’t have. How could Amelia have done this?”
“What did you do?” I demanded, rage momentarily replacing my pain. I hadn’t realized I was moving, hadn’t realized my hand was around Ryder’s throat, hadn’t realized his face was turning a ghastly blue. I tightened my grip.
“Kane,” Griffin snapped, pulling at my arm. “Kane, control yourself. He made a mistake—you’re going to kill him!”
Ryder choked and sputtered.
Good. I squeezed harder, feeling his airway close under my hand. “Why should you get to live?”
Ryder’s purple face strained, sniveling and wide-eyed. Enduring the pain. Accepting it.
“Why?” I roared.
Griffin shook me. “This is not what Arwen would have wanted!”
I released Ryder, biting my cheek until I tasted blood.
“No,” Ryder croaked, rubbing his neck. “He should kill me. I told Amelia where you’d be. And she told Lazarus. Why would she do that?”
“She must have cut a deal,” Griffin said hollowly.
“For what?” Ryder asked. “Her people, I’m sure.”
Ryder shook his head. “When I couldn’t find her, I had a bad feeling, but I never thought…”
I couldn’t listen anymore. Couldn’t hear anything but my heart, beating too slow, barely beating at all. I moved toward the platform’s edge, but I couldn’t feel my legs. I had to be with her.
“Kane, stop, they’re gone.”
I shoved around Griffin, but he blocked my path again. Firm, stern. “Kane, she’s gone.”
Sobs racked my chest. I didn’t sound like myself. I didn’t sound like anything. My face crumpled, tears blurred my vision, and no matter how much I cried, it wouldn’t ease the emptiness, the unbearable agony.
I moved again toward the platform’s edge, toward that bottomless, blackened forest. Toward the peace I’d find at its base. But Griffin pulled me into him. His embrace was awkward, stiff, more like a steel grip to prevent me from my own actions. I wrenched away, but he held firm.
“I’m sorry, brother,” he said.
Resonant silence filled my head. The sun had fallen, and the cold air raised the hairs on the back of my neck and my limp arms. The smell of burning—perhaps a lantern or torch knocked aside—wafted through the air. Voices wailed, and heavy boots stomped below us.
“We need to leave,” Griffin said. “There are men coming for you…”
I nodded as he released me, guiding us away from the ledge.
“I have to ask,” Griffin said. “The blade?”
“He took it. With her…” I couldn’t say the word. Her body. She was just a body now, just a shell.
When Griffin shifted, I climbed onto his feathered wingspan, Ryder following, his face splotchy from tears. My mind was silent as we took to the skies, utterly silent as we sailed over the depths of the forest below, through the clouds.
Later, in the suffocating dark of my study, more than inebriated with drink, my thoughts surfaced. It was so obvious now. Painfully, punishingly obvious. It had always been his plan—to let me live, to let us find the blade for him before he killed her.
We had been played. And now, there were three things left to do: locate the White Crow, endure whatever necessary to become full-blooded, hunt down Amelia, make her suffer unimaginably for her betrayal, and then, when the world was torn to shreds and there wasn’t a soul left to blame for her death, I’d complete the prophecy in Arwen’s place. Vanquish my father, drive the Blade of the Sun into his heart, and join her wherever she was.
With the Gods. In the ground. Nowhere. I didn’t care. I had lived centuries without Arwen. I couldn’t do it again.
Until then, I knew only one cure for such grotesque, intolerable pain: Revenge.
