T
he impact of my body falling against the wall and a loud Bang! Snapped me back into consciousness.
It all came back to me in pieces: the party, Ahzeen Mikov, the Chryxalis — and, most vividly of all, Tisaanah’s body hitting the ground.
I jerked myself upright, trying to leap to my feet and stumbling as I found that my hands were tied behind my back. I was in a small, expensively furnished room, maybe some kind of library or sitting room. No guards.
“I need you to get your bearings fast.” Nura’s voice, low and calm, snapped my eyes to my right, where she stood against the wall.
My eyes fell past her, to Sammerin, and my heart stopped. He offered me a faint smile, as if anticipating my reaction, but he leaned heavily against the wall. Blood soaked through his jacket.
Beside him, Ariadnea didn’t look much better. Her back was straight, shoulders square in the stance of a highly trained soldier. But she touched the side of her arm to the wall and to the edge of the end table beside her, betraying uncertainty that was hard to miss. Because, after all, a Syrizen without magic was simply blind.
Ascended above. We were in trouble. And all I could see, over and over again, was Tisaanah’s form falling.
“Where—”
“I assume they were taking us to the dungeons. But something happened. A lot of commotion back towards the ballroom.”
My blood went cold.
“They shoved us in here and just ran off to go investigate, but I doubt we have much time before they return.”
Tisaanah. It had to be.
I only barely choked back a wall of furious terror.
Step back. My mind recited a series of commands from many years ago, reverent like a prayer. Evaluate. Judge. Act. Leave no room for anything else.
My gaze snapped back to Nura, settling on her forearms, tucked behind her back. It had to be her and I. Sammerin and Ariadnea were too compromised.
“Remember Albreit?”
A smile glittered in Nura’s eyes. “You read my mind.”
And right on cue, the door opened and two of Ahzeen’s soldiers rushed back in. They were sloppy, frenzied, practically stumbling back into the room. Whatever they had seen had spooked them.
I didn’t give myself time to dissect that.
Instead, I threw myself against the larger man and shoved him towards the wall, where Nura had turned, back to us — a dagger flicking from the inside of her sleeve. At my shove, the guard careened into her and let out a yelp as the blade buried itself into his gut.
The other one dove for me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nura kick the first guard off of her blade. I narrowly evaded the swing of a sword. The frenzied momentum of his strike sent him stumbling, tripping over a coffee table.
Sloppy, sloppy.
I leapt over him before he could get up. One foot on his chest, the other coming down hard on his throat. He wheezed.
“Nura, hands.”
Impact and pain lit up my wrists. I winced. Well, she didn’t have to fucking skin me—
My annoyance was cut short by a crash to my left.
I whirled to see Ariadnea and Sammerin pushing the wounded soldier against a wall, cornering him.
I tried unsuccessfully to pull my hands apart. I could feel the fraying rope beginning to give.
The other guard, the one I had tripped, struggled to climb to his feet.
Nura pressed herself against the wall, bracing against it as she sawed at her restraints.
Another yank, and my hands finally broke free. I dove for Nura and grabbed the dagger from between her wrists, ignoring the pain that lit my palms as I pulled it by the blade.
The soldier stood upright, swaying as his arm raised.
To my left, I heard Ariadnea let out a muffled grunt as the other guard threw her aside.
Four seconds. I had four seconds, maybe.
With vicious force, I drew the dagger over Nura’s bound wrists.
It had to be enough. I had time for only one stroke before I leapt for the man cornering Sammerin, yanking him back and drawing the dagger across his throat.
And I looked away from the man’s gargling wound just in time to see Nura let the other man drop, a second bloodied dagger protruding from beneath her sleeve.
“It was smoother in Albreit,” she panted, as I freed Ariadnea and Sammerin’s hands.
I hardly heard her. Sammerin visibly struggled to remain upright. Blood now dripped from his jacket and formed a
slick pool on the floor. Ascended, he shouldn’t have been involved in that fight—
“Sam—”
“Listen.” Ariadnea cocked her head, raising a finger. We went silent.
And a beat later, the sounds of distant screams unfurled through the air. Quiet, but unmistakable.
My heart turned to lead and dropped all the way through my stomach. I leapt to the door. When I threw it open and stepped through, a curse flew from my lips.
Because this building was on fucking fire.
And it was no fire I’d ever seen before, either. One end of the hallway, the one that would eventually lead back to the ballroom, was crawling with glowing blue licks of flame. They moved slightly too slow, skipping like light reflecting through swaying glass.
The image I’d nursed in the back of my head — the image of Ahzeen beating Tisaanah to death in the middle of that revolting party — was replaced with something even more terrifying.
The distant shouts morphed into unmistakable echoes of the ones from Sarlazai. The ones that scarred the insides of my ears.
I nearly didn’t hear Nura’s gasp beside me. “Even with the Chryxalis? That’s…remarkable.”
Remarkable? Remarkable? It was horrifying.
Dread rolled over me as I thought of the look on Tisaanah’s face when she was in Reshaye’s clutches, cold and brutal and distant. And I thought of how different it was from the face that looked up at me in that tent, demanding promises of me in the moonlight.
“What is it?” Ariadnea asked, frustrated, twisting her eyeless face in one direction and the another. “What do you see?”
“It’s not fire,” Sammerin rasped. He sagged against the doorframe, clutching his torso. I looked at my friend and
silent fear passed between us.
Only for a second, before he began to keel over. I caught one arm, and Ariadnea caught the other.
He was losing so much blood.
And Tisaanah was losing herself.
And I could be losing both of them.
Everything was going to hell, and I had never — never — been so afraid in my entire sorry life. For one moment, I breathed that terror in as deep as I could.
And then I exhaled it into savage resolve.
“Find a way out. Take everyone who will come with you, and get out of here.”
Nura’s eyebrows lurched. “And what about you?” “I’ll catch up.”
She looked at the flames, then me, then the flames. “Don’t be an idiot,” she spat. “I told you the next time you tried to kill yourself, I wouldn’t stop you.”
I almost laughed. If only it were that simple.
It is easy to die for someone, Tisaanah’s words whispered, but so much more valuable to live.
“Then don’t,” I said, and I turned towards those flames.
Sammerin’s hand caught my arm, his fingers digging into my skin.
He didn’t speak, but then, he didn’t have to. His serious stare told me that he knew what I was going to do, and why, and that he couldn’t stop me.
It took palpable effort not to let my voice tighten as I said, “I know you want to have a moment, you romantic bastard, but no time for that now. When this is all over. Sunset and all.”
His eyes only barely crinkled. Weakly, he removed his hand from my arm just enough to form a particularly vulgar gesture.
I let out a laugh that was really a sigh of relief. “That’s the spirit. Now get the hell out before you bleed to death.”
I didn’t wait for anyone to respond before I turned away, walking briskly down the hallway, my pace quickly escalating into a run. It was easier to focus on the strange blue flames ahead than on their faces. The end of the hallway was now engulfed in those flickering blue lights. I was running straight into a wall of it.
I was running towards Tisaanah.
I do not give you permission to fail if I fail.
The only thought in my mind was that I loved her.
I hadn’t told her that, but as that eerie blue light drew nearer, I’d never felt more certain. I loved her for her strength, for her fierce, beautiful force, for seeing what others overlooked. I loved her for everything the world had tried to break her with. I loved her for pushing forward anyway.
Promise me that you will keep fighting your battles even
if I lose mine.
I stood with her, only her, until the end of our stories. But I refused to allow hers to be a retelling of mine. She deserved better than a lifetime of bloodstained hands and a tale with a bitter ending crafted from Reshaye’s terrible acts. She deserved epics.
And I loved her so damned much that I would fulfill the promise I made to her, even if it became the hardest thing I ever did.
Even if it meant embracing a part of myself that I would rather pretend didn’t exist.
The blue flames engulfed me. They were lightly cool, and they burned a slow, strange pain over my skin that rattled through me like lightning.
I waited until I couldn’t take it anymore before I did something that I had sworn to myself I would never, ever do.
If Reshaye was drawing from a deeper power, then so could I. For once, I wasn’t holding back.
My second eyelid slid open, and my body unraveled into fire.
