25 UNFETTERED

He was at Kinaiya Lodge. Everything was exactly how he remembered it: the watercolors on the wall, his collection of plants, the tables and furniture where he’d always placed them. There were no signs of the scorch marks the mob had inflicted. No other evidence that the city had hated him.

He stood before the painting of the Night Empress on his wall. No, not the Night Empress, his mother. Ligaya Pendergast smiled benignly down at him, and in an earlier, more innocent time, he would have imagined that was how she might look like surrounded by the Three of the Light’s grace, happy and peaceful and free.

But that wasn’t the reality of his mother. He’d loved the idea of her because he’d had no other memories of her to make, but his mistake had been believing her flawless.

The silence in the room was unnatural. He turned and noted one way in which Kinaiya Lodge was different—there were no doors leading out. Someone was intent on keeping him here.

Remy reached out from behind his back and found the familiar cold steel of Breaker, hefting it into both his hands. “No,” he said, then lifted it up to slash at the portrait of his mother.

It fell away easily; behind it, a fierce fight took place. The rest of Kinaiya Lodge faded away, and Remy saw Malekh in combat with the Night Empress. Both looked exhausted, neither giving in, and he wondered if they had been at this ever since Malekh had fallen unconscious.

“What are you doing here?” Even in his subconscious state, Malekh was ungrateful. His clothes were torn, his face bloodied. The Night Empress was similarly battle worn. Remy’s arrival was enough for both to take pause.

I was made a vessel to exact my own revenge, the Night Empress hissed. Their enemies are mine.

“They consider me their enemy. Am I your enemy, then, Mother?”

Bright red eyes gazed back at him. Remington.

“I cannot let you harm Malekh or Xiaodan, Mother. The Antecedents threw you into the Godsflame without your consent. They will use you to rule the courts, and you’ll be nothing more than their puppet. Is that really what you want?”

The scarlet-clad figure hesitated. Rather than press his advantage, Malekh waited, sword at the ready but no longer braced to attack.

I— the Night Empress began, then cut herself off with a cry. She hunched forward, fingers pressed against her temple, face twisted in agony.

“She’s been having these spells since we started fighting,” Malekh said. “Not long enough for me to subdue her, but enough to know that she suffers from a prolonged frenzy from the Godsflame.”

“You were aware?”

“Only after being trapped with her here for this long. How much time has passed?”

“Nearly a day. Everyone else is fighting mutations outside the castle, but Xiaodan, Elke, Lady Yingyue, and I are outnumbered by the Antecedents inside. They orchestrated all of this—they’ve compelled her.”

Malekh rubbed at his eyes. “I should have known. The possibility crossed my mind, but I had dismissed it too quickly—they all seemed so loyal to the throne rather than to Ishkibal.”

“Ligaya,” came the priestess’s voice, startling Remy. He saw the hooded figure materialize out of nowhere, the same one he’d seen in their last shared dream. “I will grant you that which you so dearly wish for,” the woman said.

Remy didn’t see anyone move, but instinct made him dodge all the same, and a sudden, crippling pain in his side sent him to one knee. He clasped at the injury, feeling blood drip in rivulets down his leg.

“Remington!” Malekh leaped in front of him, slashing at the seemingly empty air before them and hitting something. The priestess jumped back, a long dagger in her grip covered in Remy’s blood.

“How are you still standing?” she snarled.

No! cried the Night Empress.

“Your child will be here with you forever,” the temple priestess offered. “And as such, you both shall rule.”

Isabella moved forward again… and the knife slid from her hands. She gasped and staggered back, looking down at the hand that had driven itself through her chest. “O Holiest One,” she whispered, mouth filling with blood.

No, the Night Empress said. Not this way.

And then the dream was gone.

Remy lurched awake with a gasp, hands scrabbling toward his hip, trying to staunch his injury there only to find his clothes clean. Alegra and Elke were awake, the latter guarding him closely.

“They came straight for you,” she panted, “and Xiaodan fought off anyone who dared draw close, until the priestess awoke screaming.”

The high priestess lay on the floor, eyes wide and clutching at a chest that was also bereft of wounds. But his relief came when he saw Malekh stirring.

The Night Empress had gone still before the Godsflame, staring up at its fire.

“Ligaya,” the priestess wheezed, climbing painfully back to her feet. She shuffled toward the other woman, hand raised pleadingly out. Xiaodan was already by Malekh’s side, face pale. She turned to Remy. “It’s over,” she whispered. “She’s lost.”

“How can you know that?” Remy wheezed, still trying to catch his breath.

“They thought to kill your physical form,” Malekh said weakly. “But there’s something else inside Ligaya’s mind.”

“Ligaya,” Isabella said again. “Please.”

The Night Empress turned to look at her. She smiled gently. “Isabella,” she said, her voice no longer traveling in echoes. “Thank you.”

She grabbed the temple priestess by the throat. The woman’s eyes bulged as the Night Empress slowly lifted her. Though Isabella was taller, her legs kicked several inches off the ground as Ligaya Pendergast’s grip tightened.

And then the Night Empress turned and flung her into the wall. Again and again she drove the other woman into the unmercifully hard stone, the horrifying sounds of breaking bones and tearing flesh agonizingly loud. Eventually, Remy’s mother was holding something that barely resembled a human or vampire. Only then did she drop her burden in bloody remains to the ground.

Gibrid let out a furious shout, charging the Night Empress. The woman turned, red eyes blazing, and grabbed the man’s head with both her hands, crushing it easily in her grip. The other Antecedents made their own desperate attacks, but the latter showed no signs of tiring.

“They weren’t just using compulsion to control her,” Elke said, stricken. “It was to curtail her strength as well, Bloody Light.”

The Night Empress tore through her enemies easily, leaving broken bodies and torn limbs in her wake. When she turned to Remy, he saw that even the whites of her eyes had turned crimson.

Light surrounded Xiaodan as she channeled the sun; her face was strained and her fingers trembled, but the blaze around her only grew stronger.

Snarling, the Night Empress lunged at her.

She was blocked by a furious Yingyue, who slashed with her chakram, forcing the vampiress back. “Do not touch my daughter,” the Fourth Court matron roared.

The Night Empress surged forward and was blocked again in turn. Both women stood slicing away at each other, neither giving ground. Shiragiku and the other Third Court rushed to help Yingyue, to no avail; Shiragiku staggered back, a jagged cut across her stomach from the Night Empress’s nails.

Remy was already at Shiragiku’s side, hands pressed firmly over her wound in an attempt to staunch it. Alegra and Elke doggedly kept up their assault, doing marginally better than the others, though still no match for Ligaya.

Yingyue staggered back and the Night Empress rushed forward, hand raised to slice the clan leader’s head clean off her shoulders.

“No!” Xiaodan shouted.

Light and fire swept through the cavern, crashing into the Night Empress, who howled in pain. Xiaodan sank to the floor, panting heavily with a hand clenched against her chest.

The Night Empress pawed at the flames that burned her clothes, dousing them with a swipe of her hand. Weakened but still upright, she turned to Xiaodan, who was struggling to summon another blast of light.

Yingyue’s chakram cut right through the Night Empress’s midsection.

Roaring in pain, Ligaya Pendergast spun and drove her hand into Lady Yingyue’s stomach, right through her back.

Yingyue gagged, blood pouring from her mouth. Alegra let out a horrified cry as she rushed to her mistress’s side.

The scream that burst forth from Xiaodan was heart-wrenching, and the halo of light around her became nearly blinding. When the Night Empress leaped for her, she raised her hands, her own face a mirror to the other woman’s rage.

There was an explosion the instant they made contact. The Night Empress was thrown into one of the cave walls, which shuddered as the stone crumbled, sending her sprawling into the cavern beyond.

And Xiaodan was thrown straight into the Godsflame.

“No!” Malekh roared, finding just enough strength to get to his feet… and to throw himself into the fires as well.

Remy cried out and started after them, but Elke’s grip tightened on his arm. “No, Remy,” she said.

He tried to break free. “But they could be—”

“There’s a possibility that they can survive the Godsflame, but no human save the First ever has. You can’t risk it, Remy! Not even for them.”

Still bleeding, Shiragiku limped to the destroyed wall, but there was no one waiting for her within. The Night Empress was gone.

Remy stared at the Godsflame, heart pounding. They were the strongest vampires he’d known. Surely, surely…

Elke’s arms circled his waist. “Please, Remy,” she wept. “Don’t.”

The flames leaped up, an otherworldly sapphire for several moments before returning to its orange intensity. Xiaodan and Malekh appeared in a heap on the platform before them. Swallowing his cry of relief, Remy stepped forward.

The snarl was his only warning.

He was on the ground with Elke crouched in front of him, a hand clasped to her bleeding shoulder.

Xiaodan’s teeth were bared, hair in wild disarray. There was a look of fury in her eyes Remy had never seen before, bordering on madness. Her hands were gnarled like talons, and she was glowing brighter than the sun had ever shone down on Elouve.

Frenzy.

The word shot through his brain, panicked and terrified. She’d succumbed to the frenzy.

Xiaodan leaped for Elke, who barely dodged the blow as she drew the vampiress away from Remy. “No!” he shouted, snatching up Breaker from where it had fallen out of Altace’s grip. He shook out his knifechain and ran… only to be blocked by Malekh. The man’s eyes were red and his fangs at their fullest, his features nearly unrecognizable.

“Malekh.” Remy said his name slowly. “I know you’re in there. That you don’t want to hurt me.”

A hiss from the Summer Lord, but he did not attack. Remy risked taking his eyes off the man’s face, watched as Malekh’s fingers dug down hard into the stone ground, leaving grooves in their wake. As if he was forcing himself to remain still.

A flash of hope bolted through Remy. “I know you can do this, you bastard. You like me too bloody much to—”

It must have been the wrong thing to say because Malekh was on him in an instant. Remy only had enough time to bring up his knifechain, shoving the links at Malekh’s mouth to keep him from reaching his throat. Malekh’s face was only inches away; there was a telltale snap as one of Remy’s chains broke, the strongest steel Elke could find, unable to endure the vampire lord’s strength.

“Fuck, Malekh!” Remy lifted a boot and kicked desperately at the man’s chest, feeling like he’d broken a toe instead. His hand scrambled for the knife still attached to the link, finding it just as Malekh bent lower. “I’m not going to die knowing you’ll feel guilty for killing me on top of everything else!”

It wasn’t a fatal wound by any means. Malekh’s shoulder was the closest target he could reach, and even then, Remy winced when the blade dug deep into the vampire’s flesh, as if he’d just been stabbed himself. And he couldn’t stop his cry of pain when the vampire responded in kind, teeth biting down hard on his arm.

And then he was no longer on the ground but in some empty white space where the fog closed in around him, thick and unyielding.

This was different. Malekh was several feet away, on his knees and bent over in agony. A little beyond him lay Xiaodan, thrashing noiselessly on the ground, still aglow.

Remy forced himself to move, crawled the last few feet to reach them.

“Kill me,” Malekh rasped, a pained sound. “It’s the only way.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.” Remy grabbed at Malekh’s head and pulled him closer, with no idea what the fuck he was doing or if he was doing it right, but determined to do it all the same. “You are coming back to me, both of you,” he said fiercely, bracing his forehead against Malekh’s. “And you’re going to do it because you are stronger than this, and I fucking love you. You haven’t spent more than nine hundred years dicking around only to let some goddamn fire be your downfall. Come back to me, you arse. Come back to—”

He didn’t expect Malekh to seize him by the neck and bite down, but this time there was no pain, only the breathtakingly, sickeningly sweet pleasure he remembered when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. He let himself go limp, allowed the vampire to have his fill, and when Malekh finally raised his head, his eyes were a bright gold.

“Xiaodan,” Malekh rasped.

“I’m scared,” Xiaodan sobbed, curled up into a ball and glowing so brightly they could barely see her within the light. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“You can.” Ignoring the spasm of pain on the side of his neck, Remy took her gently in his arms, ignoring how the light hurt his eyes. “You promised me you would fight to stay by our side, and I’m holding you to that.”

Xiaodan’s hands found his shoulders, squeezed them, almost digging into Remy’s flesh. “I’m not myself. I could hurt you.”

“Nothing you can do can ever hurt me more than leaving me.” Following Malekh’s lead, Remy tugged her closer. And then again that pinprick sweetness, that spike of ecstasy as Xiaodan’s fangs sank deeply into him.

And then the pressure was gone, and Remy was on his back, the cave ceiling looming above. Malekh was on his feet, no longer primed to attack. He was licking his lips, where traces of Remy’s blood still lingered. “Are you all right?” he asked, and for once his usually devastatingly calm voice sounded like it was packed full of cotton.

Remy was still bleeding slightly. Malekh tore a strip of cloth from his shirt, tying it like a tourniquet on his upper arm just below the wound.

“Are you finally sane?” Remy asked weakly, touching a finger to his neck.

Xiaodan was no longer fighting Elke. Instead, she sat with her back against the cave wall, crying quietly as she cradled her mother in her arms.

“Oh, sweet child,” Yingyue whispered. “Are you yourself again?” And then she chuckled weakly. “A fine thing to say, when I have not been myself for so many years.”

“Mother,” Xiaodan begged. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’ve been leaving you on your own for so long. I can do this one last thing for you, at least.” Gently, Yingyue lifted a bloodied hand and placed it against Xiaodan’s cheek. “Do not cry for me, my beautiful daughter,” she breathed. “Only rejoice that I will no longer have to live caged inside this body. I go now to where your father is, but know that I—we—are so…”

Her hand dropped, and an errant breeze swept her from Xiaodan’s arms, ashes dancing into the wind.

“Xiaodan,” Malekh said.

“No,” Xiaodan said, though her tears still flowed freely. “I—I’m glad she doesn’t have to suffer now.”

“I don’t know what you three did just now, but I am glad for it,” Elke said, sounding weary. The wound on her shoulder was a mess, but she managed a shrug at Remy’s stricken expression. “It looks worse than it is.”

“I’m sorry,” Xiaodan said wearily.

Remy winced when Malekh tugged the strip of cloth tighter. “Someone needs to see to you and Elke, Malekh.”

“It barely stings.” Malekh took the dagger still buried in his arm and pulled it out with barely a wince. “You should have driven it into my heart.”

“And lose the chance to rub it in your face how right I was not to? I think not.”

Malekh leaned in close and kissed him thoroughly, robbing him of his next boast. Those who emerged from the Godsflame came out more vicious, Remy had been told, but Malekh’s hands on Remy remained gentle, and there was a newfound softness in his eyes. He helped Remy to his feet so they could check on Xiaodan, who had not moved from her spot, still looking down at her hands.

“I could have killed you and Elke,” she said, horrified.

“But you didn’t,” Remy said, sinking down beside her.

“I don’t remember much. Only an anger I’ve never felt before.”

“Was it Remy’s blood that helped you and Lady Xiaodan survive the flames?” Elke asked.

“Our regular bloodsharing may have established a connection where no other vampire who had entered the Godsflame could…” Malekh paused. “Was that your secret after all, Lilith?” he asked quietly. “Was that how you survived? You shared your heart with many who loved you dearly, after all.”

“More than that. Otherwise, most kindred with such blood bonds would have made it through the frenzy with ease.”

Xiaodan lifted her head. “Because we love him?” she asked softly. “Because our blood is different from that of other kindred, and it flows through him, too? Because Remy has his own ties to kindred? How simple, and how terribly complicated.” There was still a hazy ring of light about her when she turned to Remy and gave him a kiss, and he could feel the exhaustion spilling out of her in waves. “I feel a bit more like myself again. Zidan?”

“I don’t feel any different, but now may not be the time for introspection.”

“What has happened here?” Fanglei had finally arrived, looking about at the strewn bodies with mounting horror as she pieced together what had happened. “The Antecedents?” she choked out, displaying more emotion than Remy had ever seen from her. “They betrayed us?”

“Unfortunately so, though most of the carnage you see here was by the Night Empress’s hand. How fare the battles outside?”

“The mutations and the coven have retreated. The Alurian army has arrived by the lakeshore and are engaging the rest. By a stroke of luck, they were within a few hours’ ride from the lake when Grager and Krylla found them.”

“More than just a stroke of luck, knowing my father,” Remy muttered.

Malekh grimaced. “We were in far greater danger here than outside the temple. Xiaodan—”

“I know what you’re going to say, but I refuse to sit and recuperate in my rooms while the rest of the courts return. They will not be happy when we tell them about the high priestess and her Antecedents.” Xiaodan swayed slightly as she stood, waving off Remy’s attempts to help, then folded her arms. “See? I will rest later, but for now, I am just as capable of meeting them as you are.”

Malekh pinched the bridge of his nose. “The Antecedents may no longer have control of the Night Empress, but that does not mean she is powerless. If anything, now that the shackles are off, she may be even more dangerous.”

Speck groaned, stirring as Malekh gently lifted the man up.

“Milord?” the young physician asked, eyes fluttering. “Are you… finally awake?”

“More than ever,” the Summer Lord told him. “And you did a fine job protecting me, Speck. I am grateful.”

“Good,” the man sighed, eyes closing again.

“What are you doing?” Elke asked, aghast, when Remy scooped the still-breathing Thaïs up. “Remy, she tried to kill you.”

“She’s in no shape to do so now.” He looked down at the frail vampiress in his arms. He wanted to be furious, to hate her for what she’d done to his mother, for what she and her clan had nearly cost them. But he could muster nothing for her beyond pity.

“Why?” Thaïs whispered. “I do not deserve your kindness.”

Remy didn’t know either. All he knew was that he was tired of so much killing. “Just because you say you don’t deserve it, that does not mean I cannot give it,” he finally said. It was a poor answer, but he had never been much good at those anyway.