Thirty-Four

The battle sprawled across the castle grounds.

Illucian soldiers pried at the mausoleum with their blades, trying to reopen the collapsed entrance, but it would be useless—they had no Sella to operate it. Our forces had pushed through and were rushing them. Elko shot past me with a whoop of delight, intercepting a Vykryn coming for a Rhodairen soldier’s back.

A flash of blue caught my eye, two fighting soldiers parting to reveal a sight that stilled my breath.

Ericen was dueling Razel.

She struck in a wild frenzy, her moonblades flashes of silver in the light. Ericen had lost one of his swords, barely parrying her attacks with the remaining one. The sleeves of his shirt had been scorched away, his skin red and raw where the flames must have caught him.

Ericen ducked a blow, and another figure stepped forward, taking Razel’s follow-up strike—another Vykryn. But even between the two of them, they couldn’t take her down, even as they sliced her arms and legs and side. Razel fought with a wild fury, and the other Vykryn was favoring an injured leg.

Then in one swift move, she drove her sword through the Vykryn’s leg. Her other hand came up, a dagger clasped in her fingers. She drove it through the Vykryn’s neck.

He toppled to the ground as she ripped her weapons free.

“Stay here,” I ordered Res. I forced myself forward even as my body struggled.

Res lurched after me, screeching.

Stay! I screamed down the line.

A Vykryn met me as I emerged from the tree line. I caught his sword on my bow, deflecting the blade and ducking low. Then Res was there, his claws tearing through flesh.

“I told you to stay, you bloody chicken!”

He cawed back, limping after me on his injured leg. He fought with beak and talons, rending flesh as I struck out with my bow, taking out knees and slicing along ribs with the sharpened edge, even as my energy fled me bit by bit.

When at last we broke through the flood, my heart stopped.

Ericen fought Razel one-handed, his other arm hanging limp at his side, coated in blood. He favored his right leg, barely able to put weight on it, and a wound on his forehead leaked blood into his eyes.

The queen dove inside his guard, catching him in the jaw with an elbow. He fell back against the castle, his sword dragging along the earth.

Razel drove her moonblade down.

My arrow struck the blade from her hand. She whirled, but I already had another arrow nocked and loosed. It skinned her wrist, and she released her other blade with a snarl. Behind her, Ericen collapsed against the wall, sliding to the ground.

A dangerous fire burned in Razel’s eyes. “I wondered when you’d find me, Thia dear.”

I leveled an arrow at her. Never had I been so aware of the tension in the string, of the power coiled inside. Here, among the flames and the dying, the acrid scent of smoke breaking loose memories I’d locked deep, deep inside, my hands quivered. Not from exhaustion, and not from fear, but from the desire to simply let go. To let my arrow find her heart.

It was no less than she deserved.

Razel must have seen the battle playing out on my face, because she grinned like a salivating wolf. She stood tall, imperious in her gilded armor, and stepped toward me.

I stepped back, lifting my arrow. “It’s over,” I rasped. “The Sellas are dead. You have no weapons. Surrender.”

Razel laughed. “You’re too weak to kill me.” She stepped forward, and then again.

I held my ground, my hands trembling.

She deserves to suffer, as we have suffered. Elko’s words were a thunderstorm in my head. She deserves to die.

My mother. The crows. My people. Jindae. The Ambriels.

She’d killed so many.

So why couldn’t I kill her?

How many had died at my hand already, at the whim of Res’s power? What made this any different?

Why am I so weak? I’d spent countless hours lying in bed, asking myself that question. It had taken facing Razel, facing my past as well as my future, for me to understand I wasn’t weak at all. I never had been.

I caught Ericen’s gaze behind her. He nodded.

Survival took strength, and I had survived. Moving forward took strength, and I had forged a new path.

Forgiveness took strength, and I would not let Razel take that from me.

I would not become her.

“You’re right.” I lowered my bow.

Razel’s smile sharpened.

“But I won’t let you go either.”

I shot her in the foot. She snarled, the sound more fury than pain. Without batting an eye, she ripped the arrow from her foot and clung to it like a knife. Then she lunged, slashing.

I deflected the arrow with my bow. A piercing cry followed as Res struck, biting through the shaft and sending the arrowhead tumbling into the earth. He curled his body before me like a shield as Razel leapt back into a crouch, remnant lightning sparking through the crow’s feathers.

Razel rose with Ericen’s discarded sword in her hand.

I clutched my bow, fingers swiping for an arrow—and found none. My heart stuttered. Then Razel was upon me, a tempest of fury and steel.

I forced her aside, away from Res. She struck again and again. I deflected her blade, retreating with every step. Res’s anxious energy flooded the cord, but I warned him back. Razel struck with reckless abandon, her normal grace gone in the face of her rage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ericen struggling to his feet.

I lashed out with the sharpened edge of my bow, slicing Razel across the arm. She hissed, thrusting her blade while my guard was open and catching me along the ribs. White-hot pain flared along my side, and I spun away to give myself space.

She advanced, but then Res was there, forcing her back with a flare of his metal-tipped wing, the most his faded magic could muster. My strength ebbed, and the world began to darken. Between fighting the Sella and my wounds, my body couldn’t take much more. Res fell back, ready to support me.

“I will tear you apart,” Razel snarled. “I will destroy what remains of your pathetic kingdom. And when this world is mine, then I will at last have peace.”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” I rasped, clutching my side. Blood seeped through my fingers. “No matter how many people you kill, they’re never coming back.”

Razel straightened sharply, her nostrils flaring. “You think I don’t know that? You think I care? Family is weakness. Love is weakness. Let me show you.”

For an instant, everything was still. Something like regret passed through Razel’s face before her expression hardened to steel.

She spun and drove her blade through Ericen’s stomach.

I screamed, and the sky screamed with me.

Power erupted down the cord as Res rose tall behind me. I could feel his magic feeding on me, feel my energy running down the bond the same way it had when I’d pulled it free of him in Caylus’s workshop. This was my strength, my magic—and Res was drawing on it.

Thunder boomed, shuddering through the sky in an earthquake of shattering sound. The wind howled, snapping my hair against my skin, but I didn’t feel the sting nor the tattoo of the pouring rain.

Razel withdrew the sword. Ericen gasped, blood spurting from his lips. As he slid to the ground, a crimson smear trailed along the castle wall in his wake.

I screamed again. The rain hardened into ice, falling like stones as Res’s magic erupted. At my back, Res let out a piercing call, snapping open his wings to protect me from the buffet of the wind and the bite of the hail.

Lightning struck a pace away from Razel. She stumbled to the side, fumbling to raise her sword in the heavy winds. I pushed harder on the link, willing my strength to Res.

The hail struck like arrows. Ribbons of red appeared on Razel’s face and neck, hands and arms. Like the countless lines she’d sliced into her own skin in sacrifice to her god, so the ice cut more and more. She raised her hands to protect her face, but it was no use. The ice grew larger, turning from pebbles to sharpened fragments of glass. They drove into her body like knives.

With a scream, she lifted her sword and lunged for me. Lightning struck the ground right before her, throwing her back. She hit the ground hard, her own blade cutting into her leg. Blood stained her golden uniform, her hair, and her body until her skin looked raw.

She struggled to her knees, shards of ice rising from her skin in spikes. Her chest heaved, and she coughed blood, her skin paler than snow.

Res cawed again, the sound melding with the thunder.

Then the queen of Illucia fell.