Page 25

Chapter 25

Karus

A cry of rage and pain echoed through the burst of light, fading just as the Blightress did, just as all the Blight and her creatures quickly disintegrated to ash in our forest.

I kissed Rev deeply, pouring my power over his lips, healing them and mine all at once, shifting my fingers from his sharp jaw up through his black waves covered in ashes.

In the last declaration of my power, I had filled that blazing sun with hope. Hope that we’d see this forest as it should be. Hope that Rev would kiss me again, love me again, and many more times after that, as it should be. Hope for the child we’d made growing in my belly, an innocent life who deserved more than to witness pain and destruction of the isle in the fight to come against the Blightress .

The flaring tendrils of the sun burned all around us in the wake of the Blight’s final demise. Rev wrapped his arms around my back, pulling me further into his lap, returning my kiss with one of his own—hungry and demanding.

I pulled back from his mouth, my heart racing, my body responding to his urgent kiss as it always did when we were in the aftermath of some dangerous event we’d just faced. I wrapped my arms around him, pressed my cheek to his and whispered in his ear, “ I love you still.”

He groaned, pulling my face back to his, pressing me back into the ashes we’d left in the outcome of the sun we’d made together.

The Blightress was gone, her beasts gone, her plague upon the forest gone—disintegrated completely in the smoldering pockets of flame and light still simmering on the surface of the earth around us. I could no longer feel the Blight or hear the heart of it beating relentlessly as it had done for years.

He kissed me wholly, fiercely, as if we were the only ones left in our forest.

We weren’t.

“ Is this what humans do after exhausting their power?” Moira lilted from somewhere above our heads.

Revich streamed a myriad of curses across my lips before sitting up and pulling me up with him, rising from the ground to survey the damage. We were at least thirty feet away from the others who thankfully hadn’t seemed to notice how entwined we’d become since lighting hundreds of acres into little fires.

I rushed to Philius and Lia hovering over Renn who lay unconscious on the ground. The right side of her face and shoulder were burned in a streak of raw flesh.

“ I didn’t mean to—” Philius started, unable to finish in his grief, rising and walking away.

“ Vennae ,” I murmured, closing my eyes and searching through her veins for a pulse. It was there, but weak. “ We have to get her back to the Fortress ,” I urged, calling to Rev .

He was already there, creating two portals in swift movements of his hands.

“ I’ll take her,” Pompeii said, helping me pull her to her feet, still unconscious.

“ These lead straight to the room Philius occupied in the servants’ quarters.” Revich took Pompeii’s place, lifting Renn easily.

“ I should be able to heal these wounds,” Pompeii assured us as he stepped into his portal to wait for Renn on the other side.

We lifted her to the portal, careful of her raw wounds and gently pushed her through, hoping Pompeii was ready to catch her. The portal closed in a rush of power as her body disappeared.

I surveyed the damage, feeling Pompeii’s gentle tap through the Overseer - Baron bond on my shoulder, assuring both of us Barons that he had Renn safely in that room. Talon was holding onto Ilyenna tightly as they caught their breath. Lia was bent to the earth, inspecting the ashes that fell while the few Growers left sifted their limbs into the earth, slowly returning life to the soil.

“ Philius !” I called, catching up to him as he paced through the new growth.

“ I burned her!” He brought the stubs of his wrists to his head, ready to scream into the still smoldering forest.

I caught his arms in mine, mumbling the spells of healing he needed to close the wounds. “ You saved her from that Blight . It was going to pull her under the surface.”

“ I didn’t mean to. I didn’t?—.”

“ I know,” I soothed. “ She will know, too, when she wakes.”

“ The Blightress ,” he breathed, “she’s gone?”

“ Yes .”

“ She just left without more of a fight?” he asked, in a grim purse of his lips.

“ I think—” I started, opening my mind to her, just to see if she lingered there. “ I think she’s wounded. She didn’t suspect that I could destroy all of the Blight at once, and I couldn’t have without Revich’s help. When the Blight is destroyed, she feels it. Just like when I burned those syphoner trees. She? —”

“ What are we waiting for, then?” Philius whipped around with the glint of hatred in his golden eyes. “ Let’s go now. Let’s go to her heart and be rid of her.”

“ I —”

“ You know how to get there. You’ve been before. So let’s leave. While she’s recovering. She won’t expect us. We can rid the land of her now. We don’t need to wait.”

I couldn’t lie, the same line of thought had already crossed my mind, but seeing Renn burned and the aftermath of destroying the Blight , I hesitated in admitting to Rev what the rage in my heart wanted to do next.

“ It’s not up to us. We all have to agree because all of us will be taking a risk.”

“ I’ll talk to them.”

“ No !” I grabbed his vest as he lurched forward. “ Let me. Your temper never won any arguments against anyone but the Queen .” I sighed heavily, checking his wrists one last time to see that his wounds were healed over.

Revich and Lia were deep into a conversation, so I took a moment to dampen the pockets of flame around us. They’d sprouted here and there around what was now a clearing in the midst of healing. The Growers left were working hard, their spindly bodies bent to the ashes, pushing limbs into the ground and slowly sprouting buds of bushes and saplings of trees. Moira leapt from each new circle of growth, spinning and twirling, her own fae magic encouraging the growth and blooms of red, yellow, and white which opened for her as she danced.

Philius stayed close as I smoothed my black vest and skirts and wiped at the black remnants of Blight .

“ I’m with you, Soot .” Philius muttered so only I could hear.

I grunted a laugh, my lips pulling into a smile. It was the nickname he’d given me as a child. Instead of calling me Ash , he’d call me Soot , just to get under my skin as brothers tend to do.

“ I haven’t heard that in a long time,” I replied in a heavy sigh, hands on my hips, gripping them tightly and gazing up into the trees stained with black.

“ Too long.” He crossed his arms awkwardly, pausing slightly with how to tuck the stubs of his wrists underneath. “ I’m here as a reminder of where you came from.”

I shivered and stared at my brother for a moment in a distant memory of us as children, running through the tall grasses of the Hyrithian Plains . Hand -in-hand we’d taken on invisible foes and leapt greatest distances, and we’d done it together.

I’d never hold his hand again.

I cocked my head, filling my lungs and looking down at my boots to recuperate my thoughts.

They all gathered silently. Without needing to call them to me, my people circled in front of me. Each stood in varying states of dishevelment and exhaustion, waiting to hear what I had to say.

Philius stood to my left, followed by Talon and Ilyenna , still holding onto each other. Ilyenna’s silent tears streamed down her face as she cupped her growing belly.

Lia next, looking the most exhausted I’d ever seen her. Her black hair, always swept back into a bun at the nape of her neck, had now fallen out completely, flowing down her shoulders in beautiful waves of onyx. She looked younger, tired, but if I looked hard enough, I’d guess she wasn’t a day over forty.

My eyes followed the line, landing on Rev . I knew he gripped the rhyzolm in his hand even though he’d shoved them both into his pockets, standing there like a pillar of chiseled marble. I saw through the ash and grime, right to the man who would need the most convincing to do this.

His eyes warred.

Black , blue, black, blue—an unending swirl of color fading in and out like ocean waves on a starless night.

“ The Blight is gone from this home we share,” I started, honing my anger into strength. “ But there is one more task I ask of you.”

Five sets of eyes locked on me, and I stood taller, straighter, no longer a channeler brought to the forest to save it, but a Baron leading in the fight to protect it. “ The Blightress did not expect us to succeed in ridding Felgren of her poison. She is feeling the effects of the Blight’s destruction, possibly still healing from the syphoner trees we burned days ago. She is weak.”

Revich shifted slightly, and in the subtle movement, I knew he knew what I would ask next.

“ We can leave now. I know the way to her heart underground. The tunnel will lead us to a portal. It does not fade. That portal will lead to her heart. We can destroy it while she is weak. She will not expect that from us.” I nodded to Philius . “ He no longer has a connection to her, and she is in the far corners of my mind. The Blight is gone and she does not know of what I speak to you now. I ask if you will come. I do not command it as one of your Barons , I ask it of you as one of your family.”

A smile tugged on Philius’s lips as he stepped closer. “ I will come with you, Baron Karus .”

Lia pulled her hair behind her, twisting the long length in her hands and tucking it into a bun at the nape of her neck. “ I will not leave you now, Baron Karus .”

I nodded to her, biting down on the sob that begged to leave my chest.

I looked to Talon and Ilyenna . They shared a silent conversation and Ilyenna nodded slightly. Talon kissed her temple and turned to me. “ We will come with you, Baron Karus .” He glanced to Rev , adding, “ We hold onto hope. We defy the dark.”

Revich’s jaw feathered, but he didn’t look away from me. His nostrils flared, his eyes darkened to black, the war of blue a battle lost. He did not hold my stare as a lover, he analyzed me as a Baron . For perhaps the first time since we’d met all those years ago in the foyer of the Fortress , he looked at me as Heimlen had. As a woman with power, with potential, with a stubborn spirit and strong will.

“ I will speak to Baron Karus alone,” he ordered, holding my gaze—the one I , too, refused to break.

Neither of us moved, neither wavered from the pull of our hearts, ever that thread of the bond we shared, now hot and drawn tightly as if we each tugged on the other side, attempting to bend the other to our will.

The rest of them left, wandering off to watch the rebuilding of Felgren .

I stepped closer and he followed, closing the gap between us that had never felt right. We stood, chest to chest, him slightly taller, me with my hands on my hips, refusing to give into wrapping them over his shoulders and pulling him closer.

He kept his hands in his pockets in a show of defiance of what we both wanted and what was right and natural, our bodies always finding their way back to the other.

“ What is your objection, Baron Revich ?” I asked calmly and quietly, setting the formality of the conversation to come.

“ My objection, Baron Karus , is that this is not a task we are ready for. We bring with us, who? Three channelers in various stages of skill, an ancient lapis conduit, and two Barons ? We planned for a small army of channelers and conduits to do this. I see no evidence we are ready.”

“ The question is not if we are ready, but if she is at her most vulnerable. She is weak. I feel it. I feel her cowering there in her palace of white stone. I see her there on the floor in agony at the destruction we’ve done here.” I kept his stare while jutting my chin. “ Look around and see her pain. Now is the time to strike when she is writhing on the floor and least expects it.”

“ I have looked around, and do you know what I see?” His voice came in a clipped growl. “ I see an impulsive channeler who wants revenge. I see a frightened couple that would go to the ends of the earth for either of us and follow us blindly to their demise if we so asked. I see a tired woman who fears making the same mistake she made hundreds of years ago. I see my partner, my companion, a Baron of this forest, the mother of my child, pushing herself beyond her limits by way of pain and anger. I see her most clearly of all.”

I raised my chin, clamping my mouth shut and swallowing hard enough that it hurt. I gave him my love, pure as the first night we spent together. I was angry, frightened, determined to go to that heart and destroy it for good, but more than that, I delved deep into my own soul, finding his there with mine, sending that image to him through our bond.

He jerked, blinking rapidly.

I opened my mouth, breathing deep and lifted a hand to his chest, covering the fabric—the skin and bones—which protected his heart. “ We all go or none at all. Whatever you choose, I’ll love you still.”

The moment I reached out to him, his hand was there, pressing my fingers to his heart. “ The only reason I’ll agree to this is because of our daughter. I go for her. If I did not feel her so strong and steady through this stone,”—he pulled the green rock from his pocket, and I watched in awe as it hummed in his hand, buzzing across his palm—“then none of us would be going. We do this for the future of the children of this forest, of this isle, and no other. We do not do this for ourselves, for revenge, for blind loyalty, for some regret we have to face—no. We do this for Saelyn . For Ilyenna’s child. For all the children who are and are yet to be. They deserve a world in which this threat is just a history they hear in lyric and song before they drift to sleep.”

He dropped the rhyzolm back into his pocket and pulled my hand to his lips. “ I’m afraid becoming a father has made me as reckless as you.”

I laughed, taking my hand from his lips and sliding it through his hair, letting my body fall into his chest, delighting in the feel of his strong arms that slid around my waist. They always would. He’d always be there to hold me, even at our times of tension.

“ I love you,” I whispered, hovering my own lips just below his and glancing from his brilliant blue eyes to his mouth.

He tightened his hold on my body, my heart, pulling that tether as close as our bodies were in that healing forest we loved. “ And you’ll love me still.” He grinned and winked, the gesture melting me into a puddle at his feet, where I’d gladly worship for days on end as soon as we had rid the isle of the woman who haunted it.

“ And I’ll love you still,” I agreed, pulling him down to join my lips in a kiss that we lost ourselves to as lovers, Barons , and deciders of the shadowed path we’d chosen.