Page 61

Chapter 61

Saelyn

Reaching my mother’s side, I wrapped my frozen arms around her waist. She held her hands up to the blue shield that flickered in thin patterns of swirls across its surface.

Without a word to me, she clutched my hands folded around her hip and pressed her forehead against the power my father wielded.

“ Please , Rev ,” she whispered, her breath leaving her lungs in a puffy cloud of white. “ Let me in.”

Emerald light flowed from her fingers, easing in a languid haze across my father’s blue, becoming something muted and teal, folding over and over again until her hand fell through. An opening, just her size, formed within the shield.

Her breath shuttered, and I gasped at the comforting warmth that welcomed us, instantly melting the ice crystals on our hair and clothes.

She finally looked at me with eyes wide and green, glassy from the few simple tears that fell down her cheeks. “ I told you we’d save him.” Her grin was wide, her cheeks blooming from pale white to a strawberry red. “ Your father is here, Saelyn , and he’s waiting to meet you.”

I pursed my lips and nodded, my chin shaking, my breath short as my mother took my hand and stepped forward onto a rocky shelf, lowering herself down into a hole and finding the step below. She reached up for me, helping me follow her inside while Thevin slipped down right behind me. I felt the hand of him at my back, gripping the belt across my waist as if he wouldn’t dare tempt fate and let me out of his grasp.

My mother didn’t hesitate or stop to help anyone behind us, instead beginning our descent down the jagged stairs carved from rock. Her long fingers wound tightly through mine, and I had to watch my step, keeping close to the cavern wall. When I’d felt I found my footing, I let myself observe the place my father had hidden himself for seventeen years of his life, waiting for the time to be right, waiting for my mother to find him with an army at her back.

The cavern was vast, a shelter of black hewn rock, sharp and wet, dimly lit by the opening to the surface above us. A single glow of red let off a slow pulse at the bottom of the cave, too far down and too far toward the back for me to make out any figures.

It was the warmth that gave me hope. It blew freely all around, encompassing the three of us as we carefully made our way down the stairs. The heat was comforting, staggering even, as we neared the bottom, each wave of it pulsing along with the red light.

My mother jumped the last few steps, letting go of my hand and picking up her skirts, racing across the black stone without falter. She called my father’s name over and over until her voice broke in a raspy cry that shifted off the rock through the dark. My heart splintered hearing the desperation in her last call before she reached the light, falling to the ground in sobs to destroy the silence.

Thevin took my hand and we ran. He caught me twice before I could fall, the glow growing closer and closer.

I realized what it was quickly enough, recognizing the shape of a human heart from the medicus books in Viridis . As large as a lumen’s head, it pulsed, suspended off the rocky floor next to a man who sat, leaning against a short rock wall.

I stopped, suddenly afraid to move closer. Afraid to see what so many years alone had done to my father who had loved me enough to leave me.

My mother draped herself over him, sobbing and murmuring words over and over again. He lifted a trembling hand to her face, and I wanted to know why he didn’t hold her. I wanted to demand that he take her into his arms and cry in joy that his companion had returned to his side to save him. I opened my mouth to scream, suddenly overtaken with anger at what she had been through to get to this moment.

The words would not come.

I stepped closer in rising dread, my footfall deafening to my ears, my blood pulsing now in a wicked urging to keep moving, keep getting closer to the truth of what had happened to my father while I lived my life in Felgren , blissfully unaware of his condition.

“ Sae ,” Thevin warned softly.

I knew why.

A thin line of blood dripped from the side of the beating heart, flowing across the dark rock, directly to my father’s withered hand, emaciated, but open, as if welcoming this lifeforce into his body.

Closer to the pulse, I felt the strain in my own chest, as if the small cut of her heart wounded me as well. I rubbed my chest in the ache, watching a bead of crimson slide down the flesh, falling to the ground in a splash and finding its way to his outstretched hand. My nostrils flared and my breath shuddered.

This was the heart of the Blightress .

And this was my father, draining it, wrapping it in the warmth I recognized was a melding of a simulated sun and love, allowing her blood into his body where it had sunken his skin, keeping him alive, but unable to keep him fed.

Drip .

Drip .

Drip .

I watched in inescapable trepidation as he blinked slowly, his eyes a familiar blue as he gazed into my mother’s with the ghost of a smile.

His words were barely audible, but I caught them, spoken in a breathless rasp to my mother. “ I can no longer see. But I held on to hear your voice one last time, my love, my beloved Karus .”

She held his withered hand to her cheek, whispering something I couldn’t understand. In those moments of seeing my father for the first time in my life, I knew they’d be his last.

“ No ,” I whispered.

Thevin squeezed my hand, trying to pull me away, to pull me to his chest so I didn’t have to see my father’s body, already more corpse than life, lying across from the wounded heart of the woman who was responsible for all of this.

Like a sliver, the Blightress had festered her way into our lives since before I was born and here we were, at the end of the line, the end of the story, no happy returns, no easy whisk back to Felgren where my mother could love my father. Where I could love him, too. He had waited for us all this time. And now, he would die.

Shouting sounded somewhere behind me, but I didn’t care to look. I didn’t care to turn and face whatever tragedy was next for us, only able to stare as my mother sobbed, her words ringing in clarity, her voice hard as she held my father’s face in her hands.

“ YOU CANNOT LEAVE ME !” she screamed, even as his hand went limp at his side, falling back to the hard stone in a slap.

Drip .

Screams .

Drip .

Boom .

My name was called somewhere next to me, time moving slowly, as Thevin slid behind me, pressing on my back to face whatever terror he’d seen.

I stepped closer, unfolding my hand from his, following my boots across the rocks, only hearing my mother’s pleas.

“ You cannot go, Revich . You must come home. You must come back and see your daughter.” She rubbed his cheek, stained with her stream of tears. “ I’ve done what you asked of me, so you must come home now. You breathe, I breathe. You live, I live! This is our fucking lifeline! Our lifeline, damn you!” She pressed her forehead to his and his eyes fluttered closed as she whispered, “ Do not go where I cannot follow.”

Drip .

Flame .

Drip .

Clash .

She pressed her lips to his, holding his lifeless face in her hands. In the softest, broken words, she murmured amidst his last breath, “ I love you still .”

The last words my mother would ever speak to the man she loved settled into my skin like a fatal wound across my heart.

My father was dead.

My mother’s cry was anguish.

This broken woman—my mother, my kind, loving mother who did what she could for me. My mother, the bearer of the power of Baron , leading forces, training magic wielders, building an army to withstand the power of the Blightress and keep me safe my seventeen years from all of it. Every memory I held, every joy, and pain, and loneliness I’d felt, I’d done in the safety of her glow—an endless green across the borders of the forest which fueled us.

Her cries did not stop, did not ease, nor did the pain that ripped through my body as I watched my parents somehow love each other to the point of becoming broken things, forced into this path by the one power in this world who could have stopped it.

The Blightress could have ended all of this years ago. She could have ended her pursuit of me, of my mother, of whatever fury she’d waged across the isle, forcing her darkness into the earth and across the lives of many, killing, stealing, syphoning more power, more magic as her heart dwindled in this cave, weakened by my father set out to save us from the wrath she wielded.

Drip .

Bellow .

Drip .

Push .

I was shoved to the ground, shielded by Thevin’s body from the rocks that flew through the air, crashing across the stone.

I lifted my head to see my mother kiss my father once, one single last time, her hands shaking as she rose from the ground, gazing upon his broken body.

I felt Thevin’s heaving chest as he continued to cover me as a human shield, a man not born to the power of Felgren , but born to the gift of protection for those he loved.

My mother’s face turned to rage as she spoke low in the din of battle, facing a force of power I could sense, but could not see.

“ IT IS MINE TO WIELD !” she screamed. “ GIVE IT TO ME NOW !”

I saw him then.

A man, or the shape of one, sitting beside my father in a ghostly form, staring up at my mother with hatred in his hazel eyes. His lip fell into a snarl and something oozed from his fingers, black and solid, folding across my mother’s figure as she held her hands out before her, accepting the darkness into her skin.

His eyes flickered to me then, and I caught his stare.

I knew him. Somehow , I knew him.

“ I tried, Saelyn ,” he whispered through my mind. “ Your time has come. ” A wash of sorrow pooled over his face. He nodded once before fading into nothing more than a whisper of black smoke.

Thevin was yelling, but all I heard was the drip.

The heart continued to beat, continued to live, wounded, but strong enough to stay aloft, the slice at its side slowly closing, healing over as if my father’s death meant its awaited salvation.

Drip .

Sae .

Drip .

No .

I watched the last bead of crimson splash into the puddle of blood at my father’s side. Confused , I wondered where the black vines had come from as they tore through the rocky floor, upheaving the basalt and creeping across the ground around us.

I blinked at my mother as she stepped toward us. She looked at me once. Just one time with eyes fully black, dark pools of wrath that I knew were her own seeping from the rocks below her. I felt in my heart that the Felgren green of her power would never return, her soul too broken, too much asked of her to endure since the day of my birth and my father’s leaving.

She stepped around us, black slicked over her hands in billowing oil, sliding down her skirts to her boots. She left a trail of ink in her wake, and I twisted under Thevin to see the chaos of battle behind me.

The Blightress reigned midway up the rocky stairs, her hair of white a mirror to my mother’s, both of their robes black, both of them waging war and hatred, neither conceding to the other’s demands. Neither of them ever would. This war would rage eternal.

The Blight was vicious—sharp thorns jutting from the thick woody trunks as they burst from the ground, growing tall and separating the soldiers who had followed us. They fought them off with swords and magic while Blight beasts ravaged through the maze, taking the few soldiers we had down quickly with unrelenting rage.

Two portals from my mother appeared beside us, black and flickering at the edges. Thevin had not retreated from covering my body on the ground, but added to the commands given by my uncle who lit a third of the Blight on fire. The torrent of vines fell to ash as three simulated suns lit the cave, causing even more of the Blight to fall.

“ Sae !” Thevin shook me, rousing me from my daze. “ We have to go! Your mother has ordered us out!”

I looked at the portals of black, understanding where they led.

Those portals led to a future of running.

A life of hiding—doing everything we could to escape the Blightress as she took her final steps to consume all of the isle for herself.

In moments of great suffering comes great clarity.

In moments of my name whispered on the wind, in a night of birthday check lists, and summers of running through the fields of Felgren with the friend I’d come to love.

And in those moments, I understood what I had to let go.

It was my turn to risk, my turn to deny the future I saw laid bare before me where everything stayed the same.

I was seventeen, and I’d been given great power.

The time had come to wield it.

Thevin hauled me from the ground, never letting me go, never wavering in his protection, choosing me over his duty as Runner to stay and fight.

“ I can fix this!” I shouted.

The crackle of fire and death echoed around us.

“ I can fix this!”

He shook my shoulders, pressing his hands to my face. “ There’s nothing you can do! We need to leave!”

He pulled me closer to the portals, and I dug my heels in to the slippery rock. “ I need to get to the Blightress !” I called, ducking as shards of stone flew over our heads. “ Please , Thevin ! Help me!”

“ No !” he screamed, urging me further. “ I won’t let her take you!”

“ Please !” I took his face in my hands and kissed him hard. “ I just need to take her hand, and I can fix this,” I urged. “ I need your help. We need Boros . Please , Thevin . This is me, fulfilling my promise to you.” He jerked his head as if to deny me again, but I held onto his face, pressing the pads of my fingers to his cheeks, stroking the left side where his dimple would appear in every one of his smiles for me. “ The life we want is ours, and I need you to believe I can get us there. I need you to believe in me.”

His lips trembled and a cry left his chest. “ I can’t let you go,” he shuddered, gripping me tightly, his voice broken in a repetitive, “ I can’t. I can’t let you go.”

I pressed my forehead to his, feeling my own tears slide down my cheeks. “ I can show her. I can show her all of what she has done, and I can keep my promise to you, Thevin , please.” I kissed him again. “ Let me fix this.”

His countenance shattered and he held my head so tightly as he pressed his lips to mine in a kiss goodbye. A kiss to tell me that if he believed in anything, he believed in me. He turned through his tears, calling to Boros who fought a Blight beast, snarling and ripping at its throat in one tear of branches that sprayed black blood through the air.

My loyal lumen heard the call and came, leaping over and under the Blight still winding its way along the walls.

We jumped on his back, and I leaned forward, whispering in his ear, “ Get me to her, my friend. You’re going to have to leap as high as you can.”

He bolted toward the stairs, and I took in the battle in all of its finality—the last stand of the Four’s army against the Blightress of Wrath .

Of Hatred and Rage .

Of a bloody heart that had been wrapped in the warmth of love my father held for me and my mother for seventeen years, draining her of her power, but keeping him alive.

The Baron of Felgren was unrecognizable.

My mother changed into something I’d imagine in a nightmare, ripping the head from a Blight beast’s body, flicking her hand toward a thick vine of Blight only for it to snap, oozing a black puss and writhing on the ground.

Darkness surrounded her as she gazed up at the Blightress on the rocky stairs, who grinned with lips of a blood-red crimson.

Boros narrowly avoided a vine that burst underneath us, and he leapt over the swiping branch of an enormous blackened tree, its maw cracking under its cry of ire at our escape.

We closed in toward the staircase, passing bodies and upright Runners and Wieldwryns alike. Thevin slashed through branches and vines at our sides, ignoring the cuts on his arms and face from the sharp thorns that ravaged his skin. We passed my uncle as he dove over his guardswoman, Renn , shielding her body from the withered branches of the Blight tree swiping at them.

My mother rose from the ground, lifted by pulsing black trees, dripping with more of the black viscous substance that trailed from her hands. Fruit the size of plums grew and burst one after another, the flesh splatting to the wet rocky floor, only to sink down into the stone, emerging in saplings that rapidly grew into more of her own Blight trees.

“ You could have been this all along, Little Sprout .” The Blightress’s voice rang through the screams and snarls, hitting its mark.

My mother screamed in rage. The haunting black of her hands shot forth as she continued to rise from the ground, the name Blightress now earned by both of these women, set in a course of never-ending war.

I can fix this .

“ I will make you suffer!” my mother snarled. “ I cannot kill you, but I can bury you so far beneath the earth, not even your rot can reach you!”

I can fix this.

A grin of malice crept across the Blightress’s face. “ Then I will take you with me, daughter.”

All at once, they summoned all of their power. Black trails of magic wrapped around my mother as wet trails of black sludge knocked the Blightress to the edge of the stone stairs, her body covered with the thick substance.

“ Look at me ,” I called to the Blightress in my mind, finding her there in a thin, weak thread I could not pull too tightly for fear of severance.

Her eyes of many colors flashed my way as she scrambled, trying to regain her footing with the weight of my mother’s seeping power forcing her to the ground.

Boros leapt again, flying through the air as we neared. The Blightress shifted her gaze and with a sweep of her magic, pulled my mother down from the abominations she’d produced with her own dark power.

The Blightress gritted her teeth and swept her hand at her legs, forcing the ooze from her gown, splattering it against the rocky wall.

“ It’s over, Little One , ” she returned, pushing from the stair to rise again.

“ Give me your hand ,” I urged. “ Channel your power to me, and I will show you. ”

Time slowed, Boros leapt, bounding off a thick vine, ignoring the thorns raised across its surface. Thevin’s words of love, of believing in me, came slow and sure as he kissed my head and grabbed my waist, lifting me further toward the Blightress .

My mother’s scream of panic pierced the slow of time as she saw me reach high into the air, the Blightress’s face easing into something serene. Her long fingers, tipped in sharp, black nails, reached down toward me as her question came without hinderance.

“ Show me what, Daughter of Felgren ? ”

With Thevin’s last shove, I flew from Boros’s back, my hand reaching for hers, my fingers sliding over her open palm, grasping her hand as I answered, “ The life you’ve given me .”

Her fingers wrapped around my wrist as mine did hers, and I felt the speed of time quicken, my body beginning to fall and Thevin’s scream matching my mother’s as I said under my breath, “ Revertayden en tepiore.”