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CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

T HE PAIN LASHED ONCE MORE , and I screamed. When I opened my eyes, it was no longer dark in the room. Silver moonlight and warm daylight flooded the walls from the dozen faelights floating along the top of the tunnel.

I winced as Damien shrieked beside me. Gwyn pulled the dagger from his chest, and I felt the magic that had pierced my own heart recede. I lifted a limp hand. “Stop.”

Gwyn ignored me. She flipped Damien onto his back and used her finger to trace a spell onto his chest. We gasped in unison as Damien’s body began to heal and my own healing gift stitched my wounds together.

“You’re only prolonging this,” I muttered to Gwyn. I wanted to explain it all, to tell her that she was only giving Nikolai and the others false hope too, but I didn’t yet have the strength.

Damien’s eyes opened, and I saw the moment his vision focused enough to see Gwyn’s amber eyes studying his wounds. Damien coughed out a laugh. “Always so unexpected.”

Gwyn’s top lip twitched. “I heard what you did. Keera is not going to die for you.”

Her fingers glowed and she etched a rune into the glass of Damien’s pendant. It shattered into pieces. Damien groaned in pain, but Gwyn’s healing spell started lacing back the sinew and torn flesh.

I stared at the pendant on the ground. Damien was no longer a threat.

I flipped to my side and cursed my magic for working so slowly. I knew what Gwyn was going to do. Her eyes were feral. She blamed Damien for everything. Her years of torment, her loss of budding love. She was going to heal Damien completely so the oath that had almost taken my life would be in place once more. Then she would stab that blade back through his chest, killing Damien and Nikolai too.

“Gwyn, no!”

“Don’t fret, Keera.” Damien lifted his hand to Gwyn’s soft cheek. “Gwyn doesn’t have the heart to kill me.”

Gwyn smirked. “You’re right. I don’t.”

She glanced at me to see that I had fully healed too before tracing her finger along his chest. Damien’s scream shook the walls but Gwyn didn’t stop.

I gathered the strength to sit up and witnessed the horror of what Gwyn had done. Damien’s chest caved open, revealing his beating heart like a bear had torn through his sternum. It would be more than enough to kill a man, but Damien wasn’t dying. Whatever magic Gwyn had weaved was healing Damien just enough to keep him from bleeding out.

“Gwyn, what are you doing?” I asked, petrified.

She picked up the blood-soaked dagger and wiped it off on her trousers. “Getting retribution.” Her fingers spelled something else along the blade and the bloodstone shattered onto her lap. I gasped like the wound had been inflicted on me. That blade had been my companion for more than thirty years, had stoked our own rebellion, and Gwyn had broken it without a moment’s thought.

She grabbed the largest of the pieces and held it tight in her palm. I blinked in horror as amber and gold blood ran down her arm in thick streaks.

She held the fractured piece against Damien’s heart. His scream was beyond human but he didn’t die. Gwyn had used her magic to push the limits further than nature would ever allow.

I swallowed the dryness in my throat. It wasn’t my magic Damien should have worried about.

Gwyn ran the jagged piece of blade along his heart. “Is this why you did it?” she whispered. “It’s intoxicating holding someone’s life in my hands, knowing I have the power to cause you as much pain as you caused me.”

She cut again and Damien’s shriek cracked halfway up his throat.

“Gwyn, that’s enough—”

“Which organ of yours should I tear from your body?” Gwyn’s voice was drained of all its joy and laughter. Damien glanced at me with wide, terrified eyes. I froze. I hadn’t pictured torturing Damien before I killed him; all I had wanted to see was the smugness drain from his face as his blood pooled along my blade.

And I had.

But what Gwyn was doing was more than murder, and it would scar her in ways I couldn’t even comprehend. I crawled across the tunnel and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Gwyn,” I said, ignoring Damien’s screams. “End this.”

She caressed the back of my hand. For a moment she was the young girl in my room, lounging in the sand before the worst had happened.

“Very well.” Gwyn traced her finger along his chest, and I thought she was healing him, but instead she coated her finger in blood. Then she brought it down the middle of her face and began to chant.

“ Moroq .”

The same words Nikolai had told us about what Damien had done to him. The ritual that Aemon had used to bind Gwyn’s foremother to him, and Damien had used to bind Nikolai to himself.

Gwyn was creating a tether.

I tried to stop her but I couldn’t. I looked down at the back of my hand. Gwyn had not been caressing it at all but spinning a rune to hold me in place. All I could do was watch as the tether took hold around her wrist and then carved itself into Damien a few inches above the tether that bound him to Nikolai.

Gwyn stood over the false king. “How many nights did you spend tormenting me? The burns and bruises?” Gwyn scowled. “Sometimes the threats were worse. Your quick visits to my chambers just to show that you could hurt me anywhere, anytime. Nowhere was safe.”

Gwyn stopped at his boots and crossed her arms. “It would take months to match the pain you inflicted on me.” She huffed a laugh as Damien shuddered in anticipation of what was to come. “I wouldn’t have though. Knowing you were dead would have been enough. Eventually. But then you had to make another tether. Claim another life as yours—as if witnessing mine and my mother’s torment wasn’t enough for you.”

Gwyn stepped up along Damien’s body with the fragmented piece of my blade still in her palm. Thick drops of amber blood fell onto his face and open mouth. Gwyn’s lips tugged to the side as she bent down and whispered, “You sealed your fate, Damien. You wanted immortality, and I shall give it to you.”

Her amber eyes flashed as she pushed the jagged piece of blade into Damien’s heart. The veins in his neck bulged and his back arched against Gwyn’s hand. She pushed him flat against the ground and drew another rune along his collarbone.

She stood as Damien’s chest cavity stitched itself back together with a piece of my dagger inside his heart.

Gwyn wiped his blood on her sleeve and opened the trap door beside Damien. It was the same cell Maerhal had spent her life in. The same one Damien had kept her son in. Now it would be his prison too.

Stale air blew up from the depths. “You will not die,” Gwyn said at the whimpering pile that Damien had become. “You will thirst but not drink. You will hunger but never eat. My magic will sustain you just enough to keep you alive. Each breath will cause you pain just as you pained so many. You will live in torment until the day I die.” She held up her wrist where the new tether was marked. She kicked Damien in his chest and he fell back into the hole.

He landed with a loud thump , his whimpers echoing up the pit.

Gwyn giggled. “Or maybe Nikolai will die first and take you with him.” She leaned over the hole. “Though we both plan to live a very, very, long time,” she shouted down at him, and then slammed the door shut.

Gwyn stared at the latched door for a while before she turned around. Her face was changed. There was nothing left of the young girl I once knew. Her soft cheeks were sunken and hollow like those last few spells had fed on her and not just her magic.

She had done something she could never take back.

I stood and grabbed her arm. “Are you really going to leave him there forever?”

“And if I did?” Gwyn’s jaw pulsed. “Has he not earned it?”

I swallowed. “My only concern is for you.” I held up her newly branded wrist. “He held power over you for so long and when you’re finally free of it, you—”

Gwyn gently pulled her hand free of my grip. “Keera, I love you. But I am old enough to make my own choices.”

I let my hand fall and stood there unsure of how to respond.

A hint of a smile pulled at Gwyn’s mouth. “But I appreciate your concern. If Damien spends a month or two writhing in pain, it will not scar me. He can wait for you to establish Elvish society once again.”

“And then?”

Gwyn shrugged. “And then you can decide what to do with him. Hold a trial for him in front of the council. If they wish him dead, I will try to find a way to break his tethers.” Her face turned serious. “But I shattered that blade for a reason, Keera. Your debt is paid. When Damien dies, it will not be you who ends him.”

I opened my mouth, but Gwyn grabbed both of my hands.

“Promise me, Keera,” Gwyn demanded, knowing the weight that word held for me. “We have more than earned a life beyond this. And there are still so many places that you need to show me. Set your blade down.”

A tear rolled down my cheek. The whiplash of the past hour flooded my body and I swayed backward against the wall. My life wouldn’t end in these godforsaken cells.

It wouldn’t end at all.

I tightened my grip on Gwyn. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to enter into a promise so soon after releasing myself from the first. But Gwyn was right, it was time for me—for her—to live. And that I had already promised to do.

I wrapped my arm around her neck. “I promise, Gwyn.”