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CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

M aia threw herself out of Heweryion’s body and back into her own as fast as her magic would fly. Her knees hit the pale floor. Pain raced up her thighs and found a weakness in her hip. She clenched her teeth to trap a moan, her head spinning in an endless blur of silver, and caught herself on her hands. Her fingers slid through cold, sticky blood. Whose? Kheir’s?

“Maia?” Bryon demanded, his voice like cool water on a burn. “Speak to me, princess.”

“I’m… fine,” she groaned, palming her head where an ache pounded her skull and wincing as she spread blood across her brow. Fuck, spearing herself into someone else’s body hurt.

Because you’re out of practise, Sephanae said gently. The more you do it, the easier it will be. Watch out!

Maia snapped her head up, her eyes widening when she saw the jagged white lightning flying towards her. She threw herself sideways, rolling out of its crackling path, but her heart leapt into her throat, dragging a cry of anguish with it, when the bolt struck the pool of blood Kheir laid in. He’d lost so much, and he hadn’t moved in minutes. What if he never—

Maia, look! Sephanae urged with a rush of excitement and a ripple of laughter. She didn’t plan for this to happen.

Maia scrambled to her feet, trying to ignore the drum of pain in her head as she stared at the place the lightning had struck Kheir’s blood. Magic covered the crimson pool like fire licking across oil, and when it reached Maia’s mate, he lurched upright with a horrid, dramatic gasp.

Maia fell over herself to get to Kheir, her hands finding his bloodied face, panicked eyes scanning his regal features. He was alive. Gasping and trembling, but alive.

“I’m here, I’m here,” she promised, kneeling beside him, stroking soaked black hair from his forehead. His blood rolled down her wrist to her arm. The crimson stuff covered his shoulder, chest, and head where he’d laid in the pool. But he was alive.

His brown eyes were dull with pain but she watched panic fill them with sudden life.

“Maia!” he warned, pain crossing his face as he grabbed her arms and threw them both aside. The pain from his torn wing was blinding, excruciating; she felt it as she felt her own pain.

Tears sprang to her eyes when she crashed into the wall, impact spearing her shoulder. But a rough breath left her lungs when she saw they’d narrowly avoided being struck by a bolt of lightning.

It had shredded what was left of Bryon’s shield, and now her glaring soldier backed up towards them. Squalls of wind ripped into the hallway with every punch of his fists. Oh, he was angry. A dark flutter of butterflies took flight in her belly. Watching him fight was… something else. Maia was momentarily distracted by the sight of him, furious and capable and surrounded by so much magic that the air shook. But then she saw the curl of Karmen’s smile, saw her focus on Bryon, and Maia knew he was going to suffer for what she’d done to Hew.

Hew… the soldier was sprawled on the floor where the lightning strike left him, unmoving, his eyes closed. He might still be alive. He might be dead. Maia didn’t care enough to check. Instead she snapped her wings tight to her back, carefully propped Kheir against the wall, allowing herself a single kiss to his cheek, and then she joined Bryon.

“It’s sad, really,” the saint remarked, fluttering her fingers to kill the sharp energy in the air around them. “How you thought you could win against a true saint.”

Fuck. That was Bryon’s magic, and now it was just gone. Judging by his grunt, it hurt like a bitch, but Maia was too consumed with the agony coming from Kheir’s wing that she couldn’t feel anything else. Although… there was another pain just beneath it, screaming and sharp. Who? Oh saints, who else had been hurt?

“Well, not sad,” Karmen went on, striding closer, wind whipping up around her, far more destructive than anything Bryon had summoned. “Delusional. You really thought you could harm me?”

“I killed Enryr,” Maia said, but it came out too weak. She was shaking, too much pain carving through her soul. She needed rage, needed fury. But she was too afraid.

“Did you?” Karmen laughed, advancing. Maia stumbled back a step, but Bryon didn’t retreat. He’d taken the sword from Hew; when did he do that? Shit, Maia needed to get it together. This wasn’t the time to miss things and make mistakes. A single mistake and they were all dead. “Did you really kill him?”

Did she? She shattered his bones and left him a broken mess of blood and flesh, but he was a saint. Could he heal that much damage? Maia suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“Ignore her,” Bryon growled. He must have finished whatever assessments he’d been making because he raised the sword and charged at Karmen.

“No,” Maia breathed, the sight of her Bryon running to face the king of saints the most terrifying sight she’d ever beheld. Ice and panic thumped through her veins, flaring the ache in her head, her hip. She lunged forward.

How did I kill Enryr? She begged Sephanae. What do I—

Bryon swung his sword in a deadly strike at Karmen’s head, and Maia was panicking too hard to be there with him. She rushed across the hall, no weapons in her hands, only magic she barely knew how to use. She grabbed the vines from the wall, called on rich, earth power from the grass that flowed outside the palace, and begged help from the stone all around her. Please, please, help me end her.

You’re the new saint of spring. Don’t beg for help; command it.

Maia reached Bryon’s side just as his sword hit the Eversky’s throat, her whole body a mess of hope and panic and dread. She demanded power from the roots and flowers and old, old stones. A dizzying rush of power hit her blood stream, making her eyes water and shine. Bryon’s stolen sword met Karmen’s skin and—a rumbling threat of thunder filled the air. Maia flinched, but Bryon didn’t waver, not even as the sword’s blade collapsed from steel to water.

He simply raised the solid hilt and drove it against Karmen’s forehead, stunning her enough that she staggered back. Maia threw herself forward with a gasp, letting the power she’d commanded of the palace’s living things rush through her chest, down her arms, and out through her palms as she wrapped them around the Eversky’s throat.

Thunder rumbled louder, shaking the walls, and lightning laced the air with a crackling, deadly charge. She wanted to turn and yell at Kheir to run, to get away from the power about to detonate around them, but she couldn’t move an inch. Not when thorns punched into Karmen’s throat and forehead, giving her a twisted, bloody necklace and matching crown. Not when the temperature dropped to the frozen cold of an icy spring. Not when life bloomed within the wounds made by thorns. Flowers and ferns and weeds unfurled from the holes in Karmen’s throat, and forced themselves from her mouth, her nose.

Maia staggered back with her mouth hanging open. How the chasm…? Bryon’s warm hand found her back, so reassuring that tears slipped from her eyes.

Karmen had frozen, either in surprise or rage. Forget-me-nots choked her as they grew from her mouth, thorns and vines forcing the wounds in her throat wider. She’d done that. Maia had done that. She trembled, her teeth knocking together, but Bryon had his hand against her back and she could—

Lightning cleaved them apart, searing down Maia’s arm with white-hot pain. Her scream was so loud her ears rang. The world wavered, flashes of black stealing into her vision.

Her hearing warped and returned in time for her to hear Kheir curse viciously.

“Shit,” Bryon spat, pulling her back two steps, then five, his pace quickening. “Not these guys again.”

Her breathing was too fast, and black spots invaded her vision, but Maia let Bryon steer her away, trying to bear down on the pain of the burn. It was worse than the lightning that hit her chest and left red welts. This was a deep, searing burn, a fractured pattern down her arm.

When the black spots cleared, she sucked in a sharp breath. She’d been expecting more guards, or maybe those undead, rotting things that had escorted her from Azrail, but instead Enryr’s black-eyed children had filled the hallway behind Karmen.

The saint clutched her throat, trying to remove the flowers. Black, endless hatred seethed within her eyes.

Bryon angled himself in front of Maia, but his knees buckled without warning. He hit the ground with a grunt, kneeling so fast that Maia stood no chance of catching him.

“You forget about the cuff,” Karmen rasped, her voice raw and hoarse, wrecked by the mess Maia had made of her throat. She was surprised Karmen could speak at all. “I control your mate,” she seethed at Maia. “I own him. I own all—”

Bryon surged off the ground while Maia was in the process of helping him up. The bright, burning aura around him made her freeze for a moment. He’d recovered his strength all at once, not even a flicker of dimness in his soul but—

“How?” Karmen snarled, a violent cough killing whatever poison she was about to spew next.

“Fuck if I know,” Bryon replied, but he was grinning, a fierce, devilish grin that made Maia’s heart beat faster. “But I have more magic than I’ve ever possessed before, which means you’re dead.”

Maia believed it. Looking at the violent gleam in his eyes, the bared teeth, the power in his body as he whipped both sword and his fist through the air, gathering force… she believed he could kill the saint.

“End him,” Karmen barked, whipping her head around to stare at the kids Enryr had forced to obey him, their eyes… not black any longer.

Maia’s mouth dropped open and she jerked forward a step. They weren’t possessed, which meant they were just kids, innocents. Her priorities shifted in a millisecond, and every muscle in Maia’s body tensed, ready to jump across the corridor and put herself between the saint and those children. But the whole palace shook before she could make the move.

The ground shook again, like it had in response to her magic and… and a huge creature of gleaming ivory scales burst into the hallway. Maia froze. Huge horns gouged the ceiling as the drake stalked closer, pale wings tucked into its back but tipped with vicious claws, its face massive and fearsome, it’s mouth split to show horrific teeth and—

And there was a bite out of its ear. Exactly like the stone drake on the staircase at Delakore Palace had a chip out of its ear. She stroked her hand over that stone drake’s head so many times she’d lost count, and then both creatures had come to life when she needed them most. But they’d taken to the skies and been lost ever since.

Not lost, an ancient male voice spoke into her mind, setting both her and Sephanae into a panic. Gathering power, gathering allies for the second great war.