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CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

T hey were here, they were all here, and finally the missing pieces of Maia’s soul snapped into place. It didn’t matter that there were saints and drakes in this court, or that she was outmatched and overwhelmed. It didn’t matter that they were bleeding and weak and starved. Maia’s soul was complete—a lmost, almost complete, a tiny voice whispered, remembering a dusty shop room full of warped glass bottles and sarcasm.

Jaro was covered in blood, his fur slick and dark with it, and Azrail was… a sharp, jagged lump swelled in Maia’s throat when she met his eyes. There was no recognition in those beautiful sapphire eyes, no emotion at all. No anger, no frustration, no relief at the sight of her, not even pain.

Rage lit its flame against her soul as she reached for him and found a cold, yawning emptiness on the other side. His soul still oozed poison into their bond, still blackened the branches. It had formed a pool in the middle of her glade, dark and ominous. A problem for later, she decided when two saints blocked off her path to her mates. One she recognised from the saints' circle—a tall, rake-thin man with long grey hair, skin a shape even paler, and a thoroughly unimpressed expression. The other she’d never seen before, but power clung to the woman. She’d be an issue.

But the Eversky had been an issue, and now she splayed unconscious and dazed behind them, the drake keeping her surrounded like a prison cell with scales and sharp, wicked teeth. Again, Maia reached for Sephanae and jolted when she felt her absence.

You’ve stepped into your power, into your title. Sephanae was the Iron Dove. Now Maia Nysavion is the Iron dove.

Maia was the Iron Dove. It didn’t matter who these bastards were when they stood between Maia and her Jaro, her Azrail. She was a saint, and she was enraged. She increased her pace until she was running, tunnelling into her power and ready to make both these saints scream, to watch their eyes run with blood. But the first attack came from behind them before she could even strike.

A bubble of hope and laughter welled in her chest as magic drove into Samlyn like shards of glass from a shattered window. One buried in his throat, more in his stomach, another between his eyes. It was enough, for a moment, to halt the saints where they stood.

“Hit them with everything,” Maia hissed to her mates, to whoever still had magic. “Vawn, stay back with Ark. Kheir, protect them.”

“I have magic, I can—” he began, but Maia shook her head hard, hair whipping her shoulders.

“Stay behind us. I won’t risk you getting hurt again.” The drake had healed the open wound on his back and his wing, but it was still detached at the top. Vulnerable.

“Maia—” he began to argue, but she was already running, sinking deep into the core of her magic, making the ground rumble as she reached for the life all around them. She was the marble veined with gold and cracks, standing even after centuries of decay. She was the unfurling petals of an orchid expected to die years ago. She was the reaching arms of a vine that shouldn’t have existed in this abandoned space, the water trickling down from clouds gathering above the palace, breathing life into everything it touched. She was—

Dying. No, not Maia. The leaves, the vines, the defiant flowers, the spores, the mould—life leeched from it, sucked up by a parasite, and Maia felt it all. She staggered with a gasp, stumbling into Bryon, yanking herself out of the pool of her magic in a rush.

“The flowers,” Kheir breathed, stepping up on her right, fully ignoring her fear of losing him to stand beside her. “They all just…”

“Died,” Maia finished with a nod, slowing her pace, her rage cooling in the face of so much decay. “I can feel the life all around us, and it’s—”

The whole world went black.

Maia ground to a halt, her breathing a rasp. Someone walked into her from behind and swore soundly. Vawn. The drake let out a shrieking roar, making them all jump; she felt the flinch move through Vawn’s body into hers.

“It’s her,” Maia said in a hiss, grappling on her left to make sure Bryon was still there. “The other saint. The redhead. She’s killing everything.”

“And what about us?” Vawn asked with a nervous laugh. “‘Cause I can’t help but think we’re next…”

“We are,” Maia agreed. She lowered her voice. “Bryon, get your air ready. Break her neck, scratch her eyes out, I don’t care what you have to do, but take her down. Vawn, what power do you have?”

“I don’t,” he replied, panic making his reply fast.

“Kheir,” she breathed.

“I need to be close enough to touch her for mine to work.”

Which left them with Bryon’s air, her soul magic, and the inky hawk swooping through the air. She sensed it above their heads, waiting to peck out more eyes like it did to the Eversky. It was a tattoo, nothing but ink from Ark’s skin, but snaresong and saint magic had given it life. What else could she breathe life into?

“On two,” she whispered, so quiet only Bryon heard.

“Why two?”

“In case they’re listening. One—” She pushed away the spring magic calling to her, not wanting to feel that rush of decay again, not wanting to feel the life being drained . Instead she hauled up every bit of soul magic she had, tapping into the ability Sephanae had taught her how to master. “Two,” she breathed, and let it erupt.

Her skin glowed with bright starlight, lighting up the corridor enough for them to see, for Bryon to unleash his air without striking Jaro or Azrail. And, apparently, for her jaguar to leap up and latch his fangs in Samlyn’s throat, knocking him to the ground. He was fighting, and it was a beautiful sight. A smile began to form on her face when Bryon sliced an arc of barbed air into the redhead, sending her back a stumbling step. Her eyes widened but with rage, not shock. Good. Now it was Maia’s turn.

Samlyn was injured by whatever had pierced him with dozens of pieces of glass-sharp magic, so Maia aimed for him, driving her soul at his hard enough to bruise herself. It hurt like a bitch, but then she was inside him, alive with pain from even more places than she’d realised. Fuck, it hurt. And he was furious, cold seething rage pumping his heart. Maia encouraged it and turned him towards the female saint. His long, knobbled fingers snarled in her red hair and Maia used Samlyn’s body to rip out a hunk.

“What are you doing?” the saint hissed, a cold, icy fury in her poreless face.

Because she was piloting Samlyn’s body, Maia knew the woman was Scylla, saint of the earth. A natural counterpart to Sephanae. Scylla should have been an ally—her and Sephanae presided over all life, Scylla keeping the ground fertile and thriving while Sephanae brought life with spring. Instead, she was a dark saint. An enemy.

What was she capable of? How much damage could she wreak?

No time to dwell on that, Maia reminded herself absent of Sephanae’s voice. She needed to handle her own pep talks now.

Scylla was still puzzling over Samlyn's betrayal, so Maia had a few seconds to reach for his power of survival and pestilence and send a blunt strike of it into her chest. It wasn’t a rapid strike, but a slow creep like fog, like poison spilling through a drink. Scylla’s shock turned to rage when she realised it had slithered over the dark burgundy skirt of her dress and sank into her skin. Maia could feel it piercing the saint’s skin, pulling at her vitality, her health, until Scylla stumbled back with a snarl. It was working.

Maia had always known she couldn’t kill a full-blooded saint. But one saint could kill another, and Samlyn had all this power.

She encouraged it to creep further, to reach past sinew and skin into her blood, to scrape her bones of all its marrow and—

Pain speared her chest—her body —so suddenly that she was ripped away. When she jolted back into her own skin, Kheir had a firm grip of her arm, keeping her upright, and a bone arrow protruded from her chest, just above her heart. Oh, shit. It had missed by inches, and something told Maia it was supposed to be a direct hit.

“You dare,” Bryon growled, deep and seething with dominance as he stalked past where Maia slumped into the wall, “to hurt my mate?”

“I dare,” Scylla responded. Maia snapped her head up in time to see her shove Samlyn aside and stride towards them. Cold—it filled Maia so completely that she thought it was another magical attack until she realised it was fear.

“Bryon,” she warned in a rasp, trying to push off the wall. A white blaze of pain knocked her back with a gasp.

Air churned around Scylla as she walked, the stone seeming to curve beneath her feet, bowing to her sheer power, and her rich crimson hair floated above the shoulders of her velvet dress as she advanced. She was magic incarnate, and Maia was only just now understanding how much danger they were in.

“All our magic,” she rasped, jaw clenched against the pain of the arrow in her chest, “comes from nature. From the earth. She is magic.”

“Lovely. Real uplifting, Maia,” Vawn muttered, raking a hand through his unkempt hair and looking from her to Bryon, who’d abandoned his attack on Scylla, much to her relief. “What’s the plan?”

“Get behind the drake,” Bryon barked, grabbing Maia’s other arm as she stood there, woozy with pain. Kheir and he pulled her back, but her eyes fixed on that space across the cracked, plant-strewn hallway where Azrail stood robotically, where Jaro held his ground, teeth bared in a snarl as Samlyn faced him.

“It’s fucking gone,” Vawn blurted, his panic rising. “Where did it go?”

“To evacuate the children,” Kheir replied, but Maia spoke over him, struggling against her mates’ hold on her arms.

“I’m not leaving them,” she protested, but her next movement jostled the arrow in her chest and the whole world went white and red-hot. When her vision cleared, when she could feel her the tips of her fingers, the ends of her toes, the membrane of her wings, the itch of her skin across the arrow, when she could feel something other than all-consuming pain, she was already sheltered behind her mates.

“No,” Maia cried, trying to scramble beyond them, not understanding why her body refused to respond, why pain was making her slow. “They’re going to kill them—”

“They’re going to kill us,” Vawn interrupted, snatching her wrist when she tried to move again.

A shock of brightness and strength coursed through her, and Maia’s eyes blew wide, pupils swallowing up her iris as her view of him shifted and snapped into place. She spared Vawn one long, significant look, her heart pounding. “Well, damn,” Vawn laughed, “that’s fiercer than I expected it to be.”

“What is?” Maia’s attention drifted back to the pale hallway where Azrail stood stock-still, empty-eyed. Jaro was backing up the other way as Scylla fixed her attention on him. She knew Jaro was Maia’s mate, knew hurting him would hurt her. Maia’s heart crashed.

“Your soul.”

Maia didn’t have time to reach for Vawn even if awareness of him bloomed through her, brushing the edge of her glade, fitting perfectly into a gaping hole she hadn’t realised was there. He was hers. No wonder she’d needed to find him so desperately.

“Don’t even think about it,” Bryon warned her. “Don’t let go of her, Vawn.”

Maia didn’t like that one bit. Not that Bryon knew she was already planning to run across the distance between her and the saints to save her mates. That Bryon wasn’t restraining her himself. She sank back into her soul and searched for pain, hissing when she felt it from all of them. Ark was unconscious but in pain even in sleep. Kheir’s wounds were healed but the pain was there all the same. But why was Bryon—

One brush of her soul to his and agony ruptured her, making her knees weaken. If Vawn hadn’t been holding her, she’d be on the floor.

“Bryon—” she gasped, turning to him.

“I’m fine,” he said in a rumble. “Eyes forward, princess. I’ll find us a way out of here.”

She began to argue, but they all staggered when the air throbbed, a dark power crawling into their lungs when they breathed. Maia had felt it before, but it took her too long to remember when. Not in the saints' circle or any time she’d been in Enryr’s presence, not even when she faced Karmen. She’d felt this by the lake when she was with Azrail.

Her eyes snapped up, but her stare was dragged past his stoic, unmoving form when people spilled into the hallway, trapping Jaro between them and Scylla. There were twenty of them, then fifty, a hundred. Shit, they just kept coming. How many were they? Their skin was grey and decayed, eyes dark, backs straight like any soldier, but they were dead.

“We need to get Az and Jaro out of there,” she said in a low snarl, saint power like a supernova inside her. “Now.”