Page 49

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

M aia didn’t stop to think, didn’t allow herself time to hesitate. She grabbed the arrow in her chest and ripped it out, reaching for Ark’s hawk at the same time and sending the living tattoo soaring over their heads at Scylla, saint of the earth.

An explosion of glass heralded the drake’s return, and a knot unwound in her chest, relief spilling into the hollow it left.

Can you distract the saints? Maia asked the drake, reaching out to their tentative connection. She flinched hard when Jaro let out a fierce growl in jaguar form and snapped his jaws at Samlyn, putting himself between him and Azrail. Quickly, she added, and tacked on, please.

The last thing she needed to do was insult a legendary creature.

It would be better to climb on my back and flee, the drake replied in a voice like gravel and thunder. But I would not leave my mate behind, either.

There was longing and pain in his voice. Maia might have asked if he had a mate and where they were, but Jaro snarled again, louder, a warning cry. Her soul reacted, rage crashing like an ocean within her. She threw the bone arrow aside and looked at Vawn. “I don’t want to break your wrist, so I suggest you let me go.”

He held her gaze for a moment, for eternity, and then released her with a sigh. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

She didn’t, but she was bristling with power, and she was a newborn saint. She raced forward before Bryon or Kheir could catch her, their cries of alarm and fear like new arrows to her chest.

Like he matched her fury, the drake lumbered forward, his huge body crammed awkwardly in the corridor, and he unleashed a roar of rage so loud and powerful it shook the walls. Cracks widened in the floor. Plants shrivelled, escaping the primal rage of a drake. Even Samlyn’s face paled as he stared at the drake. She sent the ink hawk at his face while he was distracted, but he batted it aside like nothing more than an irritating fly.

Az! Maia yelled down her connection with her mate. Azrail!

She waited for his soul to surge against hers with the familiar, comforting rush of warmth and protectiveness, but he was frozen, utterly still even on the inside. What the fuck did they do to him? A roar of her own left her throat before she could stop it and Jaro’s head snapped up, jade-green eyes locking with hers. And oh, they were blazing. Rife with anger and defiance and bloodlust.

Maia’s heart quickened. It had been so long since she’d seen him, an eternity they’d lived apart, but one look and she recalled every moment they’d shared, every hug and smile and laugh and sweet, delicate promise. And yet there was nothing sweet or delicate about the look they shared as Maia broke into a run, or the way their souls slammed into each other, tangling so hard and entirely that the trees at the heart of her soul bowed and shuddered.

We end them here. We make them pay for ever keeping us apart.

As if he heard her, Jaro whipped towards Samlyn so fast his fur blurred. But it was magic he struck with, not teeth and claws and bites. It erupted from him like an explosion, driving silver shards of power into the saint until Samlyn staggered back, a hand at his throat where the largest piece punctured him.

Other fragments drove into Scylla’s back, shredding her dress, and Maia froze mere metres away, braced for the slash and pierce of Jaro’s power on her own skin. Instead, it flowed over her like a cold brush of air, like wind carried on an icy current, and rushed further, passing over her mates, over the drake, over the unconscious form of the Eversky.

Maia shuddered, and startled hard when the drake snapped, attack them now, while they’re distracted by the indentures shattering.

The indentures… Maia’s eyes stung, a lump tightening her throat. Jaro had done that, with magic she didn’t even know he possessed. Her brave, wonderful mate. There were thorns between them, truths so sharp they’d grown teeth, but those didn’t matter in this moment. He was hers and she loved him so much her heart might burst, and she felt the same adoration echoed back to her along the mate bond.

Which indentures? Maia asked, dropping rapidly into her new pool of magic, so far deeper and wider than anything she’d possessed before today. It covered her skin until she shone like a star, and she watched the impact hit Scylla when the saint glared at her, teeth bared in a show of fae hostility. Maia bared her own. She was still fae, but more. Fae but a saint, just like Scylla. Maia might not have been the root of all magic, or the earth itself, but she was life and souls and the defiant, ever-present survival of even the smallest, most fragile flowers in winter. If Scylla didn’t know that yet, she would know it now. So would the Eversky when she woke up, though Maia hoped she never did.

Which indentures? The drake laughed. All of them. Every last one in this land.

Every— Maia didn’t have time to process that because she was close enough now that she could see the freckles on Scylla’s nose, the way her jaw ticked with a betrayal of her anger, the sharp edge of her canine teeth. There were so many things Maia could do with her magic, so many ways she could have struck Scylla, but there was one thing she really wanted to do. She curled her fingers into a fist and slammed it into Scylla’s nose, the crunch of cartilage and sudden gush of blood immensely satisfying. Especially when Maia followed it with a rush of soul magic.

It would have been nice of Sephanae to stick around to explain how all of this worked, but Maia gave her power free reign and was rewarded with the glow around her hand intensifying. Scylla tore away with a hiss like her touch burned. The charcoal of her soul cracked, a bright fracture across her face where Maia’s magic struck her.

No wonder the magic burned; like the Eversky, Scylla was darkness and evil and the pureness of Maia’s power would be like acid to the touch. She drove her fist into Scylla’s stomach and left her stumbling back, diving towards Jaro just as… just as Azrail rushed at her jaguar with darkness wrapped like coils of shadow around his arms.

It took her a second to realise what had happened, to guess that even though indentures had shattered, Samlyn still had control of Az. No wonder Jaro kept trying to protect him.

Maia tugged on the thread of her power connected to Ark’s tattoo, and the hawk dove over their heads with a silent shriek. It crashed into Azrail’s shoulder right as he wrapped both hands around Jaro’s thick throat, and the drake let out another world-shaking roar behind them.

Get out of the way, you blithering fool, he barked at Maia.

She tucked her shoulder and rammed into Azrail, knocking him out of the way and tugging on Jaro’s soul so he followed. The three of them hit the wall just as the drake’s serpentine, ivory head lashed past like a whip. A whip covered in spikes and scales, harbouring sharp, lethal teeth. Magic rushed in around Scylla, pluming like charcoal smoke, carrying her away. But Samlyn had turned to Maia, furious, she supposed, that she’d taken Azrail from him.

No. A gasp tore up her throat. He was furious that she’d knocked Azrail’s compulsion free. Maia grabbed Az’s face in both hands, throwing herself at his soul and wrapping herself around it, her magic lighting them both in bright, glowing silver.

“I can’t…hold on for long,” he said through gritted teeth. Pain darkened his sapphire eyes, tightened his jaw, and lined his face with bright, vivid suffering. It was such a relief to watch the stoic expression drop that Maia didn’t care that her soul lit up with pain where they connected.

All at once, the darkness stifling the palace ripped away and Maia saw everything in bright, brutal clarity. Blood flowed down Azrail’s chest from even more wounds than last time, like someone had tried to skin him alive. Maia wanted to scream.

Jaro saw them too, and a vicious snarl ripped from him, sending another rupture of magic through the palace. Maia’s legs weakened, but Az’s warm hands fell on her waist, steadying her. The touch made her want to cry.

“Keep fighting,” Maia urged him, squeezing his arm, wrapping them both in as much magic as she could summon. It faltered when the drake roared, exceptionally large teeth snapping at Samlyn when the saint tried to escape.

“Defend me!” Samlyn yelled at the undead, a note of panic in his voice now. Hope surged into Maia’s throat at the sound of it.

“They answer to me,” Azrail snarled, teeth bared as he fought Samlyn’s control. Sweat beaded at his temple. Blood ran from his nose—black blood. Maia’s stomach dropped.

“Az,” she rasped, sending a surge of gleaming power towards that blood, as if it would have the same effect as when she touched Scylla’s darkness.

“Back, foul creature!” Samlyn snapped at the drake. “Forsaken one, to me!”

Azrail ripped away from Maia so suddenly, she stumbled. The moment she found her balance, she had her hands around his arm, pulling with all her might, locking eyes with the Provider. “I’m going to kill you,” she promised him.

The saint’s smile suggested the inverse, and cold bled through Maia, dripping down her spine. She was focused on him, on the army of dead things behind him—too focused. Scylla came out of nowhere, appearing from a plume of magic behind the drake.

Watch out! she tried to warn him, but not quickly enough. Scylla sank her fingernails into his tail, like it was nothing to get past scales and natural armour. Maia sensed the magic shift in the air, flowing towards her, and a choked sound tore free as her own power responded, eager to rush to feed Scylla.

With a scream of frustration, Maia released Azrail. She couldn’t hold onto them and fight Scylla at the same time, and like fuck was she about to let this saint steal her magic—or any of her mates’ power. She could feel Scylla, like she could sense every living soul, and she focused on that, the sickness and greed bleeding from her, touching everyone in the hallway, draining Maia, her mates, even Samlyn and… and the dead soldiers.

Maia suppressed a shudder—this was going to be foul—and threw herself into the dead soldier closest to Samlyn. It was surprisingly easy to urge those rotten, slimy hands to snap Samlyn’s neck.

The crack was louder than it had any right to be, and for a moment silence reigned—but then the drake roared and snapped his massive head around to lunge at Scylla. Maia felt all of it: the rage making the drake’s soul flare, the pain dimming Kheir’s, the defiance growling through Bryon’s, the determination rampaging through Jaro’s, the waning strength of Azrail’s, the resigned hopelessness of Vawn’s, and Ark—he was still unconscious and that scared her more than anything. And beyond them all, the Eversky was waking.

Maia didn’t have time to deal with Karmen right now. She leapt into another dead soldier when Samlyn grabbed the first, his head at a right-angle on his neck, face twisted with rage. Maia’s stomach knotted inside her own body but this soldier felt nothing but hunger. Weak willed and easy to overpower. She used him to throw Samlyn onto one of the drake’s spikes and leapt into another, feeling the same mindless hunger. Whoever these things were, they’d been hungry for so long, denied sustenance for so long it was all they cared about.

They were dead bodies with living souls trapped inside them.

Vessels.

She couldn’t let that thought connect, had to focus on Samlyn as he wrenched himself off the drake’s spike with a twisted, annoyed expression. Not pain, not even anger. Irritation. Like having a broken neck and a hole through his middle was an inconvenience.

“Stop playing and end them!” Scylla hissed, appearing in a rush of power, her soul fat with stolen magic like a mosquito gorged on blood. Maia hated her, wanted to rip all that power from her until she was powerless and weak.

A plant pot to Scylla’s left exploded, Maia’s rage striking out. A vine ripped from the wall and whipped Scylla’s face, gouging a channel of blood in her smooth cheek. She turned, exceptionally slowly, to face the ranks of dead soldiers, not flinching even when shards of Jaro’s magic struck her back. Shit. She knew Maia was in here.

Maia jumped into another, her heart quickening in her own body. She grabbed Samlyn’s arm with the corpse’s hands, not letting herself think about the fact her soul touched all this gooey, decaying ooze. She ripped his shoulder from its socket, leaping into another soldier before his arm had even gone limp.

Samlyn was the weak point now; if they took him down, they could get on the drake’s back and get the hell out of here. If Scylla didn’t use all that bloated power first to stop them, that was.

“Call…for backup,” Samlyn croaked, his mouth obscene as it moved on his broken neck. Maia jumped out of the dead soldier—and plunged back into her own body with a scream when pain tore through her hand. It was instinct to cradle it to her chest, but the sight of it hanging unnaturally from her wrist made her stomach lurch. Tears spilled as the pain grew unbearable. She’d survived saints and manipulation and massacres. She refused to be taken out by a broken wrist. But the person who’d given it to her…

She stared up, a rasping sob in her throat, when Azrail reached for her again, his expression devoid of feeling. His eyes were hollow, utterly flat.

“Stop,” she breathed, trying and failing to fill her voice with magic. “Azrail,” she snapped, her voice harder, stronger, but her magic responded to anger , and pain it seemed was its antithesis.

If bright, crystal power hadn’t shattered between them, driving into Az’s bare chest, his shoulders, his arms, she didn’t know what he’d have done next. But Jaro was there, leaping between them with a low snarl of warning. Through the bond she felt his heart break as badly as hers. It went against nature to attack someone you loved, to turn yourself upon family.

The sharp fragment’s of Jaro’s magic erupted further, sinking viciously into Scylla, into Samlyn, into—

“Oh fuck,” she rasped, teeth gritted against the pain. “There’s more of them.”

Maia knew with a single glance that the two men who strode towards them, the ranks of dead soldiers parting to allow them through, were both saints. Power wrapped their auras like a second skin, both the same dark, corrupt grey as Scylla. Not quite as black as Karmen, but close.

“Time to go, princess,” Bryon growled, grabbing her good arm and pulling her into his body, wrapping an arm around her back to support her. Where did he even come from? Maia shook her head, panting through spikes of pain. Her heart jumped into her ribs at the sight of Kheir holding up hands wreathed in pure black flames, Vawn propping up Ark as—as Ark blinked his eyes open. Maia tried to go to him but Bryon tightened his grip. “Later,” he rumbled. He glanced to Kheir. “We ready to go?”

Kheir nodded, his gold-bronze face paler than normal, pain carving unfamiliar lines into his face. “He’s ready, just—”

His attention whipped around to the drake when he roared and ploughed into the dead soldiers lined up like toys, massive jaws opening on rows of teeth and—

“Oh, that’s nice,” Vawn remarked, wrinkling his nose. “And the crunching noise really adds to the ambiance of the dismemberment and digestion of body parts happening here.”

As if triggered by the sound of his voice, Azrail lunged towards Vawn with his shadows out in full force. Maia’s heart tripped, but the drake roared, power throbbed around Scylla, the Eversky awoke with a scream of rage, and there was too much happening, too many threats from every direction.

Maia’s head spun, her chest full of Kheir’s pain and Ark’s agony and Azrail’s turmoil. Her Sapphire Knight was in so much pain, fighting every command given to him, and Maia didn’t know how to fix it. The world spun and dimmed around her, and she didn’t know how to fix it.

“Jaro,” Maia rasped when he drove Azrail back another step. She needed her soul magic, needed to jump into Az to stop him attacking Jaro, to unleash the full force of spring upon the saints, but she’d drained too much power, too fast. And it had done nothing. Samlyn was injured but strong, still in control of Azrail. Scylla was smiling, bursting into laughter when the drake closed his jaws around her—and she reappeared a safe distance away.

“Such an ancient, powerful beast,” she taunted, “but you’re still weak, aren’t you? How long did you sleep, drake?”

The drake roared loudly enough that the ground shook and Maia fell into Bryon, jostling her broken wrist. Azrail had broken her wrist. Jaro had stabbed her in the saints' circle. How many more times would these saints make her mates harm her?

Samlyn stumbled back with a grunt that drew her attention even with the drake between them, and Maia choked on a rush of hope when she saw a piece of glasslike magic as big as a sword driven through his chest.

“That’s your own fault,” Scylla sighed, angling her head towards the two newcomers—both male, one with skin like reflective gold with perfect curls and clothes from an ancient era draped across a youthful body, one much older with hard eyes, a square jaw, and ice-white hair slicked back from a clever face.

It was the armour he wore that sent a chill down Maia’s spine—it was formed of metal, not leather, and his chest was covered in a hundred overlapping scales like a dragon’s hide or a fish’s body. And blood already stained the edges. Was that blood from the last time he’d been in the Saintlands? From the prison realm they’d all been trapped inside? Or was this new blood? Had he just killed someone?

Who?

Maia’s head spun as she searched the hallway, counting her mates, only settling when they were all here. She shouldn’t have turned away.

Azrail caught Jaro and Kheir in a rush of darkness and came at her so quickly she didn’t sense the threat. Cold hands closed around her throat, icy points of Az’s fingers pressing into her skin. Too cold. Why was he so cold? She hissed, using her good hand to grasp his wrist, staring into flat blue eyes.

“Az,” she rasped, grunting when his hand tightened. Behind him, Bryon and Ark snarled at once but Maia couldn’t look away from Azrail. “Fight it. You can fight it.” She threw herself through the glade of her soul toward his, cringing at the black, oozing poison. She needed her magic, that strength and pure, cleansing power, but black spots closed into her vision and when she reached for her magic, it struggled to respond. Azrail, she shouted at him. Az, fight this. You can fight this.

His eyes didn’t ripple with even a hint of emotion. He was too far gone, too far—

Grey, gauzy light burst through the palace, making Azrail’s skin even more wan, his eyes a shade lighter. Maia struggled for air, struggled to hold onto his soul even as the light flared brighter, like the vivid glow of the moon, like starlight. It felt … cold. Colder than any light had a right to be. It felt like Azrail’s soul when she wrapped herself around him.

A cheer went up from, jubilant and loud. One female voice and two male.

The saints… were cheering?