Page 76 of Shadows Ascend (Remnant Archives #2)

"Go!" Lova gritted her teeth, frustrated. "I'll take care of the rest of those blood cunts!"

Shifting back into her lynx form, Lova raced after the remaining fae, her adrenaline drowning out the fierce ache in her side, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with her thirst for vengeance—my mouth watering just as hers was, thinking about the feel of ripping their throats out with her own fangs.

Spotting a large rock jutting from the tundra, Lova launched herself from it, landing paces ahead of the blood fae’s retreat. Turning with a lunge, her claws buried deep into the blood fae’s leader, the shock in his eyes satisfying for the both of us as she landed on top of him.

Quickly, she slashed out, cutting out his throat before shifting back to her fae form, straddling the blood fae that writhed beneath her.

"I told you I'd rip these fangs out blood whore." Holding his thrashing head, Lova pried open the blood fae’s mouth, blood gurgling out the sides before she viciously ripped out the his teeth with her pure shifter strength. Dangling them in front of him, his light dimming, Lova smiled darkly, "You won’t be needing these where you’re going.

May Sheol take you to its darkest depths where you will live this very moment for eternity. "

He was dead before her last words cut through the frozen winds. Snapping her head up, Lova growled at the last two blood fae that stared in shock, fear shining in their eyes.

Throwing their leader’s bloody teeth at their feet, she snarled, "Leave and never return or stay and suffer his fate. I care not which you choose."

They both blinked slowly, glancing between each other before spinning back around and blurring away straight towards the plains where the bruxa were waiting. The undead vampiric females never did like the blood fae, found them quite annoying mimicking their way of life.

Shoulders sagging, her adrenaline slowing, Lova climbed off the dead blood fae, holding the knife in her side like a lifeline, she squinted out in the distance—back towards Bane.

The wind slapped against her face with its own stinging vengeance, and I shivered internally.

It was more than the cold that chilled her body now.

With great effort Lova dragged herself over to the swordmaster elemental, and paused when she spied the tears falling from his crystal blue eyes.

“The babes,” Lova gasped, “Are they—gone?”

Bane shook his head, "No. They are still alive…” his hands trembled over their slain friend, “I—I can’t.”

"Oh Bane," I whispered to Lova internally, understanding the swordmaster’s plight much more now. "I always knew he suffered a terrible fate in the Blood Wars. When he came back from them, he was never the same."

"We all have different sides of ourselves, forta,” Lova whispered back through our connection, “Sometimes life has a way of suppressing it, and sometimes life shows its hand without any remorse.”

My throat burned, bitterness a sour taste in my mouth as Lova reached out to grip the solid fur covered shoulder of the swordmaster. "You must do this, my friend."

Bane’s hands fisted, dropping on his kneeling legs, "I have no blades," he snorted through his tears.

"What a pathetic swordmaster I have become, with not a single blade left for me to save these faelings.” He jerked his head towards the scorched tundra, “I burned those fuckers too hot, there’s not even a blade among their ashes.

"Shaking his head again, he reached out to palm Calliope's heavily pregnant stomach, unable to control his trembling once again.

"I can feel them. If… if I use my fire, I may hurt them, especially if they move," he whispered.

I watched as Lova reached for his calloused hand that lay defeated on their friend and pulled it away to curl around the knife buried deep in her side. "My injury is fatal, Bane, but my life may still save another this day."

I inhaled sharply, tears burning my eyes.

Bane's head snapped up towards her, his eyes bloodshot from fatigue and grief. "No," he growled. "I can take you back to Jar. He can safely remove the blade and heal you."

Lova smiled weakly. "My soulmate is talented, but some damage he cannot undo. It has been too long, there is too much internal bleeding, and this blade runs deep. In the time it takes for all of us to trek back, you’ll be delivering four dead bodies to my soulmate instead of two.

Take the knife, my friend, save the faelings. Do not let my death be for nothing."

Bane cursed, his hand shaking harder around the blade as Lova’s lips thinned. There was no time for his hesitation, not now.

With a sharp inhale and a final surge of strength, Lova curled her hand around Bane's and wrenched the long dagger out, blood spilling from her like a broken dam as she fell.

Bane stared horrified at the blade, and then back to Lova, watching as she dragged her bleeding body to curl alongside her fallen friend—deep brown eyes stared unseeing and vacant back at her.

"Your babies will live on, Calliope. This I vow," Lova choked on a whisper, a thin sheen of sweat beading on her brow, her lips twitching at the foul curses escaping the swordmaster’s mouth as he made his first cut. Holding onto her dead friend Lova waited, growing colder in death alongside her.

When a high pitched cry of a newborn babe rent the frigid air, angry and fierce, Lova knew that he was the male foreseen in Talgira’s vision which meant the female was next.

Her breath slowing, the beat of her heart waning, she waited for the next cry, and when it came, a soft sweet whimper joined by the coo’s of the hardened warrior that held her, the shifter smiled.

Through Lova’s eyes, I stared in awe at Bane who was unsheathing his own fur, baring his body to the unforgiving cold, to wrap the twin faelings together in the heavy cloth.

"Penina," she gurgled and I choked on the blood filling her mouth. Bane’s eyes drifted over to us, rocking the babe’s in a subconscious paternal instinct. "Calliope wanted to name them Penina and Falcon."

Bane cleared his throat and it was then that I noticed through the haze of Lova’s death that he had been crying again. "Goddess bless Penina and Falcon, children of the shifters Calliope and Maddox Sythe. Long may they live in the light."

"Long may they live in the light," Lova’s lips moved but no sound left them.

Bane’s shadow leaned over her, his soft heated touch chasing away the bleak coldness of the looming death.

I could barely hear his final words. "Rest your warrior soul now, forta," he called to her.

"You have fulfilled your vow, Lovisa Riss. May the goddess take you with her golden light to live freely within our hearts where the devoted and young never die.”

Her breath rattled when she took her last—a harsh sound for a harsh end and I felt every vibration of it as I died with her.