Page 140 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

The Cerl slumped forward, the impact of Jove’s shot dropping him like a stone.

Jove fell to his knees, clawing his way to the last place he’d seen his wife and son.

He was too slow, too clumsy, his legs refused to work properly.

His fingers clawed at the cobblestones, his sword and pistol forgotten.

Nails ripped from their beds as he urged himself to move faster.

He shoved the Cerl soldier’s dead weight off her. Blood leaked from her side.

“No no no !” Jove pleaded, cupping his hands over the wound. Clara’s glassy eyes wandered over him, her lips weakly moving in a silent prayer.

His hands left bloody fingerprints on her face, her chest, on Samuel’s blanket. His son. Screaming. Jove checked him for any injury. Nothing he could see. Clara had shielded him.

“Is he—” she whimpered.

“He’s all right.” Jove’s hands shook too hard to take his son out of the sling.

He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just sit there and watch her die.

All of his training had utterly fled his mind.

If he didn’t do something, she would bleed out.

He didn’t know how deep the wound went. All he could see was blood.

“Help me, please!” Jove shouted into the void, unsure of just who would answer. “ Help me !”

Clara shook her head, and Jove picked her and Samuel up, holding them both to this chest. He kissed her temple, tears streaming down both their faces. “Hang on. Just hang on.”

He could not live without her. He had to find help.

A wink of blue caught his attention—the Cerl’s pistol a few feet away, halfway tucked under his cooling body.

If Clara died, would he use it on himself?

His heart pounded in his chest. He could. He would be with her in whatever life awaited beyond this one. He’d nearly lost her to his own stupidity before the Kyvena attack, and he’d barely survived then.

He’d lost Ana, Zeke, and his father. He might’ve lost Kase. He could not lose his wife.

Samuel’s cries reached a fever pitch, breaking Jove out of his thoughts. Clara’s tears fell silently down her face, but she couldn’t comfort their son. “Take him. Help him, please.”

“Clara—”

“He needs his father.”

“He needs you !” Jove’s voice cracked, raw and pleading. “ I need you!”

“Jove, please.” Her voice broke. “Take him.”

Jove set her down softly, trying not to jostle her wound. He unwound his son from the wrap, cradling him close to his chest.

The baby’s mouth gaped open, his eyes scrunched in terror or displeasure or hunger. Blood not his own smeared his cheek. Jove’s tears washed it away as he pressed a kiss to his head. “Shh, shh. I’ve got you. It’ll be okay. ”

It wouldn’t, but Jove didn’t know what else to say.

Clara fell back into her silent prayers, and Jove pressed Samuel’s wrap to her wound, trying in vain to stop the flow.

“Master Jove!” a voice said above him. “Move aside.”

He shook his head. He would not leave her.

“ Anoheme ana hoiseh li Valihanora !” the voice shouted above him. Golden dust ignited around him. “ Jir dremu hiassa li grer mara .”

Everything burned. His ears ceased working. He couldn’t see.

It was like he stood on the surface of the sun. He could barely feel Samuel’s weight against his chest or Clara’s form beneath his hands. He nearly lost hold on his reality.

And then it was over. The noise around him returned, and then Kainadr’s face appeared before his. Jove blinked.

“I healed your wife,” he said, so casually calm it bordered on absurd. “You can let her go.”

Jove looked down at Clara, whose eyes had cleared, losing their glassy luster. Relief hit him like a summer rainstorm, and he let out a restrained sob. “Thank you.”

You can let her go. No, he couldn’t. He’d never let her go again.

Clara pushed herself up and tugged him to her. He kissed her, her lips desperate and salty from tears.

“Have faith, my love,” she whispered into the kiss.

Jove couldn’t answer, only nodded, pressing his forehead to hers. It was okay. She was okay.

He needed to get her out of this city.

Kainadr helped them up, throwing some dust out again, and in seconds, a sword materialized in his outstretched hand.

“Got to use it once, but turns out I really am merely gifted with the healing arts. Take it—I’m as likely to slice my own head off as someone else’s.

It will help with the shadows. Get your wife out of here. ”

If the situation hadn’t been so dire, he might’ve laughed. Instead, Jove took the sword from him and nodded. “Let’s go.”

Clara swathed Samuel in her bloodstained wrap and clasped Jove’s hand. Her fingers were warm and alive, safe and snug in his own. She was alive.

They took off from the market square.

Jove’s free hand clung to Kainadr’s sword, ready to swing at anyone who dared come close. No one would touch his wife again. “Where is your mother? If you can make it to Windwick or one of the other nearby hamlets, you should be able to wait it out until…”

Clara let out a muffled sob. Jove stopped, dropping her hand. “What? What happened?”

Clara shook her head, her face and clothing still covered in blood. She brought a hand to her mouth, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “The soldier…I can’t…I tried…”

Shouting echoed off the lanes behind him, but he ignored it.

Jove had just pulled her into his arms—unsure what happened but knowing it was bad—when white-hot pain struck him from behind.

He cried out, careening forward. Clara screamed, catching him, holding him steady.

His vision sputtered, flitting in and out, her face swimming before him. He fell to his knees

More shouting erupted behind him. Jove turned just enough to see Kainadr picking up the sword he’d just given Jove, swinging it with all the strength he had at one of the gray shadows, but the shadow was faster.

It dodged the sword, and before Kainadr could recover, the shadow struck hard.

Blood spurted from his stomach, and the Yalv went limp.

The shadow wrenched its hand back out. Kainadr collapsed.

Clara screamed again. Jove fought against the lightning pain in his back. He didn’t know if Kainadr could survive that, but he would not let that thing kill his wife and child. The ground beneath him was slick with blood, too slick—his hands kept slipping as he tried to shove himself up.

Before he could fight his way to his feet, a rolling crack of thunder rent the air and threw him back to the ground.

His head hit the cobblestones hard, and his head rang with the impact.

Pain radiated through his skull and rattled his teeth.

Another wave of energy crackled and blasted apart the shadow above him. A third wave had him heaving.

And then it was done.

He couldn’t breathe deep enough, and Clara sobbed his name above him, trying to push him onto his side and stem the flow of the blood leaking out his back.

His nerves sparked like loose wires, chills erupting over his feverish skin.

Nausea rose in his stomach, and it took everything in him not to heave again. His body couldn’t take it.

Weakness drifted through his limbs, and the thudding pulse in his ears slowed its rhythm. His vision sputtered and fizzed, gray at the edges.

Was this what it felt like to die?

He squeezed his eyes tight. No. Not like this. Not here, not now. Samuel and Clara needed him. He would not leave them here with no one to protect them. He refused to give in. Not yet.

He had more to live for.

Ironic he had to be dying to realize that.

He wrenched his eyes open and pressed hard against the nausea and weakness.

The shapes above him were blurry and unfocused one second, snapped into clarity the next, then phased out again.

Another face had joined Clara’s in hovering over him, a man Jove vaguely recognized but couldn’t place.

The blond man had a gnarly cut above his eye, dark red blood mixed with clotted brown covering half his face, but his brown eyes were clear and free of black ink. “You Kase’s brother?”

His ears felt full of water, and it took him a few extra seconds to realize what the man said.

Burning pain in his back had him silent save for the groan. A few more seconds and he gasped out, “Yes, but I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.”

“Depends who you ask, I’d wager.” The man’s accent—from the Nardens, he thought. It was hard to place with all the ringing in his ears. “What’s hurt?”

Clara smoothed the hair back from his brow. “The shadow being hit him with something. I don’t know how to…”

The blond man rummaged in a nearby pack. “Name’s Niels Metzinger, and I owe Kase a favor.” He pulled out bandages and a sewing kit. “I’ll get you stitched up for now, and later, you can have a real medic take a look.”

He fished out a flask and, without any preamble, splashed alcohol into the wound. Jove’s vision went white, and he bucked against the pain.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” said the man, not sounding too sorry whatsoever, “but you oughta be just fine once you stop bleeding everywhere.” The man rubbed some sort of cloth over the wound, and Jove nearly bit through his lip. This Niels claimed he owed Kase a favor, but this felt more like someone exacting vengeance meant for his brother out on Jove’s flesh instead.

Maybe he should have lied. “Not too deep, but enough to let you attend your own funeral if you can handle the pain.”

Despite the man’s odd assurances—at least, he thought they were supposed to be assurances—the damage felt like it went clean through his chest. The man handed him another cloth. “Bite down on this.”

Jove was almost insulted, sure he could’ve handled the pain, but then—oh stars and shocks , this was worse than breaking his arm across Harlan’s desk.

With each poke of the needle, Jove screamed into the cloth clenched between his teeth.

Each jab sent a bolt of lightning throughout his entire body.

Cold sweat gushed from his pores, but it did nothing to cool the jagged white fire pulsing from the stitching.

Each pull-through and tightening of the thread was agony. His vision blanked again.

He must’ve passed out because the next thing he knew, the blond man—Niels—was gone, and Jove’s head rested in Clara’s lap. She stroked soaked hair at his temple, her fingertips both hot and cold at once.

“You’re awake,” she breathed.

The throbbing in his back promised him the pain wouldn’t fade for a long while. It wasn’t acute and all-consuming any longer, but any movement stretched the skin, creating a line of fire licking up his torso. He sucked in a breath and clenched his teeth.

“Love, you can rest for a while more. A few of the Yalvs are going around and helping those who are worse off. They’ll help move you when you’re ready,” she said softly. Jove looked up at her, dazedly marveling at the sunset glowing in her midnight eyes. Samuel was quiet.

Was it truly over? Had they been victorious? Or was this battle only a precursor of something even worse to come?

Jove forced himself to rise, and even with Clara’s help, the pain almost had him begging for a stiff drink.

He ground his teeth until he was sitting up.

Clara helped set his back against the cottage wall behind them.

He gingerly tugged her under his arm and held her close to his uninjured side.

Samuel squirmed, seemingly oblivious to the chaos he’d just survived.

If only Jove could be so carefree.

Maybe one day, he would be.

“I’ll need to help them soon. They need someone to lead them,” Jove said, his voice gruff from the trauma of the last few hours. “But for now, it’s good to be here with you.”