Page 103 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

Iaso silently walked forward. Her eyes lit, but they were dim and cold. Her face remained blank as she placed a hand over his neck.

With a gasp, he straightened, color returning to his cheeks. When she dropped her hand, he probed the area with his fingers. “The wounds closed. You?—”

“I wasn’t too late to heal you,” she mumbled.

Tears blurred my eyes, and I turned to blink them away, looking to the sky as I always did, but I found a man instead—or the shape of one. Standing in the entrance, a beam of moonlight brightened and took the form of a male human. He didn’t say anything, just stood and observed.

Rogue slid his hand into mine.

With a deep sigh, Iaso said, “Not everyone—every thing you see tonight will be a soul. The land remembers, too, and sometimes, its tragic memories get stuck in a loop. It’s called an echo.”

Suddenly, the man spun on his heel, and a bolt struck him in the chest. He staggered backward as he looked down at it, his hands hovering around the shaft.

“But I love you,” whispered on the breeze.

The soul collapsed, but when he hit the ground, he disappeared into mist among the scattered moonlight, only to reappear on his feet. He stood for a few moments before turning around to meet the same fate.

“That is… Oh, that is horrifying.” Gus took a wide step away from the entrance. “He’s sad, but what if we stumble into something or someone…worse? Can they hurt us?”

“If it’s a true soul and not just memory, then yes…

if they really want to. The only souls who can return are those with loose ends, regrets, or deep-seated anger.

But hurting a living person—doing anything physically in the realm of the living would require an immense amount of effort.

” Iaso didn’t look away from the man as he died again.

“Just…don’t trust everything you see, don’t panic, and don’t bother asking the Goddess to wake.

She won’t. No one is coming to save us.”

Dragonscale spread farther down Rogue’s arms, reaching toward our clasped hands, but the shackle prevented it from armoring my form.

Iaso’s vines wound through the slots in the grate. Metal groaned, bolts straining under pressure until it ripped from the wall.

She stepped to the threshold and peered up, disregarding the man as he appeared again. Rogue and I joined her, giving the soul a wide berth as he repeated his motions.

The moon had become a ghost, and in its place, the stars shone brighter. Clouds of stardust swirled among them, bathing the night sky in shifting colors. Blue, green, and purple light rippled through the darkness.

“The Goddess created the veil to separate life and death, but it also bound time, which is why you’ll see echoes.

Without the veil, strong memories resurface, be it ours, the dead’s, or the land’s.

When the Goddess sleeps, the veil thins between this realm and the next— and between what is, what was, and what could’ve been.

Tonight, time and existence bleed into each other.

” She faced us, her eyes molten and bright.

“Take everything you see with a grain of salt.”

“I say this with the utmost respect,” Thana started, “but I deeply feel like we should’ve prepared for this before the night of.”

“Tell me, what could have prepared you for this?” Iaso leveled her gaze at her. “How do you prepare to face the dead?”

Thana huffed out a breath, checking the straps of her sheaths. “I would’ve liked to mentally prepare.”

As the moon flickered out entirely, everyone froze, eyes drawn to the sky in silent dread. Without the bright moonlight, the shifting, spectral hues reached down and wound through the world like an eerie blue-green haze.

“We need to go,” Rogue said. “I can’t imagine Doran will entertain Adonis for long. He’ll realize he doesn’t have a shackle, and”—he glanced at Finley’s flesh and bones—“we need to get him away from Adonis and that dagger.”

My heart lurched at the reminder, and I resisted the urge to run my fingers over the metal at my wrist. “We know a lot of dead souls,” I whispered, scanning the horizon. “A lot of them are dead because of us.”

It was a straight shot to the tree line, and aside from the soul stuck in the echo, it was clear.

“If we’ve killed them once, we can do it again,” Rogue whispered.

“Right,” I snorted, despite the knot of fear wrenching my gut. “Kill the dead. Easy.”

He laced his hand in mine and lifted it to his mouth. After pressing a quick kiss to my fingers, he murmured, “Easy.”

Then, he tugged me out into the night. I braced for an attack, but none came—yet.

The rest followed in our footsteps. The human rebels hugged the outside of the group with their swords drawn, heads on a swivel. Edana and Drakyth pulled up the rear, Drakyth covered in a similar dragonscale to Rogue.

I released a subtle breath when we made it beneath the trees’ cover, but my skin still crawled with the prickling sensation of being watched.

Once we were within earshot of the camp, Godrick pulled Rogue to a stop.

“Let me try to reason with the human officers—convince them to turn or retreat,” he said, his expression grim. “Some of them have to be simply men following orders, and those, I can convince.”

Before we could respond, Delphia added, “If he has infected their minds, we’ll just kill them and move on to their next in command. Adonis couldn’t have manipulated all of them. We just have to keep cutting off heads until we find the right ones.”

“No,” I snapped. “It’s not worth your lives.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Rogue said. “One misstep and you’re dead. All of you. Or worse, he’ll get into your heads again.”

“It is worth it,” Godrick argued. “To cleave his army by even a fraction is always worth it.”

Drakyth nodded slowly. “All it takes is one card. The faintest shift, and the entire house of cards caves in.”

“We just have to find the right person.” Godrick ran a hand down his thick beard. “If not an officer, then a gossip, someone who can spread the word fast enough.”

Edana asked, “Spread what word, exactly?”

Godrick met her gaze. “That they fight for a false king. That Stirling blood is alive, and their Queen is coming.”

Chills spread down my spine. Turning to Delphia, I said, “Keep him hidden. If you start to fatigue, retreat. Do not push your limits behind enemy lines.”

She gave me a sharp nod.

“We’ll do everything we can,” Godrick said. “Cause a ruckus and start a few fires along the way. If nothing else, we can lead them on a wild goose chase to give you a little more time to get that off.” He motioned for the shackle on my wrist.

The cold metal burned my skin, an incessant itch spreading beneath it.

Gus stepped up. “We’ll go with him.”

Rogue shook his head. “Delphia won’t be able to carry you all beneath her shield.”

“We can blend in among them,” a human said. “Perks of being a human.”

“The only perk, it seems,” grumbled another.

Godrick glanced between Rogue and me, a hand on each of our shoulders. “Stay safe, and stay alive. I’ll see you both very soon.”

With that, he, Delphia, and Thana disappeared while the dozen rebels started toward Auryna’s armies. They couldn’t be far—a half mile at most, and beyond them, the coast. Instead of sand, the beaches were made of rock shards and broken shells, tossed by the angry swells and rip currents.

Lee had moved the Bloodsworn in as close to the human encampment as he could without detection, leaving Adonis’s army caged between us and nature’s death trap.

Rogue charged forward, his strides long enough that I almost had to jog to keep up, but Iaso snatched his arm before we stepped over the border of his blood oath. He met her glowing golden eyes with fire in his own.

My brows furrowed, mouth open—but it clicked shut at the snap of a twig. Our heads swiveled to the source of the sound.

Lee sprinted toward us.

Aside from the fires flickering, sending wisps of smoke and embers up into the air, he was the only movement. Groups of soldiers stood motionless, their blades unsheathed, eyes flitting between the sky and their surroundings.

“An angry soul appeared within minutes of the liminal moon starting.” Lee glanced over his shoulder.

“Two soldiers followed it out of the spell boundary, and it nearly killed them. They’ll make a full recovery—they’re in the nurses’ tent now—but the soul couldn’t follow them within the spell’s border. ”

The nurses’ tent.

Mother was in that tent, this close to the battlefield, and?—

Wait.

My heart beat in my throat.

We stood outside the boundary.

“What are we doing?” I pulled Rogue over the spell’s boundary, and he staggered with a grunt. “Are you okay?”

With a lop-sided grin, he leaned down to whisper, “I’d like to keep my toes if you don’t mind.”

My brows pulled together, and I glanced down, not having realized I stepped on his foot. My eyes narrowed and lifted to his, but he’d already turned his attention to Lee.

“We also received word Adonis was seen with Ara, though that’s clearly not true—or not entirely true. Does he have Doran?”

Rogue said, “He’s buying us time.”

Lee scanned our faces. “Where are the others?”

“Also buying us time,” I said with a grimace.

Lee stilled, expression carefully neutral. “Godrick…is behind enemy lines?”

“With Delphia and Thana,” Rogue said, swallowing thickly.

“Adonis is already there!” Lee shouted, then lowered his voice to say, “All it would take is one false step, one sighting, and he’ll be dead before his next breath.”

My throat constricted, heart racing, before a ripple of cold slithered down my spine. I spun with a gasp and found a man I never thought I’d be unlucky enough to meet.

With red eyes, sheared black hair, scarred wings, and a deep scowl, Adrastus Draki was unmistakable.

He glared at his son.

My fingers curled around Severance as I discreetly slid in front of Rogue, though I wasn’t sure if it was to protect him from his father or himself.

When he turned his hard gaze on me, I fell back a step into Rogue’s front, and he hooked an arm around my shoulders.

Adrastus’ scowl twisted into a grin, his sharp teeth too large for his mouth. His bloodied hands twitched at his sides.

Then, he was gone.