Page 20 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ARA

S weat rolled down my forehead despite the frigid temperature. I blinked back tears as the icy air stung my eyes, my throat and lungs burning.

I waited for something to happen—a face to reveal itself, the glint of a weapon, the disillusionment of my fragile reality—but nothing did, and my feet just kept going.

I sprinted through the forest, fueled by nothing but pure desperation.

But that desperation grew and warped and multiplied until my mind started to play tricks on itself, a flicker of movement here, a faint sound there. The wind felt like fingers on my skin, the trees rustling whispers, the ground as unsteady as my head.

Or perhaps it wasn’t my mind at all.

“Adonis!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. It echoed through the silent forest. “Adonis! Where are you?”

My only answer was a deep rumble in the distance. My feet slowed when the ground shook, and I spun in every direction, my head on a swivel to find him before he found me. The trees swayed, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end when no animals startled, no birds took flight.

“Adonis!” I screamed again. “Show yourself, you bastard. Adonis! ”

Distant trees snapped and fell, and I jumped, turning to see dark pillars of smoke swelling into the sky.

I stumbled back a few steps again, clenching my jaw.

My hand lifted to my face, feeling my cheek, then reached out to a tree. The bark was rough and cool. I dipped to the ground, lifted a handful of dirt, and watched as it slipped through my fingers.

Was this real? How would I know if it was?

My heart thumped wildly, my eyes snapping back to the plumes of smoke, swirling into the air until a massive shape burst from it.

I squinted, then fell back onto the tree trunk, jaw slack.

A wyvern emerged from it, as black as the smoke itself.

Had Adonis known of wyverns?

“Were they real?” I whispered under my breath. “Is this…real?”

If this were real…

I scrambled to my feet. If this were real, something exploded, and I hoped it was the tunnels. I desperately hoped Adonis was inside them. While I had wanted to run him through myself, dying in the pit of hell he loved so much seemed a fitting fate.

If it wasn’t real…

There wasn’t anything I could do to prevent the inevitable.

I picked up speed, moving as fast as my weak legs would allow, and I didn’t stop—not for my trembling muscles, not for the cuts in the soles of my bare feet, not for the fire in my lungs, or the stars in my vision.

I would never stop. Not until I reached King’s Port. I’d crawl the remaining miles on bloodied hands and knees if I had to.

“Just follow the sun,” Doran had said, and so I would.

I wouldn’t stop until I made sure Livvy was safe—that we were safe. From there, we’d seek passage on a ship north and never be seen again.

“Your friend is…fine. Just go. I’ll meet you there shortly,” were his last words before he shoved me out and slammed the door shut.

How healthy was fine, though? Someone could be permanently injured, missing a limb, or mentally scarred, on the verge of collapse, but with a smile, and still be considered fine. What constituted fine? Were the ability to breathe and function the only requirements?

Was I fine, as I ran for my life, simply because I still possessed my life? Was I fine because I could still run, or because I could still think? I could assimilate into society, so I must be fine enough.

I am not fine, nor is Livvy.

We’d go to Draig Hearth to retrieve Mother—would she be fine? Why was she at Draig Hearth? I couldn’t recall her reasoning, nor why the castle felt safe, but the why didn’t matter. Not right now…or that was what I told myself, at least, and I believed it, too.

For a few seconds.

Then, my mind wandered to the library, and flashes of long hair and robes, books and scrawny legs, hugs and warmth sucked the breath from my lungs.

The last time I’d seen Alden, he’d been lying in the alleyway, bleeding out onto stone until his soul left with his sparks, fading into the stars.

I’d managed to shove that away these past three months—shoved his entire existence away, locked in an untouchable box in my mind, because I couldn’t grieve him there.

I would’ve driven myself to insanity, unable to breathe or cope, and I wouldn’t give Adonis that satisfaction.

But now that it’d been opened, I couldn’t stop picturing his tunic that night, white but stained dark, saturated in his blood. He hadn’t been wearing his normal robes, and something about him dying in a tunic felt wrong. Alden dying at all was wrong, but in a tunic?

I kept reliving it—the stabbing, the red stain stretching across his abdomen, and my failure to save him.

The stabbing, the blood, my failure.

Alden died, and he was just…left there, like he wasn’t one of the greatest people to ever exist. Where was his body now? Had he been buried or left to the elements? He certainly didn’t make it back to Nautia, back to his home.

My gut wrenched as bile climbed my throat.

Did he at least make it back to his Ara?

Wherever he was, his soul wasn’t in this world anymore, not with us, not with me.

Gone.

He was gone.

Pain crushed my chest. I flattened my palm over my sternum when it felt like it’d physically cracked, and sobs poured from me as I ran—angry, hurt, devastated cries—but my feet never slowed.

I could fall apart. My tears could drain me dry, and my chest could crack open for my heart to fall onto the forest floor, but I’d leave it behind. I would continue because I had to, because we were on the cusp of freedom, and I would never allow us to fall back into his hands.

Never. Again.

My foot hooked on a root as I furiously wiped my blurry eyes, and I flung forward before catching myself on a tree trunk. My fingers dug into the bark until the tips bled, my throat dry and raw, as I let the hurt simmer into rage.

When I pulled my hand away, drops of red coated my fingertips, and I couldn’t help but stare, wishing it was Adonis’s blood on my hands.

I wanted to slice him until he fainted, not from blood loss but from the sight of himself soaked in it.

I wanted him to beg for mercy, though there would be none. I wanted to drown him like he had me.

Perhaps he should drown in his own blood.

Suddenly, I hoped he wasn’t in those tunnels, because I wanted him to suffer.

With a scream of frustration, I pushed myself off the tree and continued towards the setting sun, but my legs were growing weaker, number.

I stumbled again and again, my head growing fuzzy.

When the ground dipped beneath me, I fell to my hands and knees, my palms hitting the snow, and my injured wrist buckled.

I screamed at the agony racing up my arm and fell to one side, clutching the swollen joint, stifling sobs.

When the pain subsided enough for me to function again, I braced my good hand on the ground and tried to pull energy from it—from anything, but everything was unnaturally empty. There was nothing to be taken. It was sickeningly dead, the land, the trees, even the air.

With a deep breath, I stood again and continued moving as fast as I could.

Not fast enough, though.

Perhaps it was my racing heart I heard, or the pounding of blood in my ears, or the sound of my freedom on the brink of slipping through my fingers again, but something deadened my senses enough that I didn’t hear the massive form running behind me until it was too late.

A hand grabbed my bicep and spun me around.

“I knew it,” I muttered, something deep in my chest breaking, deflating. “I fucking knew it.”

But I was unshackled, and I wouldn’t go without taking something from him, too.

I latched onto him with something much stronger than a hand.

I didn’t bother looking at his face before my magic started to pull the life from him.

No, I watched his chest, the rise and fall of each rapid breath, because there was a heart beneath it all—there was life.

Each tug eased the burn in my muscles, and tears stung my eyes.

I hadn’t realized how bone-tired I’d been. It went deeper than running; it was months of being tortured, of sleeping in chains and starving, of freezing darkness and terror.

He dropped to a knee with a grunt but didn’t pull his arm away. “Rogue is nearby. He’ll find us.”

Fresh fear poured over me like ice water, and I finally looked away from his beating heart, my attention snapping to our surroundings.

I jerked my arm, my eyes on the sky. “Let me go.”

“Ara.” His voice sounded vaguely familiar—but it wasn’t Adonis’s.

This wasn’t Adonis.

I looked at him then, my brows furrowed.

The more I stared, the deeper I waded through the dark fog shrouding where I knew him from. He was a mammoth of a man, older, with dark, ruddy red eyes, black hair, and a scar through his eyebrow.

“Terran?” I shook my head when a fuzzy headache settled in my skull. Adonis didn’t know Terran.

This was real.

I was real.

“Let me go,” I said in a rush.

“Did you not hear me?” He stood with a muffled groan, shaking his head. “Rogue is here.”

“Why would I wait for him to find me?” My chest burned, both lungs and heart on fire as I looked down at my arm—at his hold on my arm. “Let me go.”

His hand was still on my skin, still touching, still holding, still restraining, and suddenly, the danger wasn’t nearby.

It was here.

It was right there, where his skin touched mine.

Let me go.

I clawed at his hand, bent over, and wrenched my arm, nearly pulling my shoulder from the socket.

Hysteria climbed my throat, and I pulled harder. He simply stumbled forward in a daze, staring at my face but not seeing.

Not seeing the panic he caused—or not caring.

Let me go.

Let me go.

Let me go.

I wrapped my hand around his wrist and sucked the energy harder, envisioning myself taking all the strength from his body until he didn’t have enough left to hold his head up, much less hold my arm.

His jaw tightened, his shoulders tensed. “W-What do you mean why? Why would you not…” A second passed, and his expression fell, his breath leaving him with a whoosh. He dropped back to one knee, his gaze distant, staring straight through me. “Adon didn’t…” His mouth twisted into a scowl. “Did he?”

“Let me go ,” I begged through sobs. “Let me go.”

Large wings beat overhead, and my head spun, threatening to send me to my knees. I jerked again, but his grip was bruising, and he was too lost in his own delirium to recognize it.

I wasn’t willing to waste energy shocking him—I needed it—and I didn’t want to kill him, so when his grip didn’t falter, I swore under my breath and kicked his gut. The bastard doubled over with a grunt but still didn’t let go.

Another beat of wyvern wings, and my mind went completely black, no thoughts, just…panic.

“I don’t want to kill you, but I will,” I managed. “Either release me or?—”

“Do you not…” Terran seemed to be in a trance, one determined to hold me hostage as well. “You don’t feel him?”

“ Who?” I screamed. “Please. Please let me go.”

He was going to get us both chained by Adonis’s men or worse, captured by another king.

No, not captured.

I would die here.

My chest constricted, throat tightening until it felt like I could no longer swallow. I was choked and thrust back under Adonis’s water, drowning, suffocating, dying.

No.

I squeezed my eyes shut, Terran’s words left unintelligible among the roaring in my ears.

Never again.

Clenching my jaw, I snapped my eyes open. “I will not go back there.”

I kicked his shoulder with every ounce of renewed strength I had.

His arm went lax with a sharp pop of his shoulder, and he finally released me, falling back, clutching at the dislocated joint. He bared his teeth, but by the time I’d spun on my heel, the sound of his joint snapping back into place echoed through the barren forest.

I didn’t make it two steps before he dove forward to wrap a hand around my ankle, and I slammed into the ground with a thud, barely saving my broken wrist from shattering.

A scream tore from my throat as lightning filled my irises for the first time in months—a glorious feeling that would’ve brought tears to my eyes had I not been so desperate.

I kicked his bruising arm again with my free leg, and he roared, his pupils narrowed to slits, surrounded by smoldering black-red.

Talons tore from his fingers, sharp enough to nick my skin at the slightest touch. Drops of red speckled my ankle under their tips.

My eyes flashed between his grip and his face. “Release me, come with me, or die… Terran .” Though I was confident that wasn’t his name. “Which will it be?”

He seemed to force his eyes back to normal, his talons sliding back. “Goddess, damn it all. Fine. Let’s go, Storm Bringer.”

The second he released me, I scrambled to my feet and took off, moving much faster than before.

“The drugs—that’s why you can’t feel him,” Terran shouted behind me, followed by another curse and pounding footsteps. “You’ve got, at most, twelve hours before he comes for you.”

Never again.

A dark shadow fell over the forest, and I looked up with a sinking knot in my gut to find a massive serpentine wyvern blocking out the sun.

My knuckles cracked as I clenched my fists, biting back another scream, and forced my legs to move faster.

Trees rustled with another beat of his wings.

Faster.

Sparks licked at my heels when the sun finally peeked around the wyvern.

Faster.

Those blue sparks climbed my form, flickering all around me, the energy growing louder until a deafening crack rang out. Then I flew through the forest, trees passing by in a blur as I left Terran and the wyvern in my wake.