Page 108

Chapter

Seventy-Three

Nuo

M y chest burned, my breathing ragged, but I had enough left in me to fight. I needed to get to Bas and find Kazhi, so I cut through the vines around my ankles, turning to find Falizha doing the same. She was less than ten feet away.

Brekt was in the air. He would be fine. He would save Liv.

But, Endless Night , the Ikhor was worse than the paintings depicted it.

It was fucking floating! Glowing, just like we’d been taught.

I had just begun to believe the stories weren’t true, that Liv was in full control, and then the Ikhor turned the shrine into a place of horror, killing everyone it laid eyes on.

Screams tore through the shrine as fire consumed the Guardians. Some had already drowned and several bodies hung from the second floor, swinging from vines that were holding them by the neck. The Ikhor targeted them one by one and then killed them all. I didn’t count how many escaped.

Aeden stopped those who survived, turning on them when they didn’t follow his command.

It was chaos—no one knew who to target. I caught several near the main doors, unsure who to point their Deathmakers at.

“Get out of the shrine! The Ikhor may come back.”

If any of the Guardians heard, I couldn’t tell. With the Ikhor gone, the remaining fires were out of control.

Where was Kazhi? The Aethar girl?

My desperation rose, and I coughed around the heat from the flames — dry air was a Sea-legs worse nightmare. I wiped at my mouth. Blood stained my hand. Fuck. I lifted the other hand I held tight to my rib. Blood poured through my fingers. I wouldn’t make it long. I needed magycris.

In my time as a Guard I’d been stabbed, cut and badly bruised. But this wound—this was something else.

I pushed the pain aside. Guardians and a wall of fire surrounded Falizha, as she yelled at her brother over the roar of flames. Aeden had Bastane slung over his shoulder. I needed to stop them.

I ran for Falizha when a wind kicked up, stopping me.

“Nuo!” Through the flames, I spotted Kazhi against the far wall. She searched for a way to get to me. The wind rushed me again—she was trying to use her magic to put the fires out. “I’ll get Bas,” she said. “You get healed!”

She was right. I was losing energy.

Kazhi had a clear path to Aeden, which left Falizha for me. I took three pained steps before I was blocked. Falizha stood before me, sneering. How had she moved so fast? The shrine moved under my feet, and I realized I was losing too much blood.

Behind Falizha, her brother ran out of the shrine, carrying Bastane’s limp body. He turned to his sister. “Surely you can take down a Guard who’s nearly dead.”

“Kazhi,” I screamed over the smoke and flame. “Go after him!”

She nodded before disappearing, leaving Falizha and me alone.

“It’s time, Falizha,” I mocked, opening my arms as if to embrace her. Her body shook, backing away from me but stopping before the flames touched her. “I promised it would be me who did the honours of ending your life.”

“I will not die by your hand. You are nobody! You’re pathetic, a weak-blooded Sea-leg!”

“Are you trying to convince yourself? Cause no one else is listening, hun.” I swaggered forward, dirt crunching under my boots. This would be easy, even bleeding out.

The shrine was bathed in an orange glow. “I was right, wasn’t I? This was a slaughter. We didn’t come here for the Aethar.”

Falizha pulled her own knife, mouth set in determination. She was actually going to try and fight me.

I circled her, eager to get this death and claim it. “I promised your life was no longer your own.”

“You kill me, and you can never go home again. You are an enemy to the Guardian City.”

“Sounds like a fair trade to me. Besides,”—I pointed to the burning shrine—“odds don’t look good for me anyways.”

For the first time since I met the slimy bitch, she showed an ounce of bravery when she charged to strike me first. “You disgusting Sea-leg. I will gladly cut you up into pieces.”

She was surprisingly skilled with her blade. Her long hair spun as she dodged my knives. Her cape whipped out as she moved.

My side was killing me, slowing me down, but it was like fighting a child.

Her golden face burned with rage as our weapons clashed. Over and over again.

I pushed her back, and she slammed against a crumbling pillar. Her chest rose and fell as fast as my own. She was putting up a decent fight.

“My brother was ordered to make sure none of you left here. The time of the Guards is done. The Ravin family will control the beast from now on.”

“Is that so? You think Brekt will follow you? You think you can get through the Ikhor?”

Falizha smiled. “We only needed proof the Ikhor caused the transformation. Control the Ikhor, control the beast.”

The breath left my lungs. “Control the Ikhor? Are you insane?” That was their plan?

Falizha rested a hand against the pillar, holding herself up. “Oh, Nuo, you are so clueless.” She bit her lip, enjoying this. “Do you think it’s normal for a man to be able to toss someone across the room as Aeden does?”

I waited to hear more, hating the delight that crossed her face. She loved having the upper hand.

She gave me a taunting grin. “We have been developing weapons in secret for a very long time. We have been controlling people in ways you could never imagine. And now, we will use those same methods to control the Ikhor.”

Her brother. He had looked strange. What had he done to himself?

“Figuring it out?” she asked. “We’ve been testing magycris and finding other ways to use it. Aeden is much more powerful than any warrior who has ever lived. And as much as the magycris can give power, he has figured out how to take it away.”

The shrine groaned, the fires spreading up the walls. It wouldn’t be long before the entire thing collapsed.

“I’m talking to you, Nuo! Don’t worry about this crumbling shithole. It’s a fitting place for you to die. In a place that holds no meaning to the world anymore. A dead shrine for a dead goddess.” Falizha charged, trying again to strike me.

Again and again, we parried. I was playing with her while she fought to find a weak spot on my side. There was no weak spot, even wounded. I barely had to try to keep her off me.

Guardians stumbled down from the second floor, so few left, fleeing from the fires.

Falizha saw me watching them. “Looking for a way out? There’s no escaping through those flames.”

“Why don’t you put them out for me, sweetie?” I mocked. “Be a good girl and do as you’re told.”

Falizha screamed her wrath, and then it hit me.

“You can’t? Can you?” I laughed as we battled. “That’s why you are such a spiteful person. You can’t use the magic. Not like big brother.”

She became frenzied then, slashing at me, sloppy, powered by anger.

I needed to end this—there would be no drawing out her death. I had waited so long for this moment, but it would have to be quick. I needed to find the others.

Falizha’s knife clashed with mine. She held on, blade to blade, her arms shaking against my strength. Her defence was strong, but she left her stomach exposed, and must have forgotten my other blade.

“You pathetic?—”

She coughed, looking down.

My blade embedded to the hilt, blood streamed onto the metal and over my hand. I held onto it so that she wouldn’t collapse and twisted it, earning a scream. I held her upright because I wanted her to look me in the eye as she died.

“Your brother is next,” I said through gritted teeth, hardly satisfied with her death. “Then your father. I will take the entire Council down, member by member.”

The blade she held raised against mine slid away, her strength draining. She wrapped her free hand around my arm, the one holding the knife in her gut. “Filthy, Sea-leg,” she sputtered, her breathing laboured. “Your death will be as pitiful as mine.”

I was about to laugh when a sharp pain in my neck stopped me.

Bastane always told me I was too quick to celebrate my victories.

I didn’t think she had it in her to use the last of her strength to plunge her knife into my neck.

Into my fucking gills.

My second set of lungs opened, thinking I was breathing in water. My chest spasmed when I inhaled my blood, choking myself. They expanded again, drawing in the warm liquid.

Bitch , I wanted to say, but blood slid out between my teeth.

Falizha fell to the ground when I could no longer hold her up. She was sprawled on her ridiculous purple cape. I collapsed on my side next to her. She watched the sky, the sun fading now, while I choked on my blood.

Her jaw worked around her last breaths. Her eyes shot upwards to a shadow standing over us. “Brother.” Her hand rose and fell, trying to reach for Aeden, standing at my back.

“Well, this is not how I wanted to tell Father you died.”

“Help—” she tried.

“Help? My hands are a little full putting out these fires. I need to collect the weapons. What I am taking back north is worth more than your life. Goodbye, little Lizha. I wish you could have seen how we won in the end. Then again, I could hardly care that you were part of it.”

Aeden grunted commands to the Guardians left standing. He waved his hands toward the fires, and somehow, they were put out .

I choked on my laugh, knowing Falizha wasn’t powerful enough to control magic like her brother. I could have pitied her in another life had she not made mine so miserable.

Falizha’s nostrils flared, and then, with a final huff, her body shrunk, giving up.

She was dead.

Her vacant, open eyes stared past me to a quiet shrine.

I used the last of my strength to roll myself onto my back.

The rippled blue glass from a remaining piece of the roof above me set the room aglow with beams of light like I was floating under the surface of a clear lake.

I could hear the weak cries for help of those who survived the attack and the quiet footsteps of someone walking amongst the dead.

Bastane was captured. Kazhi might be dead, too. Brekt and Liv had likely taken the battle elsewhere, and who knew how that would end.

And I was going to die alone, under the rippling blue waters.

Time slowed as I stared above. The sound quieted to a breeze whistling between cracks in the walls, water dripping from the corpses hanging from the balcony.

I thought killing Falizha would feel like a victory. So why did it feel like the Ravins had won?

The Guards were broken. The Guardians had turned their backs on us. Liv lost her battle against the evil. What hope was there to end the cycle?

Footsteps grew louder as they approached. My vision blurred, and I could no longer see who stood around me, but I knew who it was.

Mother.

Creator.

The one who didn’t come when I called but came to take me to her dark depths.

Mayra’s shining blue aura floated over me, ready to take me back to her seas. She was a blur at first, coming into focus as she drifted closer. She was beautiful. My favourite colour of blue.

“I’m going to help you.” Her voice was soft, high-pitched and feminine. Not layered and angry like her brother Rem.

I didn’t move, rather concentrated on the voice keeping me tied to the living world. She spoke to me, saying things I didn’t understand, leaning down overtop of me.

“And then you’re going to help me. It just so happens I need a Sea-leg.”

Mother . I couldn’t get the words out. I couldn’t speak to her.

After a moment of silence, Mayra spoke again. “I am going to regret this.”