Not Soren, whose eyes were dancing with flames of grief, or Draven, who had appeared in the midst of jagged shards of ice, face paler than I’d ever seen it.
Certainly not me. I couldn’t have formed words if I’d tried, when it felt like the palace was crumbling beneath our feet, every icy spire on the verge of melting into a frigid sea that would swallow us whole.
I took Draven’s hand, willing my mana not to swell and give him one more thing to worry about. By some happy accident of fate, it listened. His fingers wrapped around mine, his grip tight enough to bruise, but I didn’t complain.
It grounded me, the way I was trying to ground him in turn.
The deep obsidian of the poison crept the final inch toward Nevara’s scalp, covering her last remaining bit of shimmering moonlight hair.
Her chest went still, and Amias shook his head, cursing once more before he, too, fell silent, channeling his mana with so much force that an eerie green glow surrounded him. Draven stepped closer, never dropping my hand.
“You do not get to go like this, Nevara,” he growled, his voice thicker than I had ever heard it. “We started this together, and we will end it that way. So wake the hells up, and help me win this shards-forsaken war before you have the nerve to die peacefully in your bed.”
Another agonizing second stretched out while Amias’s light glowed a deeper shade of emerald, before a rattling, strained breath cut into the hush, accompanied by the smallest rise and fall of Nevara’s chest.
Slowly, the darkness ebbed away from her skin, displaying a solid inch of shimmering hair. The glow around Amias disappeared, and he collapsed into the chair behind him, his breath coming out in rapid pants.
“The venom is contained for now…” he said, gratefully taking a glass of water Soren shoved into his hand.
“But?” Draven demanded.
Amias shook his head wearily. “But we have no way to stop it. The antidote only accelerated the spread of the venom, a risk we run if we take another shot in the dark.”
“Then we wait to be certain,” Draven said, an edge to his tone.
“The only way to be certain would be to craft an antivenom from the original source,” he said quietly.
The original source… the ancient monster the world hadn’t seen in hundreds of years, that had taken the strongest fightersin the kingdom to overpower, along with Nevara’s visions and her mana. That had nearly killed her, even then.
“So we find the original source,” Soren announced, his arms folding across his chest as if bracing for a fight.
“It isn’t that simple,” I said, my voice quiet but edged with exhaustion.
Amias slumped deeper into the chair. His posture was wilted, his head tipped back against the cushion, hair damp with sweat from channeling mana into Nevara. The vine tattoos along his fingers were dull, as though even the ink had grown tired.
“Perhaps it would have been if we had been given the information sooner,” Soren shot back, an uncharacteristic bite snapping through his tone. His jaw flexed, tension carving sharp lines across his face.
“There was no point in sending you all off to die when we still had hope of an antidote working.”
The familiar acerbic voice came from behind us. Wynnie strode, chest heaving like she had run here. Lumen padded at her heels, solving the mystery of how she had known to come.
“How’s that working out for us now?” Draven bit out, frost simmering faintly around his boots.
“You’re still alive, and so is she, thanks to Healer Amias,” Wynnie countered, crossing her arms. “So I’d say better than it would have worked out if you took off while you were still recovering to hunt a monster that may or may not still exist.”
Amias didn’t speak, but his eyelids fluttered open at the sound of his name. He blinked once, twice, then let his gaze drift back to Nevara with a hollow weariness.
Draven gave no sign of remorse or apology, but the pulsating in his mana abated somewhat.
“If there was one, it stands to reason there will be another,” Soren said, pacing a short line before turning back to us, eyes sharp and unyielding.
“Not necessarily.” I finally found my voice, though it felt like pushing through ice. “That’s part of what I’ve been looking into, but there’s no pattern to what… spawns. There was no reason that even one should have still existed, let alone reason to believe another will magically appear.”
Amias lifted a trembling hand to rub at the side of his face, as though trying to stay awake long enough to follow the conversation.
“Could we find venom in its lair?” Soren pushed, brows drawn tight. “It had to come from somewhere.”
“Eventually, it would have had to make some sort of home,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck as Batty shifted anxiously beneath my hair. “But initially, we have no idea where the monsters actually form. It doesn’t seem to be any one place. Korythids in particular would be hard to track the origin of, though, because they travel and nest underground. They only emerge to the surface when they’re spinning webs to set traps for their victims or actively planning to attack.”
