CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Burn it,” Isera presses out, her voice hoarse. Desperation pulses across her whole face as she glances to Alistair. “Alistair, please. Burn it. I need you to burn it.”
We all turn to look at her in surprise and confusion. Then understanding washes over me when I realize what she’s looking at and what she means byit. Bane’s body.
Isera is still standing a few steps away from where Emperor Bane Iceheart lies dead on the ground. His black eyes are still open, and that massive amount of unnatural and slightly sickening sympathy that I forced him to feel is still etched across his features. Blood from the wounds in his chest and throat have turned half of his fancy silver shirt red, and it stains the grass next to him as well.
A short distance away from us, the Orange, Purple, and Blue Clans have climbed to their feet and are dusting themselves off. They glance at us and Bane hesitantly before looking to their respective clan leader for guidance. It seems as though their leaders are not sure what to do either, because they just linger there while instead glancing towards Orion. No dragon shifterhas ever been allowed inside the Unseelie Court like this before, so they’re all waiting for the Unseelie King to take the lead.
Orion, however, has his full attention fixed solely on Isera.
“Burn it,” she repeats, that desperation still lacing both her voice and her expression. “I need to make sure that he’s dead.”
Alistair’s green and orange eyes begin to glow as he summons his magic. Then he quickly sweeps his gaze over the rest of us. When no one offers any protests, he turns back to Bane’s corpse and raises his hand until his palm is pointed straight towards it.
A torrent of fire, so hot that it’s blue in color instead of yellow, streams through the air and hits Bane’s corpse with awhoosh. The blue flames envelop his body completely. Alistair remains standing like that with his palm out, keeping the fire contained only to the body so that the rest of the landscape won’t catch fire as well.
For a little while, we all just stand there and watch the body of a six-thousand-year-old emperor burn.
Wicked satisfaction courses through me. This is the man who kept Draven enslaved for two hundred years. The man who whipped Draven’s wings. The man who has kept me trapped in poverty and isolated in a forest of thorns my entire life. Regardless of what he said there at the end when my magic was increasing his sympathy to unnatural levels, I still feel nothing but satisfaction at his death.
He deserved to die like this.
Isera deserves her revenge.
I deserve my revenge.
And I’m not done yet. I will carve my vengeance out of Jessina Iceheart’s body if it’s the last thing I do. She ruined me. She destroyed any chance I had of finding out if my parents actually loved me. She killed them. She took my parents from me before I could figure out how to fix things and make it right with them. And she did it right in front of me in the most brutal waypossible, which is a huge reason why I’m also struggling so badly with the effects of my own magic now.
I hate her. I hate her more than I thought it possible to hate a person.
And I will have my vengeance. No matter what.
Isera drags in an unsteady breath as Bane’s body is at last incinerated completely. Only bone fragments and ashes remain on the grass now. Alistair pulls his magic back. Swaying from exhaustion after using so much power in such a short amount of time, he draws in a deep breath while Lyra moves up to steady him with an arm around his waist.
A strong wind sweeps across the landscape, catching the ashes and making them drift towards the border. Orion says something under his breath right as they reach the wards, and the wind continues right through it, carrying the ashes with it.
Beside him, Isera stands there and watches the ashes drift off.
Her eyes are wider than I have ever seen, and her mouth is slightly open. She looks… lost. Utterly and completely lost.
Then a sob rips from her throat.
It’s so violent that she actually staggers a step back. Sucking in a panicked breath, she presses a hand to her mouth while another sob tears from her chest.
“Isera,” Orion says, worry pulsing across his scarred face.
He starts to reach for her but then hesitates, his hand hovering in the air between them. But she doesn’t notice, because her gaze is now once again fixed on the patch of grass where Bane’s body used to be. Tears well up in her eyes, and she draws in another panicked breath.
“I don’t feel any better,” she blurts out.
Snapping her gaze back up to us, she stares at us with those wide and utterly devastated eyes of hers. The sight of it makes my chest tighten with pain.
“I thought…” she begins, her chest now rising and falling faster as she begins to hyperventilate. Tears stream down her face. “I thought I would feel better once he was dead. Once I had gotten my revenge. I thought the pain would stop. I thought this awful regret would stop strangling my chest.” Gripping the fabric right above her heart, she pulls at her fighting leathers as if she can’t breathe. “But it doesn’t. Oh Goddess, it still hurts.”
I begin to take a stride towards her, but she staggers another step back and desperately shakes her head. Her breaths come in fits and starts.
“Why doesn’t it stop?” she presses out in that broken voice full of tears. “It was supposed to stop! But I still miss my mom. I still regret wishing her harm.” Desperate sobs rack her entire body. “I just want her back. I want to tell her that I love her. Tell her that I understand. That I know. That I know that she didn’t abandon me. Oh Goddess, I miss my mom.”
