Please, Loria. Let her remember me. Let her know me.
But her side of the rune is gone. All that remains are tattered threads in my mind’s eye.
She darts for a dagger discarded by the fireplace, coated in dried blood, and stabs it in my direction with violence in her stare. A warning. And a sign.
Her dark blue eyes are cold. I see recognition there, but also confusion and contempt. I’m no longer Alexus to her. I don’t know who she sees when she looks at me, but she doesn’t trust him.
Another pound, like a shoulder slamming into the door, followed by a cry.
I can’t use up my strength. I’m already weakened, and there’s only one way out of here now, and it requires my all.
“The Watch is here,” I sign, hoping to build some sort of unity between us. “We need to leave. Quickly.”
She blinks and scans the bloody room, her eyes filling with tears, as if the realization of the night just struck her.
“Helena and Finn are with Rhonin,” I tell her. “It’s just you and me. I can take you to them.”
She glances at the balcony a split second before shoving to her feet and skirting around me, dagger raised. She sways, staggering toward the exit, holding her blood-soaked side.
Slowly, I stand and face her. I remember this Raina. The one who stood against the world. The one who turns into a deadly warrior when she feels she must protect herself or what’s hers. She isn’t going to come with me willingly, and yet we cannot just walk out of here unscathed, not without me leaving a massacre behind and a bloody trail that leads straight to Starworth Tor.
I must give her no other choice.
Another pound. And another.
Raina stands at the doorway of the balcony. She steps outside and glances toward the ground. Even if I couldn’t sense more guards outside, I’d know of their presence by the look on her face when she turns back. Panic gleams in her eyes.
I let my magick fall away from the door, a little at a time, and in a matter of seconds, guards from the Watch begin pushing against the bed.
While Raina’s distracted, I rush her, flip the dagger out of her grasp, and wrap my arm around her waist in one smooth movement. With her hands pressed to my chest and her nostrils flaring, she stares up at me with a glare I recall from our first days together.
“I think I’ve loved you for my entire life,” I whisper. “And when we’re both gone, I will love you still.” My words are true, but they feel like shards of glass in my throat. As the Watch’s guards fight against my magick to enter Finn’s room, and the others start up the exterior stairs, cornering us from both sides, I gather my magick close and Raina closer, whether she likes it or not. “Do you trust me?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, adamantly, and pounds her fists against my chest, but I hold fast. I always will.
“Well, you’d better try,” I tell her.
A flash of worry crosses her face a moment before I cover her head and send the most powerful blast of magick I can manage toward the ground.
Everything happens so fast. The explosion destroys the balcony, the concussion rumbling through the city. My power shatters windows and sends wood and fragments of cobblestone, gravel, and dirt flying into the air as we fall toward the street, only to be caught in the resulting swell of magick as I draw it nigh, the propulsion so extraordinary it rockets us upward, launching us into the darkness, away from danger. Just the two of us. Safe.
Into the sky.
37
RAINA
We’re flying.
I’m with the Witch Collector, and we’re flying.
I cling to him, my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist as the briny night air tears at my hair and dress and sends a terrible chill rattling through my bones. I can sense a horrific absence inside me, even if I can’t give it a name.
Something missing. Something stolen.
“I’ve got you,” the Collector says, the honey and sandalwood scent of his magick overwhelming. “I’ve always got you.” His arm tightens around me as his other extends from his side, his hand formed into a claw, as if holding the very power that’s arcing us through the night sky and over the city.
Over the Malorian Sea and toward the stars.
