We made sure Kaazhim was a hundred percent dead, with no medallion or ring to bring him back, and then I sank into my bond and followed its insistent pull up the river, with the lightning soul given flesh at my side.
“Run!” she urged, lightning racing across the dirt as she raced faster, her eyes wide when she threw an urgent look at me. Urgent, and heavy with sympathy.
Whatever she knew… I ran faster, pushed my aching, barely-patched body to its limit and didn’t stop running when wounds reopened. I didn’t stop until we rounded a bend in the river and they came into view: the dark queen Xiu, my fearless wife, Nabil, and a dozen other people bearing fire and light and glowing magic to fight back the darkness.
I pushed my body until air barely scraped into my lungs, until I wheezed, and nearly fell when Nabil dropped to his knees and Ameirah followed.
“Ameirah!” I bellowed with the last of my air. “Get to her!” I yelled at Elinour. “Get to her right now.”
But she shook her head. She didn’t know how, or maybe couldn’t use the lightning that way.
“We have to kill her now,” she panted, her eyes so blue, so pale. “Use Dusk-Breaker. It has to be now. If we don’t, your wife will die. We willalldie.”
I wanted to scream, but deep down I knew she was right, and if Xiu had already struck Ameirah, I would use this legendary sword to ensure she never harmed her again.
The mud carried me the last few steps towards the queen, and my boots slid as I raised Dusk-Breaker, as I gathered power in my arms and forced air into my tight chest. She was so focused on Ameirah, on Nabil, on the sword that dripped blood in hergrasp, that she didn’t see me until I speared that ancient, fire-carved sword through her back and out through her chest.
“Back!” Elinour shouted, and I jumped backjustin time to avoid being cooked inside my own body by the lightning that erupted from her and down the fuller of that mighty sword.
Xiu’s knees gave way and Elinour followed her down, keeping the stream of lightning unbroken as Ameirah finally turned, devastation on her face, and met my eyes.
I followed her broken gaze from Xiu to the sword her weak hand now dropped into the muck, to Nabil. He lay on his side in the mud, eyes open, mouth parted, and I thought he was only injured, and rushed to help.
I jerked back when I was close enough to realise the truth. Nabil was dead.
CHAPTER 66
AMEIRAH
Icouldn’t swallow right. My throat was full of broken glass, so it hurt to swallow, hurt to breathe.
“Varidian,” I rasped, tears running hot over my cheeks when I blinked. “She just—it happened so quickly. I tried to stop it, but she—”
“I know,” he murmured, his voice rough as he brushed a tear from my cheek. “I know, dearling.”
“Varidian,” a husky female voice snapped, and I stared beyond my husband to see a small, pale woman clad in scraps of light. She locked eyes with me, a look of both sympathy and urgency, then gave Varidian a scowl. “It has to be now. Stop fucking about.”
“Who… who is this?” I breathed, my voice hoarse like I’d been screaming. My legs shook when Varidian grasped my shoulders and pulled me to my feet, his eyes on the medallion still glowing on my chest.
“The lightning soul,” he replied, and quickly added, “I’ll explain later. Or she will. But we have one chance to end this war, dearling, and we’re rapidly losing that chance.”
I tried to swallow again, and gained nothing but pain for the attempt. “I looked at him,” I confessed, a fist squeezing my chest until agony wrote itself across my heart. “I looked at him; that’s how she knew he was behind her. If I hadn’t—”
Varidian kissed my brow and leaned me against him, on my feet in the mud. I was covered in the stuff now, even muck smeared on my neck, but I didn’t care. Nabil hadn’t moved, hadn’t blinked, hadn’t breathed in minutes.
“She’s… fighting,” the lightning soul said through gritted teeth. “I can’t hold her much longer.”
I looked at the woman and startled when I realised her hands were wrapped around the hilt of Dusk-Breaker, the same fabled sword depicted in the stained glass window that carried me to Riverren for the first time. Was that truly not years ago? It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime when Nabil was still alive, smirking as he playfully insulted me or went on a swear-filled rant about the king, or the military, or the state of public libraries. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see as tears poured over my eyes like the waterfall glimpsed from the fortress. Another world, maybe even one we’d never visited.
I allowed Varidian to guide me closer, to where the lightning soul had all her weight thrown into that sword, keeping Xiu pinned to the ground like a butterfly pinned to a board.
“Nice to meet you in the flesh,” the pale woman, the lightning soul said with a tight smile, grunting when darkness flared from Xiu, her back arching as she fought the sword spearing her. “I’m Elinour. You threatened me that one time, remember? Let’s be friends when this is all done.”
“Sure,” I agreed in a flat voice. Dead—I sounded dead, as Nabil was dead.
“Do you know how to do it?” she asked, her gaze flitting between Varidian and I as the light wielders closed in around us, hitting Xiu with fresh streams of fire, blinding sun, and cold starlight. Xiu hissed, bucking, but didn’t succeed in throwing off the sword or the lightning soul.
“I will shred every last one of you to ribbons and feed them to my creations,” she threatened in a deep, bestial hiss.
