“Sounds good,” Karis says. He looks the archpriest dead in the eyes while he answers Brech. “Ask Neradt who I’m talking to. He should know.”
Neradt glares. “The squire has succumbed to heresy and madness,” he announces. “Pay no heed to his crazed ravings.”
As recently as a month ago, the accusation of madness would have hurt. Now he savors it, because he knows what it truly means: Neradt is afraid.
“Have you ever heard Vara?” Karis asks Brech. He meets her eyes, and the eyes of every paladin in the courtyard who’ll look at him. “You haven’t, right? Neradt’s never heard him either.” Karis breathes in the light of the rising sun, and it glitters at his fingertips. He laughs harshly. “I don’t think you’d like what he has to say.”
Dace steps back, and alarm crosses the other paladin’s faces too. Karis can’t see his own eyes, but he knows they’re starting to glow gold.
“Another word and your life is forfeit, squire,” Neradt shouts gleefully.
Karis’s arm hurts, the joints straining—Buzzcut is twisting it behind his back. But nobody covers his mouth. They want him to condemn himself, and Karis is happy to oblige. He grins with bloodstained teeth. “I’m the only one that Vara speaks to.”
When he exhales, Radiance bursts around him. The power shoves everyone away in a ten-foot radius, a clatter of armor and shouts. A golden dome flashes. Falters.
Neradt’s raised arms also shine with Radiance, his pendant gleaming against his chest as he chants. Paladins and soldiers draw their weapons, chanting their own prayers, until their blades gleam with sunlight and the cold gray intent of Ka Dravos’s power.
Vara is still bound, and Karis doesn’t have enough power to defeat them all. But if his life is forfeit anyway, he’ll make them work for it, and he’ll die without secrets.
You won’t die yet, brave warrior, so save the dramatics,Vara tells him, fond and exasperated.Well done stalling—the minute is up.
And a familiar calling hooks into his soul. Karis pivots, his mind awash with the song of sunlight, to see a figure sprint across the courtyard.
Ronan, bearing the Crown of Vara.
Karis’s whole body pounds, the drumming alarm transforming to elation. He doesn’t know how or why Ronan is here. At the moment, he doesn’t care.
His Radiant shield shatters under Neradt’s spell. Karis ducks under a swinging sword and runs. A gauntleted hand catches his shoulder, and Buzzcut’s harsh eyes loom large before him util a column of shadow engulfs him. Darkness limned with brilliant blue leaps from shadows cast by blinding light. Slows, entangles, catches.
Nothing can stop Karis as he runs to Ronan.
They nearly collide into each other, and for a single instant everything else falls away. No chanting, no war of light and shadow, just the reality of Ronan’s sweat-streaked face, the heat of his heartbeat drumming through both their chests.
“I’m sorry,” Ronan says. There’s blood on his face. On his arms.
“Really not the time for that,” Karis gasps, leaning in. They don’t kiss. They just inhale each other’s breath, lips nearly touching. Radiance calls to Karis, resounds in his veins. “Ronan, I need…”
“I know, I’ve borrowed this for long enough.” Gentle lips against his forehead. “May I?”
Karis stands still in the chaos, his heart finally calm, as Ronan steps back, and lifts the Crown of Vara. The crown is a simple band of yellow gold, encircled with white gold runes. It’s heavy at first, when Ronan sets it on his head. Then it lightens, fitting perfectly, like it was made for him.
All the pain and terror fade away. The dizziness clears from his head. Karis staggers around, turning his face to the rising sun, and spreads his arms.
He becomes Radiant.
?
CHAPTER THIRTY
RONAN
Power rains upon the courtyard, an earthquake of light bearing down on the mortal world. Ronan’s vision darkens with the pressure. His knees and palms hurt, impact jarring through his bones, when he falls to the ground. Everything is so hot that his blood feels cold beneath his skin.
Light dims enough for mortal eyes to see. Pressure eases enough for mortal limbs to move. Ronan scrambles to his feet, grit in his palms, the memory of soft skin against his lips, and when the afterimages clear enough from his eyes, he sees Karis transformed and ascendant.
The same sweat-stained auburn curls, the same blood-streaked freckles. But those plump, pink lips have never curved in so gentle a smile, and those amber eyes have never glowed like this.
A voice rings like a bell, touching every corner of the courtyard, sounding simultaneously from Karis and the depths of every listener’s mind.
