Текст книги "The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

Maybe that was why tears streaked down my cheeks.

Maybe not.

Vincent was kneeling beside me. His hand was on my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel his touch, and for a moment that devastated me.

No matter how real he felt, no matter how real he looked, he was gone.

He smiled sadly at me.

“I tried, Oraya,” he murmured. “I tried.”

I understood the depth of what he was admitting in those two words. Centuries worth of brutality ingrained into him, revered above all else. Millennia worth of generations of bloody ends and bloody beginnings.

I had never seen Vincent admit weakness before. And those words were a concession of so many failures.

And yet, I was still so angry at him.

“It wasn’t enough,” I choked out, fractured with an almost-sob.

His throat bobbed. “I know, little serpent,” he murmured. “I know.”

He tried to stroke my hair, but I felt nothing.

Because Vincent was dead.

All of it was true at once. That he had saved me. That he had crippled me. His selfishness and his selflessness.

That he had tried.

That he had failed.

And that he had loved me, anyway.

And I would carry all of that forever, for the rest of my life.

And he would still be dead.

I forced myself to my feet. I turned to Vincent. His image, once so sharp, was starting to fade.

He looked to the obelisk.

“I think,” he said, “this is what you came here for.”

I followed his gaze. The pillar had opened, revealing a cavity full of rippling crimson light.

And there, at its center, was a little vial, floating, self-contained, in the air. The liquid within contained impossible multitudes of color, shifting and changing with every passing second. Purple and blue and red and gold and green, all at once, like the range of shades in a galaxy.

“The blood of Alarus,” I whispered.

“Your mother and I gave up so much to distill this.” His gaze found mine again. “But we gained so much, too.”

“What do I do with it? Do I drink it or—or wield it—”

“You can drink it. Only a little bit. Or you can put it in your blades. It will find a way to give you its power, however you wield it. Your blood is the catalyst.”

“What will it do to me?”

I thought of Simon, and his bloodshot, empty eyes. Those teeth that had taken more from him than they had given.

“It will make you powerful,” Vincent said.

“What else?”

“I cannot say.”

There was a reason, I knew, why he had never used the blood. It was a power so great it could only be an absolute last resort.

I reached into the compartment and closed my hand around the vial.

It took a moment to realize the scream that sliced the air was mine. Everything disappeared but the pain for several long seconds. I was dripping with sweat when, inch by inch, I withdrew it from the obelisk.

Vincent’s form now flickered. The light that imbued the carvings shuddered and skipped.

“Go,” he said. “You don’t have much time.”

His voice sounded so far away.

He gave me a gentle smile. “Don’t forget those teeth of yours, little serpent.”

And Goddess, despite everything, I hesitated. Despite everything, I was not ready to let him go.

I would never be ready to let him go.

“I love you,” I said.

Because it was still true. After everything, it was still true.

I didn’t wait for him to say it back to me. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and turned away.

The image of Vincent withered away into darkness.

I didn’t look back.

72

RAIHN

Simon didn’t let up. And I matched him.

The two of us locked ourselves in nonstop combat, swords and magic clashing in a blurred cacophonous melody. The blood from the battle in the skies above now rained down over us in a steady rhythm, drenching us in black—covering us in so much blood it was impossible to tell how much of it was our own. I no longer felt the blows. The pain was so constant that I just let it fall into the background, another distraction to be ignored.

I wasn’t sure how I wasn’t dead yet. Felt like I should be. My body threatened to give out with every movement.

I just kept telling myself, One more swing.

One more.

I didn’t expect to come out of this alive. But I sure as fuck wasn’t about to let Simon live, either.

Whenever I could steal precious seconds, I glanced over my shoulder, to the distant doorway in the ruins—an abyss of black, with no sign of Oraya.

With every passing minute, my heart crawled up my throat.

Come on, princess. Where are you?

I was grateful that holding off Simon took all my focus. Otherwise, I’d linger too long on the millions of horrifying scenarios that danced in the back of my head—Oraya’s body broken by traps or crushed by stone or burned up by magic she couldn’t control.

SMACK.

An especially devastating strike from Simon slammed me against a sheet of rock. I felt the impact in my bones. My head lolled. My vision dipped into fuzzy white.

When I forced myself back to consciousness, mere seconds later, the first thing I saw was Simon’s snarling face rushing toward me.

I barely managed to roll out of the way.

Countered, clumsily.

Warmth dotted my face in a fresh spray of blood. I hit something. Wasn’t sure what. Couldn’t count how many blows I’d gotten in by now.

He roared and returned my strike.

Another spatter of red-black over his cheek, now. Another distant throb of pain. Another wound.

Couldn’t count those, either.

I tried to swing my sword and realized my left arm had now completely given up on working. Fuck. I switched hands quickly, drawing back—

Too slow.

I slammed against another column, the broken edge jamming into my spine at just the right angle to knock the breath from my lungs. My body slumped against it and wanted desperately to stay that way.

Don’t you dare, I told it. Get the fuck up.

Simon stalked toward me. He was a pathetic sight, too, limping, blood smearing down his face. One eye was now missing, or at least seemed like it was, beneath the mess of tattered flesh.

Still, that damned magic pulsed at his chest, stubbornly clinging on despite every blow I levied to it. Keeping him going long after any mortal body would give out. Making him stronger than I ever could be.

“You,” he growled, “should not be so much trouble.”

Movement out of the corner of my eye.

I made the mistake of looking.

Oraya.

For a moment, I thought maybe I was hallucinating. She staggered from the darkness. Blood drenched her hands and smeared her face. She was running, though half-stumbling, looking around wildly.

And she was surrounded by magic.

I’d seen her wielding her Nightfire before, but this—it was fucking magnificent. It embraced her now, licks of stunning white-blue cutting through the night, fanning out around her like the wings of the gods themselves.

Yet the magic that pulsed around her left hand, which was closed tight, was different than the Nightfire. I could sense it even from here—feel it, in the air. The clusters of smoke around that clenched fist were red and dark, and otherworldly in a way that made my skin crawl, even from all the way over here. It clung to her like it was made for her, wisps lingering at her skin and the blades at her hips.

I had no doubts of what I was seeing.

She had it. She fucking did it.

For a few endless seconds, my relief and pride battled each other for dominance, neither winning.

But then I saw Simon’s head turn. His bloodthirsty fury melted away, replaced by something even more terrifying: lustful desire.

He knew. He felt it too.

He dropped me and started to turn.

Oraya’s gaze met mine across the ruins. A second of eye contact that seemed to last an eternity, holding a million unspoken words, teetering on the edge of the end.

I wished I could use this moment to say all that I wanted to. So many things I wished I’d said.

I hoped she knew it all, anyway.

Because I didn’t even have to think before I charged.

It was like my body knew what was happening, and deemed it a worthy cause for one last push beyond the edges of my capability. Every shred of my remaining strength—physical and magical—united in this single lunge. Asteris roared to the surface of my skin, clinging to my blade, my hands. My arms managed to lift the weight of my sword one last time.

I leapt at Simon, wings spreading to propel me through this final strike, and I buried my sword into his back, pouring every scrap of magic I had into that blow, ripping him apart from the inside out.

Black light overtook my vision.

Simon let out an animalistic bellow and whirled around. The only piece of the world I managed to cling to was the hilt of my sword. Everything else withered.

I’d just unleashed something in Simon, his strikes now nothing but feral rage. Gone were the final vestiges of the calculated warrior. He was practically coming at me with teeth and fingernails.

He hurled me against the wall. His hand slammed against my throat, pinning it to stone.

I couldn’t see. Couldn’t feel anything but my grip around that hilt.

That was all I needed, anyway.

Because as his fingers tightened around my throat, as his blade drove into my flesh over and over again, I clutched that hilt with everything I had and pushed.

And pushed. And pushed.

The blade parted leather, muscle, organs.

He was so far gone that it took what felt like an eternity for the wound to catch up to him. Slowly, his eyes, bloodshot and frenzied, went distant.

At least, I thought to myself, I got to see what that looked like.

His arm faltered mid-swing. My strength gave out. My hand, blood-slicked, slipped from my sword, which was now lodged firmly into his torso.

I couldn’t reach for it again.

A sudden release of pressure, as someone grabbed Simon and yanked him off me.

The blurry image of Simon’s slackening face was replaced with Oraya’s.

Now that was a welcome trade. I tried to tell her so, but I couldn’t speak.

Her eyes were so wide and bright, like two silver coins. She said something I couldn’t hear over the rush of blood in my ears. She was shaking.

You don’t have to look so scared, princess, I tried to tell her. But when I attempted to straighten, I only fell to my knees.

And everything was dark.

73

ORAYA

“Raihn!”

I didn’t mean to scream his name. It ripped itself from my throat when he fell. I barely heard it so much as I felt it, a distillation of emotion too powerful to remain inside me.

I had run from those tunnels into the bowels of fucking hell.

The sight of it had shocked me, horrified me. The sky was dark with warriors tangled in combat, and the sandy ground of the ruins drenched with flower-bloom spatters of blood that rained from the bodies above. In the distance, beyond the rocks, our ground forces were locked in combat with the Bloodborn—human, Hiaj, Rishan, Bloodborn, all tearing each other apart.

No horror story could top this. No nightmare. Not even the prison of the gods could be worse than this.

And yet, none of it was as horrifying as seeing Raihn like this, a collection of broken tissue and tattered flesh, lying on the ground.

Suddenly I was on the grounds of the colosseum in the final trial. Suddenly I was losing him all over again.

“Raihn.” I grabbed him by the shredded leather of his armor and shook him, hard. “Get up. Get the fuck up.”

His head lolled. I expected a bleary blink, a half smile, a fuck you, too, princess.

What I got was nothing.

I pressed my hand to his chest. Or at least, I tried to, even though it required me to do the impossible—find an expanse of skin that wasn’t an open wound.

It rose and fell. So, so weakly.

He was alive. But I knew that wouldn’t last. I’d spent so much of my life sensing death looming over me. I knew what it felt like when it was near.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Simon stir. He was a monster at this point, a grotesque puppet of twisted flesh and gore. But that magic, that noxious, terrible magic, would keep him going.

I shook Raihn again. “Raihn. I forbid you to die on me. Do you understand? Get the fuck up. You swore to me—you swore—”

Never again, he’d promised me, in the springs. He swore to me that he would never betray me again.

And this—losing him—felt like the greatest betrayal.

No. No, I refused to let it happen.

I grabbed my blade and sliced my hand open again, squeezing the blood into Raihn’s parted lips. It pooled and dribbled out pathetically from the corner of his mouth, useless.

And still, he did not move.

Everything else in my mind simply shut down. Grief cracked open inside me, drowning me, uncontrollable.

Behind me, Simon twitched again, gurgling groans rising from his decimated body.

Above me, blood rained down from the heavens.

Around me, my people fell to the blades of my enemies.

Before me, my husband died.

And in my hand, clutched against burnt flesh, was a power strong enough to end it all.

All my life, I had wanted to be something to fear. It was my father’s dream, shouldered from the moment I could understand how to build the strength he expected of me and excise the weaknesses he disapproved of.

If I used the blood of a god, I would certainly become something to fear. I would be more terrifying than Simon was. I could destroy him. Septimus. The Bloodborn. I could kill every enemy and make sure no one ever would question or threaten me or my people ever again.

They would write legends about me.

But that would be the power of destruction.

I would not be able to save Raihn.

I opened my palm. The skin cracked and bled, charred by the power of the vial I clutched against it. Yet that ugliness only highlighted the incandescence of what sat within it, the blood a galaxy of colors against the darkest shadows of night.

It was so incredibly beautiful.

I blinked and a tear rolled down my cheek.

I wouldn’t lose one more thing. One more person. I couldn’t.

This blood could be used as a tool of destruction, yes. But how else could it be used?

Once I had cherished my dead father’s dirty wine glasses. I’d wrapped myself in his discarded clothing. If someone had offered me a piece of his hair, I’d have wept for it.

This blood was more than a weapon. It was a piece of someone who had once been loved. It was a bargaining chip, priceless to the one being who I knew would treasure it above all.

As Simon grunted and pushed himself to his hands and knees, I lifted my eyes to the sky. Beyond the winged bodies above, storm clouds swirled in unnatural wisps—like fish circling a pond, fragments of suspended lightning dancing between them.

I’d only seen the sky like that once before. When we had the attention of the gods.

I raised the vial above my head, as if offering it to the heavens.

“My Mother of the Ravenous Dark,” I screamed. “I call upon you, Goddess of Night, of Blood, of Shadow. I offer you the blood of your husband, Alarus. Hear me, my Goddess, Nyaxia.”

74

ORAYA

For a few long, terrible seconds, nothing happened.

The battle continued. Simon kept slowly pushing himself to his knees. Raihn kept dying.

More tears welled up in my eyes.

No. This had to work. It had to.

My arm shook as I held that vial to the sky, held it as high as I could, my eyes staring unblinking into the god-touched night above.

Please, I pleaded, silently. Please, Nyaxia. I know I’ve never been yours. Not really. But I’m begging you to hear me.

And then, as if she heard my silent prayer, there she was.

Time seemed to slow, the figures above moving in slow motion. The breeze through my hair grew cold, the strands suspended in midair. My skin pebbled, as if in the moments preceding a strike of lightning.

Just like last time, I felt her before I saw her. A staggering sensation of overwhelming adoration, and overwhelming smallness.

“What,” a low, melodic voice said, deadly as a drawn blade, “is happening here?”

There was only one thing, I realized in this moment, more terrifying than the presence of a god.

And that was the rage of one.

I slowly lowered my eyes.

Nyaxia floated before me.

She was just as beautiful, just as terrible, as I remembered her. Hers was the kind of beauty that made you want to prostrate yourself before her. Her hair floated in tendrils of ink-black night. Her bare feet hovered, delicately pointed, just above the ground. Her body, dipped in silver, gleamed and shone like moonlight in the darkness. Those eyes, revealing every shade of the night sky, were dark and stormy with utter fury.

The world itself felt that fury. Ceded to it. As if the air was desperate to please her, the stars moving to soothe her, the moon ready to bow to her.

Perhaps the fighting stopped, when Nyaxia appeared, soldiers on all sides shocked by what they were in the presence of. Or perhaps it just seemed that way, because everything else ceased to exist when she arrived.

Her shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths. Her bloody lips contorted into a snarl.

“What,” she ground out, “is this atrocity?”

She spat the word, and with it, a burst of power shook the earth. I cringed, my body folding over Raihn’s as rocks and sand cascaded from the ruins. Wisps of stormy shadow surrounded her, leeching out into the air with the ominous darkness of tragedy.

Simon had managed to get himself up to his knees. He turned to her, bowing, blood spilling from his mouth as he spoke. “My Goddess—”

I didn’t even see Nyaxia move. One moment, she was before me, and the next, she was at Simon, hoisting him up with a single hand and ripping the pendant from his chest with the other.

It was so sudden, so brutal, that I let out a little gasp, my own body bracing tighter over Raihn’s.

Nyaxia let Simon’s corpse, limp and bleeding, fall to the ground without so much as a second glance.

Instead, she cradled the twisted creation of steel and teeth in her hands, staring down at it.

Her face was blank. But the sky grew darker, the air colder. I was shaking—whether with shivers or fear, or maybe both, I wasn’t sure. I still leaned over Raihn, and I couldn’t bring myself to stop, even though I knew it was pointless.

I couldn’t protect him from the wrath of a goddess.

Her fingertips traced the pendant—the broken teeth welded into it. “Who did this?”

I wasn’t expecting that. For her to sound so… broken.

“My love,” she murmured. “Look at what you’ve become.”

The pain in her voice was so naked. So familiar.

No, grief never really left us. Not even for the gods. Two thousand years, and Nyaxia’s was still tender as ever.

Then, in an eerily sudden movement, her head snapped up.

Her eyes landed on me.

My head emptied of thought. The full force of Nyaxia’s attention was devastating.

The pendant in her hands disappeared, and suddenly, she was before me.

“How did this happen?” she snarled. “My own children, using the body parts of my husband’s corpse for their own pathetic gains? What incredible disrespect.”

Talk, Oraya, an urgent voice reminded me. Explain. Say something.

I had to force the words out.

“I agree,” I said. “I’m returning what is rightfully yours. Your husband’s blood, my Mother.”

I opened my fingers, offering her the vial in my shaking palm.

Her face softened. A glimmer of grief. A glimmer of sadness.

She reached for it, but I moved it away—a stupid move, I recognized right after I’d done it, when her sadness was replaced by anger.

“I ask for a deal,” I said quickly. “One favor, and it’s yours.”

Her face darkened. “It is already mine.”

That was a fair point. I was gambling with something that was not mine to trade, with leverage that was laughable against a goddess. I was so afraid. I was grateful I was kneeling, because otherwise, I was sure my knees would have buckled.

I tethered myself to the sensation of Raihn’s fading heartbeat beneath my palm, and my own heightening desperation.

“I appeal to your heart, my Mother,” I choked out. “As a lover who knows grief. Please. You’re right, your husband’s blood is yours. I know I cannot, and would not, keep it from you. But I—I ask you for a favor in return.”

I swallowed thickly, my next words heavy on my tongue. If I wasn’t so distracted, maybe this would have been funny. My entire life, I’d dreamed of asking Nyaxia for this very gift—but never did I think it would be under these circumstances.

I said, “My Mother, I ask you for a Coriatis bond. Please.”

My voice cracked over my plea.

A Coriatis bond. The god-given gift I’d once thought would give me the power I needed to be Vincent’s true daughter. Now, I was giving up my father’s greatest weapon to bind myself to the man I’d once thought was my greatest enemy. To save his life.

Love, over power.

Nyaxia’s gaze flicked down. She seemed to notice Raihn for the first time since she’d arrived, with only passing interest.

“Ah,” she said. “I see. Much has changed, I suppose, since the last time you begged me for his life.”

Before, Nyaxia had laughed when I’d asked her to save Raihn’s life, amused by the antics of her mortal followers. But there was no amusement in her eyes, now. I wished I could read her face.

I wished I had better words for her.

“Please,” I choked out, again. Another tear slid down my cheek.

She leaned down. Her fingertips caressed my face, tipping my chin toward her. She was so close that she could’ve kissed me, close enough that I could count the stars and galaxies in her eyes.

“I told you once, little human,” she murmured. “A dead lover can never break your heart. You did not listen to me then.”

And Raihn had broken my heart that night. I couldn’t deny that.

“You should have let the flower of your love remain forever frozen as it was,” she said. “So beautiful at its peak. So much less painful.”

But there was no such thing as love without fear. Love without vulnerability. Love without risk.

“Not as beautiful as one that lives,” I whispered.

A flicker of something I couldn’t decipher passed over Nyaxia’s face. She reached for the vial in my palm, and this time, I let her. Her fingers touched it tenderly, like the caress of a lover.

She let out a soft, bitter laugh.

“Spoken by someone too young to see the ugliness of its decay.”

Was this what she told herself? Was this how she stifled her grief over her husband’s death? Did she convince herself it was better this way?

The last time I’d met Nyaxia, she had seemed a force greater than any mortal could comprehend.

Now, she seemed... so tragically imperfect. Fallible in all the same ways as us.

“It would have bloomed,” I said softly. “If he had lived. You and Alarus. Your love wouldn’t have withered.”

Nyaxia’s eyes snapped to me, like I’d startled her by speaking—like she’d gone somewhere far away, forgetting I was here at all.

For a moment, grief collapsed in her beautiful face.

Then she shuttered it behind an ice wall, pristine features going still. She snatched the vial from my hand and drew herself back up to her full height.

“I feel your pain, my child,” she said. “But I cannot grant you a Coriatis bond.”

The words obliterated me.

My skin went numb. My ears rang. I could not hear anything over the sound of my heart shattering at my goddess’s feet.

“Please—” I begged.

“I am a romantic,” she said. “It brings me no pleasure to deny you. But you and him—you were created, thousands of years ago, as enemies. Those roles are marked onto your skin. Hiaj. Rishan.”

My chest burned, my Heir Mark pulsing, as if awoken by her mention of it.

“Roles given by you,” I said, even though I knew it was stupid to argue with her—

“Roles given by your forefathers,” she corrected. “Do you know why I created the Hiaj and Rishan lines? Because even before Obitraes was the land of vampires, your peoples fought. A perpetual power struggle that would never end. It is what you are meant to be. If I grant you a Coriatis bond, your hearts would become one, your lines intertwined. It would erase the Hiaj and Rishan legacy forever.”

“It would eliminate two thousand years of unrest.”

And it wasn’t until Nyaxia nodded slowly, giving me a long, hard stare, that I realized:

We were saying the same thing.

Nyaxia had no interest in ending two thousand years of unrest.

Nyaxia liked her children squabbling, constantly vying over each other for her affections and favor.

Nyaxia would not grant me a Coriatis bond with Raihn, would not allow me to save his life, out of nothing but petty stubbornness.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My anger swallowed all words.

Nyaxia sensed it anyway, though, a flash of disapproval over her features. She leaned close again. “I’m handing you victory for the second time, my child. Perhaps you should simply take it. Don’t all little girls dream of being queens?”

Did you? I wanted to ask her. Did you dream of becoming this?

Instead, I rasped, “Then tell me how to save him.”

Her perfect lips thinned, another drop of blood rolling down her chin with the shift of her muscles. Her lashes lowered as she took in Raihn’s mangled body.

“He is practically already dead,” she said.

“There has to be something.”

Another indecipherable emotion over her face. Perhaps genuine pity.

She flicked a tear from my cheek.

“A Coriatis bond would save him,” she said. “But I cannot be the one to give it to you.”

She rose and turned away. I didn’t look up from Raihn’s battered features, which blurred with my unshed tears.

“Oraya of the Nightborn.”

I lifted my head.

Nyaxia stood at Simon’s broken body, nudging it with her toe.

“Treasure that flower,” she said. “No one will ever be able to hurt you again.”

And then she was gone.

No one will ever be able to hurt you again.

Her words echoed in my head as I let out the sob I’d been choking back. I leaned over Raihn, pressing my forehead to his.

His breath, ever-fading, was so weak against my lips.

I did not care that Simon was dead.

I did not care that the Rishan were retreating.

I did not care if I had won my war.

Raihn was dying in my arms.

Slow rage built in my chest.

Treasure that flower.

Perhaps you should just take it.

Spoken by someone too young to see the ugliness of its decay.

With every memory of Nyaxia’s voice, it grew hotter.

No.

No, I refused to accept it. I had come this fucking far. I had sacrificed so much. I refused to sacrifice this, too.

I refused to sacrifice him.

A Coriatis bond, Nyaxia had said. But I cannot be the one to give it to you.

The answer was right there.

A Coriatis bond could only be forged by a god. And yes, Nyaxia had denied me. But Nyaxia wasn’t the only goddess my blood called to. She was my father’s goddess.

My mother’s was just as powerful.

Crazed hope seized me. I looked up to the sky—the sky still bright and swirling with the thinning barrier between this world and the next. And maybe I imagined it—maybe I was a naive fool for it—but I could have sworn I felt the eyes of the gods on me.

“My Goddess Acaeja,” I cried out, my voice cracking. “I summon you in the name of my mother, your acolyte, Alana of Obitraes, in my greatest time of need. Hear me, Acaeja, I beg you.”

And perhaps I wasn’t insane after all.

Because when I called, a goddess answered.