Tears poured down Willow’s face. She wailed over the death of her little brother. What if it had been Bay? Laurel pictured her own brother, lifeless on the floor.

  And it was her fault.

  Laurel loosened her grip, falling into her own mind.

  It was her fault.

  She rolled away from Henna, rose, and made a mad dash toward Jurius. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Willow do the same. Jurius crouched low, anticipating their arrival. Both of their veins blazed with Sapphire threadlight. Willow arrived first, but she was smart enough to wait for Laurel. Unfortunately, Jurius was not as patient.

  He dashed toward Willow, his fist swinging in a wide arc. She slipped under it, but he pulled his arm toward the ground and his elbow crashed down at an inhuman speed directly onto her shoulder. Laurel arrived just as his elbow hit. She stabbed forward with the obsidian blade and sliced hard into his shoulder. He spun around, snarling, and reached for her hand that held the blade. She pulled it back and blood sprayed out as the blade cut into his palm.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but you die next.”

  He dove at Laurel. She pushed her corethread to counteract the weight, but he pulled with even more force. In an instant, he’d pinned her arms down and smashed his head into her face. The force nearly knocked her out. Blood came drooling out of her nose as she stared into his face. The face of a Bloodthief.

  Laurel spit blood in his eye and rammed her knee into his groin. He released her, instinctively wiping his eye clean, and she seized the moment. She squeezed the obsidian blade with all her strength and thrust it straight through his sternum. She’d expected more resistance, but it slid in with ease.

  He gasped. Both of his hands came to the hilt of the blade as he stared down at his chest.

  Gale take him.

  “Jaymin,” he mumbled. With his final moments, he grabbed Laurel’s hand on the hilt, pulled it out of his own chest, and slowly turned it around.

  He screamed and jammed it into Laurel’s heart.

  Threadlight exploded from Laurel. A sound, like shattering glass, echoed against the stone walls. Then, as if the world itself grieved the reality, the earth trembled beneath their feet. Walls groaned and wood splintered as decorations came crashing down onto the floor. Laurel tried to steady herself. Inside her, it felt as though her soul were slowly draining from her body.

  She knew she was dying, but, at least for a moment, she’d helped.

  The world seemed to expand and contract in odd pulses as Chrys looked down at the threadlight grappling onto his wife and son. His feet hit the stone and he ran to them, but there was nothing he could do. If he’d had the obsidian blade, he could have cut them free. But it was gone, the Zeda people had never found it.

  He pushed on the artificial threads, his veins flaring blue, but it accomplished nothing. His family was going to die, and he was helpless. Powerless. He’d promised to protect them, and he’d failed, again. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how strong he tried to be, it would never be enough. Alone, he wasn’t enough.

  Mmmm. You are not alone.

  Chrys shook his head. No, I can’t.

  Would you have them die for your own pride?

  Stop!

  Your sacrifice can save them. I can save them. Yield your soul to me.

  The sound of swords and screaming lifted his gaze to the east. Hundreds of shadowy figures rushed toward Zeda families. A volley of arrows rained down through the vaulted treetops. Chrys pushed on as many arrows as he could, but too many fell. Zeda fell with them.

  A dark fury washed over him as he stared out over the oncoming army.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a massive feytree, consumed by fire from trunk to crown, break at its midpoint. The world seemed to slow as the falling giant ripped free of its neighbors, hundreds of branches snapping off the tumultuous weave. A cacophony of sound. The entire Fairenwild seemed to mourn its fall. And as it fell, it fell toward him.

  If nothing stopped it, it would smash into the wonderstone, and everyone on it.

  Chrys refused to succumb.

  He lifted his hands high above his head. It was audacious, impossible. He let the power of the wonderstone rush through his veins. It burned. Channeling more threadlight than he’d ever dreamed possible, he pushed. The massive tree groaned from the force, slowing its freefall. But still it fell. He doubled his efforts, pushing with every ounce of will and strength he had, his veins expanding with the pressure. A man holding the weight of a mountain. It stopped. The feytree hovered in the air above Chrys and the wonderstone. His entire body trembled beneath him.

  Mmmm.

  His son screamed beside him, threads still constricting his brittle bones. Zeda families cried out as swords fell on their loved ones. The unknown army laughed as they fought.

  He couldn’t hold the feytree any longer. He couldn’t save them. He wasn’t enough. He was never enough.

  But then he saw her, jet black hair slicked behind her ears, amber eyes dancing in the light of the raging fires. Standing in the shadows as everything around her burned to the ground. The woman. She was responsible. Every problem. Every trouble. Every bit of pain. He looked back at his wife and son strapped to the wonderstone by a hundred threads of light. He heard their screams. He felt their suffering, and he would not let them die.

  Mmmm.

  “You can save them?” he spoke aloud.

  Yes.

  “Then I am yours.”

  Threadlight exploded from his body as ice poured through his veins. The commotion of the world blurred for just a moment before a dam inside him burst asunder. His neck moved without request. His lips curled into a smile even as his mind cried out in fear of what he’d done.

  “Mmmm.”

  Chrys felt the Apogee reach out with his mind, tendrils grasping for prey until they finally latched onto the mind of a Zeda man who’d just landed on the wonderstone. He didn’t understand how, but he could feel the man’s soul. Then another. And another. Three Zeda souls bound to his own in the briefest of moments. Their souls wove together in a binding tapestry of light. He could feel their threadlight, like wells of power, ready to be siphoned. It was pure power. Borrowed power.

  The massive feytree blasted away, splintered wood bursting out over the battlefield. A shiver crawled up his spine, and the air around him seemed to expand. His lungs strained within his chest. He felt the three Zeda men collapse to the ground before he saw them.

  The Apogee leapt off the wonderstone. Zedas scattered, terrified. Finally, after years of patient waiting, he was free. And this time he wasn’t bound by the mutation.

  He walked forward as the fastest of the army approached. He sidestepped the man’s sword and gripped his throat. The impact sent the man’s legs swinging forward as his momentum came to a sudden halt. “Such frailty,” he said before snapping the man’s neck and tossing him aside.

  A spear came soaring toward him. He snatched it out of the air, turned and launched it forward into another man’s eye.

  He’d forgotten how feeble men were.

  A blade came down from behind. He ducked below, spun, and delivered a blow so hard into the man’s chest that his ribs bent inward below the skin.

  He grabbed a blade off a dead man and strolled casually through the battlefield. It moved in his hands like a sickle sifting wheat, impaling, severing, striking down Zeda and Bloodthief alike. He never slowed. He never tired. He never stopped.

  These men were playthings, not worthy of his effort, but there was one different. An Amber threadweaver. A wonderful twist of fate.

  When she saw him approach with blood smeared across his face, a dozen tendrils of light sprang out of the ground and hooked their claws into his body. But he was stronger. He screamed out like an animal, threads bursting apart. In his own mind, Chrys could hear the screams of three Zeda threadweavers.

  Fear grew in the woman’s eyes. This time, a hundred tendrils of light burst out from beneath him and latched onto his body. He fought them all. They were nothing to him. He could not be stopped. The agony of the Zeda men rang out in the back of his mind.

  The Apogee fought the weight with all of his strength, his legs buckling beneath the pressure. He took two steps—the woman’s eyes growing wider with each—before he stalled in front of her, howling like a caged animal, blood dripping from his cheeks. Her eyes blazed with yellow threadlight, her yellow-veined arms trembling with the effort.

  Her eyes grew wide. “What are you?”

  The earth quaked in response.

  Alverax gave wide berth to the combat as he sprinted toward the woman and child. There was little he could do to stop the fighting, but there were at least two people he could save. If Alabella found out, she would kill him, but he’d already died once. It wasn’t so bad.

  He approached from the far side and stopped in awe as a man with threadlight coalescing around him pushed the entire upper half of a feytree out of the way like it were a single branch. Threadlight coiled around the man as he jumped down off the stone.

  Alverax shook away the awe and stepped up onto the stone platform. A strange urge to threadweave poured over his mind. It felt like the stone was calling to him. It reminded him of sailweed cravings, an incessant need to consume.

  He looked down at the woman and child, pinned to the stone by the artificial threads latched onto them, screaming in pain and fear. He focused on the threads wrapping the infant and squeezed. The threads resisted with a strength unlike anything he’d experienced before. He squeezed harder, screaming at them as his veins burned black.

  “Break!” The threads burst apart like grain thrown into the air, including the threads wrapping the woman.

  Before he could celebrate, the threads reappeared, small threads at first, but each grew larger and larger. And then he saw it. The child’s eyes, wide open as it screamed, were a brilliant pale yellow.

  Alverax threw his energy back at the blossoming threads and shattered them once again. The child was doing this to himself, overcome by the cravings of the stone and without the will to deny it.

  He looked down at the bright threadlight of the stone. It was the source. He dropped down to his knees and placed both hands on the stone. This was it. A task only he could perform. A family only he could save. With every ounce of his soul, he grabbed onto the stone’s threadlight. Its energy ripped through his body, filling him with such intense pressure he was sure his skin would burst. He screamed out in pain, but held fast, squeezing harder against the bright threadlight. The pressure continued to build inside him; the pain rose to a crescendo.

  He threw every death, every betrayal, every mistake, and every heartache into the burning threadlight. It was a trade, his life for theirs. The veins in his arms turned blacker than death. It was unbearable. His body shook. His legs convulsed beneath him.

  But it wasn’t just him that was shaking.

  As he fought against the power of the stone, the world shook around him. Cinder and ash fell from burning treetops. Feytrees teetered back and forth, the world itself groaning against the quaking earth. He was afraid, but he’d never felt such purpose.

  Thunder cracked in the sky through gaps where branches used to be. He squeezed harder. Another flame-consumed feytree toppled to the ground. His body was on fire from within, and he let it burn.

  The stone beneath his feet fractured, a mountain rending in two. The threadlight bathing it burst apart in a cloud of mist.

  Alverax fell forward onto his face, smiling as he lost all consciousness.

  The Apogee fought the threads that bound him while the earth beneath shifted like ocean waves. A terrible pain surged through his mind with each quake, weakening him. He could feel the man inside him trying to escape. A futile effort. This time he was prepared.

  He watched the Amber-eyed woman flee into the darkness. Her threads weakened with each passing moment. She would need to die, and whoever had made her. He turned back toward the wonderstone and saw hundreds of dead lying in the dirt. Bloodthieves and Zeda alike, equal in death. Massive, scorched branches had fallen and crushed a dozen people. Men groaned as they tried to get out from under them. A group of Zeda threadweavers walked through the chaos, ripe for the taking.

  The Apogee looked further and saw Iriel seated on the edge of the wonderstone. She held the baby in her arms, crying. If the child grew, it too would be a liability. The Apogee looked on them with fondness. Too long spent in the mind of another.

  Iriel’s eyes lifted and caught his own.

  He nodded to her—a token of respect—then turned and walked away.

  All around him, men cried out for their lost.

  Women wept for their fallen.

  They gathered their families and hurried west.

  But the Apogee traveled east.

  Chapter 31

  As Jurius hit the floor, the walls of the keep shook. Willow steadied herself on the ground and waited out the earthquake. When it finally stopped, she rushed over to Pandan and grabbed hold of him tightly. He felt heavier than he had just moments before. As much as her heart wanted to deny it, the brother she’d finally found again was gone once more.

  She turned to Jurius who lay clutching his chest, gurgling up blood as the life fled from him. She grabbed the black blade laying on the ground between him and Laurel and thrust it back into his chest. Screaming, she thrust it in a second time. And a third. As if quickening his death would bring back her brother.

  She wiped the blood on his shirt as she rose. It was then that she realized what she held in her hand. The blade matched the description Chrys had given. Could it be?

  “You need to leave.”

  Willow snapped her head around at the sound, hiding the blade as she turned. Standing straight-backed and strong was High General Henna.

  “You need to leave,” Henna repeated. “Before anyone else sees you. The window in Jurius’ study opens to the north end of the keep. If you drop down from there you should be able to get to the wall.”

  Willow tilted her head. Henna had just tried to kill them. “I don’t understand.”

  “Chrys warned me,” Henna said. “The day we visited him in his home, he slipped me a piece of paper. It was hastily written, but it said Jurius is a Bloodthief. I had someone look into it. They came back with a lot of questions. Tonight, it was clear; Chrys was right. I should have trusted him. There will be hell to pay for his death, but you should not be the ones to pay it.”

  Willow turned and remembered Laurel. The young girl lay on the ground, a small pool of blood across her chest. She ran to her and checked her vitals. “She’s still alive!”

  Luther moved to join her. “I watched Jurius stab her in the heart. She should be dead. If we can get her to a doctor, maybe she still has a chance.”

  “I’ll take her,” Henna said, walking toward them. “If you bring her with you, you’ll never make it out fast enough. Go. I’ll get her to a doctor.”

  Willow paused, still doubting Henna’s sincerity, but she had no other choice. She was right. They’d never make it out if they had to carry Laurel. She turned to her brother, dead on the floor next to Jurius, and ground her teeth. “Can you see that he gets a proper burial?”

  Henna nodded. “I will try, but I cannot make that promise.”

  “Willow,” Luther said urgently. “She’s right. We need to go, now.”

  Willow knelt down beside her brother. “May the winds guide you,” she whispered, tears swelling in her eyes. She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “And carry you gently home.”

  With one final nod of appreciation, Willow and Luther entered Jurius’ study. It was filled with books, maps, paintings, and a single oil lamp lighting it from within. As they opened the tall window, a cold breeze brushed past the curtains. The rain continued, though it had dulled to a gentle beating. Willow jumped out of the window, pushing on her corethread to soften the fall. Luther ran down the wall and rolled as he reached the surface.

  Neither spoke a word as they ran toward the outer keep wall.

  They had failed.

  Chapter 32

  Alverax awoke from a nightmare.

  Fire and quake and rain pouring down on a field of death.

  He shielded his eyes from the bright sunlight beating down on him. His head pounded and his stomach felt like a ship at sea. A figure stood over him. He tried to blink away the haze. It was his father. His dead father stood over him smiling, and all Alverax could do was laugh. The nightmare wasn’t over yet. All his father said as he looked at him was “thank you.”

  Tears welled up in his eyes. His father, the infamous thief of Cynosure, a cheat and a liar, had wormed his way into Alverax’s dreams. But the truth was more painful, and no matter how hard he tried to deny it, Alverax missed him. His father’s words, even in a dream, were water to a thirsty soul.

  The pain in his stomach flared. He leaned over the side of his cot, heaving more than he vomited. Another figure rushed to his side, keeping him from falling over the edge. He coughed until his stomach settled once again. He looked back up to his father, but he was gone. In his place stood a woman. An angular face, dark hair and green eyes. Alverax panicked and his body trembled. His breathing became more and more sporadic as chills covered him from head to toe.

  “Get me some lavender!” a second woman shouted. An older woman by the sound of her voice. She held him down and looked directly into his eyes. “I need you to breathe. Focus on each breath. Long and deep. Keep your eyes closed. You are having a panic attack. It will end.”

  When the other woman returned, the older woman began rubbing something onto Alverax’s chest. It was fragrant and calming. He focused on his breathing and, over time, he relaxed. The shaking subsided. The world ceased its spinning.

  He opened his eyes again and found more people standing over him. Two older women with gray hair and a woman holding a child. He recognized them but couldn’t place how.

 

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