RIIIP—
My sword crunches through the cartilage of the wings, the leather webbing, pinning them against his back, impaling them—
And my longsword slides into his back.
There’s no way my sword would ever grind this deep withoutsomethingempowering me. I scream to the heavens and the smoke-filled sky. Through flesh and muscle and bone it goes, past the resistance I feel in his spine, until my muscles flex andbulge and my veins distend and every fiber of my being is placed in that vicious stab into Aramastun’s back.
I only stop screaming and pushing when I hear theshlickof the sword tip meeting stone.
The Night Judge is impaled on my blade.
He lets out a wordless groan.
So I stab the motherfucker again. Not quite as hard, because I don’t think I could ever get the power behind that jumping spine-breaker again if I tried, but it’s enough to silence the vampire lord.
I go for a third stab for good measure. Then a fourth, because I’m still pissed. My blade rises and falls, slamming into the pulpy flesh until blood is spraying all over me, blackened and silvery with a demonic touch, covering me from head to toe.
“Sephania . . .” says a small voice.
It’s Palacia.
“. . . he’s dead.”
“Huh?” I look back blindly. Raise my sword and stab again without looking. Wipe a sheet of blood from my eyes. Finally coming into focus, homing in on the mass of demonic flesh I’ve been stabbing into for the past minute. The pool of blood surrounding the face-down overlord iswideanddeep.“He is?” I ask mindlessly.
Slowly, I stumble back. I leave my sword impaled inside Aramastun, just in case he feels like trying to be alive, I’ll keep him pinned to the rooftop.
But he doesn’t move. He doesn’t stir. He doesn’t twitch. The wings are enfolding his body like a mummified tomb.
My knees buckle and I rasp a laugh. “W-We. We won?”
I collapse onto my back for the umpteenth time that night.
Chapter 58
Sephania
Against all odds, we’re alive. Everyone ended up on their asses during the rooftop fight high in the clouds, yet only one person stays down forever: Overlord Aramastun Wyvox, the Night Judge.
The Five Ministries are toppled. Ostensibly, Olhav is saved from its tyrannical leaders, and Nuhav is saved from the trickle-down.
I myself spend two entire days abed in the Firehold, healing from my exhaustion and the slice to my leg. Others in the cohort take longer to recover.
Skartovius Ashfen needs a constant influx of blood for three nights to heal the hole in his chest. Turns out Aramastun’s sword missed his heart by an inch, which is the difference between still having an arrogant nobleblood to call my own, and not.
Garroway Kuffich doesn’t need as much blood, but his mind is addled the first few days. He hardly remembers what happened, which I suppose is normal for a cracked skull. His dhampir powers heal him slower than the vampires, and he’s laid up for a week. Eventually, the tiny bones stitch themselves back together.
Vallan Stellos has new scars aplenty to show off. The close-quarters explosion he caused in midair rippled through him like a hailstorm through leaves, leaving his skin shredded. Surprisingly, he’s up and better faster than anyone, however, because most of his wounds were surface-level and the healingpowers of his vampiric blood works well to sew the fabric of his skin easier than, say, bone and muscle. Some of the explosive remnants lodged deeper in his body, and he decides to keep them in there as mementos.
Lukain Pierken fares the worst. Like Skar, he needs rapid infusions of blood to keep him from falling into the vampiric form of a coma—a long hibernation that would shut his body down for weeks, months, or years. Losing a leg is no small thing, especially with the wound constantly bleeding out until we can bring him to the Firehold and cauterize the wound.
I wonder, if Palacia had not shown up, would Lukain be an amputee right now? Since he protected her out of some latent bloodbond that still exists between the vampirex and the dhampir who turned her. Then I think hownoneof us would be alive if not for my interfolk friend. She’s got some explaining to do, though I’m not even suresheunderstands her bloodline power.
A few days after the battle, I limp off my gurney and make my way through the Chained Sisters’ infirmary to Garroway, to see how his head is today.
He’s sitting upright, eyes closed. He’s forgotten parts of the battle—since he was only involved in the first part of it—so I explain it to him. I tell him how we won, how wild it was, and chuckle uncontrollably like a madwoman when illustrating how I came down on Aramastun with my sword through his back. The pantomiming makes my head spin, so I sit down after a while.
After I’m done, he frowns at me. “Hold on a minute. You’re telling me Palacia saved us?”