“Like I said,” I continue, voice very calm. “It is your choice how you meet the skies. I am a healer. I could remove this blade and stitch your guts back together—not enough to save your life, but enough to prolong it.” I smile at him as the lies spill out, a terrifyingly cold grin that matches the frigid feeling at my Remnant. “Would you like that? To remain in this state for days? For weeks?” I bend closer, eyes never leaving his. “I don’t believe you would.”
He huffs a pained breath. There is panic in his stare as it shifts over my features, judging whether I am lying. I reach again for the handle—
“The Iron Isle,” he chokes out, the words gurgling up his blood-filled throat. “But she will be dead,” he croaks, using his last strength, “long before you…ever breach it…fae scum.”
Soren stiffens.
“Thank you,” I whisper, sending out more tendrils of maegic. Pulling every bit of air from his lungs. Watching his eyes turn bloodshot as he quickly suffocates. “For your cooperation.”
His body twitches, then stills.
He is gone.
I sit back, forcing my eyes to Soren. I look for condemnation in his gaze, for traces of disgust at my brutality…and find not even a shadow of it.
Morality is well and good, as lodestars go,he told me once.Shame, on the other hand, is not.
I am not ashamed of what I’ve done. I am not ashamed of who I am becoming. Not anymore. And it seems…neither is Soren. His eyes are steady, holding a subdued shade of the same pride I saw when I wielded my lightning whip.
We stare at each other in the loaded silence for several long moments. He does not say a word, merely offers me a hand and helps me to my feet. He holds tight as we leave the bathhousebehind and make our way back to tell the others what we’ve learned.
The dead outnumberthe wounded, but I do what I can for those in pain. It is, in a way, good that I have so much experience with the aftermath of battle. I go to that detached place in my mind born from years of training, where all that matters is the task at hand: wrapping wounds, checking pulses, stitching gashes. I see to Mabon, then Tethys, then several injured Hylians, not looking up until I feel Pendefyre’s heavy presence at my back.
“Rhya. Come with me. Jac’s asking for you down at the stables.”
“Is he all right?” I ask, instantly panicked.
His nod is short. His grave expression does not shift. “Yes. But…”
“What is it? What’s happened now? Surely this night cannot get any worse…”
Penn’s lips flatten to a frown, a wordless contradiction.
I cast one last glance at Soren, who is on the terrace conferring in hushed tones with Alaric and Vaughn, as Penn leads me away from the villa. My trepidation grows as we walk down the stone steps to the stables. Or, what remains of them. Farley is there, sitting in the dirt, looking dazed but unharmed. Jac’s arm has been wrenched out of its socket and his face is pale with pain. He will need a sling once I fix the dislocation. But that will have to wait, for…
Gods, no.
My eyes fix on the body that lies between them, her vacant eyes staring up at the skies. Her soul has fled there already.
“No, no, no,” I breathe, rushing forward. I fall to my knees at her side, take her cold hand in mine. “Thisobei…”
Of all the Paexyrian, I knew her least. Still, the loss weighs heavily on me as I stare at her face, once so prone to impish smiles, now forever still.
“Rhya.”
My tear-glazed eyes attempt to focus on Jac. “Y-yes?”
“You need to see to Yara.” His eyes, always so playful, are deadly serious. “You need to get her to…move away.”
I do not understand. Not remotely. But I nod and rise to my feet, following the sound of ragged breathing until I find her sitting in the darkness at the center of the grazing fields. There are several bodies littered around her—Efnysien’s blood purists, gutted without mercy during an earlier skirmish.
Umyr’s head rests in her arms.
I weep as I see the beautiful chestnut bay Paexyri no longer breathes. Her vast wings are flattened against the ground, her thick mane limp and lifeless. Her glossy, intelligent eyes are unseeing. The blood that seeps into the earth from the death wound at her flank is silver as the moonlight that shines down upon us.
“Oh, Yara.”
She does not look up at me as my voice breaks on her name or as I drop into the dirt by her side. Her hand continues to stroke Umyr’s velvet nose, so tender it tears my heart.