Of Darkness and Crowns (27 page)

But it’s no longer
my
curse.

It belongs to Bale.

I grit my teeth and see the gears and wires against the backs of my eyelids. I hear the churning and grinding of the clamp. The pumping mercury. And I hear my heart. Beating. Stronger than the foreign cybernetics that don’t belong.

I believe that with my whole being.

You’re not a part of me.

I will the clamp to break. See it shutting down. Gears stop spinning, the piston stops pumping. The technology grinds to a halt.

Then I feel the rush of mercury hit my heart.

Gasping, I open my eyes wide. A blast of air expands my lungs. I’m shaking, my hands seize my chest, trying to reach past the glass casing and grab the boiling poison hitting my organs at lightning speed.

Tears fill my eyes. My heart aches at the pressure. And I’m sucked under with consuming emotions I can’t grasp. It’s too much…I want to take it back…make it
stop
.

But it’s too late. My eyes shut.

Then, I buzz, quaking with a pent-up need to unleash. No more restraint, my eyes fly open, and I’m pushing off the wall. I march toward the stone door and grasp the corner to throw it open wider, but it’s flung from the hinges.

Bax grabs Lilly, forcing her to stand. His eyes rake over me, his thin mouth parted in mute shock. Then, “What have you done?”

“I’m dying,” I say over his question. “Please, take my friends to safety. And take Caben…give him the proper—” I force the lump in my throat down “—give him the burial deserving of a king.”

Bale’s blazing eyes find and hold me, narrowing. She’s on her feet, bringing herself up in one effortless move. I try to look only at her and not Lilly’s tear-streaked face as she clings to Bax, or Kaide’s bowed head, or Kai’s arms cradling a trembling Whip. In my peripheral, I glimpse Lena leading Aurelia alongside the wall toward the others.

This is all I can offer them. A way to escape. They’ll be on their own from here, and I don’t know what will happen to them in the future—but in this moment, I want to see them live.

Rolling my shoulder, I work it back into place. The painful
pop
only a slight annoyance. Then I stare down Bale. “Come at me, you hell bitch.” And I’m running, my feet flying over the marble so quickly I don’t feel their impact.

I just need to get her away from Caben long enough for my friends to grab him and go. That’s it. A fraction of a minute.

Balling my hand into a fist, I haul back and land a hard punch to her face. I’m surprised she let me reach her, touch her. But I don’t stop once I make contact with her flesh.
Flesh
. Something in me registers that. Human. A goddess yes, but in the flesh.

She can be hurt.

Still, she’s as hard as stone. An ice sculpture that refuses to crack. My hands light up with pain as she merely turns her head to the side, my fists grazing off her. I grab her headdress and yank her head down. It’s a dirty move, but the Cage fights taught me I have to resort to any means necessary to survive. In a way, Bale taught me that.

A tinkling laugh falls from her lips. It crawls under my skin and stirs something primal within. Jerking out of my hold, she uses her forearms to break my grasp. I scream as her touch sears my skin from the quick contact.

“You think you can contain all that power?” she asks, linking her finger into the strap of my harness and pulling me up to her height. “There’s a reason you were given that…shield.” She spits the word. “And now you broke it.” Her frown is fake on her mouth. “You’re only human.”

Latching on to her wrist, trying to ignore the burn, I lock gazes with her. “So are you.”

Her smile drops, and as her eyes widen in the quick second it takes me to reach for her neck, I have my hands sealed tight around it. She laughs, and I squeeze harder, but it’s like trying to strangle a stone statue.

The veins of her face swirl, shifting position as she cackles…and before the thought fully enters my head, I remove one hand and slash my arm against the sharp feathers of her headdress.

My tainted blood spills over her.

Bale releases a violent shriek and drops me. I scramble on my hands and knees toward Caben, where Bax is already lifting him into his arms, Lena and Kaide grabbing his feet. My eardrums feel as if they’re about to burst, but I push through the pain.

Before I reach them, Bax releases Caben and looks past me. I want to yell, force him to hurry and get Caben out…but the black mist curling around us forces me to turn my head. Just look back once.

The dark tendrils twirl around Bale, cocooning her, as she raises her hands and summons the light of the moon. Somehow, through some link, I understand what she’s doing: healing. And fast.

Lilly’s hand is under my arm and dragging it around her neck, pulling me up to stand beside her. “We’re all leaving—” Her words break off as a rumble echoes throughout the temple. The walls begin to shake.

♦
31
♦

Kaliope

T
HE TEMPLE IS COLLAPSING.

Whatever power Bale is calling forth from her moon, it’s bringing the whole damn building down around us. The walls tremble, sending blocks of stone and moonstone crashing and breaking apart the marble floor.

I’ve only just been lifted, Lilly gathering me close, as a blast hits the main support structure. It hurtles toward us. The last thing I see is Bax covering Lilly before we’re thrust into darkness.

A cacophony of noises—shouts, stomping, banging—clashes in my ears as I suck in a smoggy lungful of air and cough. “Find her!” I hear many voices yelling, calling to locate Bale. With somewhat little clarity, I realize the temple has been attacked. Either by the Otherworlders or the armies.

When the rubble starts to clear above us, I glimpse a hand—a human hand—and release a heavy breath. The army. But that relief is short-lived. If they’ve defeated the Otherworlders and are now seeking Bale, they’re not here to help us.

We’re the traitors.

Before I can pull myself from the wreckage, a scream rips through the ruins. My head swings around, my gaze finding its source. Bale hovers above of the demolished sanctuary, black vines of mist and snapping currents of power coiling around her in a gathering vortex of smoke and light.

Then with the clap of her delicate hands, another, more powerful explosion ignites. The blast clears the remaining rubble from the center of the sanctuary, only to pile more on top of us. But in the flash that it happens, I see it all as if in slow motion. A dip in the floor beneath her suspended feet. The floor bending inward, swirling like a whirlpool, then rebounding and sending a wave of debris spewing from all around her. Spiraling out and raining down…

I lift my arms.

And everything stops.

Fragments of gold and copper leafing scatter the air, reflecting the moonlight and erupting fires, sparkling like molten sand. Above Bax’s head, a large cornerstone hovers mid-careen. A storm of moonstone and rubble surrounds us, wisps of smoke caught just as it begins to curl.

Taking a labored breath, I ease myself onto my knees and slowly lower my hands.

“Kal?” Lilly’s questioning tone sounds distant and distorted in our sheltered cocoon. Where, outside of it, the protectors and Bale move so slowly, they’re practically frozen.

“I don’t know…” is my only response. Because I don’t. But I do understand whatever time we’ve been allotted, it’s not enough to shield us for long.

As the others are hauling themselves from the ruins, I quickly account for each person. All are here, all are alive, if only banged up and bruised. Any substantial injuries will have to wait until later, when I might be able to heal—

And with that sudden thought, I’m scouring the wreckage, tearing full-size boulders away from the pile like pillows, searching for Caben. I find him under a section of wall. How long has it been since Bale’s ascent? Since his death? Seconds…minutes? Like this frozen moment of time, the instant I saw him die, all time ceased.

But it doesn’t matter. My hands are clearing away the flecks of silver leafing and debris from his face, away from his mouth and nose. I palm his cheeks, cold, but still giving off a small amount of body heat. The world around me slips away as I stare down at him. Feel his smooth skin, his soft hair. Tears cloud my vision. I don’t stop them from falling.

I use every emotion welling within me. I call forth every memory I have of him—from my most infuriating to my happiest. From the second I first threatened his life, to the instant when I first realized I loved him, when he touched me in a way no other ever has. And when he kissed me, and then my deformity, accepting and loving—I use it all.

And when my hands flare into that bright white light, I don’t fear it. I don’t see my father’s face as he was rendered to madness. I don’t envision the Dark Priest as he was right before I rectified the damage done to him. I refuse to think of all the fear that coursed through me with every patient I healed while trying to understand my powers…I only allow the warmth to spread, the glow to envelope us, and my heart to beat with no barrier blocking the mercury.

“Come back to me,” I whisper, my voice breaking.

As the glow spreads, seeping into his skin and illumining it, filling him with warmth and living essence, his chest bucks. I startle, a wave of hope crashing over me. I don’t hesitate. I send another high level of power into him, and this time, his eyes open and he gasps.

My hands tremble, but I keep them anchored, unable to blink as I watch Caben breathe, cough, live. After the initial shock of being jolted back into his body, his blue eyes find me. And I finally release the breath stalled in my lungs as they look at me with recognition.

“I feel like I’ve been hit with a building,” he says, his voice hoarse. I laugh.

Tears streaming down my face, I laugh so hard my debris-riddled lungs ache. “That’s because you have.”

His lips stretch into a smile. A full Caben smile that, oh my goddess, I haven’t seen in so long. My lips crash on his. And though he’s weak, he meets my greedy need for him with as much force as he can. But all too soon, the reality that we’re not free yet comes barreling back into my conscience.

Breaking the kiss, I ask him, “Can you move?”

He licks his lips. “I feel numb. I don’t know.”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll carry you.” I stand and motion to Bax. “Everyone ready?”

Eyes wide, he hikes his wiry eyebrows and clears his throat. “For…?”

“We’re taking this thing”—I wave my hand around, indicating our shelter—“with us. But I don’t know how long I can keep it going.” After the intense healing session that was needed to restore Caben, my strength is waning quickly.

Kaide links Whip’s arm around his neck and nods to me. “Her leg is broken, but we’ll manage.”

I frown at Whip, who hobbles next to Kaide with her teeth gritted against the pain. The others are in the best shape they can be considering, so that leaves Caben to be carried. I kneel beside him and bring his arms around my neck. “Hold on as best you can,” I say.

He groans as I lift him into my arms. “I will never live this down, will I?”

A smile stretches my lips. “Never, Prince. Never.”

His almost smile, the one not quite reaching his eyes, suddenly vanishes. “Please, never call me by that title again.”

My forehead creases with my confusion, and I want to understand his reasoning, want to ask—but Bale’s figure blinks in and out of my fringe. A prickling sensation swims down my chest to my stomach, and I turn to see her stony eyes looking directly at me.

She remains frozen, still in her pose of ejecting the wreckage…only she now faces us. She moves just as slowly as the units, but with one, disturbing difference: she is
aware
. And she’s working hard to break down my barrier.

Her lips begin to move, the only part of her body gaining speed. She mouths:
soon
.

Fear slithers down my spine, and I’m lifting Caben higher into my arms. “But not today,” I whisper.

Then, we break for the remains of the entrance. My last action is to look back—to see the protectors left behind. My stomach bottoms out, my heart heavy. There will be nothing left of them soon.

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