The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 21

C HA P T E R T W E NT Y- O N E

here was no preamble, no slow build. Only violence, splitting the air like a strike of lightning, and every bit as powerful. A streakT plummeted from the sky, a winged warrior carving the guard who had been holding Zefiah in two before she could chase us.

Septimus and I ran for our pathetic lives, though I had no idea where we’d go. Zefiah’s hilt in my grip gave me a much-needed burst of strength, though my body was still so weak I could hardly walk, let alone run, especially hauling her considerable weight one-handed.

I struggled to tear my eyes from the sky. The Nightborn were the only vampires who bore wings—feathered for the Rishan clan, and batlike for the Hiaj—and though I had seen a few of them, I’d never witnessed an army like this. The Houses of Blood and Shadow were Nyaxia’s forces, leading her charge against the human nation. But the Houses of Night and Death had broken their ties with Nyaxia and instead pledged their loyalty to Acaeja. They spent most of their efforts fighting their vampire siblings rather than in the human nations. I had heard recent whispers of that changing, and now, I hoped fiercely they were untrue.

Because one Nightborn vampire was intimidating. But an army of them? Holy gods. It was a natural force. Hundreds and hundreds of wings, blotting out the sky, wringing out what little light seeped through the sunless night. Drowning out every sound but the beat of their flight.

Drowning out all light but the gleam of their weapons and teeth. Every vampire House had their strengths. The House of Shadow was the stealthiest. The House of Blood was the most vicious. The House of Death blurred the lines of life and death itself.

The House of Night, they said, turned warfare into an art. An entire kingdom built to be a monument of bloodshed.

Now, I was certain that it was true.

They hurtled to the ground like shooting stars, weapons drawn, blood spraying from every strike. Battle cries fell into garbled, wet silence.

Septimus and I wove through the bloodshed, listening to those death wails ring out behind us, and then listening to them slowly be replaced by shouts and steel as the Shadowborn rallied, recovering from their surprise.

“You did this?” I managed to choke out, barely.

Septimus shot me a wry smirk over his shoulder. “I told you I like other people to pull the triggers. The Nightborn have been hunting me for a decade now.”

I glanced up at the sky, black with a cloud of wings. “You’ve managed to evade these fuckers for ten years?”

“Eleven years. That’s why I knew that once I made my presence known to them, they’d come. And quickly.” He lifted his closed palm. A chain and a silver pendant bearing a bright blue gem dangled from it.

“What’s that?” I panted, nearly tripping over a severed limb that plummeted from the sky—arm or leg, I wasn’t sure which.

“A useless magical trinket I stole from the House of Night some years back. They didn’t know that I knew they would be tracking it, if I used it.”

His gaze flicked to the sky. “Was saving it for a convenient distraction.”

This man stole from Nightborn royalty solely so he could turn them into unwitting weapons when they’d be more useful. I almost had to admire it.

Well, he’d created a distraction all right. My boots slipped on the slick pool of black vampire blood thickening over the floor with each step.

Zefiah’s light sputtered with her bloodlust. It was killing her, I knew, to be in such close proximity to so many vampires and not be skewering any of them. Her tip scraped against the ground every few steps. I could barely hold her up with one arm, and my other still dangled, useless. I wanted Egrette’s heart, too, but I was in no position to take it now.

“There will be aethergates downstairs,” Septimus said. “The Shadowborn use them to travel here and back. That’s our way out.”

“Won’t those just take us deeper into Shadowborn territory?”

“I can redirect them.” {Of course he can,} Zefiah grumbled. {Taking advantage of magic of the White Pantheon for his own ends.}

I really wasn’t willing to be morally superior about it.

A broken Shadowborn body dropped from the sky and landed on the stone ground with a wet crack. I had to practically jump over him to avoid tripping.

“So you expect us to fight our way not out of this cage, but deeper into it,” I managed, between gasping breaths. At this thought, my throat tightened.

“Your typical strategy of chopping off heads has been serving you well, if you’d prefer to try that,” Septimus said sweetly.

I could probably find a way to chop off his head right now, if I really,

really wanted to.

But then I smelled the smoke.

Nightfire.

It was such a distinctive smell. A magical element, most commonly used by the Nightborn vampires but occasionally leveraged by others, too.

Instead of burning orange and red, it moved in licks of searing white and blue. The smell was sweet and acidic, almost pleasant, masking its true, horrifying nature. It moved faster than flames and felt cool to the touch. But when it consumed, it left nothing at all.

Already, it was everywhere.

“How did the Nightborn do this so fast?” I panted as we ran.

Septimus’s mouth thinned to a grim, humorless smile. “Egrette doesn’t want her resources taken. Certainly not by the House of Night, where they could be used against her. She’d rather feed the flames or start her own and let them destroy everything.”

I looked up at the cages with fresh alarm. My stomach turned, bile rising in my throat. My gaze landed on one face, a terrified woman clutching at the bars, and the sight of her fear dragged me back— {Get back!} Zefiah bellowed, right as a deafening crash rang out. I jumped backward just in time to avoid a sheet of stone falling, ablaze in white. I barely glimpsed Septimus, hand outstretched, calling my name, on the other side of the debris.

Fuck. I cursed my moment of distraction. I squinted through the Nightfire, tracking Septimus’s silhouette through them. He was yelling something, and though the words were swallowed by the chaos of the battle, I could tell from his gestures that he was saying to find a way around the fallen wall.

{This way,} Zefiah said, a beam of golden light shooting through the flames. {I sense a path.} I followed her guidance, stumbling over uneven floors, practically blind between the darkness and the searing light of the Nightflame. I made it through one narrow path between the debris, and then another. The screams had risen to a terrible crescendo—shouts of warrior soldiers, yes, but worse were the sounds of the trapped prisoners, too familiar in ways I never liked to think about. I tripped over something hard and barely caught myself, then leaned against the wall, drawing in a deep, shaky breath.

Get a grip, Kyrene, I told myself. But my heart clawed against the inside of my ribs like a wild animal trying to get out, frantic to escape the flames. And gods, those screams. I wished I could escape those, too. No one ever prepares you for the sounds. No one ever could. I’d seen bodies chopped up, often by my own hand. I was intimately acquainted with all the ways flesh could tear or rot or break. I knew the smell of it, too—fresh bodies and stale ones, the way the scent differed in a hot climate or cold.

One must adapt to this quickly enough. Just part of the job.

But the sounds were so much worse.

Sometimes, I could understand why vampires saw us as animals.

Because the sounds that humans made when they were locked up with their own inevitable demise were the same ones that animals made at the slaughterhouse.

I was seventeen years old again. I was in Vostis, in the Citadel of the Destined Dawn, and we were locked up in here, and there was no way out —there was no way out— I clutched Zefiah tight to my body. Her form was a wordless reminder that I was not the girl I had been that night. A girl who had never held a sword before, and who did not know how to kill. {You know now, Kyrene.} Zefiah’s voice was firm, offering comfort in steel. {You have me.} I held her so tight that the whorls of the glyphs on her hilt dug into my

palm.

“Y-you’re the Vindica Ultis.”

The voice was small and young, and the words spoken in perfect

Oketian.

My eyes snapped open.

I had barely paid attention to my surroundings as I’d stumbled here.

Now, I saw a sea of blood and flames unfolding in the hallways beyond.

And in front of me, pressed up against the bars, was a teenage girl. She had short blond hair, and smears of dirt or soot on her cheek. A younger boy, practically a child, crouched beside her, knees hugged to his chest, dark eyes round.

The girl said again, more urgently, “You’re the Vindica Ultis!”

I knew that look, that voice, so well. She didn’t even need to say her real question at all for me to hear it anyway: Are you here to save us?

“Kyrene!” a voice bellowed from behind me. “This way!”

I looked over my shoulder to see Septimus across the hall, standing at a metal door that he propped open with his foot. He’d found a path forward, though who knew how long it would stay open. He jerked his chin toward it

in a clear command—Let’s go.

“Take him.”

The words were a frantic slurry. I looked back at the girl. She now gripped the boy’s forearm, as if to hand him to me through the bars. A crash rang out as another shelf of stone collapsed, taking a handful of screaming prisoners with it.

“Take him,” she said again. “Please. Take him.”

The boy said nothing. I noticed the burns on the girl’s index finger and thumb, and the matching ones on the boy’s hand. Valentina once had burns like that, from holding her welding tools. They were machinists. Machinists from Oketia, no less.

We had to go, and quickly. I knew it. I was already starting to turn away, though I couldn’t quite make myself take the first step.

“Please,” the girl begged. Maybe, by now, she had begun to see what I’d always thought was written clearly on my face—that I was no hero, no matter what they called me. “Please, take him. He’s only thirteen.”

I hated this the most. When they begged not for their own lives, but for someone else’s. Thirteen was so gods-damned young. But how old was she?

She couldn’t have been more than three years older. Sixteen was young, too.

My hand slipped into my pocket and closed around the pendant there, which had once belonged to the last person who had looked at me that way.

For some reason, I thought of Septimus’s words:

You will not save anyone but yourself. {You do not have time,} Zefiah said, hearing my decision before I made it.

“Kyrene!” Septimus’s voice echoed from behind me, but I wasn’t paying attention to him, either.

I was already lifting Zefiah and bringing her down, hard, on the bars.

The children staggered backward, arms up to shield their faces, as the metal crumpled under Zefiah’s blade with a blast of white light. The twisted,

broken door swung lazily open.

I thrust my hand out.

“Come on,” I said. {Kyrene—} You’re the blade of fucking justice, Zefiah. Don’t you want me to be a hero for once?

“Stay close,” I snapped at the children. “And keep up.”

The girl nodded. The boy remained silent, wide-eyed.

But no sooner did I turn around to take in our surroundings than did I question my sanity. It was hell. Literal hell. And I had no idea how to get them out of here. Across the flames, I met eyes with Septimus. His expression changed—posture straightening, eyes narrowing, entire body

communicating a silent, What the fuck?

I ignored him. Which way out, Zefiah? {It is not an easy path. And it will close quickly.} Then we’d better move fast.

Septimus strode toward me, purposeful and quick, and I turned, instinctively shielding my new charges from him. I was certain he would either toss them aside into the Nightflames or force me to leave them behind. I would do the same in his position.

He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, I snapped, “I’m taking them out.”

He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Pity, maybe, though it was such a strange shade on his elegant vampiric features that I couldn’t quite decode

it.

“They can’t come with us,” he said.

“I don’t care. I’m getting them out. Alone, if I have to.”

I fully expected him to argue with me. I was ready to push past him if I had to. But instead, an odd expression flickered over his face, a humorless

twist raising one corner of his mouth. His eyes bounced from me, to the children, to Zefiah, to me again.

“My,” he said. “How noble of you. Very well. There’s a back door. The safest way out.” {He is correct,} Zefiah said, a thread of light shooting through the darkness. {This way.} It felt like some kind of trick—that he was not only not arguing with me, but that he was helping me. I didn’t know what to make of my sudden, unexpected flood of—gods, was that gratefulness?

There was no time for words, anyway, and maybe I was glad for it.

It was a small miracle that we managed to fight our way to the doors.

But the chaos was our friend. The Nightborn and the Shadowborn were so distracted with each other that there was barely anyone I needed to kill on our way to the back of the fortress.

And when we finally reached our destination, I threw open the doors

and my heart immediately sank.

They wouldn’t make it. No one could.

The fire had spread into the forest, Nightfire and flame fused in a blazing hellscape of red and blue. A towering pine tree fell with a pained groan, streaking light through the sky. The night was still blotted out with waves and waves of Nightborn vampires, and the howls of soulless echoed

in the night.

Which way do they go? I asked Zefiah. {Straight. East. There is a harbor.} It was such a monumentally small shot. As I stood here, covered in the blood of the innocents just like these, the lunacy of what I was attempting seemed outrageous.

Septimus thrust something into the hands of the girl. I looked down and realized it was a sword.

“Have you used one before?” he said. He spoke Oketian—accented, almost melodic. But what surprised me more was his unexpected firm

tenderness.

The girl shook her head.

“It’s basic,” he said. “There’s a sharp edge. Don’t hesitate to use it, dove.”

The girl’s eyes drifted to the fire. A sword did nothing against that.

“There’s a harbor. Straight shot that way.” I pointed Zefiah’s tip, and she sent a streak of godlight in that direction, burning through the forest. “Move fast.”

The girl started after it, but the boy stood, frozen, in the doorway. His face was blank, his body trembling.

“Hey.” I took his shoulders in my hands. “This is your chance. You might not get another one. Don’t look back. Look for the coast and run for your fucking life. Save yourself.”

The words were an unintentional echo of the ones a stranger had given me ten years ago. I wondered if they would persist in him forever too, just like they’d persisted in me.

The girl opened her mouth to say something, reaching for the boy’s

hand— Blood spattered me.

A stray bolt of light careened from the roof.

The girl was now a puddle of gore on the ground, a burning arrow through her face, her head a mess of tattered flesh.

The horror froze me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. The arrow had clearly not been meant for her. It was a wayward shot intended for some vampire heart. Bad fucking luck, and shitty aim, and careless violence, and a life ended.

The boy let out a small, horrified cry. There were no dramatic screams.

No tears. It was often that way, I’d learned. Shocked silence.

Septimus gave the boy a rough shove. “Run, boy. Now.”

It felt like there should be more that we could offer him. But I didn’t even have time to do more than glimpse the child running into the dark forest as Septimus grabbed my arm and dragged me back into the chaos. {Survive this first,} Zefiah reminded me.

She was right. It wasn’t the first time or the last that I’d see an innocent die in front of me. Still, my steps were rough, my throat tight, my stride wobbly. Blood half blinded me, smearing into my left eye. I had a suspicion it wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t wipe it away with Zefiah occupying my grip.

We managed down a set of stairs, then another.

But then, before we entered the next flight, Septimus stopped. Stopped, at a thick iron door, one that resembled the one he’d paused at when we came in. The smoke was now so thick I could barely see, the not-heat of the Nightflame so close I could feel it on my skin.

He leaned against the door, head hanging, one palm against the metal. {There is no time for whatever he is doing,} Zefiah warned. She was right.

“What is wrong with you?” I said. “Let’s go!”

“Can you open it?”

He turned just enough so that a sliver of his profile was visible to me.

One eye.

“What?” I said.

“The door,” he snapped. “Your sword. Break it.”

It was no longer a question. It was a command.

I examined the bar. It was thick, and no doubt reinforced by magic.

Zefiah said, {I can break the metal. But there is more than iron blocking in whatever sits inside those walls.} “Taking down the door won’t be enough to let out—”

“I know.” The words were sharp, like a drawn blade. “I know,” he said again, more calmly. “That isn’t what I asked.”

We don’t have time.

The words were on the tip of my tongue. They were true. But there was something in Septimus’s face that made me pause—something a little too raw in a way I knew he didn’t intend to reveal.

And I thought of the way he’d looked at me, when he’d seen me with those two children, and I wondered if I was giving him the same expression now. {We do not have time for this,} Zefiah insisted.

We hadn’t had time to send that boy to safety, either, but Septimus had done it.

So with a muttered curse between my teeth, I brought down Zefiah on the bar, once, twice, three times, until the iron gave way with a bone- shattering crack.

Screams echoed from within. No, not screams—roars, maybe, or wails.

A sound that was a terrible combination of all three. Unlike anything I’d ever heard before.

Goose bumps rose on my skin. Zefiah hissed a wordless revulsion, because the wave of horrific wrong-ness that flowed from behind that door rivaled anything I’d ever witnessed from any soulless.

“What is that?” I breathed.

But Septimus ignored me. He stood in front of the open door, a silhouette of white against a pit of darkness.

He didn’t go inside. He simply withdrew something from his pocket.

Matches, I realized. He struck one, and in that little orange glow, I glimpsed something writhing in the dark. Something that almost looked like a person.

Septimus bowed his head, muttered something I could not hear, and tossed the match into the darkness.

Then he turned to me and said, “Let’s go,” as a wall of piercing, agonized wails rose up behind us.

BY THE TIME Septimus and I made it to the bottom floor of the fortress, we were both drenched in blood and I had long ago lost track of how many different people it had come from. I was practically blind in my left eye because a glob of gore was now sliding into it, but I needed my functional hand for Zefiah, who was indulging in one of the greatest feasts of vampire blood that she’d ever had the pleasure of experiencing. We cut through soldier after soldier as we carved a gory path down the stairs, and I was grateful that the Shadowborn were distracted and caught off guard by the unexpected attack. I was on the verge of collapse by the time we reached the bottom.

My eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness when Septimus commanded, “Cover me.”

As if I hadn’t been doing that this entire time—one-armed, no less. He kneeled next to one of the doors and began working at the frame, doing something I couldn’t see. Not that I had the time to watch anyway, because an onslaught of both Shadowborn and Nightborn soldiers already had followed us down the stairs. I planted myself at the bottom, strategically positioning myself so that the corner shielded me, and swung Zefiah at body after body with frantic ferocity.

“Hurry!” I gritted out breathlessly. I was no longer even attempting to kill. Just trying to buy us precious seconds. I swung wildly at a particularly persistent Shadowborn soldier.

Behind me, Septimus muttered, “I’m doing my—”

The Shadowborn I was fighting was abruptly yanked around the corner with a wet cry. I staggered backward just as a streak of darkness plummeted from above and landed in front of us.

I breathed a curse as the figure straightened, her wings stretching out behind her. {The Nightborn queen,} Zefiah murmured, heavy with bloodlust.

Vampire royalty were marked by Heir Marks, tattoos of red. The Nightborn, it was said, had such Marks on their wings, too. The Nightborn king and queen were the subject of plenty of gossip, even in the human kingdoms. It was a nice story, after all—he was Turned, and she was half human, both unlikely fits for a vampire throne. Some said they were practically part god, due to gifts granted by the goddess Acaeja.

I’d always dismissed these stories as amusing exaggerations. But as the queen of the Nightborn lowered to us, her batlike wings lined with bloody red, wielding two night steel blades with cracks of glowing crimson running through them, I thought to myself, Turns out they were right after all.

The Nightborn queen wore fine leather armor, all black. She had long, sleek black hair which whipped around her in the wind. Her eyes were bright silver, and they speared through Septimus.

“You,” she snarled. She looked only at him—as if everyone else, me included, was meaningless. “You thought we wouldn’t find you?”

Septimus smiled, albeit in a way that silently said, Well, shit.

“Always a pleasure, Oraya,” he said over his shoulder, and worked faster.

But the Nightborn queen didn’t wait before she pushed past me, knocking me aside like an inconsequential piece of scenery, and lunged for him. Nightfire trailed her every movement, streaks of blue-silver light shadowing her hands.

I caught myself against the wall, a sneer at my lips. I didn’t appreciate being swatted away like a bug. And before the Nightborn queen could land her strike, I leaped after her, Zefiah raised. Her wings were spread, her back to me. Arrogant of her, to give me a perfect opening.

I struck right between her shoulder blades, piercing armor, aiming to go deep enough to hit her heart. Zefiah’s light flared, her pleasure at drawing the blood of a vampire queen practically orgasmic. The blood was deep red, darker than a human’s but lighter than the black of vampires’.

Oraya whirled to me. A crack split the air as Zefiah, barely, blocked her strike. My arm trembled with the force of holding her back, and as we stood there, locked together, her eyes narrowed. They practically glowed in the darkness. I watched them flick from me, to Zefiah, back to me.

“Who,” she murmured, “are you?”

My muscles screamed. My right arm dangled uselessly at my side, and my left one was not strong enough to do the work of both, especially against a gods-damned vampire queen.

“Get over here!” Septimus bellowed behind me, and just as my arm was about to give out, I pushed violently against Oraya’s blade. Zefiah let out a burst of godlight, buying us precious seconds.

And then I was running, and Septimus grabbed my arm, and in a wild, chaotic tangle, we flung ourselves through the aethergate.

The last thing I saw as I looked back was the Nightborn queen diving after us, wings spread. Septimus hurled the Nightborn pendant, sending it bouncing pitifully against the stone, right as he pulled the passage closed.

Just like that, with seconds to spare, we were gone.