Page 40 of Oath-Maker

The last thing I saw were my paladins—the ones still alive—being hauled off.

CHAPTER17

It wasn’t until today that Ireallythought the phrase “blind rage” must have been real. Because I was pretty sure that was what happened following the Guardian letting my blood into a fucking canteen for safekeeping.

I didn’t remember being brought to the holding cells in the basement of the Order’s tower. I was simply in the library, bleeding, and then here. But I could have guessed it had involved a lot of dragging my fighting body ungracefully. I supposed that was one thing that Lucius and the Guardian now had in common: ordering me to be dragged places. At least one of them had felt bad about it afterward.

Now, I sat, fuming, alone in darkness. My body felt as though it were burning from the inside out. Rage, yes, at the senseless loss of life and for what—a warning? A message? The Guardian and his celestial army had already achieved that by turning Lightport into a beachhead for the Fallen and the Order into a command center.

But there was also a depthless grief pulling me under. Those paladins had trusted me. The ones still alive had, too, but now… I could see it in their eyes, in my memories. Where there might have once been a need to fight, a desperation to see this through, it was gone now. And I could hardly blame them.

I wasn’t sure if there was a word for this gyre of equal rage and grief churning within me, but I so desperately wanted one accurate enough that it felt tangible. Like something I could grasp and wring and tear. To stomp on the ground and end it.

All I could do was seethe in silence and wonder if I’d even be free enough to fight in the attack Lucius had planned for tomorrow. I wondered if they’d even be able to pull it off now.

My mind kept questioning if swearing in paladins under a new oath had been a good idea or not. If maybe I should have said that training right beneath the Guardian’s nose had been a bad idea when I’d felt it in my gut.

Maybe they’d have been alive right now. Maybe Isabel would have been around to see the fruits of her labor.

Maybe if we had all acted on first instinct instead of being frozen in shock, the celestial and demon war wouldn’t have been so terrible for humans in the first place. They had magic and surprise—shock—on their side, sure, but we had guns. Other weapons. Planes…

How had the humans lost so badly, so quickly?

But the answer was the same as it’d always been: magic. Magic won every time. Magic was the reason the Guardian had stolen my blood.

Why, then, hadn’t he outright killed me?

I questioned this for hours following the incident in the library. There was no way to know how much time had actually passed, as this brick-walled, cement-floored room had no windows. But I could feel in my bones that time was running out—an instinct aided by the constant, low shaking in the floor that hadn’t subsided since I’d woken here.

The Veil. Or rather, the tear in it.

The Guardian was already at work widening it, opening the tear large enough for what remained of the celestials’ formerly radiant empire to break through, and there was nothing I could do about it from a prison cell with magical bonds on my wrists keeping me from being able to use my magic. Just the same way Lucius had stopped me in the early days of us, before we’d surrendered to the mate bond that had changed everything.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the hard, brick wall. I’d tried to sleep for hours now in the hopes that, somehow, I could reach Lucius in my dreams again. Exhaustion pulled on every muscle in my body. It tugged my eyelids closed. But no sleep came, no matter how hard I tried.

This was the end.

Maybe.

I didn’t want to think so, but it was growing harder with every passing moment to believe otherwise.

Lucius will come. He’ll be here.

But what army will he have, and will it be enough?

And will he get here before the Guardian finishes his agenda with my blood?

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Faint, but there. When I lifted my gaze, I found an outline of Lucius’s form there beside me. Translucent and not fully there.

Not a dream.

“Lucius?” I asked, a waver in my voice. I bit back the tears threatening to fall.

Lucius—or this form of him—smiled softly before flickering out for a moment. I snapped forward as desperation clawed at my chest.

“Wait! Come back!” I said into the darkness.

“I’m here.” His voice filtered back in slowly. “It’s difficult to maintain our connection at this distance. Your magic…”

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