Page 161 of A Reign of Roses
And in the distance, Lazarus sent ice in a hailstorm toward us. Mari cast spell after spell, Griffin deflecting each blow, driving him back, each attack casting the night in sparks of vivid green.
I struck harder and faster, Arwen conceding step after step, fighting to maintain her footing.
I gritted my teeth, panting, shuddering with the effort—
Until my foot met hers in the snow. And I did not waste the chance.
My shadows drenched us both, a swirl of obsidian mist, suffocating her softly, lulling her into a sleep not unlike one I had offered her when she had been racked by wolfbeast poison. This, too, would be a mercy. I could only hope she would see it as such one day, many, many years from now.
Arwen struggled, but my shadows proved too strong. There was nothing she could do as her furious screams fell into whimpers. As my darkness, my wings and claws blended with the night and overpowered her like fog against the sun. I swore I heard my father’s low laugh.
“Please,” she begged, and my heart ripped from itself.
“Forgive me,” I murmured, pulling her close, feeling consciousness slip from her. Smelling honeysuckle and orange blossom for the last time. “I love you. I’ll love you wherever I am, whatever I am. Always.”
45
Arwen
“And I, you,” I whispered,meaning it with everything that made me.
It was the very skill Kane had noted when we’d sparred that doomed him. Thinking I’d weakened, that I’d be forced to succumb—I’d thought so myself. So, so many times. Yet once again, a well of power simmered beneath my lowest point. When I thought I had nothing left, I rose even higher.
Kane’s eyes flashed once with shock and horror before he flew backward with the force of my rippling, shimmering lighte. My sunfire lighting the night like dawn.
He did not stand.
And I didn’t cast more than a passing glance toward Griffin or Mari—though it nearly cracked me in half not to, I couldn’t waste a moment.
I grabbed the Blade of the Sun from the snow and surged for Lazarus, held within manacles of Griffin’s emerald lighte. My blade poised—
With a blast of icy wind Lazarus blew the manacles off and took off into the forest. Through frosty branches and all that howling darkness—
Heart pounding brutally inside my chest, I hurtled after him, legs pumping pleasantly, braid a drumbeat on either side of my spine. This, I knew I could best him at.
If Griffin or Mari followed, we lost them quickly. Circling through mighty trees and rolling fog and icy snow. Around boulders and dry grass. Twigs and lightning bugs and glowing pairs of eyes.
I did not want to hurt Kane, and yet I did.
I ran so fast my feet slapped along the forest floor, my mouth dry and numb as breath shuddered from it.
I did not want to leave Leigh or Ryder, and yet I did.
Until he reached a bare clearing. Rocks and moss on one side, a river across the other. Nowhere left to run. Panting like a dog.
I unsheathed my blade from my back, and it sang to me in greeting.
I do not want to die.
And yet, I will.
“You don’t have to,” Lazarus called to me through the night, and I was sure fear had finally crept into his voice. “It’s not too late to come with me and rebuild this useless world together.”
I angled my blade. “I knew you’d be scared in the end,” I snarled at him. “The greatest coward of them all.”
He roared with fury as his icy arrowheads flew in my direction. So many that I could only cut the Blade of the Sun through half, the rest gouging at my skin beneath my leathers, scarring the trees behind me as they hit.
My limbs shrieked with the pain.
