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  “You will always hold my heart, Andriana,” I whispered. The dagger pressed in harder.

  “And you mine, Ronan,” she whispered back.

  “Enough,” Lord Jala bit out. “Do what you must.”

  It was as if I distanced myself at that moment. As if I wasn’t there, in this tight circle, holding the hand of the one I loved most. I was far away, doing the hard thing that had to be done, watching my lips move as if I was someone else entirely. “I release you,” I said. “I release you. I release you.”

  And with a slip of the silk strip from our joined hands, it was done.

  CHAPTER

  43

  ANDRIANA

  I felt the searing pain in him, even as I recognized my own. I knew what drove him to do it. Fierce protection. Sacrificial love.

  “Take him back to the dungeon,” Lord Jala said to the guards. “Kapriel too. We shall decide what we will do with them later.”

  “No,” Keallach said, turning toward me. “It is best if they are both here to witness this.”

  I gaped at him, wondering over his cruelty. Could he not see the sorrow that both Ronan and I felt? Did he not know what witnessing our vows would do to him?

  The monk looked to me and then to Keallach, still bound. “His hands must be free,” he said to Sethos. “It is part of the vows.”

  Keallach stared up at Sethos. “You either trust me or you do not. But the monk is right. Without us holding hands, the vows will not be binding.”

  Sethos’s eyes narrowed.

  “Sethos,” Keallach said, “my sword-bearing arm is likely broken and—”

  “It is not the idea of you lifting a sword that bothers me,” he said, coming down the two stairs to stand beside us. “But you are correct. I either trust you or I do not.” He considered him thoughtfully.

  “Have I not done all you have asked?” Keallach said. “Did I not deliver the Ailith into your very hands?”

  “At an obviously great personal cost,” Sethos said, as if that was a negative thing rather than a positive. He inclined his head to a guard beside Keallach. “Free him.”

  I shivered as my arm cuff sent an agonizing chill down to my elbow and wrist, but then I felt warmth too, a curious back and forth.

  Keallach offered me both hands, even the one that was red and swollen. Trying not to hurt his injured arm, I accepted both, doing my best to ignore Sethos beside us and to concentrate solely on my brother before me, desperate to discern if he was doing all of this for his own good, or for all of ours. Keallach stared into my eyes, and in such close proximity, touching him, I knew then what I needed to know most. In him, I read love and loyalty and hope.

  For me as a sister.

  Not as a bride.

  He smiled a little, as if knowing I must have received his message by the look in my eyes.

  “Get on with it,” Sethos barked at Zulon.

  The sun was setting, and clouds were building in the west as if a thunderstorm brewed. I shivered, even under the heavy fabric of my gown. My armband continued to alternate between bursts of cold and heat, recognizing both enemy and Ailith kin, as confused as I was at what was transpiring around us.

  Zulon stepped closer, the small man reaching only my shoulder in height. But I remembered that he was a wicked fighter. “Who stands for these two, wishing to share their marital vows?”

  “We do,” the Council said as one, making me start at the volume of their combined voices. It sent me to trembling. Was this happening? Regardless of what Keallach intended, was I about to become his bride?

  Keallach squeezed my hand with his good one. Trust me, his eyes seemed to say.

  “Present the bride and groom,” said the monk.

  Lord Jala stepped forward. “I present Emperor Keallach of Pacifica, who wishes to wed this woman.”

  A long silence followed, until Lord Fenris drew his sword and lifted it to Tressa’s chin, forcing her to speak. “I present Andriana of the Valley, who …” The sword pressed harder against her throat. “Who wishes to wed this man?”

  Even without looking at her, I knew she hated every word she uttered. But Keallach held me captive with his blue-green eyes.

  Such love as this, I hadn’t felt outside of Ronan’s own.

  I gaped at him, frightened, even if his chief emotion was a desire to serve, honor, protect. I couldn’t quite trust that the dark one wasn’t using him to trick me into this.

  I centered in, willing him to focus on those ways that served the Maker’s cause. He was clearly in a battle, and I was the prize.

  It was a battle the Maker and I had to win.

  Call on the Maker, not your own gifting, Niero had said to me.

  “Maker,” I prayed aloud. “Keallach is yours. No longer theirs. Pull him back!”

  Sethos was on me in an instant, clenching my throat. “You dare … to invoke … that name … among us?” he seethed.

  Keallach lifted a hand and sent Sethos reeling away from me, slamming him against the wall. Then he did the same to the nearest guards.

  Others around us surged into motion. Ronan wrenched free, taking down one captor and then another and cutting Kapriel loose.

  “No!” Sethos screamed, stumbling back toward us. “Guards! Sheolites, to me!”

  Kapriel lifted his hands to the skies, already thick with swirling, sunset clouds that looked like the beginnings of a vase atop a pottery wheel, just taking shape into a funnel.

  I turned to Tressa. “Go to the dungeon. Find your way through,” I said, reaching out to will courage into her. “Free them all. Send them to us.”

  She tore away, and I bent and grabbed a fallen guard’s sword, just in time to block Lord Fenris’s first savage strike.

  CHAPTER

  44

  KEALLACH

  Lords Kendric and Daivat fell quickly, facing Ronan, Kapriel, Dri, and me.

  But Max and Fenris remained, with Sethos between them and Sheolites closing in from every side. Sethos was lifting his hands to me, fingers curved, a shriek coming from his mouth that deafened me and seemed to block me from my gifting.

  I ended up near Dri, back to back. More than anything, I wanted Dri to live. I want her to live, Maker. Take me if it has to be one of us, I thought, the first time I’d ever thought or wished or prayed such a thing. And it felt good. Right.

  Holy.

  I returned Maximillian’s first strikes with fervor. In all of my life, had I ever felt such a thing? Claimed? Holy?

  Only the ceremony in which I’d received my armband compared. And in the Ailith’s circle at Georgii Post. Surrounded by my brothers and sisters. Shoulder to shoulder along the Way. That is what I felt in this moment again.

  It was like a slap across the face.

  I’d been in a reverie. A dream state, casting between one realm and another. Even if I’d decided to remain true to my Ailith kin, I knew what frightened Dri. Sethos’s dark power pulled me back to my old life and ways, again and again.

  But I was called to the new. To the Remnants. To my Call, as deeply a part of me as the blood coursing through my veins. To the Maker.

  It was he who had brought me into the world, and it was he who would usher me out.

  I centered in on the thought, closing my eyes, willing away all the other forces that had a call on my mind and my heart. Maker.

  The One who had made me one with sisters and brothers, a holy force, each with their own gift to lend to the cause … or forsake it.

  I opened my eyes, watching as Dri caught a Sheolite guard’s strike, turned, and sent his sword flying.

  I swore under my breath. She was lovely.

  Beyond anything I could dream of as my own.

  And in love—forever in love—with another.

  Ronan.

  I let out a growl of complaint, finally understanding it for the last time. She wasn’t mine.

  She was my brother’s.

  My brother’s. Not the brother formed in tandem in my mother’s womb. But ju
st as surely my brother’s.

  I turned to two guards who had just entered the fray, sending their swords skittering across the stones. They stared at me in stark terror as I approached and looked them in the eye. “Go below to the dungeons, and free the prisoners. Quickly!”

  Their eyes dilated, and they turned on their heels to run and do as I bid.

  I could feel my enemy’s eyes on the back of my neck, his hatred, even before my armband told me he was advancing.

  Sethos. My once-savior.

  My utter downfall.

  He carried the dead Kendric’s sword in his hand and came at me, nostrils flared with rage. I blocked his strike, and our swords crossed above our heads. “I trusted you,” I said, panting from my exertion at holding him back.

  “As I did you,” he spat, whirling to strike again.

  But I could tell he wasn’t certain—wasn’t sure that I was wholly the Maker’s yet. Because I knew there was far more power behind his strike than he had just now brought against me. And I was using my weaker hand. He was wondering if there was still an opportunity, a way in.

  “It is over, Sethos,” I said, our swords cutting a vibrating sound in our ears as we slid apart again. “You did your best. But this day belongs to the Maker.”

  With that word, he advanced on me with a vengeance, granting me no quarter, no edge. I frowned, trying to set up blocks with my gifting, but failed. I needed time to concentrate, I decided. A breath of time. But onward he came, until I was backed against a wall.

  If Vidar and Bellona hadn’t arrived then to aid me, each with a sword tip at his neck, I would likely have died.

  Sethos stilled.

  “Seems the rats have escaped their dungeon,” Vidar quipped. “Shall this be a swift or drawn-out death, Lord Sethos?” he asked. Behind him, I saw Killian take down a Sheolite guard, nearly cutting him in half.

  “Oh,” Sethos sneered, dark eyes shifting left and right, “let’s draw it out. But it will be your deaths I shall relish, not my own.”

  Vidar’s eyes danced. “As you wish,” he said, sliding his sword in a shallow groove across Sethos’s chest. Bellona thrust her sword forward, aiming for his jugular, but Sethos twisted in a frighteningly inhuman move, and her sword met only air.

  “You shall pay for that,” Sethos seethed toward Vidar, putting a hand to his chest. He grabbed for me next, but Bellona was already pulling me out of harm’s way, and I found myself side by side with Ronan, who had just brought down a Sheolite. Together, we looked around. And found whom we sought.

  Andriana.

  “You go to her,” I grunted. “I must finish Sethos.”

  “Wait!” Tressa said, running toward me, Killian beside her, and placing her healing hands on my injured arm. “Just give me a moment…”

  ANDRIANA

  Two Sheolites moved in on me, one from either side, and I shifted back and forth. The sword was awkward in my hand, too big for my grip. And my cursed dress, so tight all along my body, made it feel like I was fighting with my legs tied together. It wasn’t long before one Sheolite disarmed me, sending my sword clanging to the stones.

  I glanced around for anything I could grab to protect myself, while still more Sheolites arrived to fight the prisoners who had escaped and followed the Ailith to aid us. I reached for a silver tray just as my attacker brought his sword toward me, and managed to block his strike. The tray folded around his weapon, hitting my shoulder, and I wrenched it away, letting out a humorless laugh at the look on his face. Apparently, he’d never attacked a Remnant armed with a tray. But once again, he advanced on me, pulling two daggers from his belt. I edged away, putting a table and then a chair between us.

  With a roar, Ronan came after him, swiftly taking him down. Once again, I grabbed a sword from the ground and stood, back-to-back with Ronan, as the next came at us. “This cursed dress,” I said to him. “I can barely move.”

  “Stay beside me,” he grunted, blocking his next adversary’s blow.

  He needn’t have said it. I was determined not to be separated from him again. We used long-practiced moves and quiet words of warning to deal with the two upon us, and then a third after them. Which was good, because clearly the Sheolites no longer had orders to spare me. They were bent on killing us both.

  Weariness settled over me like a net. We couldn’t keep this up for long. We needed the Remnants in full force. Maker, show us the way.

  It was then that I felt the warmth in my arm cuff, the presence of the Maker and his angels. Vidar was grinning as he advanced on a Sheolite before him, waggling his eyebrows at me as I caught his glance. I saw Killian, protecting Kapriel as he lifted his hands to the sky, the wind and rain now just beginning to hit us. Azarel and Asher were there, each firing arrows into our enemies. Lord Cyrus now fought Lord Jala.

  Still more allies flooded onto the terrace. Drifter and Aravander and Georgiian, and even some Pacificans, all going after our enemies. In the sky, the clouds—alight with coral sunset hues—swirled, the funnel building in response to Kapriel’s call to arms. Those enemies in front of us found themselves fighting on two sides, and we began winnowing away their number. Wind began whipping around us.

  Keallach was advancing on Sethos, palms out before him, face taut with deadly intent. Sethos staggered and tried to lift his sword, but it was as if it weighed a thousand pounds. “Stop it!” he shouted at Keallach. “You are mine!”

  “No,” Keallach said, shaking his head a little, grief in his eyes. “You tried to make me yours, but I have always belonged to the Maker.”

  One of Azarel’s arrows pierced Sethos’s shoulder.

  He sneered at her as she drew another arrow across her bow, his wings unfolding behind him. But he looked again to Keallach. “You think the Maker shall forgive all you have done to harm him and his cause? He shall send you to join me, one way or another.”

  “No,” I said, moving closer. “He shall not.”

  I could feel Keallach weakening, doubting in the face of the enemy’s lies, and I placed my hand on his shoulder. Vidar came up too, putting his hand on the other shoulder. Together, we drove toward Sethos, knowing our Knights would protect our backs. Our battle was here, against the darkest one we’d ever met. Tressa came behind us, putting her hands on Vidar and me, and I felt the surge of power move through us into Keallach.

  Sethos dropped his sword and continued to move backward. “You think this ends here?” he spat.

  “Yes, it ends here,” Kapriel said, coming to stand beside his brother and bringing down the heart of the funnel cloud around us. It sealed us off from the others. Every time someone tried to approach us, they were tossed aside. It was like we stood in the eye of a tornado.

  Sethos hit a marble column and looked wildly about. His wings were unfurled, as if he was poised to fly, but with our combined power, we kept him in place.

  Azarel approached him, drawing an arrow across her bowstring.

  “For every one of the Maker’s beloved you have murdered, for the harm you have wrought upon this world, I will send you to the underworld, never to return.”

  “You, little angel?” he sneered. “You truly think one such as you can take me down? Did you not see how I destroyed your beloved Raniero?”

  He dodged her next arrow and advanced upon her. Azarel let her wings unfurl, and in a blur of motion drew Sethos to one side.

  Allowing Ronan’s sword to cut into his back.

  And Killian’s sword to pierce him through the belly as he arched.

  And Bellona’s dagger to drive into his neck.

  He fell to his knees as Killian withdrew his sword, gurgling, choking on his own blood, and letting his staff fall.

  “May you rot in the dark, thinking about all you once had … and lost,” Azarel said, lifting his staff in her small, strong hand. “This is for Raniero,” she bit out, and then pierced him through the heart with his own weapon.

  “And this is for everyone else,” Killian said, bringing his blade down acr
oss Sethos’s neck in a killing arc that vanquished our enemy.

  Forever.

  CHAPTER

  45

  ANDRIANA

  The wind ceased, and the sudden silence sounded like its own form of sound. It was like everyone on the crowded terrace held their breath. But as we slowly turned to see our friends, the Maker’s own, standing with our foes at their feet, a cheer rose into the air. Men and women raised fists, shouting, smiling, hooting their praise, and then pressed in toward us, lifting us, dancing, and singing.

  We had done it. Or rather, the people had done it, I thought. The Remnants had merely been the catalysts. All along, the Way was much stronger than anything we held as our own gifts. Together, we are strongest, I thought, relaxing, exulting in the sensation of being held by hundreds, passed along above them as they sang and danced, carried out of the palace and into the streets where bonfires had been lit and thousands more seemed to congregate. It was there in a large plaza that I was finally set upon my feet, and soon, Keallach and Kapriel, Ronan, Bellona, Vidar, Tressa, Killian, and Azarel were set beside me.

  I caught Vidar’s furrowed brow as he looked to an alleyway and spied some people, with bundles upon their backs or at the sides of mudhorses, moving away from us, down the street. I cupped his cheek and gave him an understanding look. “This is the Maker’s city now,” I said. “People accept it or they do not. It is their choice.”

  “But why?” He shook his head, hands on his hips. “Why would they not choose this?” he said, throwing his hands up and gesturing around, his grin returning. The people did not allow us to continue our conversation, but wrapped us into a dance in which you placed your right arm around the shoulder of the person next to you and your left arm around the hip of the other. To my left was Ronan, and he smiled down at me with such love and glory that I thought I might burst with how it filled me.

  He helped me keep my feet, seeing anew how the gown bound me, and when the song finally waned, he pulled me aside, bending down with his knife to split the skirt from knee to ankle. I sighed with relief. Even though the bodice was still tight, being able to move freely was just the aid I sought. He sheathed his knife and then pulled me into his arms, cradling my head and stroking my back. “Dri, I am so glad … for all that’s been accomplished, but most of all, that you are safe.”