by JA Andrews
She needed sunlight.
Stretching one hand toward the fire, she pulled vitalle in and funneled it out her other hand into Roan’s body. The fire dimmed slightly, and her fingers stung. The vitalle flowed into him like a dribble of light in an ocean of darkness.
Sini’s breaths came in little shallow hisses. The fire would never be enough to help him. A tickle of fear ran across her neck. Roan was barely alive, so who had she felt—?
“Leave him be, Sini,” a voice said softly from behind her. “He’s past even your skills. At least at night.”
Sini whirled.
Lukas stood behind her, burning stones on his hands and around his neck oozing trails of light and the drawn sword in his hand sheathed in tendrils of darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sini’s hand clenched Roan’s shirt at the sight of Lukas.
It took her several heartbeats to make the connection. Rett hadn’t called her here, Lukas had. She felt an instant’s relief that Rett was safe before a wave of fury filled her and she wanted to fling herself at Lukas, cursing him for the battle and the Stronghold and the twins.
But his face stopped her anger cold. He smiled at her almost warmly, with a hint of smugness at her surprise.
“I hoped you’d hear my call.” He leaned easily against an ornate desk with a window open wide to the starry night sky behind him. His smile was familiar, but his face had changed, even over the last few days. The differences were small—a harshness in his eyes, a cruel twist to the edge of his mouth—but they changed it profoundly.
A chill loneliness seeped into her, pushing back the anger. Everything she’d wanted to say to him died on her lips. She gripped Roan’s shirt and stared at the dark sword in Lukas’s hand.
“What did you do to Roan?”
“The lord consort was unable to see reason,” Lukas said. “I warned him not to attack. A common sword is no match for this.”
The chaos of what she was feeling shrank into a heavy knot in her stomach. The shape of the sword in Lukas’s hand was identical to Svard Naj. The wooden hilt looked as though it had been hastily carved, merely to be functional. The blade, what she could see of the silver behind the swirl of shadows, was rough and slightly irregular. Runes along the blade caught the light. Swift Death.
“It is a shame,” Lukas admitted, “that the Duke of Greentree had to sacrifice his son for the good of the realm, but it will play well with the people. And it will be easy enough to find Madeleine another suitably accommodating husband. Had I known Roan was so stubborn and naive, I would never have told the duke to use him. I hear he has a younger cousin who is not as short-sighted.”
“How are you so selfish?” She demanded, turning back to Roan, trying to swallow the dread rising in her. He was so weak. She pulled more vitalle from the fire, pushing it into his body. It wouldn’t be enough, but she did it anyway. He just needed to survive until dawn.
“Come away from him,” Lukas said quietly. “There’s nothing for you here any longer. You can’t save him, he’s all but gone already. None of this is your fault, and if you want to blame me for it, I understand. But I love you, and someday I hope you’ll see that I’m doing all this for your own good.”
The words and the familiarity of his voice caught at her. That voice had given her sanity on the Sweep. But his words—had his words always been this twisted? Everything inside her felt too chaotic, too afraid. Roan’s body was so cold.
“We’ll go soon,” Lukas continued. “I’m not leaving you to this place after I worked so hard to free you from all of this.”
Sini shoved herself to her feet, the anger back in force. “By starting a war?” she flung at him. “By destroying the Stronghold? By killing people I love?”
“I know you don’t understand. No one wants to hear that the Keepers aren’t the saviors we thought they were. But these aren’t the Keepers of the old days, Sini. They’ve lost all the things that make them great. They can’t fight enemy hordes or water demons. They couldn’t contribute to this small battle.”
He gave a derisive snort. “They didn’t even know that the Duke of Greentree was working for me all this time. They don’t offer the protection they claim to, and it’s time Queensland was free of their lies. After a short time, no one will even miss the Keepers. Even you’ll get over them, the way everyone gets past childhood heroes.”
There was a scuffling at the window and the darkness shifted. A glitter slipped into the room and a trail of light blue light slithered down behind the desk. A black reptilian face came into the firelight next to Lukas. He set his hand on the inky black dragon’s head.
Sini took a step back. A third young dragon.
“This is Umbra.” The creature fixed Sini with white, emotionless eyes. “Isn’t she beautiful?” The rings on his hand left thin lines of light as he stroked her head. His jaw tightened. “Anguine is useless. He barely had the strength to fly and is nearly free of my compulsion stones.” For a breath he glared at Sini. “And now Umbra’s brothers have been taken—” He took a calming breath. “But that may be for the best. It was exhausting trying to keep control of four dragons. Now we can raise Umbra to be everything we need.”
He stood surrounded by so much darkness.
“Everything around you is black,” Sini whispered.
Lukas snorted. “Don’t be dramatic, Sin.”
The swirls of shadow around the black sword had lessened. Fingers of it still drifted up Lukas’s arm.
“What’s that blade putting into you?” She could feel the pull of it, tugging gently at the edges of her vitalle. Hungry and waiting.
“Strength.” Lukas shifted so she could see the blue blade sheathed across his back. “Mostly it pours energy into the other blade, but some of it comes into me. I never tire when I hold it. It’s amazing.”
She cast out and felt the energy of the sword not only wrapping around Lukas’s arm, but delving deep inside him. It wormed into his chest, snaked up his neck and into his mind before flowing out through his back into the blue sword, Naj.
It moved an incredible amount of energy. The vitalle from the fire and the little bits of the candles would be nothing to it. She stepped closer. Without the sunlight, how was she going to have enough vitalle to destroy the blade?
“How much energy can it take in?” She let a begrudging interest into her voice.
“Close enough to an entire healthy person”—he nodded to Roan—“that they’re essentially dead when it’s done. It takes it from them in a breath, but the energy moves slowly through me. There’s no pain at all. When it happens…” He closed his eyes and drew in a long, luxuriant breath. “It won’t take anything more until it’s moved everything into the blue sword. That blade is so strong it can slice through armor with no effort at all. Until this one is ready, if anyone else were to threaten us, Naj could deal with them. Of course, it’s been long enough since Roan attacked me that this blade is almost ready again.”
Sini kept her eyes fixed on the shadows wrapped around the blade. “It’s black.”
“What?”
“The light around Naj is blue, but this blade has nothing but shadows.”
“Really?” he asked eagerly. “Have you ever seen anything else like it?”
She shook her head. “It’s so violent.”
“That’s the point, Sini. They’re both so violent you only need to use them once or twice, then the threat of them is enough.”
The pull of the black sword grew stronger. Fingers of darkness began to reach out of it toward her and made her skin crawl. “That blade is a terrible thing.”
“Only in the wrong hands.” Lukas’s fingers wrapped around the hilt. All the burning stones in his rings oozed little clouds of energy. Bits of the blackness merged with them, wrapping around the other swirls of color, tainting them darker.
She raised her eyes to his face. “Yours are the wrong hands.”
“But I’ve accomplished so much,” he objected. “Tomorrow
we will sign a peace treaty with Queensland.”
“Who will sign it?” Sini demanded. “You killed the queen!”
He looked puzzled for a moment before grinning. “I didn’t expect you to know that yet. You always surprise me. Saren was an impediment to peace. Madeleine will sign the treaty tomorrow. It will give her access to the gold merchants just as before and will ensure that no one bothers us.”
Sini fixed her attention on his sword. She needed the sunlight to destroy it. Maybe if she agreed to go with him, she could destroy it at first light and then escape. Roan lay on the floor, though. She’d never get back in time to heal him. Of course, even if she was here, dawn might be too late.
Shouts echoed from outside and Lukas cocked his head to the side, listening with a pleased air. “There is the final step. We can leave. The Duke of Greentree has proved invaluable.”
Sini swallowed down a new fear. “What is he doing?”
Lukas sighed. “Why do you ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to?”
“Tell me.”
He paused for a moment. “The duke kept several of his units in old barracks behind the hold. They’re now spreading the news that Queen Saren was assassinated by a city guard who was a personal friend of the Keepers. A whole unit is being tasked with…bringing the Keepers here to face justice for the crime.”
She stepped toward him, furious, and Umbra let out a low hiss.
“Careful, little sister. Umbra is viciously protective of me. I’ll teach her to protect you too, in time. But for now, you should stay back.”
More shouts came in the window and Sini flinched.
“There’s nothing you can do for them,” he said gently. “Not against trained soldiers. At night.”
The truth of his words stung, and she turned her attention back to his sword. Maybe she couldn’t help anyone outside, but she could do something about that monstrosity.
He followed her gaze and held the sword. “Do you have any idea how much power this gives me? I don’t need to touch someone to draw life out of them. Roan didn’t even get close, and I gain more control all the time. Together with you, Sini, I could…” He laughed wildly. “Can you imagine? Is there anything that could stop us?”
Lukas stepped toward her. “Do you know how many times I’ve wished I had your powers? And your mind?” He grinned. “I have missed you!”
Coldness gripped her, freezing her anger into something sharp. His words rang like a hollow, twisted form of the dedication in the twins’ book. …Sini, whom we love not for all the healing…or your astounding power, but for the joy you brought us.
Sini searched Lukas’s face for something she couldn’t find. “Did you ever want me?”
“Those things are you.” His voice was tinged with exasperation. “Without your powers, your life would be utterly different. You’d still be a street rat in the Lees. Vahe would never have noticed you. Killien would never have trained you. The Keepers would never have taken you to the Stronghold. Everything that has ever happened to you has been because you have amazing powers. Without them, you wouldn’t be you.”
The words snapped something inside her; some power his words had held broke. She wanted to shake him. “Your view is so small and twisted, you can’t even see anyone. You can’t even see me.” She stepped closer to him. “I keep hoping you’ll open your eyes.”
The black sword pulled at her again. The shadows wrapping it were thin now, brushing gently over Lukas’s hand.
Everything has a limit.
Drawing vitalle from the dying fire, Sini funneled it into the sword. The shadows grew and climbed up Lukas’s arm.
His eyes widened and he looked at the sword. “What are you doing?”
She pulled more vitalle from the fire. The flames sputtered and Lukas twitched. “Stop it.”
The blade was like a vast, hungry emptiness. The little bits of light dripped into an ocean of black. The sword must have a limit, but it was far more energy than she could find.
She needed sunlight.
The more she put into it, the more the strands of darkness thickened, wrapping up to Lukas’s shoulder.
“It’s changing you.” Sini watched the darkness sink into Lukas’s body. Chesavia had been right. Maybe the war chief Naj would have been a better man without these swords. She cut off the flow of vitalle into the blade. “You don’t have to be like this. You’re doing all of this because of the sword.”
He snorted. “I’ve been planning this for years. I didn’t even know the sword existed before I heard a story about it in Napon last summer, and I only found it weeks ago. It’s doing nothing beyond helping me to achieve things I’ve worked towards for a long time.”
“But before you found it,” Sini said, “you only did what was necessary. You sickened a few animals, you caused trouble along the border, planted the idea of unrest and that the Keepers weren’t trustworthy. But after the sword…” She looked up into Lukas’s face. “That’s when you went to Gulfind, isn’t it?”
Lukas’s eyes narrowed. “I only did what was needed there, too.”
She almost didn’t ask, but Lukas needed to understand, and maybe she did too. “How many people did you kill?”
Lukas’s hand tightened on the sword. “It was Anguine, he was too…enthusiastic.”
“You controlled the dragon,” she pushed. “You caused it. That was the first time you did anything like that.”
Lukas looked down at the sword, shaking his head dismissively. “It had to be done. I didn’t intend to, but there was no other choice…” An edge of uncertainty crept into his voice.
“What happened?”
Lukas blinked down at the sword, his brow drawn as though searching for the answer. “When I arrived, I had a meeting with the leaders of their merchant guild. They refused to just give me the gold I required, as I had expected, but when I called Anguine to threaten them…they attacked me,” he said sharply. He paused. “Or they were about to.” His voice lost its certainty. “I didn’t intend to kill anyone. But it started and Anguine came…”
“Put the sword down, Lukas,” she said gently.
He shifted away from her. “I have no desire to put it down,” he snapped. “It’s what I’ve always needed. Have you ever—” He chewed on his lip. “Have you ever found something so strong that you wanted to be part of it?”
She stretched her fingers, the memory of the sunfire thrumming through them. “That sword is death and destruction.”
He shook his head. “It is power. It is safety from any who would harm us. Forever.”
“Put it down,” she pleaded. “When dawn comes, I can destroy it.”
Lukas took a step away from her. “When dawn comes, we’ll be long gone.” He started toward the door, but Sini stepped in front of him.
“No. That sword needs to be destroyed.”
Lukas fixed her with an irritated look. “I know you don’t approve of my methods, but after tonight, we’ll have nothing but peace.” The blade in his hand still swirled with tendrils of darkness.
“That sword wasn’t made for peace.”
Sini studied it. If the sword took in less than the vitalle of a healthy person before stopping, then its limit must be near that. All she needed was more vitalle than a healthy person.
She could light a fire—her stomach dropped. Her ring was gone. A surge of fury rushed through her at how little power she had. After all the sunfire she’d controlled today, without her ring she couldn’t even start a fire.
She cast out through the room. There was Lukas, the now weak fire, Roan’s dim body…and the dragon.
It was the dimness of Roan’s body that made her decision. He needed as much help as she’d be able to give him tonight if he was to survive until dawn when she could really help him. She straightened. It would require actually touching the dragon. She stifled a grimace.
First she’d gather everything else she could find. The burning stones Lukas wore each glowed like tiny fireba
lls. The energy twirled out of them, creating a path she could easily access. Knowing Lukas wouldn’t be able to see the light, she began drawing the energy out of them. Streams of colored light flowed out of every burning stone on Lukas’s body into her hand.
“On the Sweep,” she said quietly, “you always protected me.”
“You’re my sister,” he said simply.
“No, I was a stranger, and you still protected me. But I never protected you.”
“You were only a child. You shouldn’t have been protecting anyone.”
“But I’m not a child now. And it’s long past time someone protected you.” She straightened. “That sword is damaging you. Put it down.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “You already lost me my dragon. If I put down this sword, I might as well have nothing.”
“You’ll have yourself back.” She paused. “And you’ll have me.”
“You’ve always been too naive,” he snapped.
The words stabbed into her, but she forced herself to keep trying, “Aren’t you tired of being controlled?”
He held the blade out. “No one controls me. This sword is my freedom.”
The sound of fighting grew out the window and Sini pushed away worry for the others. The dark blade was flat for a handbreadth where it came out of the hilt before the cutting edge grew sharp.
She took a bracing breath. There were too many people here that would need her help come dawn. This needed to end now.
Sini shifted slightly towards Lukas. Umbra’s eyes narrowed and she let out another hiss.
Good.
Sini pushed back the panic rising in her. This was going to hurt.
“I hope someday,” she told Lukas, “you’ll understand I’m doing this because I love you.”
Sparing one breath filled with longing for the sunlight, Sini thrust her hand forward and clutched the flat portion of the blade.
