“The tower?”
“Safe. The king was reckless to attack us so brazenly. His forces surrendered this evening and beat a tactical retreat.”
“The king is dead. Killed by those he summoned forth.”
“Then we best undo his work,” Elora replied after a brief, surprised pause. “Go on, we’ll handle this.”
With the wizards joining the fray, Xavier’s hope for success burned brighter. The Moritta stood side by side with the mages, and between their steel and magic, he finally had a clear path toward the mirror. The king’s bodyguard lay beside it, murdered like so many other members of the guard and no longer a danger to Xavier. Only one obstacle stood in his way.
Caius.
“No!” the spymaster screamed. “I won’t let you ruin my hard work, you bloody lizard. Get away from that!”
Xavier whirled toward the wicked magician, only to shrink back as he caught a foul whiff of something he’d hoped to never breathe in again for the rest of his life.
Dragonsbane. Generous plumes of black smoke billowed from the lit torch in one hand, and his radiant staff glowed in the other.
“You don’t like this, do you?” The man chuckled and thrust forward with the torch again, sending the cloud of repugnant smoke wafting toward Xavier. “My people searched far and wide throughout the sewer until we found what remained of the dragon hunters’ supply. Of course, very little remained. Fragments of herb. A leaf here and there amidst ashes. But that is all it takes, isn’t it? Do you already feel the tickle in the back of your throat, dragon? Is there a tremble in your chest?”
Xavier didn’t dare to inhale the smoke, though the smell of it was already in his nose, burning down his nostrils and bringing tears to his eyes.
With what power he had left in his lungs, he exhaled a jet of flame and sent it billowing over the pebble-strewn ground. The corpses of guards and deceased demons alike went up in flames. He breathed until he had nothing left in his aching lungs and the gland that supplied his fiery breath was empty.
At the end, the spymaster remained unharmed and the remnants of his magical shield fell around him in glittering fragments.
But the dragon’s bane was gone. Sometimes life and battle were about the small successes, and while he may not have slain his enemy, he’d removed one threat from the battlefield.
Furious, Xavier charged to continue the onslaught with his physical gifts. He fought viciously, snapping with his teeth around an invisible force that barely sparkled with magic. He snapped again, clashed teeth together, and closed it around a shield that held up against his assault.
Their battles were reciprocal for those moments—Xavier fighting to end the warlock’s life, the Moritta and Rosalia fighting to buy him the time to do it.
He had to kill the man if he was to help his friends and allies, and he had to do it soon, before the next wave of demons emerged.
Xavier bore through the magical shield with all of his might. It fractured and splintered under his draconic strength and the power of his claws. The next shove obliterated it, and the momentum carried his talons forward into the man desperately hoping to fend him off.
He took no pleasure in the human blood spilled, but he hoped the spirits of the dark wizard’s victims were at peace.
Before staggering away from his slain foe, Xavier plucked the Rod of New Life from Caius’s twitching fingers. He drew his wings in tight against his body and crossed the final distance toward his objective. The mirror hung suspended within the gate at its apex, the source of the portal’s power.
As a dragon had made the blasted thing, only a dragon’s blood could undo the vile curse. Xavier dipped one claw tip into the blood welling from beneath the fissure in his tough hide, then he flicked the scarlet drop against the mirror’s glistening surface.
An instantaneous reaction quivered against the glass and it warped, shifting within the frame. Although he had spent much of his life studying the mirror and struggling to understand his grandfather’s notes, he’d never thought he would be faced with the opportunity to destroy it once and for all. Instinct told him what to do next, and he drove the Rod of New Life into the center of the portal.
The shockwave that spread from within it was cataclysmic. The ground rocked and quaked, and power reverberated out in every direction, flinging away surviving demons, Moritta warriors, and the few guardsmen clinging to life. Sheer force of will and his draconic constitution kept Xavier on his haunches.
All at once, the mystical doorway lost its insidious gleam and took on a semi-translucent, silver luster. The tranquil gleam spread skyward to create a pillar of light.
And the gateway to another world opened.
18
To the Void
Without Xavier by her side, Rosalia prayed that their last moments together would not be at the mercy of a demon army. She had to trust that he would succeed, just as he trusted she would do the same.
Her goal was very clear. Lacherra could not be allowed to escape. She had to pay for all the misery she had caused.
Finding her in the chaos wasn’t easy, but an intuitive tug had Rosalia ducking through a crumbling archway, narrowly avoiding a demon with claws as long as her arm. As she stepped through to the other side, Lacherra came into view, battling a Moritta warrior. He had the bulk Lacherra lacked, but the assassin was faster. She gutted him in one swift motion then turned to flee.
The callousness set something in Rosalia ablaze, and the vast distance between them evaporated in a single step, bringing her against Lacherra in a tackle. The two women collided quite abruptly and hit the ground rolling as the world around them erupted in noise and chaotic trembles. Had they been standing, the shockwave would have certainly pitched them both to the pebble-strewn, sandy floor.
“Murderer!”
Lacherra flipped Rosalia off of her and scrambled to her feet with a feline’s flexibility, nimble enough that she turned tumbling to the sand into an acrobatic art. As they faced off with their daggers each in hand, Rosalia saw red.
Prior to the explosion, the assassin would have needed to slip between a sea of Moritta to make her escape. Now, that wasn’t so necessary, as most of their forces and their enemies lay sprawled out. A wild feeling in Rosalia’s heart told her that if she hadn’t intervened, residual luck may have granted her opponent’s desire and spirited the Nairubian woman away.
Lacherra’s gaze briefly darted toward the portal, seeing the crushed corpse of her wizard cohort and a few dozen smoldering bodies. Too many emotions flickered across her features for Rosalia to get a proper read on the woman, but in the end, she looked back to her with cold, dark eyes.
“You may have stopped the demons, but this isn’t over.”
“Your king is dead. Caius is dead. You failed, Lacherra. Everything is over.”
“I can still kill you.”
“I’d like to see you try. You’re nothing without your stolen coin.”
Lacherra lunged forward, her quick movements nearly bringing her blade close enough to spill Rosalia’s guts. Rosa leapt back in the nick of time, but a sliver of fabric from her leathers fluttered to the ground. So much hate burned in the older woman’s eyes.
Despite everything Lacherra had done and the pain she had caused, Rosalia couldn’t bring herself to end the life of the woman who had raised her. Even if it had been under false pretenses.
But she didn’t need to kill Lacherra to stop her.
The wrist blade ejected, and light from the portal glinted off the edge. Lacherra blocked the first feint, but Rosalia stepped through her—beyond her—and pivoted on the right, swinging down and slashing the dagger across the back of her opponent’s heels.
It slid through leather, flesh, and tendon. As blood splashed over the hot sand, the other woman stumbled forward and collapsed.
Then the most peculiar thing happened. Shapes emerged once more from the portal, each of them a shimmering, semi-translucent figure. Several heartbeats passed before Rosalia caugh
t on—recognizing the face of a thief she’d once joined on a heist. Another familiar face emerged, the fellow a lookout who’d once worked the square in the Twilight Gardens.
One by one, several thieves passed through the new gateway, and with each one to arrive, Rosalia’s heart sped faster with the anticipation of what she expected but couldn’t trust herself to hope she would see.
It can’t be. They couldn’t.
Fate wouldn’t be so kind as to let her see them one final time.
And then it was. Hadrian and Mira stepped through the glittering rift. The latter gazed up at Xavier towering above them all, and she smiled.
Rosalia stumbled backwards a step, her emotions a wild chimera of bewilderment, heartache, and elation. Seeing them again tore open the old wounds that had only begun to mend.
The familiar faces of a hundred thieves had gathered all around them, and no matter what direction Lacherra tried to crawl, one of them blocked her. Despite their incorporeal, spiritual forms, she couldn’t leave.
Hadrian crouched down in front of Lacherra and tucked a silver braid behind her round ear. “Ah, my love, we meet again.”
The number of ghosts multiplied. Grandmaster Ombre, a Nairubian woman who in life had been a striking figure of obsidian complexion and silver braids, stood among a dozen other thieves. Ol’ One-Hand lurked behind her.
“A quick death is too good for you, sister.”
“I’m not your sister,” Lacherra hissed to her fellow countrywoman, swatting Hadrian away. Unlike his touch, her hand passed harmlessly through him. “All of you would have done the same if you were approached. You would have done the same to survive!”
“No,” Hadrian said softly.
“I may have been a thief, but I had honor,” Ol’ One-Hand dissented in an equally gentle voice.
The dead crowded the ruins, each of them a thief or the loved one of a thief, or a friend caught in the crossfire on the city’s most murderous night. They watched with solemn eyes.
“An easy death is too much for you,” one ghost said.
“Death is too easy for her,” said another.
“To the Void,” someone suggested.
“Yes…the Void.”
“To the Void!” became a rallying cry, a chant that all the spirits joined.
The last Rosalia saw of her former mother-figure and mentor was the sight of her attempting to claw her way out of the portal as the spirits of those she betrayed dragged her away, still living, to her doom.
At last, silence reigned on the battlefield beneath the dark sky. Night had completely fallen and swept milky swirls of silver starlight over the midnight sky, crafting a beautiful contrast to the ravaged land below.
Blood had been spilled needlessly upon the scorched earth, and what remained of the battleground in the wasteland of the old city was no place for men, let alone gods. Something about gazing upon them made the gods unfathomable to describe and struck her full of awe—so much that she barely registered the lumbering sound of Xavier’s heavy approach. The divine beings were light and energy and though Rosalia would always have the memory of meeting them, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to fully recall their features.
Energy swelled around them all, incorporeal at first before gaining substance in swirling, multicolored lights that were breathtaking to view. With the lights came a wind that grew in speed until the group was blocked from the sight of any stragglers.
Inja and Islena surpassed Rosalia’s expectations, not that she had ever expected to meet one of them. Despite the previous weeks of her adventure and meeting two other deities, it never occurred to her that she’d meet her own patrons.
“We are free at least from our captivity.”
“But…Moritan said a sacrifice was needed.”
“And you did sacrifice, as did your mate. Both of you have served admirably, Rosalia.”
“And you, dragon, have righted the wrong set long ago by your ancestor. Our fellow divines shall recover—with faith, their spirits will flourish. For this, we give our thanks. In appreciation, we will grant you one boon, a single wish to be shared between you, granted from your heart’s greatest desire.”
“I yield my share in this wish to Rosalia.”
“Xavier—”
“I have everything I need. You are enough.”
Her greatest desire? There were a dozen things Rosalia wanted, but none of them stood out in the forefront as her greatest desire. She wanted the Enimuran Thieves Guild restored. She wanted life returned to the unjustly slain. And even more than that, she wanted her family again.
If Hadrian and Frederico had been a father and grandfather to her, then Mira had been the closest she’d ever had to a sister. Her heart yearned for them and tears burned in her stinging eyes. “What if I ask you to return my loved ones to life again?”
“That is a noble wish, young one. While our power is great, there are other forces and beings of great power who would take offense to meddling with the natural order of life.”
“But it wasn’t natural. They were murdered. Please. I don’t want riches, powers, or magical gifts. I just want my family.”
Islena’s pale eyes drifted to her twin. He glanced at her. “There must be something we could do, isn’t there, brother?”
“Something,” he agreed. The twins held eye contact for three seconds, that moment in time lasting an eternity to Rosalia. Her heart seemed to slam a dozen times against her ribs in that span. When it ended, Inja flicked his gaze toward her. “We will leave one soul. Resurrect one body, as restoring even a single spirit will send vast ripples across the Ocean of Fate. More than that would cause irreversible damage. Is this a satisfactory gift, child?”
One soul.
Faced with an impossible challenge, Rosalia turned to the ghosts lingering on the sand. How could she possibly choose between one of them?
Hadrian pinned her under a knowing look. “I’ve lived a long life, Rosalia. I’ve seen many things, traveled to many places, and found peace with my end.”
“But La—”
“I loved her. It is a pity our affection was one-sided. But I also loved you with all of my heart. You were the daughter I always wanted, the child I longed to have with Lacherra. But she did not want a child, and now, in my death, I understand why.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He stepped forward. Though his steps didn’t disturb the sand, she felt the ghostly caress of his fingers as he took her hands. “I could have raised no better a child than the one your mother left in my care. Walk forward with peace and happiness, Rosalia. Remember my teachings. As long as you hold those close, I will always be with you.”
“I love you.”
“As I love you. Remember my words, and never forget them.”
“I won’t.” She choked on the promise, breaths ragged and thick with emotion.
Hadrian gave her another of his quiet smiles then faded away.
And he was gone. Her memories and the love she held for him were all that remained.
Heart pounding in her chest, Rosalia turned to the others who remained. How could she choose between Frederico, Mira, and her own mother?
“Not me,” Frederico said, chuckling. “I’m old, darling. If I didn’t die that night, it might have been the next year, or perhaps the year after that.”
“You weren’t that old.”
“Illness waits for no age. It takes the old, the young, the weak, and even the strong. Sickness does not discriminate.” A weight of certainty settled in her gut and sent tendrils of cold lacing down her limbs. “I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, as I still didn’t want to admit it to myself. Let me be the least of your concerns.”
“I miss you.”
The ghost placed both of his hands on her shoulders and gazed at her. “And I miss you, but I’ve never truly left your side. Whenever you dance, remember me and know I’m there with you, my sweet. With every song you sing, every performance you give, a part of me will be
there. There is a final gift for you in my apartment, hidden in a vault built into the floor beneath the wardrobe. I intended it always for you and Mira to open together, but do with it what you will.”
She nodded, biting her lower lip. “Okay.”
“Watch over her, Xavier. Be the man she deserves.”
The weredragon rested one talon on Rosalia’s shoulder. “I will, old man. I may never be the man she deserves, but I’ll live each day striving to become him.”
When Frederico’s ghost faded, only two remained. The other spirits that had poured through the rift had already moved on, leaving only Dahlia and Mira. Her mother and her closest friend.
The last of her restraint crumbled, and tears came rushing down her cheeks in great salty rivers no matter how many times Rosalia wiped them away.
“Mama, I… There’s so many things I’ve told myself I would say if I ever could meet you. Now that you’re here, nothing comes to mind.”
Her mother’s quiet laughter warmed her in her soul. “Then I should be the one to speak. After all, I’ve waited years to say these words to you, Rosalia. You make me so proud, and yet no words seem adequate enough to convey my thoughts.”
The tears wouldn’t stop. Rosalia’s shoulders shook and a wretched, humiliating sob worked its way out of her throat.
“You’ve grown to become a spectacular woman. You are everything I hoped you would be. Brave. Smart. Loyal. You disrupted the very fabric of this world and ended a tyrant’s reign.”
When her mother stepped forward and caressed her cheek, Rosalia’s breath hissed in. All her life, from her earliest childhood to the first moment she’d stepped on stage, and even after, all Rosalia had wanted was to hug her mother one more time.
“I have loved you from the first moment I knew you existed, my little rose. But I would not take this wish from you.”
“But I barely got to know you. She robbed us of our time together.”
“No. I have always been with you. Wherever you go, you carry me with you here,” her mother said, raising one semi-corporeal hand to touch above Rosalia’s heart. Warmth bloomed beneath the touch and spread through her chest. Her spark grew and swelled until she felt it shimmering throughout her entire body. “My love for you will never fade, but I need not be on this plane to love you. You know who this wish is meant for.”
Diamond in the Rough: a Fantasy Romance (Daughter of Fortune Book 3) Page 13
