He hunches beside me, staring at Colin. Eogan wants me to get up. Wants me to fix this.
“Our world is unfixabl—” I start to tell him, but when I turn, his expression says he’s all too aware of the depth of brokenness that exists. His hand is stained red with the blood of his brother.
His fingers go to the side of Colin’s head. “You were a good man, mate.” Then slowly they move to my chin to tip my face up. Forcing my eyes to look in his. “He didn’t do this so you could fix things, Nym.” And for a second, I swear I see a teardrop mix with the rain flecks on his cheek.
Then another.
They drip off and land on my skin.
I glance away. “So says the man who’s incapable of anything but using people.”
But as soon as I say it, I know I’m wrong. Because suddenly it’s not calmness flowing through his fingers but jagged emotions that are grieving and messy and completely his own. Telling me his heart is growing perfectly capable of becoming undone. I feel it the same way I can feel the rain and the rhythm of the war, and Draewulf roaring. And Adora laughing in lunacy from wherever she’s hiding.
Eogan’s voice is husky as he holds my face. “He gave his life to protect who you are. Not because of what you’ve done or might do.”
Don’t let him take who you are.
His words . . . they blend in with Colin’s and settle like heat within me, soothing, scorching, touching my core. Wooing my battered heart with the truth of Colin’s one simple offering that encompassed everything: Love. Freely given. For someone he believed could also be free.
Abruptly, the heat of that truth grows sharper, like static, forcing clarity through my veins, carrying with it an illumination of Colin’s statement back at the meadow. That this tragic war that’s been waged in and around each of us, this battle that’s gone on in our souls—that’s ravaged us and beaten us down and clawed away our humanity—has simply been evil trying to destroy who we are.
Because evil knows what we will become: Stronger. Wiser. Unstoppable.
Don’t let him take who you are. Make him fear who you will become.
Somewhere beneath my skin, the melody from the Valley of Origin begins singing—louder, sweeter. Clearer. Until it’s yelling. Then it’s shouting its refrain to the siren in my bones to awaken the real me that is not a curse, but a true Elemental.
I look over at the bloodied wall by which Draewulf escaped. At Colin and the bodies around me. At the airships bombing the hulls out of Faelen. And I know exactly what this world is capable of.
But I also know what I am capable of.
I glance at Eogan.
What we are capable of.
I’m trembling when I touch his hand with my deformed one and, for a second, watch the rain spill off my pale fingers to his black ones in the same way forgiveness spills from my soul. He knows what it is to rise above evil perhaps more than any of us.
His breath clouds through the rain like a wild summer storm. I lean against him and inhale as my whole body shudders. Something’s shattering and being set free. As if the melody thrashing about inside of me is breaking me apart in the process.
Eogan tries to steady me, but I shake my head and place my other hand on the ground. I close my eyes and let the ice creep out from my fingertips until, shoving it harder, I spread it onto every surface of stone and wall and brick and cold flesh. Immediately, I hear both the Faelen and Bron men begin slipping.
From somewhere, Adora utters an oath.
I open my eyes and swerve around to stare straight at her. She’s crouched against the wall with that knife in her hand again.
I smile.
Her eyes widen.
Eogan already has his sword out, but it’s the cold energy snaking from my shivering fingers that knocks her blade away. I whip the ice current farther as she launches herself at us, hissing obscenities—about my mother, about my status as a slave, a favor girl, a murderer—and wrap it around her like a thread.
She drops to the ground and bursts into hysterical laughter mixed with screams.
I wait for Eogan to bind her hands before I release her. Leaving her alive. Barely injured.
Cursing.
Let the Faelen people deal with her.
The rain is turning the slick ground into slush. King Sedric and his men, bruised and bloodied, are tramping through it, making their way toward us. One of the knights steps ahead to seize Adora from Eogan. “We’re taking His Majesty and Princess Rasha. Rolf will stay be—”
His words are cut off by a loud whistle followed by another blazing detonation, this one closer. The whole fortress sways with the sensation that half the mountain is slipping away.
The group whips around.
“Nym!” the princess beckons urgently. “Come on!”
I look at Eogan and that perfect emerald gaze posing a silent question amid the growing vibrations and sounds of cracking rock.
My body’s shaking too hard to answer him with anything more than a nod. Let’s finish this.