Son of Ereubus (31 page)

Jareth caught up with Duncan, cradling his arm to his chest. “Michael and G—”

“I know!” Duncan barked.

“Here, I’ll fly.” Jareth slid from his saddle and held the reins for Duncan to take. “Have you seen Ke—” Before he could finish, a tremendous explosion rocked the ground beneath them and a huge fireball erupted into the sky on the western side of Eidolon. They both covered their heads momentarily as debris rained from above.

Duncan swore an oath in Ereubinian, loud enough for any of the blessed within ear shot to have heard him. “Yeah, I saw Kendall. So did the Moriors — right before he blew them and himself to Hothrendaire.”

Jareth, having caught sight of an approaching Ereubinian, swung the hilt of his sword into the man’s face with as much force as he could muster. As soon as the Ereubinian instinctively grabbed for his injured head, Jareth cut it cleanly from his neck. For a moment, neither Jareth nor Duncan spoke.

Overhead, a veil of smoke shielded them from the arrows of Ereubinian crossbows and the Adorians were able to fly out of Eidolon. Duncan felt his face and neck flush with heat and his heart rate increase.

“Damn you, Kendall,” he whispered, “and damn your heroics!”

Garren sat for what felt like an eternity. Michael had taken Ariana past two enormous doors, shaped like butterfly wings, that might as well have led to the afterlife. He guessed them to be at least thirty feet or more in height. The Adorians who’d met them near the border arrived shortly after. The elder went into the room where Michael was.

Several of the men stood close watch over him. They’d been given instructions in Adorian, and though he could apparently conjure the tongue unwittingly, he couldn’t understand it when he tried. He assumed their instructions were not to leave his side, but they looked afraid. Brave, but afraid nonetheless, and they stood as far away from him as possible. His patience for not being told what was going on with Ariana was wearing thin and he was in the midst of contemplating a run for the doors, when they suddenly opened and Michael emerged.

He was shaken, his eyes swollen and red, his complexion just as drained of life as his sister’s had been. He staggered to where one of the others stood and sank to the floor with his back to the wall. When he spoke, his voice was low and hoarse. “The healer said it’s irreparable … her wounds are too deep, she …” He bowed his face in his hands and breathed in a slow choked breath. “She will not live.”

Jareth stretched out his wings and rose into the air, yelling down to Duncan, “Come on, old man, there’ll be time enough for grief once we’re home!” Then, after he was certain Duncan had shaken himself from his disbelief, Jareth flew ahead.

He could not get the image of Ariana, bloody and unconscious in Michael’s arms, out of his head. She’d looked so pale, so lifeless. And Garren, riding beside Michael as if he had the right to still draw breath after what he’d done?

Flying was hard enough on an Adorian’s body, but doing it with broken bones was excruciating. The muscles that created movement in his wings were attached to those that allowed for movement in his arms, shoulders and torso. It would be a mere mile, perhaps less, before he’d be forced to land.

Jareth hadn’t been asking Duncan if he’d seen Kendall out of curiosity; he’d asked because he needed to know whether Kendall had made it to the western side of the dividing wall or not. If he hadn’t, Jareth would need to find him, take the breastplate and continue as Michael’s decoy. Three small groups of Adorian knights had volunteered to fly into Eidolon before the main party arrived, while the Ereubinians were too unaware to pay attention to the sky above them, and wait within the castle ramparts with enough crudely constructed bombs to take out more than a few Moriors. Explosives weren’t a weapon of choice for either Adorians or Ereubinians simply because the resources to make them were scarce, but when they were used, they were undoubtedly effective.

The last of his energy gave out and Jareth descended. His intention was to walk, but once his feet hit the ground, he crumbled forward and was lucky to crawl to a nearby tree, where he could rest.

He came to with the smell of stale breath in his face.

“Did you know?” Duncan was bent over, his face bright red and puffy.

Jareth’s eyes felt like someone had thrown sand in them and they burned once he was able to pry them open all of the way. “Care to be a little more specific?”

“Kendall! The others! Did you know what they were going to do?” Duncan roared.

Jareth cringed. His head was pounding without any help from Duncan. “Such a Braeden thing to ask. You piss and moan that you’re done with the realm of man, that you’re unwilling to reunite your men, and you’ve still got balls left to whine about not being included? If it makes you feel any better, Michael didn’t even know.”

Duncan laughed, but there wasn’t anything jovial about it.

“Is it because you don’t have wings, Duncan? Is that why Braeden are so arrogant, because you feel like you have to make up for something? You’ve got your ways of doing things and we have ours.”

“Yeah, Jareth, that’s it. I’m pissed because I don’t have wings. You want to talk about wings? I’m pissed because Gabriel died ... because if Gabriel had kept his wings ...” His voice shook as it trailed off. Then, when he could no longer find the words to continue, he roared indecipherably and hauled Jareth to his feet by his good arm and began to walk toward his horse.

“I think I’ll wait on the others, thank—”

“They’ve already left for Adoria, Jareth. I’ve been waiting on you to wake up from your beauty rest for over two hours. Now shut up and get on behind me.”

Jareth briefly considered flying despite the pain in his body, just to avoid having to deal with Duncan’s attitude, but the look in the Braeden’s eyes told him the decision had been made for him.

“I should have told you,” Jareth muttered as he struggled onto the horse.

Duncan reached back and helped him. “Kendall was the only one of you with any sense and he goes and does something stupid like this.”

Before they rode off, Jareth flexed his wings full span for one good stretch. “He saved hundreds of lives.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t heroic. I said he was stupid.”

The words did not immediately register. Then, as they did, the room felt like it was falling down on Garren and he fought to catch his breath. He heard Michael sobbing, but he couldn’t see him for the tears that filled his own eyes.

“My Lord,” an elderly man, perhaps human, gripped Michael’s arm. “Let Garren go to her. Time is running out, you mustn’t question why.”

One of the other Adorians started to protest, but Michael put his hand out weakly. “Do as Bronach says, let Garren go to her. What’s done is done.” Michael barely got the words out, his voice cracking at the finish.

Garren paused in the doorway and Bronach placed his hand on Garren’s back to urge him forward. “It’s alright. You must go to her.”

Garren stepped into the dimly lit room. He saw Ariana on a bed against the far wall, her face no longer showing any trace of pain or fear. Her cheek was cold when he touched it. He took her hand in his and placed it against his chest. “Forgive me,” he whispered.

Bronach drew back and stood along the wall, unseen now, his heart frozen in his chest. The other immortals had already knelt, their heads hung, words spilling over their lips that couldn’t hold a candle’s worth of light against the darkness that purposed to take Ariana’s soul.

It cannot end like this.

“She’s dying,” Onora looked up at Bronach, horror-stricken. “Can you do nothing?”

She already knew the answer to that — they all did. It was forbidden. He shook his head, remaining quiet. Bronach felt Garren’s grief all the way to his soul and all he could think about was the past, how deep their love had been. He remembered the gatekeeper’s words ... “that same unpredictable power means that their love is far greater than even you or I could ever have imagined.”

All of Bronach’s fears had been for naught if she died now, before she or Garren had even begun the real battle.

What have I done?

Garren couldn’t breathe under the weight of his sorrow. He didn’t just weep for a girl he barely knew, it was as though he’d always known her, as though he’d lived all of his life in shadow only to be brought into the light by that first touch. Something inside him screamed, raged that this couldn’t be the end, that this wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

What was supposed to happen, then?

He rose over her, touched her hair, swept his thumb across her jaw. Everything in him willed him to do something, but what? What could he do? Whispers, dark and taunting, swirled in his head from an unknown source, telling him that it was over, that he had lost, to let her go. The whispers turned to laughter and resonated through his whole body, made him feel as though he’d been robbed of his very soul.

Garren braced himself, knowing he was losing his grip on reality. He glanced down and saw her chest rise one final time, filling her lungs with air, before she stilled and he knew she’d breathed her last.

“No,” he whispered, “it is not over.” The fury in him reeled against the voice and rose against it, urged him to act. He leaned down and kissed her, keeping her hand to his chest, clutching against his heart.