Ignoring the daemon blade, Cadrianna raced down the curved steps and plunged into the crowd of Drenth-born guests. Most moved once they saw a scourge amongst them, others she shoved out of her way, not caring a wit, glaring at everyone who dared voice an objection.
“Emre!”
Stiffening, the man who should be dreaming the eternal sleep in the Meadows turned toward her as she pushed aside the last remaining couple standing between them. Behind the mask that resembled a broken statue, his eyes showed nothing. No surprise, no relief. Just cold steel hardness. “Hello, Cad.”
Without thinking, Cadrianna reared back and punched Emre, a clean shot to the face that sent him sprawling into the fountain. The guests gasped in shock at the savagery in their midst. But also because some seemed to recognize her. They glanced down at the man she’d socked, and realization dawned on them. Whispers broke out.
Emre sat up, rubbing his bruising jaw, his mask hung to the side, damaged. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“My daughter is all that I have left of the family you ripped away from me,” she hissed. “This is all yo—”
“Our daughter, Cad.” Emre planted a hand on the fountain as he stood, tossing the broken mask. He faced her, hands at his sides, that hard visage plastered upon his face. No anger. Nothing. “Drenth is more than you and me, my beloved. You knew this the day we wed. Drenth is everything, much more than any single person. It is a haven. A memory. A future. We cannot let the Fallen destroy it. I cannot. And I know you cannot. Break the lies wrapped around you, Cad.”
She moved within inches of his face, angry, and wanting nothing more than to tear him limb from limb for all the heartache he’d caused her. To stab the Strix deep into his heart, ending him for good. This was the Gutter King of Drenth, her contract. The only way to save Brynn from Lu Har. To finally be free.
All she had to do was kill him, here and now, and it would be over.
The rebellion would falter under the Fallen’s gaze, at his feet even. Clear victory in the southern Mistlands, leaving only the war on Kalderim the final path untrod.
And yet, seeing Emre once more amongst the living, she found herself hesitating. O, the anger was still threatening to boil over, but not just yet. She felt the lies which served as her savior and shield begin to unravel.
Emre slowly reached toward her, her heart and mind fought valiantly against another; heart wanting to fall into his embrace while her mind urged her to flee once more. In the end, she did neither. One of his hands wrapped her lower back, the other toward her shoulders as he tried to pull her into a hug. Her body held still.
Sensing her hesitation, Emre let his arms fall back, then he began to itch his forearms. His face became less stone if only a fraction. “I’m sorry, Cad. I had to do it.”
That broke her calcification, her lapse of judgement. Her anger flared anew, this time bubbling over the kettle’s edge. “Brynn has suffered for your betrayal. I’ve suffered.” She thrust her arm out in the direction she last saw Lu Har. “Suffered for him!”
Emre took a step back as the Fallen’s all-onyx eyes settled on them, and her beloved’s left hand roamed toward the pocketwatch in his vest pocket. It was covered with aetheric runes in spells of Ignis. Emre gripped it tight, checking the time as if that were the most important thing in the world right then and there. Not her.
Smiling, her beloved’s face glinted like steel. “Forgive me, my love, but I cannot stop until Drenth sees the Imperium burned to the ground. I do this for all of Drenth. But most of all, for Brynn.”
His gaze was focused on the young woman who had danced with Lu Har, who was now standing next to Solanine watching the pair of them, and it forced Cadrianna to truly observe her. Then she noted the features of the young woman, the curvature of cheek, the bridge of nose. The mouth, the ears. So familiar. So like her own. So like the daughter locked within the belly of Gargantua.
Brynn? “Wha—”
Emre pressed the top button on the pocketwatch and a concussion tremored under foot. Followed by exploding marble fragments, sluicing liquid aethecite, and shattered screams rent the peaceful night air as the mist font throughout Gargantua.
Cadrianna’s head smashed into the fountain, her skull aflame as the very core of Gargantua rumbled. The fountain’s fuel rained down on her, drenching her while she fought to her feet, wobbly as if she’d been beaten with a cudgel.
Emre was gone.
Lu Har was down, soldiers of the Imperium surged toward him as they oozed from every orifice of the fortress and converged upon the mezzanine as if called to battle. Wheellocks and blades bristled. Cinder took to the sky, the daemonized drake’s wings splintering branches and aethecite lights in the process, great ailerons flapping and sending gusts into the crowd. The drake scooped up the Fallen with its clawed back feet from the melee and careened away into the night.
Solanine—who was being supported by a tall, muscular man with a bald head and a craggy face of harsh angles and leery black eyes—yelled for the soldiers to hunt down the Gutter King. Void Form aetheurgy sent shockwaves through the crowd as Solanine then summoned blackened mist by waving their scales’ hands and chanting voidspeak. Aether filled the mezzanine with the poisonous haze up to their knees.
The young woman in the pink dress was gone. Brynn? Couldn’t be her. Could it?
The scourges cut through the crowds, hunting. The vicars in their cassocks and mist canisters waded through, holy enemies colliding in a battle of axe and blade, Shard Form and Void Form. Solanine and the bald man moved toward the vicars with deathly ease, the blooddrake’s aetheurgy scything through the Drenth-born flesh, killing wantonly. The lead vicar leapt with an axe borne of pure aether toward the blooddrake and aetheurgy fractured.
More trembles unloaded upon Gargantua, deep from the innards. Wails of aethecite lines exploded as holes pierced the stony skin of the fortress like a blowing volcano. Cadrianna went down again as the fortress teetered under the strain, dipping one direction then the next as it fought to settle.
Through the thick of it, Cadrianna spied Emre as he waded the tide toward the main compound. Cadrianna, still woozy, took a step to follow after Emre, but a hand grabbed her ankle.
Ratko.
The scourge was on his stomach, a table, as well as a piece of stone fence, pinned him to the ground. Blood cascaded down the scourge’s face, beard askew in dusty points. Ratko, though, had Cadrianna’s leg in a vice-like grip.
“Traitor!” Ratko yelled through gritted teeth as he struggled to pull his legs free of the stone prison.
How easy would it be for Cadrianna to end his life?
“Bitch,” Ratko wheezed. “Pathetic and weak.”
In a moment of clarity, Cadrianna understood everything. She didn’t have to be this person anymore. Ratko was goading her. That wasn’t who she wanted to be any longer, the monster.
“Fuck off, Ratko.” She leveled a heady kick to the scourge’s jaw, knocking him unconscious. “I’ve always hated you.”
“YESSSSSSS, CAD! FINALLY, YOU ARE FREE! BUT I DO WISH TO TASTE THE SCOURGE’S SOUL. O WELL, ANOTHER TIME.”
And then she took off after Emre, barreling through the double redwood doors and into the hallway beyond, sterile and empty as a deathly scream filled the air behind her.
XXXVIII
Emre
BLOWING THE FOUNTAIN before all the guests had left the party reeked of a desperate gamble. Perhaps it was.
