them.
His eyes filled with fear. He backed away, desperate. “Ye immortals! My servants! Come to me now! I command it!” Koios cried. “Save me now!”
Extending his arms, he leapt off the tower as if he fully expected to be caught.
His body crunched on the deck of the ship far below, crushed.
“Um. Hate to be a bother,” a voice called out behind her.
Gavin? “Gavin!” she cried.
Her husband stood with his toes on the very edge of the tower, his hands cartwheeling as he tried to keep his balance.
“Uh . . .” he said. “Hi, honey. Help?”
Then, before she could move, he plunged out of sight.
She was at the edge the next instant, as if she hadn’t had to cover the intervening space.
She looked down, afraid of seeing his broken body beside her brother’s far below, but instead she saw Gill Greyling. He’d almost climbed the entire tower, coming after her—and now he’d snagged Gavin out of the very air.
Twisting as he held Gavin’s wrist in his hand, the Blackguard said, “I lost one Gavin, sir. I’m not losing another.”
And then she was helping hoist her husband up the tower. The battle immediately below them was finished—the Blood Robes had broken at the sight of their master leaping to his death.
And then her husband was up, and safe, and in her arms.
The dawn was glorious, but there were a million things to do. But none of them mattered right now. The feelings were too big to hold in for one more moment.
She had never cried so hard in her life.
Chapter 144
“Will you . . . uh, will you look at my eyes?” Kip asked Tisis. He’d thought that it was simply the night, bleeding the colors from the land as it does, but the rising light of the incipient dawn was making it clear. There was something wrong with the colors; they were wan and weak. He said, “I blew my halos. On the Glare. It’s been really nice holding and being held by you, but now . . . I have to know.”
Tisis took a deep breath. She’d hadn’t looked in his eyes since the beginning. But as she looked at him now, she seemed relieved. “They were stark white, right after. All the way through. Now they’re blue. Just your natural blue.”
“No halos at all?” he asked.
“No, none.”
“Well . . .” he said. “That’s, um, great. I guess.” He wasn’t going to have to be Freed in the next few days, so that was something.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I can’t draft,” he said quietly. Grief speared through his stomach. That was why the colors felt weak, emotionless. His vision now felt as impoverished and textureless as a drafter’s vision is compared to the immortals’. He was seeing the way munds do.
“What?” she asked. “No. Maybe you’re just tired? Lightsick?”
He shook his head, forcing a smile. “My life was spared, but not my powers. I’ve tried every color. They’re gone. They’re all gone.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth.
He could’ve been the Lightbringer; now he couldn’t even draft. He was a mund. Many drafters would have preferred death to that. He would have, a year ago. He looked away. “Do you think—do you think you can love a man with broken eyes?”
She didn’t get mad at him, which he would have deserved. She only squeezed him tight.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again.
“Me, too,” he said, wiping his eyes clear. He took a deep breath. “And now let’s be done with that.” He was almost surprised that the words rang true. “I think . . . I think I’m kind of finished with self-pity. It probably should’ve taken less than dying to figure out how good I’ve got it, but I do. I’m here. With you. So I’m a mund. So what?”
“A mund?” she objected, a smile turning her lips at last. “Kip Guile, the last thing you are is mundane.”
Did you think I would forget you, little Guile?
“Huh?” Kip asked Tisis. She and Commander Fisk were helping him stand.
“I didn’t say anything,” she said.
He was wobbly, but maybe he’d recover quickly if he walked around a bit. “I think I’ve figured something out about myself: I really hate watching a battle.”
The view from the elevated platform was excellent. Though Ebon’s Hill hid everything in Weasel Rock and Overhill, Kip could see West Bay and East Bay and the still-burning fires at the Great Fountain. The predawn light was just beginning to tell the tale of how much damage the