quick and merciful blow.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
NIC
Nic woke screaming, tasting thick elixir on his lips, far stronger than he had ever been given before. A cloudless sky stretched above him, and he remembered, and he knew he was still lying broken on the battlefield at Triune.
Dari knelt at his side, drawing back the wineskin she had emptied into his mouth to ease his suffering as he came back to consciousness. She dabbed a bit of blood from his bare chest and arms with her sleeve and tried to smile at him. Nic loved her for the attempt, even if she couldn’t achieve her goal.
Behind Dari stood her thinner, frail-looking twin. Lord Ross kept his big hands on Kate’s shoulders. His dark face was streaked with dirt and sweat, and his sharp eyes seemed sad beyond measure. At his side was a man Nic didn’t recognize, but he knew him for a Stregan by the blinding hues of graal lifting from his powerful shoulders. This would be Platt, Dari’s cousin, and the Stregan king. Iko and Blath formed an honor guard on either side of him, and Iko was supporting an obviously weakened and wounded Stormbreaker.
Lord Cobb and Lord Baldric were nowhere to be seen, and in his depths, Nic understood that those two heroes had fallen, and were lost to Eyrie forever. His anguish sent fresh racking pain through his back and limbs, but he couldn’t move, even to escape the burning torture his body had become. Only his eyelids and mouth obeyed his commands, and not without rebellion.
“Be easy, love.” Dari’s fingers stroked his forehead and slipped through the edges of his matted curls, and he tried to be easy, if only for her sake.
Snakekiller’s energy was oddly absent from the landscape, but Nic didn’t believe Stone’s viper was dead. Just gone. Hiding herself away from him, perhaps because her rage had driven her to attack his mother, and wound him by accident.
Dari’s energy eased into Nic’s awareness, bolstering him, but he refused to take too much. There would never be enough spare graal force to sustain him. He understood that, even if his beautiful wife didn’t.
With the fragment of strength he allowed her to grant him, Nic focused his thoughts on Stormbreaker, and let the Stone Brother know to get word to his sister when she came out of hiding that Nic loved her, and forgave her. That he owed her too much to ever be repaid.
I will, came Stormbreaker’s simple reply, as soft as a summer wind through the Veil.
Aron, Nic tried to say, with his voice and his mind, failing at both.
Aron was who he needed to see.
Aron was the only one who could help him now.
“A prince among killers,” Dari whispered, her sweet scent of spice and apples soothing him for a moment as her lips pressed against his forehead. “You never belonged in this battle, did you? Come back to me. Come back to the son who hasn’t had the chance to know you.”
Her warm tears fell across Nic’s face, and he wanted so much to grant her this gift, this boon that was far beyond his reach. He knew he’d have to face her and say his good-byes, but he couldn’t do that to her or himself.
Not yet.
He accepted a bit more of her offered energy, and this time, he addressed Lord Ross.
Lords, he managed. Ladies. Provosts. Commanders will do.
Lord Ross’s composure fractured, and the big man’s lips trembled as he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Nic knew he understood what Nic wanted him to do, but he could scarcely face the task.
“They’ll come,” Dari told him as she gave him another gentle kiss on the forehead. “They all know you’re Eyrie’s king now, and dynasts who have no heirs or rulers present to speak for them will learn soon enough, from their surviving Guard captains and messengers.”
Lord Ross turned to his nearest Guardsmen and whispered instructions.
The man straightened and bowed, then hurried off to do his lord’s bidding.
Nic closed his eyes and fell into oblivion, only to jerk awake some time later, coughing down another mouthful of elixir so strong he might as well have been swallowing burning tallow oil. All the people who greeted him before were still present, along with a brawny, bearded man dressed in Cobb’s obsidian and ruby robes. Nic assumed this would have to be the new Lord Cobb. An Altar warbird carrying a broken arrow in his fist as a sign of surrender had joined