Page 121 of Ruin of Revenants

“You’ve lost too much blood,” Isoria snapped, reaching for me. But when she pressed her palm to my shoulder, nothing happened. She grimaced, pulling a hand slick with blood back and swallowing thickly. “I have nothing left.” Her gold eyes darted to mine, fear widening them.

“I’m weak but I’m not going to die yet,” I insisted.

Howling and shouts pulled our attention back to Father, still trapped near the crevice. The shadows coiled around him in a painful, chilling embrace. Revenants slunk forward in the darkness. One hurled a ball of water across the crevice. It slammed into Father and hovered there, silencing his cries. Drowning him on land.

My stomach twisted. I could call off the land. Already my hold on the magic was tenuous. It was taking more effort to keep the roots still than to command them to recede into the earth.

But when I lifted my horrified eyes to Isoria, I remembered the way Father had leered over her, prepared to strike her down when she was defenseless. Adding to the wound was the fact that he’d believed that slaying Isoria would kill me too because of our restored bond. He’d already cut me open and left me to bleed.

He’d lived in constant fear of supposedly demonic phoenixes, of assassins, of foreign invaders taking his throne. Of trolls storming from the mountains he’d left to demand a piece of what he’d stolen. Of the revenant army invading the capital. So many monsters, real and imagined.

Father, you’ve become more monstrous than the monsters you feared.

I turned away, not wanting to watch his end, even if I was partly to blame for it. I would let the revenants he refused to fight wield their magic against him. I would let this mark the end of his brutal reign and the start of something new.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Isoria

I held Archer through the awful quiet until I was sure it was over. Princess remained at my side, hovering protectively and growling low in her throat as she faced the revenants. Though they couldn’t cross the vast split in the earth Archer had formed, it was clear at least some of them had magic they could hurl across it. Our time was running short before we’d be back in the thick of battle again, but I couldn’t force Archer away, not yet. He needed this moment.

After, unless we had enormous fortune and encountered a healer only a street away, we’d have to find cover. A building or home we could hide within long enough for me to replenish my strength and heal him.

Archer’s emotions flooded me like they were my own. Grief and guilt that seared me to the core along with a painful resignation that this was how it had to be.

It took a moment of processing those feelings for the realization to strike. King Wystan was dead, the throne passed to Archer.

But I hadn’t been the one to slay the king.

My mind flashed back to that long-ago time in Maris’ cottage when I’d been but a child, before my family and others had retreated to the safety of Cinderwood and built the sanctuary of Everhaven. So often the focus had been on my fate being intertwined with Archer or me being his ruin, his assassin. Maybe an assassin of the whole royal family. Vithenna had insisted we were fated enemies, and in some ways, our prophecies had made us just that, outlawing phoenixes and igniting Archer’s hatred.

But Maris hadn’t used words like kill or assassinate. No, I remembered her croaking voice saying something else. She’ll be the dismantling of the royal family.

Chills erupted along my skin. Hadn’t I accomplished that? Archer had said I’d ruined and remade him, changing his entire perspective on phoenixes and how he should rule. His sister had spared my life for his sake, offering the mercy her father could not. And I’d driven King Wystan to such bloodlust he’d threatened his own son, pushing Archer to unleash the land’s magic at last and leave his father to die at the hands of the revenants.

I pulled back from Archer to gaze at the sky—or the last shred of it I could see with the shadows creeping nearer. “Vithenna,” I called, “my prophecy is fulfilled. The royal family is dismantled. I did not kill Archer, but King Wystan is dead and both Archer and his sister have changed. The usurper and the cause of so much bloodshed is gone. Let that satisfy your need for justice. Stop your army. Let the souls move on in peace.” As if in response to my words, I could feel the chill of Mortius’ shadows inside me.

Archer watched me in undisguised awe as the same realization clicked into place for him. Likely, he’d never heard the exact wording of my prophecy and didn’t know exactly what I’d been meant to do. Just as so many phoenixes around me had imagined, his family had also assumed I’d destroy the royal line with death. Bloodshed was the only language King Wystan had known.

To my surprise, the shadows responded and receded, curling backward and slowly dispersing. The night sky was suddenly open and vast, countless stars gleaming like gemstones. As a lover of the sunlight and the power it gave me, I hadn’t hated the night, but I’d never fully appreciated its beauty the way I did now.

Turning, I watched the revenants across the crevice freeze and slowly collapse, crumpling into the corpses they were supposed to be. Magicless. Motionless. No longer Vithenna’s puppets.

Something eased in my chest as I felt the souls become untethered from those bodies, no longer trapped in rotting prisons but free to move on and find rest in the afterlife. My body released Mortius’ shadows, but this time, they rose off my skin for good. They whirled and joined more until they formed a grey figure standing near us. “It’s done,” Mortius rasped. “You no longer need to carry my power. I’ll take it from here.”

Tears pricked my eyes, relief I didn’t have to do the work and joy for the poor souls who had been so wronged by the goddess of life.

“It’s over,” I breathed. The release of Mortius’ power in me opened more room for my own, and I turned to Archer, relieved to find I had enough magic again to push into his wound, knitting the skin back together. “We’ve done it.”

“You did it,” Archer said, awe still in his voice. Some color had returned to his cheeks, and his eyes weren’t so glazed over. Though it would take time for him to fully recover his strength, I was grateful to know he’d be all right.

We’d made it.

There was a horrible sound as the earth quaked again, rocking the buildings around us. Shouts in the distance alerted us that our soldiers had felt it too. Archer seized my waist, holding me upright before I lost my footing like I had for him only moments before.

Dread filled my veins and my gaze shot again to the sky, but Vithenna didn’t descend from it. She stepped out of the night’s shadows, materializing like a spirit who’d been watching and waiting all this time. Her eyes blazed with fury and her hands sparked with lightning. Each step she took shook the earth until more crevices formed, like pottery breaking into countless pieces.

Screams erupted throughout the streets as buildings shuddered and more cracks spiderwebbed through the cobblestones, shifting and crumbling structures entirely. The noises were deafening. Splintering wood and falling stone. Weeping and shouts and scampering footsteps as citizens sought shelter. Rumbling earth as it continued to move, to shake, and the zapping sound of the electricity dancing in Vithenna’s hands.