This was the Prime Warrior, made for battle in the heavens and on earth.
But the familiar understanding haunted her eyes. The one that had come to warn us of Echnid’s motives. The one that had spoken with me and Moirenna in that foreign realm.
“Valyrie?” I pleaded, trying to bridge the two. “What’s happening?”
“I am sorry, Fatecatcher.” The deep regret burdening those words twisted the strand of hope I’d been clinging to. “But we did not have a choice.”
My throat was dry. “What did you tell Echnid when he sent his gorgons after us?”
She only shook her head. Beneath me, Dynaxtar riled, as if feeding off my agitation.
The Angel repeated, “I am so sorry.”
“Valy—”
But she dropped through the clouds, plummeting to the ground at an impossibly fast rate.
“Valyrie!” My voice tore on the scream, and Dynaxtar was diving, too. Wind and smoke stung my eyes, my hair whipping out behind us as I leaned low against my khrysaor.
Xenovia came back into view in a blur. Fires roared across the desert capital, orange and gold flames flickering off the bronzed arches, spires, and onion-shaped domes. Weapons clashed as?—
My breath caught in my throat. There were other things crawling through the streets. The gorgons and a cerberus, but beasts bedecked in shadows, too.
But I couldn’t worry about them now. Valyrie was plunging toward the city, and fear ratcheted up within me every second. Her wings tucked in as she dove, Dynaxtar hot on the trail of her ether.
“Please, Valyrie!” I shrieked. “Help us!”
My next scream was louder, more ragged than ever. It rang through my ears, and the Fatesworn bond tugged violently as Cypherion reacted, but I couldn’t answer. Valyrie plummeted toward a target, intent on one warrior in the throng of battle.
And Harlen didn’t even see her coming as she landed behind him and scooped him up with a leash made of stars. As she used the will of her Angellight to bind his wrists behind his back and force him against the nearest wall.
“NO!” I screamed again as the Angel pulled a triple blade from her waist.
“It is him or you,” Valyrie called back over her shoulder as my oldest friend struggled against her. Dynaxtar landed with a boom I barely heard, and I dove from her back.
Valyrie’s ether shoved at me, light erecting a wall between us. I beat with fists and feet, screamed and clawed and raged with all the fury of the Fate of Wrath.
“What are youtalking about?” Harlen yelled still ripping at the Angellight pinning him. His eyes flicked between me—desperate and sobbing—and the Angel.
Valyrie turned to him and repeated, “It is her or you.”
“WHY?” I shrieked, the word so broken. “Harlen!”
My friend only met my eyes. And as I saw the resolution dawn, I crumbled. My heart tore from my chest, a deep, slicing pain. Every moment of our childhood poured from the wound. Summer nights on balconies, healing cuts and bruises after punishments in the temple, crying on each other’s shoulders as we realized the horrors we faced weren’t ending. How he’d held me through Titus’s recent torment, every ministration he’dtaken to protect me, and the smiles he’d forced out of me when I thought there was no hope left.
“Harlen!” I screeched again. I ripped my short sword from my waist and slashed at the Angellight, lilac only reflecting along the blade. Dynaxtar bellowed her own blue flames at the wall. Readings slammed into me from the onslaught of power in our foot soldiers’ weapons, searching for another fortune. Any other fortune.
But nothing helped.
Nothing could stop what the Fates had already decided.
Harlen held my stare. “I love you, Vale,” he said. “You are the sister I never thought I deserved, but the one I will go to the Spirit Realm to protect.” Then, he looked at Valyrie, and there wasn’t a hint of a tremor in his voice as he said, “It is me.”
And the Angel opened his throat with an unremorseful swipe of her triple blade. Her Angellight flared along the weapon, and Harlen collapsed to the floor.
I crumbled with him, sobs wracking my body and palms flattened against the Angellight wall.
Valerie turned to me, but I didn’t look away from the friend who’d given his life for mine as the Angel said, “He felt no pain.”
