Lilah’s jaws snapped at her, and should have closed around her neck. But Valessa had crouched down, the force of her will reshaping her, making her something new, something small. Her vision shifted, her senses overcome by the strangeness of her being. Only desperation kept her moving, kept her arms rising and falling, which were now soft white wings no bigger than a single claw on Lilah’s paw. She felt herself condensed, yet lighter. Her body lifted higher, higher, and when Lilah swung at her, she banked away. The wind blew across her eyes, face, and through the nostrils of her beak. Once more Lilah swung, but she was too high now, soaring over the battlefield.
Down below, Darius’s sword gleamed with light, and with a single chop, it beheaded Lilah as she roared up to the heavens. Valessa soared on. Her back felt exposed, feathers missing from where she’d been clawed. Even now the wound would not heal. From her left eye she saw her wing blackened and mangled from where Lilah had held her. One by one, soft feathers fluttered away with each beating of the wing. Whatever strength kept her going, she felt it waning, already pressed to its limits.
But oh, how it felt to fly…
She circled, just a night dove, watching as Darius leapt into the center of the mercenaries’ line. Already outnumbered, they could not hold against his skill and strength. They broke, and with a cheer Daniel’s army surged forward, overwhelming them. Bodies fell, and Valessa fell with them, circling lower and lower, unable to beat her wings. Floating in that downward spiral, she felt free for the first time since she’d thrust her neck against the tip of Darius’s sword. A shame it couldn’t last.
She hit the ground amid the corpses outside the gate, human once more. Her flesh was pale, and she wore no clothes. The scars on her back still bled shadow. Glancing only once, she saw her left hand had regrown from where Darius had cut it off, but everything below the elbow was rotting flesh. No matter how she tried, she could not make it look pristine.
“Darius?” she whispered, knowing she could not be heard over the cheerful celebration but asking for him anyway. She tried crawling to her knees, but her hands were shaking, and her body was more like fluid, resisting any attempt to stand. She just wanted to lie there. She just wanted to pass away.
Valessa?
She opened her eyes. Darkness encroached upon the edges of her vision. Amid her pain, she heard her name cried once more.
“Valessa!”
Darius was suddenly above her, his armor blackened by fire, much of it covered with blood. Somehow she knew none of it was his. He lay his sword beside her so it would not glow. Valessa stared at his face, at his worry, and tried to hate him.
“You did this,” she whispered.
“Shush now,” Darius said, and if he heard her, he did not react. He pulled off a gauntlet, then put a hand on her forehead. She almost laughed. Was he searching for a fever? She was ice. No heat. No life.
“Help me,” she said more forcefully.
“I...” Darius pulled her shoulder, saw the marks of the lion clawed across her back. “Shit.”
“Please, help. I don’t want to die like this.”
Darius gently laid her back down.
“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t even know what you are, Valessa. I don’t know what I can do.”
“Not that.”
She reached with her good arm to the blade that lay dark beside her, lifting it up an inch before dropping it. A shadow passed over Darius’s face.
“No,” he said. “We’ve won. We’ve crushed them and retaken the tower. We’ll beat Cyric next, and it’ll be you who cuts his head off, I promise. And after that, you can spend the rest of your unnatural life trying to kill me.” He laughed. “We’ll make a game of it, right Valessa? You’ll keep trying, I’ll keep living, until we both get bored and I get old…”
A shiver ran through her. This was not how she wanted to die. The Abyss was waiting for her, and she would not be safe from its cleansing fire.
“Do it,” Valessa said. “I won’t be a coward, and I won’t let that damn lion be the one who kills me.”
Darius reached for the blade, and his fingers touched the hilt. It shone a soft white. For an instant she felt the light bathe over her, burning away the pale color of her flesh and exposing the shadow swirling beneath. And then Darius released it.
“No.”
He turned her over, and she did not resist. His bare hands pressed against Lilah’s cuts. The pain of it was intense, and her fingernails clawed against the dirt, periodically sinking through to fall into the earth itself. And then she heard him pray.
“I’ve never healed anyone before,” Darius whispered. “And forgive me if I’m insane to do so now.”