The final impact knocks all the air from my lungs. I only have the vaguest sense of my body. All I know is that the motion has stopped. We’re no longer falling.
Beyond me, the sound of settling debris continues. I close my eyes and mutter a prayer of gratitude. Somehow, through all that, I’m still alive. Somehow.
I look up. We’re far beneath the earth. There’s a gaping hole above me, and the night sky is so distant I can barely see the stars. All the broken pieces of the fallen castle surround me.
I know the only reason I survived was my vampire strength. But it seems incredible that any sort of creature could live through a fall like that.
Alarm grips me when I realize my leg is pinned beneath a boulder. I cry out. I can’t even feel the pain!
I try to yank my leg free. But even if my body is whole, it’s still in a very weakened state. The adrenaline is ebbing away, and a weary exhaustion starts to take over. Dust catches in my throat. I start to cough violently.
“Eleira?” Raul’s voice, distant and fragile, calls for me. “Eleira, where are you?”
“Here,” I croak. “I’m over here.”
I hear him curse, and then, a few moments later, see him stumble down a pile of rocks.
He looks like absolute hell. His clothes are torn, there are long cuts all over his face and body. He staggers to a stop, searching the ruins for me. The moment he sees me he picks up the pace, then drops to the ground at my side.
“You’re hurt,” he says. Concern paints his voice.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
He looks me up and down. “Your leg,” he says. “Hold on.”
He stands and shoves his shoulder into the boulder. It takes him considerable effort, but he manages to lift it just enough for me to pull my leg free.
“It’s not broken,” he observes, a trace of wonder in his voice.
“No,” I echo. In fact, considering the distance I fell—we all fell—I would have thought we’d suffer more injuries. “How is it we’re still alive?”
“Vampires are a resilient bunch,” he mutters.
“No kidding.”
The sound of scraping stone makes us both spin around. James is picking himself up from the dirt.
Before I know it Raul is on him. He pins his brother to the ground.
“You have ten words to explain what you did up there,” Raul growls.
James coughs, and I think it might be an attempt at a laugh. “Only ten?” he starts. “Surely that isn’t enough—”
“Four left,” Raul warns. “Make them count.”
James leers up at his brother. He must see something frightening in Raul’s gaze, because he sighs and rumbles out exactly four words, “Father wanted the staff.”
“The staff!” Raul curses. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”
“It wasn’t me.” James shakes his head. “I was possessed. The Ancient—”
“—used you as a surrogate to mount an attack on The Haven.”
All three of us turn to see Morgan emerge from darkness. Smithson trails her, carrying an unconscious Victoria in his arms.
“He succeeded,” the Queen concludes.
I’m surprised by how little anger I hear in her voice. She simply sounds… weary.
“If you’re wondering how we survived the fall,” she continues. “I cast a protective spell over each of us the moment I realized what was happening. Good thing, too.” She looks around. “We would have been crushed were it not for that.”
I stand up and face her, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.
“What she giveth, she taketh away,” Morgan mutters. She makes an intricate, circular motion with her fingers. A faint blue orb, about the size of a fist, retracts from each of our chests and flies back to her.
As soon as it happens all the pains and aches of my body crash into me. I stagger down. I’m barely able to hold myself upright. I grit my teeth against the pain.
Slowly, it starts to ebb away as my body begins healing itself. The process is not pleasant. Being shielded by Morgan’s spell and then having it ripped away is like being wakened from a pleasant dream by being dunked into a tub of ice.
I look around me. All the other vampires are suffering similar afflictions. I presume, because of my strength, I’m the first to recover.
All the others, that is, except Morgan. Her eyes land on me, and she sends me such a look of revulsion, such a look of disgust, that I feel no better than a maggot she might have found in a stale piece of bread.
Raul is the next one to stand. He lumbers to me. I meet him halfway. We fall into each other’s arms. He holds me against his hard body and strokes my hair.