“Leave,” he whispered before lunging forward with his sword. At the same time, two more naturi that had mounted the hill from the other side tried to attack Rowe as he engaged the knife-wielding Aurora. I jumped to his defense, pushing them back and eventually removing their heads.
When I turned back, Rowe and Aurora were locked together, bodies inches apart as their blades pressed together. One slip and someone was going to lose a head. There wasn’t time to try to get between them or to slip around Aurora to aid Rowe, who was weak from his loss of blood. A lump grew in my throat, and I mentally promised myself that I would fix everything once it was all over. That thin promise was the only thing that made my feet take those final steps toward Rowe and Aurora.
Pulling back my blade, I plunged it through Rowe’s back and through Aurora’s chest. Both of them gasped in unison and went stiff as a board. I grasped the hilt with both hands and jerked it out of their bodies. Aurora fell forward, but I put my shoulder into Rowe’s back to keep him from falling backward.
“Take her!” I shouted, holding him up as blood gushed out of his back and front from the massive wound I had made. With shaking arms, I watched as Rowe raised his sword and brought it down, removing Aurora’s head in a long fluid motion. She fell dead, her white robes stained red from her blood and black from the mud.
There was no time to mourn the death of my older sister, which I would have done no matter how much she hated me. I needed to do what I could to save Rowe’s life while his body still had the strength to hold onto his soul. Carefully, I laid him down on the ground. His eye was closed and his breathing labored.
“Cynnia, come over here and help me!” I screamed as I knelt in the sinking mud.
My sister instantly crawled over to Rowe’s limp body and stared down at him in horror.
“I told you to go for an
“I got tired of waiting for you to move,” I said, grabbing Cynnia’s hands and pressing them to the large cut along his neck. “Keep your hands there and hold tight to slow the bleeding,” I told her. “I need you to do what I do to save him.”
“What are you going to do?” Cynnia asked.
“Ask for the Great Mother’s help.”
“I think she gave up on me a long time ago,” Rowe murmured, his voice growing weaker. My heart thudded in my chest and I could feel tears gathering in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I was not going to let him die.
Closing my eyes, I touched Cynnia’s mind so she could both hear and feel exactly what I was doing. I reached deep into the powerful flows of the earth and let my soul sink down into the very essence of the earth until I felt a larger consciousness. The Great Mother was watching everything, listening to the battle that was taking place on her soul. She was aware of the abuses of power. She was aware of everything at once.
Pressing my hands on the wound in Rowe’s chest, I pushed his soul down into the earth as well, so it brushed against this deeper consciousness. I waited, holding my breath, praying this would work. I had healed my own deeper, life-threatening wounds this way, but then I’d always had a deep connection to the Great Mother. She spoke to me when my mind was quiet and warned me of many things. I only prayed now that she would see the same goodness that I felt in Rowe and heal him.
After a couple of seconds, deep within the earth, I felt Cynnia’s confused and awe-filled presence. A plea for Rowe’s life had formed in her brain as she begged the Great Mother to be merciful to this poor creature after all his centuries of service.
Blood continued to pour forth and I felt my grasp on Rowe’s soul starting to slip. I was losing him. Gritting my teeth, I tightened my grip and called forth even more energy. The tree burned on my back and down my arms. I could feel it growing, stretching down my arms and up my throat to the point where I thought it would soon strangle me. The energy of the earth was flowing into me, and finally into Rowe. The wounds slowly closed beneath Cynnia’s and my hands, and I could feel wounded organs mending with amazing speed and precision.
Rowe coughed and groaned, drawing in a ragged breath and then another before placing one of his hands over mine. I opened my eyes and looked down to find him smirking up at me. He was covered in his own blood and looking extremely pale, but I knew he would live.
“I’m impressed,” he said in a low rough voice. “You commanded the earth to give me a second chance.”
“You never give commands to the Great Mother,” I said, squeezing his hand in mine.
“No, Nyx,” Cynnia countered. I looked up to find a look of horror written across her mud- and blood-smeared face. “I heard you. You weren’t asking for help. You were demanding it, and she listened to you. I have no right to claim to be queen of our people. You’re the one chosen by the Great Mother to be the true source of our power.”
“And I decline,” I simply said with a soft smile.
Cynnia shook her head and backed away a few inches. “But I didn’t even know you could do such a thing. I’ve never touched the Great Mother in such a way.”
“I guess you’ll have to prove to be smarter than Aurora and listen to your sister when she offers you advice,” Rowe said. The one-eyed naturi took a deep breath before pushing into an upright position. I placed a hand and knee gently at his back to help hold him upright as he seemed to waver. “The naturi that fought against Aurora were following you, not me or Nyx. They were following you and your vision. Now is not the time to question it. It’s time to lead.”
“I can’t do this alone. Aurora—” Cynnia began, but I held up my hand and halted her words.
“Aurora chose to be alone. You never will be.”
With a nod, Cynnia pushed to her feet and walked over to the edge of the hill to look at the naturi gathered below, who were still fighting. She bent down, picked up Aurora’s severed head by the hair and held it high in the air. The fighting instantly stopped and an eerie silence fell over the park as everyone waited for her to speak.
“Aurora is dead. I, Cynnia, am your new queen. The war is over.”
I looked over at Rowe, to find him watching me with an odd look on his face.
“You stabbed me in the back,” he whispered.
“If you were in the same position, you would have done the same thing,” I said, rubbing my thumb across his scarred cheek.
“But I wouldn’t have been able to save you.”
“You would have tried, and that would have been enough.”
“I can feel a part of your soul attached to my own now.”
A half smile tweaked one corner of my mouth. “It looks like you’re stuck with me then.”
Rowe matched my smile and leaned in closer, letting his lips brush against mine. “I’ve heard worse news today.” My laugh was smothered by his lips as he kissed me in the mud and rain and blood.
Thirty-five
The Daylight Coalition was waiting for us as the nightwalkers turned their attention from the warring naturi to the scattering of humans positioned behind a grove of trees with guns. It was too late to try to cloak ourselves from view, as they had already seen us. However, we still had a few other tricks up our sleeves. On a silent count of three, we all ran at the coalition members in a blur of movement in the darkness. Gunfire exploded in the night as they desperately tried to hit us, but we easily dodged the bullets and fell onto our targets. Each man in the coalition force was paired up, in the hope that they would be better protected.
Sliding around one particularly massive live oak tree, I swung my blade so it sliced through the throat of one man before ripping a gun out of the hands of his partner. I tossed the weapon aside like a broken toy and sank my fangs into the jugular of my enemy. He squirmed beneath me, desperate to be free as I drained him of his life. I drank deeply, not bothering to push away his conscious thought. He wanted to fight nightwalkers. Well, then I was going to give him a good taste of what it meant to go up against a nightwalker and lose.
In the middle of my feast, I didn’t notice that he had palmed a large knife, but I felt it the moment he shoved it into the middle of my back. I released him, pushing him violently away as I reached around to pull the knife free. Quivering, he backed against the tree he’d been hiding behind and searched himself with trembling hands for another weapon. Blood continued to pour from his neck where I had bitten him. I sighed with relief when the
