Ninety-Two
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Dianna. 0 Days.
M y body hit the ground, Samkiel landing on top of me so I could take
the brunt of the fall. The portal above us closed, blocking my view
of Nismera raging at our escape. I stood, taking Samkiel with me. It was just like Eoria when I’d rushed into a room full of monsters to save Gabby. Only this time, it was for Samkiel. I’d almost been too late. The memory of Nismera standing over his damaged, bloody, and beaten body with that spear held against his throat had turned my insides liquid with fear. It had helped that they had only bothered to post a few guards.
Nismera’s arrogance had definitely worked in my favor. I had killed and eaten them quickly, but even with the boost from feeding, I had been severely outmatched, my skin crawling from the power pulsating in the room. But I didn’t care and didn’t hesitate. Samkiel was dying.
I’d overused my power again and summoned a portal, trying to get as far away from them as possible. I couldn’t think about Roccurem and what he had done. He had saved us. For once, someone had betrayed for me, and it meant more than I could say.
My feet skidded as I tried to keep us moving, supporting almost all of Samkiel’s weight. It terrified me. Samkiel would never lean so heavily on me if he could help it. My body ached from my wounds and using it as a battering ram to gain entrance to Rashearim. Slashes remained on my shoulder and side but were slowly healing.
Samkiel grabbed his midsection with his remaining hand, grunting in pain as he turned to look at me. His eyes caught on my shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
He was worried about me? Of course, he was. His life was slipping away, and I was his only concern.
“Says the one with the gaping wound and a missing hand.”
My foot slipped on the jagged rocks, water cascading down the stone walls on either side of us, making everything slick. I struggled to support Samkiel’s body weight and run down the damned tunnel. I didn’t even know where we were. My only thought had been as far away as possible.
The world shook again, and I heard the roars of creatures I couldn’t even imagine. The realms were opening, and the entire universe was bleeding. We were so fucked. We took a step, then another, before
Samkiel’s legs completely gave out.
No!
I caught him, his weight slamming me to my knees, but I refused to let him hit the ground. We had to keep going, but when I tried to lift him, he gritted his teeth, holding back a cry of pain. I stopped, afraid to move him, my eyes darting, searching in vain for somewhere safe. Who was I kidding?
There was nowhere that was safe now.
His hair was several shades lighter as if the power ripped from him had also taken the color. He was so bruised and mangled, the skin around his eyes and mouth burnt, his nose broken and skewed to the side. So much blood soaked his council garbs that my heart clenched—my poor baby.
Samkiel rested his head on my shoulder, and a whimper escaped me.
“You’re so warm, and I am so cold.” His voice sounded as cracked as the skin around his eyes.
“Gods don’t get cold.” I heard myself say, my voice broken and jagged as if a part of me was cracking wide open. I didn’t know what to do or how to heal him. Samkiel was the healer. I was a creature of destruction. His normally golden skin had turned that damned shade of gray I’d seen in my dream.
“We do,” he took a gasping, rattling breath, “when we die.”
The sound that escaped me was primal. A cry of fear, pain, and grief that any living creature would recognize.
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. Where did they get you? Let me look. Let me help.”
I shifted beneath him, holding him with one hand and searching his body with the other. I ripped the sodden council garbs open, exposing his torso. My breath rushed out of me on a sob. A brutal, jagged cut dissected
his abdomen, deep, devastating, and still bleeding. Dark spiderweb-like veins branched from the wound, the skin cracking and dry. Why wasn’t he healing?
I held my hand above the gash and called on my power. The edges of the wound blistered, but the bleeding continued.
Samkiel jerked and gritted his teeth so hard I saw blood. I stopped, dropping my hand and holding him closer.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Fuck. Why isn’t it working?” I pushed impatiently at my hair, tucking it behind my ears with a bloodstained hand, smearing my face with his blood. Desperately, I looked around for help,
knowing there was none to be had.
“It’s okay.”
“Can you heal yourself? Use what power you have left?”
He shook his head weakly. “I don’t have any power left.”
“What does that mean?” He didn’t answer, his eyes closing. “Samkiel,”
I cried, shaking him, “what does that mean?”
His chest rose and fell too slowly. “What’s left of me,” he stopped, “my father bound to the realms. My entire life force. Why I was so tired after the spell was made.”
Rage flooded me, pure and blinding. I would rip Unir to pieces if he were still alive. My nails transformed into talons. I hated them. I hated all of them. Selfish, selfish gods. How could he do that to his own son?
“You have to leave. Nismera will come for you. They all will.”
“No, I won’t leave you. I’ll never leave you again, okay? I promised.”
He nodded and turned in to me, trying to get closer.
“I can feel them. The realms cracking, opening. So many. There are so many. He locked them all away.”
“Okay, well, we will face that together, too. Just tell me how to help you. Please.”
I pulled him closer, frissons of fear going through me with his every labored breath. If only I could will my own heat and life into him.
“You are my whole world.” He looked up at me, and my heart shattered.
His once vibrant gray eyes had darkened as his skin paled. “I-I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I met you. Being with you, I finally felt what I wanted and had searched forever for. You woke me up and gave me reason. You made me feel like I was enough. I never felt like the World
Ender with you. I never felt less. You are what I’ve been searching for my entire life. You, Dianna, had my heart long before I ever touched yours.”
“Sami.” I couldn’t hold back my tears. My chest heaved, and I tried once more to close his wound. He hissed in pain and grabbed my hand, stopping me.
“I wish I had never left when my world fell. Maybe I would have heard you. Maybe it would have been me to find you and Gabby. I would have
loved you then, too.”
Love.
Love.
That word. That damned word.
My heart shattered, my soul erupting into a million pieces, and every broken piece belonged to him. I dropped my head to his, pressing my forehead to his. I focused, trying to pour myself into him and stop what I knew was coming. Tears blurred my vision, scalding my cheeks as they continued to fall.
“You have horrible taste in women,” I choked out through sobs.
His body shook, and a wet gurgling sound bubbled from his lips as if he was trying to laugh even this close to death. That one movement, that one sound, and then complete stillness. Samkiel sagged against me, his hand dropping from my arm, and the world went quiet.
My nightmares were coming true. Samkiel wore the same clothes, only now I knew it was his council garbs. His face, oh gods, all the color was
gone from his skin. I had lost him.
No, I couldn’t.
If I could just stop the bleeding, I could… I moved my hands, using my power to try to cauterize the wound again. Samkiel didn’t jerk this time, did not move or twitch. Pulling back, I saw the wound wasn’t bleeding anymore, but not because I had healed him. He just had nothing left in him.
I curled over him and laid my head against his chest, listening for a heartbeat, but I couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of my own heart. I cradled him closer, one hand beneath him, the other on his face.
“Samkiel.” I tapped his cheek. He was cold. He was too cold. Like her.
“Samkiel.” Another tap. “Samkiel.” A teardrop fell, leaving a trail across his cheek as it slid away. “Sami,” I said, my voice breaking.
The world stopped shaking, every realm wide open now that he was
gone.
“It will not work.”
My head whipped up, and I stared at Roccurem. His form shimmered before solidifying again. I gasped as he slid down the wall. Half his form wafted off of him in tendrils. Nismera had not missed in her rage.
Roccurem smiled, half of his face nothing but a swirling dark mass. I was losing him, too.
“I wanted to repay the debt I owed Unir for protecting me. I did everything in my power to bring you and Samkiel together to avoid all of this. But I had to do it in a way Nismera and her legion would not see. A whisper on the wind to get Zekiel to that cavern. A small idea of a bond sealed in blood, prolonging the trip you and Samkiel would take to search for the book. A push, sending you to the vampires you thought were friends.
A kiss from a witch. All for this. For salvation from a goddess of pure hate.”
A sob escaped me.
I looked down at Samkiel. He was limp in my arms and deathly gray, all his color stripped away, my sunshine gone. My soul cleaved in two. Pain didn’t come close to describing what I felt holding him. This was brutal agony, and I didn’t know if I would survive a loss like this again.
“I tried to speed up the progression of the mark. I tried to help. Even with the prophecy, I warned you both.”
My head snapped toward Roccurem. “Prophecy?”
Roccurem’s three unwounded, opaque eyes stared at Samkiel and me.
“One falls, one rises, and the end begins. So it was foretold the second Unir bound his son. One carved from darkness is you. One carved from light is him. The world will shudder as it does now. This is how the world ends.”
“I can’t… I can’t do this again. I won’t survive.”
Even the fate seemed to crumble at the plea in my voice. “You can.”
My hand closed over Samkiel’s, the coldness seeping into my very bones. I jerked my gaze toward Roccurem.
“What about the mark? I’m his amata, right?”
“Yes. You have already started the bonding, but it is unfinished.”
A sharp chill fell into the room, and my skin prickled. I didn’t take my eyes off Roccurem, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we weren’t alone anymore. I cradled Samkiel’s body closer to me and stared at Roccurem. The cold mist, whatever it was, seemed to hesitate.
“Tell me how it works.” The words were a strangled whisper.
“I am unsure if that will hel—”
“Tell me!” I bellowed, my voice deep and cruel, the sound of an ancient and violent creature.
Roccurem flinched. The universe halted. The cold in the room grew spiky in alarm.
“The first step in the ritual is blood.”
Our blood deal.
Blood of my blood.
Reggie’s form wavered as if he struggled to hold himself together. “The
second step is body.”
Sex.
I want you.
“Last, and most important, is the soul. That is all the Mark of Dhihsin truly is. It is a sealing of a soul split. Your power becomes their power.”
“Soul?”
“Love is the purest expression of a soul you can share, and the words spoken seal the mark. It is the final step. I thought it would be spoken sooner, but you are both damaged, stubborn creatures.”
Hope flared in my chest.
“Samkiel told me he loved me before… If I say it, is there a chance?”
Roccurem glanced behind me, and I didn’t need to turn to know death hovered, waiting and watching.
“Even if it does, it will require a sacrifice of some magnitude.
Resurrection has a cost.”
Hope flared in my chest. “I don’t care.”
“I do not know how this will affect you or him. Death has never been this close. Not even with Gathrriel and Vvive.”
Gathrriel and Vvive.
I remembered the name from when Logan and I were in Yejedin.
Gathrriel was a powerful warrior wounded in battle and on the edge of death when Vvive found him. She swore on her blood, body, and soul, praying to the Formless Ones, the ones before creation, to save him. That was when the mark appeared. It was the first soul tie, and it sealed them together in every way possible. She saved him that day, saved the world, really.
A frigid wind swept in, sharper than any blade, the aching cold scraping against my bones. I glanced around the room and leaned over Samkiel protectively, his massive body limp in my arms.
I wouldn’t bring Gabby back. I couldn’t be so selfish, but Samkiel? The realms needed him. He was a light, a force of nature, and possibly the only being who could eradicate Nismera. Those were all good reasons, but above all, I needed him.
“If there is a cost for resurrection, then so be it. I’ll pay it.” The alternative was losing him, which would never be an option for me.
I had told Gabby every day that I loved her. She was my sister, and we’d shared everything. When she died, I wanted the word “love” to die with her. I never wanted to feel that deeply about anyone ever again, never wanted to be hurt like that again. No matter how I tried, Samkiel refused to let me lock my heart away. He showed me what I could have. He promised he would never leave me, yet here I was, my soul shattered and Samkiel cold in my arms.
I took a deep breath and focused, turning every bit of grief and sadness into cold, hard steel. I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to his and linking my fingers with his.
“If Roccurem is wrong, and I am truly out of time, if this doesn’t work, I want you to know that I am nothing like your father, Samkiel. I refuse to live without you. There will be no peace in this realm or the next. I will burn this universe down to embers for you. I will leave nothing untouched, taking apart anyone that’s ever hurt you piece by piece. So when you hear the screams from however far away you are from me. When you feel the very stars shake from the rage you aren’t here to pull me back from, when you hear them beg and plead for mercy, I need you to remember that it’s because you and your stupid, annoying persevering ways got to me. I want you to remember that you got under my skin when I hated you. I want you to remember that you made me happy and made me feel when no one else could. I want you to remember that you saved me in every way possible and never once gave up on me. So when the very fabric of the universe burns, I want you to remember that I love you.”
The air in the tunnel grew heavy, the cold darkness retreating with a hollow whisper. Pain radiated through my left hand. I hissed and glanced down. A reddish-orange glow burned beneath my skin, etching intricate whorls around my third finger. The laser-like beam cooled, leaving behind a jet-black brand, but it was so much more and went so much deeper.
A seal.
The Mark of Dhihsin.
As quickly as it burned, as it showed, it disappeared.
Samkiel took a breath, his eyes fluttering open before closing once more, but a rhythmic heartbeat echoed through the tunnel, quickly synching with my own.
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