Page 57 of Tethered Thrones

I would’ve laughed if it wouldn’t make my lungs collapse. In the end, he ordered me around. But what more could he want? I’d died for Hadi not once but now it would be twice.

He didn’t need to worry so much, after all, Tsuki had implied it would just be me to go. I wanted to tell them, but I couldn’t speak.

“Enough… puppet,” Sun silenced me now, stroking my face, his hands joining the others, and they were not listening! I did not have many words left in me, my chest filling with the darkness and the horror, and my mind swam with a vision of an afterlife more brutal and demented than the shadowland we’d resided in.

Only someone as wicked as me could survive there, maybe thrive there as an underworld king. Tsuki had at least thought ahead that much, and for that, I was grateful.

“I’ll fix this, I’ll fix this, I’ll fix this,” Clem was chanting, rocking over me, his magic trying to push out the evil, but he couldn’t. A child of darkness couldn’t end it. He was too weak.

Clem had asked me once if we had mothers and fathers. I had firmly saidno, so sure of myself back then.

But I’d been wrong…

And her arms around me are so warm, her skeletal frame plush like a pillow, her gnashing black teeth beautiful.

For once, I surrendered to a power greater than me without a fight. We had eternity once they joined me beyond the grave if I escaped that hellish land. I would meet them again someday…

Chapter 19

Sun

This couldn’t be right. It just couldn’t. But the truth was forced upon me, whether I liked it or not.

I sat immobile, covered in blood that stank of something I couldn’t name, and maggots born from the bile, malicious and snapping, burning away like paper charms, lit on fire by an invisible hand one by one. It was disgusting and inconceivable, and Bracken was dying because of them. I could feel it in every bone in my body.

“No,” I wailed as a soldier knocked into me, rushing into the fray. I could hear the fight against Daaku behind us like it was from a far distance.

“He’s dying,” Hadi said, mirroring my thoughts, words I could not bring myself to speak.

Something like poison, but worse, was spreading everywhere through the tether, corrupting our souls.

I could barely bring myself to look at Bracken. Tendrils of what had to be black magic curled around him from his open wound. He looked worse than the undead horses who’d charged from the cracks in the Earth.

Another wail pierced the air, and I was sure it was Clem. But it wasn’t. It was Kiar who stopped trying to stem the bleedingand just held him. Bracken looked peaceful, eyes white and fading gray, a familiar empty gaze I’d seen hundreds of times over the years.

But his stomachcontorted,bulged, and misshapen. Something was trying to break free of him. And with the last of his strength, he was keeping it in, dragging them with him to the grave.

Hadi, too, sat immobile, realizing we were all going to die, no doubt, his commands worthless now. And Clem, my precious Clem…

Clem was flashing every color of the rainbow, and then he went white. Bleach white. Bone white. I ripped my eyes away from him unable to look.

“I…” a sob tore from Clem’s trembling body, Bracken’s black blood seemingly etched onto him like tattoos, “I c-c-can’t fix this!”

Clem’s face fell into his palms as I made myself look at him again, the other set of hands covering his ears as he sobbed and sobbed. Hadi’s face twisted, shaking his head no, whispering, “Do something, Clem. Beg her. She has helped us so far. She is a goddess!”

“She can’t!” Clem shouted, never lifting his face, gasping for air between every whimpering breath. “She has nothing left. She tried to warn me. Even Taiyo tried to warn me! I… I can’t.”

I shuddered at that. No, no, there had to be a way. One missing wing shouldn’t kill him, but whatever curse Daaku placed on Bracken seemed to have done the trick. Clem just needed to break it!

“You can’t die on me. You said you were my master. You can’t protect me if you’re dead,” I begged as I leaned over Bracken.

Beyond the sorrow in Kiar and Hadi’s eyes swam fear. Fear any moment now, their hearts would stop beating with Bracken’s, and we’d fall into one mass grave.

“I…love you too, Sun,” he murmured, Bracken’s voice suddenly clear and resolute.

But his eyes were so misty and so very, very far away.

Deliriously, he lifted a claw to my chin, his hand swayed and jerked uncontrollably. “So utterly human. I detest it… But I love you.”

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