Page 61 of Tethered Thrones

I was fading.

Chapter 21

Clem

Keep him alive. Keep him alive. Keep him alive.

Sun’s final command echoed in my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to move a muscle as the book of shadows dissolved into a black mist that scattered away with the rush of soldiers storming the open gate.

I was empty. Worse than empty. A cavernous tooth-filled pit had opened inside me, sucking away at everything bit by bit. The world itself lost any color, and I gazed at the rest of my lovers washed in muted shades of white, black, and gray, swarming with hopelessness as I clicked.

Even the blackness of Bracken’s blood seemed darker. And if I had more tears to cry, I would wail until I collapsed at the sight of that.

But I had nothing left.

I couldn’t contain the sorrow, anger, and fear within me anymore. And that bastard’s voice was inside my mind, taunting me.

Sacrifice, Clem. Bear her blessing well, Bracken.

I’d have to sacrifice significantly as Tsuki’s emissary. That’s what that nightwing had told me. But I was not honorable like Sun. I could not and would not bear this loss with my head heldhigh. I couldn’t do it. Yet I knew I had to use the spell to sever the tether now.

But that isn’t what Sun told me,I thought.He said to keep him alive. But why? So that Bracken can suffer longer? I can’t do that to him. I just can’t!

But my inaction was having more or less the same effect as he wheezed, his chest fluttering, then going up and down slower and slower still. His face had twisted into something horrifying when Tsuki left him. I didn’t dare imagine where he had gone, at the lip of the hellmouth awaiting endless suffering without a shadow of a doubt.

Where we’d all end up if I didn’t act.

His tether was but a spider’s web, thin and shining, snapping. I had to break it now. I had to, or Sun, Hadi, and Kiar would die!

I reached for it, and Kiar snatched my hand away, his spots and two-toned hair more pronounced in the colorblind dystopia my eyes had glazed over to.

“No. Keep him alive,” Kiar demanded, and I shook my head, clawing at him, trying to wrench my wrist away.

“I must sever the bond! We are running out of time!” I pleaded as he shook his head vigorously.

“We go together or not at all. Just give us enough time to slay him,” Kiar pleaded, and suddenly, pressed his lips to mine.

His desperation leaked into my mouth and tasted much sweeter than the poison welling up inside. And then he was gone, dashing after Sun, hacking and slashing his way through the city guards and the demonic creatures summoned from the hellmouth portal.

I looked after him helplessly, shaking. Why were they leaving me one by one? Why were they all leaving me alone if we were meant to go together?

Sensing my distress at their absence, Hadi kneeled and took me into his arms. His white irises swam in the familiar inky black pool of his eyes, and I could not tell if it was tears or blood streaming down his face now.

“You can do this. Remember, you’re one of us. Tsuki’s emissary. We will fight, and you will defend this bond to the death.”

Hadi folded me into his chest, all four arms trembling, and I squeezed my eyes tight. I did not want to remember the last of Tsuki’s essence flowing through Bracken until she was but a wisp of moonlight.

Moonlight? I looked up and over Hadi’s shoulder and saw the moon sitting in the blue sky, a pale whisp of nothing in the daylight. So dull and exhausted.

Our mother was so very tired and blameless when the whole of Naran cursed her name for something she had never wished for.

I couldn’t bring myself to squeeze Hadi back as he released me, and I fluttered weakly to Bracken’s side. And he, too, left, charging into battle while I rested my head on my dying master’s chest.

I wished the tears would return if only to wash away the bloodstains. The tether was so weak now, each of us dying bit by bit. I reached for Bracken’s strand, not to snap it, but hold it firm, and my hands passed through it.

Like a ghost.

I closed my eyes and focused. This time, I grabbed onto it and held it.

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