Page 200 of The Last One
I look down to see… No, she’s holding my amulet.
“You’ve become too much,” Elyn says, “and yet you will never be enough. My mother is wrong. You’ll never change. This realm will never survive, because you will never be the god you were born to be—the god that Vallendor Realm needs and deserves.”
I wave my hand at the chaos around me. “I didn’t start this!”
The battle rages on. More dead otherworldly pile high on both sides.
Elyn surveys the fighting and sighs, her expression sad. “No. But the conditions were perfect for the original usurper to breach the realm.”
The original usurper. Danar Rrivae.
“He’s come here to take Vallendor from you,” she says, “with the help of his associate.”
“Emperor Wake.”
Elyn nods. “And Wake has been working all this time with Danar Rrivae.”
Sybel warned me about Wake.
He is only a consequence of the One, but he is a force working against you. The One is far more powerful.
Danar Rrivae—it’shismagic that keeps Wake alive. That allows Wake to fight with otherworldly. Not Elyn after all.
And now I remember the last time I saw Danar Rrivae. Kestau, at a garden party before convocation. That afternoon, he smiled at me, tugged one of my braids, said that I was a perfect mixture of Izariel and Lyra. “He called me ‘L.D.’ Little Destroyer,” I whisper now.
“And he’s now here to take Vallendor,” Elyn says. “And if he wants to do that, then he must kill Vallendor’s Grand Defender. He must kill you. And if he kills you, then Danar Rrivae becomes even more powerful, and Vallendor becomes yet one more realm lost to Supreme. But you are his obstacle, Kai. You are the One destroying Vallendor with your power, province by province—and, of course, doing so without consent from the Council of High Orders. Both of you have turned against Supreme, and only one has been punished for that but has escaped final reckoning. That is the job of another Adjudicator. I’m here to complete mine.”
My body feels like it’s catching fire and tearing in two. And now I know the truth that I’d traveled across Vallendor to learn. Now I know who the One is.
Elyn takes a step away from me. She holds my amulet in one hand and the sword with a silvery-blue blade in the other. The platinum hilt is marked with familiar-looking characters that spell out her name.
“You kill me,” I shout, “then you give Danar exactly what he wants.”
“I kill you,” she shouts back, “then you cannot destroy Vallendor Realm and Danar Rrivae will have no claim to this realm, since he failed to kill its Grand Defender. What happens to Vallendor once you’re gone, Kai, will be decided by the Council. Until then…”
She takes another step back and says, “I am Elyn Fynal. As Grand Adjudicator of Vallendor and the Nine Realms, Sentinel and Divine Mediator, with the approval of the Council of High Orders, including Lord Izariel Megidrail, you, Kaivara Megidrail, former Grand Defender of Vallendor, Lady of the Verdant Realm, Destroyer of Worlds…”
Tears glisten in her eyes, and she takes a deep breath. “Kai, I sentence you to death.”
“No!” I thrust my hands, and wind bursts from my fingers.
Elyn’s knocked off her feet and drops my amulet.
I dive for it, but I feel no tugging like I had before. What’s wrong with it? No light pulses from the moth’s—
“Stop!” Elyn shouts just as she blasts force toward me, strong enough to slam me back against a hillside and knock the air out of my lungs. Rocks and boulders from above break apart and rain down on us, and we both dodge stones now loosened from the palisade.
Elyn thrusts her hands again, keeping me pinned against the boulder, and the pressure intensifies. Her hair is free of that single braid and drifts like spiderwebs around her head. Her eyes burn gold like fire, and her amulet, that dove, also flares golden, and the air around us smells of crushed jasmine and snuffed-out candles.
“You will not—” I grit my teeth and force her hold off me. Despite the pressure, I manage to conjure and hurl fireballs at her, catching her off guard.
Alarm shines in her eyes, and her pressure weakens for a moment.
Desperate, I lift Fury, my arm shaking as my energy is nearly spent.
Elyn lifts her own sword.
We swing.
