Page 46 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
He didn’t know what to expect, seeing as he’d been unconscious at the time, but he had her to thank in part for his leg being mostly whole. She could do it again; he knew it.
After another moment of hesitation, Hallie knelt beside the woman. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Only a little relief broke through his dread. They still had a long way to go, even if she was willing to try.
“Use the stored Soul in the locket,” Fely breathed. “Don’t lose your grip on your tether. Andfeel.”
The instructions were clear as mud. But Hallie seemed to get it. “And if I’m not able to do it?”
“Then we all die.” Fely’s hand glowed a soft yellow in the morning light as she set it on the King’s neck. “We don’t have the sword. We don’t have all the Essences. If he dies now, then Jagamot will never be defeated.”
“But you said I won’t be able to control anything without the watch.” Hallie still clutched the locket. Her hair fluttered in the soft wind swirling around them. Niels shivered.
“Try the goggles, try anything,” Fely pleaded. “Just don’t let him die.”
For all she said about the King’s death meaning they would all die, he didn’t think that was the whole of it. The Cerl King clearly meant something to her, something more than the other half of an arranged marriage. He recognized her panic; he’d felt it the day Jack died, when Hallie had nearly been crushed in the collapse.
He would never forget the adrenaline thrumming through his veins at breakneck speed. The rough threads of her jacket clutched in his fingers as he pulled her out of the falling beam’s path. Her warmth tucked against his chest as the stone and dirt rained down around them. The relief that it was Jack beneath the rubble and not her. The horror and guilt that he’d been relieved his best friend was dead.
His head spiked with pain.
He reached into his pocket once more, but this time he took out the ring. He slipped it onto his pinky. It wasn’t much comfort, but it was something. He rubbed his temples with one hand.
Hallie crouched beside Fely, placing a hand on the King’s shoulder. She murmured words under her breath, too quiet for Niels to hear. Kase’s goggles and Fely’s locket dangled from her other hand.
The ring’s sapphire dug into his palm as he tightened his grip, nearly breaking the skin.
He didn’t know what to expect. He’d seen the blackout in the caverns, and he’d watched her unravel a man before his eyes, but the shock of white-gold light trickling from her fingers now wasn’t as potent as it had been then.
He wished he could do something, anything to help. But with his limbs riddled with injuries and no power thrumming through his veins, he couldn’t do anything but sit there and keep his headache from worsening.
He did make an effort to keep an eye on their surroundings. Without any knowledge of the area, he wasn’t sure what might be lurking past his field of vision. He wished he had his pistol, but he wasn’t sure where that had gone, and he didn’t see the Cerl weapon on Fely, either. Maybe she’d dropped it during her strange episode in the tunnel corridor.
The ruined building’s ceiling was missing in places, and the crumbling brown columns held up fragments of carved reliefs. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine what it might have looked like in its prime.
Two moss-covered statues stood tall on the far side of the giant room. He couldn’t tell much about them with the overgrowth, only that both held swords. Most of the ground was jagged with upended cobblestones. Dirt, dead grass, and remnants of the past filled in the cracks and crevices.
It was like something out of the storybooks Hallie used to let him borrow before they were together. He’d enjoyed them well enough, but honestly, he’d only read them so he’d have something to talk to Hallie about. Even though she was his best friend’s sister, he’d wanted her to notice him.
Hestillwanted her to notice him—to notice how he ached to brush the stray hair from her face as she bent over the King’s prone form. To notice that he’d somehow fallen more in love with her in her absence. To notice he was here, and Kase wasn’t, and for it to matter.
But he shouldn’t want any of that.
It should have bothered him to watch her hands glow with otherworldly power; it should have separated her fully from the Hallie he’d known. But it felt right, somehow. Like she’d finally gotten to live out the stories she loved so much.
The light enveloping her hand pulsed. He swallowed around the fear lodging itself in his throat, trying not to thinkabout a soldier coming apart before his eyes when that light touched him.
He watched her closely as she worked. Her hands were the same, though power flickered around them.
Kase would’ve figured out a way to help her. Niels had only known him a short amount of time, but he’d seen enough to know the man was quite resourceful and brilliant. Blast him.
It really was a shame he liked Kase Shackley. The man had offered himself up on a gilded plate to the Cerl general and emerged victorious—all for Hallie.
Niels would’ve done the same if it would’ve made a difference. However, unlike Kase, he wasn’t the son of one of the most powerful men on Yalvara. He was the son of a dead man.
Hallie swayed a little, her hand falling from the King’s shoulder. Niels caught her. “Hallie!”
She shook her head, pushing off of him and pushing her palm against the King. “Almost had it.”
