Page 14 of Amethyst and Iron
“I am. Thanks for that.”
The guy gave him a respectful nod, then told him, “Go to your love. We will protect the perimeter. You need not concern yourself with that, only your fallen.”
Your fallen.
No.
That wouldn’t be our reality.
I certainly wasn’t going to allow Cassius to pay the price to make that so. I already had the means to see to it.
It was different for me, I was dying anyway.
Cassius had an eternity left to live. And he hadn’t lived yet either. He’d just been an enslaved soldier of the Celestial Plane until recently.
Him dying while they were Soul Branded would destroy Velra and, by extension, Lazriel, because it would leave her closed to him—worse than the first time that had happened.
My way was the only way.
As much as I didn’t want to leave them, as much as I didn’t want to give up what I’d found in them, too much was at stake to be selfish.
3
~Lazriel~
Blood.
Blood everywhere.
Herblood.
So much of it.
Toomuch of it.
It was all I could sense as we arrived on the scene—or near the scene.
I couldn’t see her right there.
Sylas had teleported us, but only to the vicinity, not right to Velra. He’d been unable to track her magical signature given the… situation. So he’d latched onto Cassius’, but that had been really weak.
I shuddered at the sight of the fusion bar.
The place was fucking decimated, in ruins, only two walls left standing and just a couple of chairs intact.
There was nobody else there. No bodies—dead or living. Kelsana was nowhere to be seen either. Knowing how selfless and caring Velra was, she’d probably sent her out of the line of fire the moment she’d registered a threat.
As I struggled to track Velra when her blood was everywhere and overpowering everything else, I couldn’t keep silent with this intense fear and anxiousness threatening to take me over, so I swung my head toward Sylas as he followed beside me. He had a strained expression all over his face, his struggle to contain his panic and emotion over all of this mirroring mine.
“What did that purist fucker mean about you conserving your power and all that shit about fucking with the balance of nature?”
I wanted to ask more than that. The Glasswake Massacre thing he’d mentioned. And all that shit about Sylas’ father.
But what he was planning to do right here and now took priority.
“Relishing delivering a villain monologue?”
“Sylas,” I snapped. “Don’t give me a party line, don’t talk around it.” I grasped his arm. “All right? I can’t… with Velra… and Cassius… with them…”
