A Dawn of Onyx (The Sacred Stones, #1)(103)

“A griffin? Really?”

The hulking, feathered beast nodded. “My parents weren’t very creative.”

Griffin moved first, taking out rows of soldiers with his deadly wingspan, and ripping heads clean off with his lionlike teeth. Blood splattered my face, but I didn’t care. If anything, I relished it. Looking at the carnage, the bodies, the slumped carcasses of scaled beasts—what they had done to the peaceful city of Siren’s Cove.

I was going to kill each and every one of them.

I parried and stabbed, but moving in the shallow water slowed me down and I heaved with the force of swinging my blade against stronger fighters. Above us, I heard the roar of Kane’s dragon form as he lit the soldiers that fought us with fire, the gray wyvern following in close pursuit. The smell of charred flesh threatened to bring my stomach’s contents onto the sandy bank beneath us. No amount of time spent in an infirmary had desensitized me to scorched human remains.

Still, the hordes kept coming.

I jabbed and grunted, narrowly dodging blades and flames and fists. I was grateful for the pale light. I didn’t want to see how red the ocean water we moved through had turned. A Garnet soldier came at me and slammed his blade against mine. I blocked and spun but he slipped through, and I barely caught Barney out of the corner of my eye as he sliced through the soldiers’ neck before the man impaled me.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

He slammed me down into the shallow water in response, covering my body with his.

“Hey!”

“You have to get on the ship, Lady Arwen.”

“We can’t leave these people to die,” I grunted under his weight.

“We don’t have a choice.”

I knew Barney was right.

They had too many men. And beasts. And Fae. They weren’t even using any lighte—their swords and arrows and cannons enough to decimate half of Siren’s Cove. Barney rolled off of me and whistled at the sky, and not a minute later gnarled talons picked Barney and I from the sand and carried us over the sea and onto the moving ship. Wind assaulted my face and we landed with a thud, the force of Griffin’s wings sending some of the Peridot soldiers aboard running for the galleys.

I looked back to the shore. Some soldiers still clashed calf-deep in the bay, but most of our enemies looked to be retreating. For a moment, I wondered with child-like optimism if they would just simply let us go. If being ripped from my home, then the keep, and now this palace, losing my oldest friend and destroying whatever might have been with Kane might just be enough loss for a lifetime.

Instead, I watched in silent horror as the salamanders lit enemy arrows alight and a fiery rain of piercing metal hailed down onto our ship. The entire deck ran for cover. Ryder and I lunged for Leigh and Mother and moved to get under the deck.

We toppled into the captain’s quarters with a thud.

I sucked in a great lungful of musty cabin air.

“Thank fuck,” said Ryder, checking to make sure he was in one piece. Once he was sure no limbs had been lost, he flattened out against the floor to sip in gulps of air.

“Bleeding Stones,” exhaled Leigh, untangling herself from me.

I waited for my mother’s admonishment against our foul language.

Surely even near death wouldn’t stop her automatic reprimand—

But it never came.

The darkest chill—pure dread—barely tickled my neck.

I turned around, sitting up from the worn wood beneath me.

My mother was prone on the ground, an arrow lodged in her heart.

“No!” I shrieked.

No, no, no, no, no—

I gathered her into my arms, shaking and screaming, my pulse too loud in my ears, shuddering—

“Arwen, you can fix this, right?” Ryder scrambled to the other side of my mother. “Mam, Mam! Stay with us.”

“Mother?” Leigh grasped her tightly, and my heart stopped beating altogether.

I knew as soon as I held her. My stomach turned and my vision blurred, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

My abilities had never worked on my mother.

I tried anyway, pressing my palms into her blood-drenched blouse. I poured all the energy I had into her. Like Dagan taught me, I thought of the sky and air and atmosphere. Tried to pull everything around me into myself like sucking in a final breath. My pulse thrummed, my body ached, my head pounded, and I waited. Waited for her tendons, muscles, and flesh, at my power’s urging, to stitch themselves back together around the arrow. My nerves vibrated and my jaw clenched at the effort, but the blood continued to pour out in rivulets, and nothing happened.

“I am so, so sorry. I can’t— I’ve never—” I sobbed.

“Arwen,” she said, her voice a whisper, “I know.”

I cried harder, unable to find strength or courage or hope. Her wound was too great. Ryder’s face was crumpling. He held Leigh tight, but she had gone deathly pale and still, the tears welling in her eyes the only sign of her horror.

“I did this. It’s all my fault,” I wept.

“No. No, Arwen.” She swallowed a wet cough. “I have always known what you are, and loved you just the same.”

Confusion and shock warred inside my reeling, spinning mind.

How could she have known? The ask died in my throat as she coughed again.