Could kill me.
Because no one else could shield themselves from the guns the way I could. Also…there was no way in hell I would let anyone else take this role. It was my duty as heir. I’d signed a blood oath to protect my people, with my life if necessary. Now it was time to put my money where my mouth was.
It was time to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure they stayed safe.
I sent my love through the bonds to Austin, waiting behind me a ways with the others. He’d clearly figured out what was going on and found me. I sent pride and honor （or what I imagined that might feel like） through all of my Ivy House bonds and connections, hoping my team would understand the message of how I felt about them. And then I darted forward.
An anguished roar went up behind me, Austin knowing what all this meant. My heart broke for him. Luckily he’d have plenty of mages and mercenaries to take his vengeance out on, because this was going to work. I would make sure of it. I would not die until my job was done. I would not.
I picked up speed, going high first so that I could angle down. I didn’t want to disturb the flow of the magic, plus the spell would burn up my wings. They’d be useless. I’d need to fall on the right spot. A dicey bit of mental physics, but it would work. It would. It had to.
Pushing everything else from my mind—the tortured feelings from my bonds with Austin, the frustration and fear from my various connections, the yelling from Sebastian behind me—I hit my zenith and started down, my eyes on the spot, my momentum ready to carry me through.
Wind whipped by my face. Arms closed around my middle.
“No, Nathanial!” I tried to scream, the words garbled.
With one hand he stuffed my wings between our bodies. With the other he held me tightly, even as I tried to shock him to get him off.
“No, Nathanial,” I tried to yell again, his much faster speed barreling us toward the spell now.
“No! ”
Wings stowed, he wrapped the other arm around me tightly, squeezing my smaller frame into his and curling, trying to protect as much of me as possible. Trying to sacrifice himself so I would make it.
Going down with the ship.
“Noooo!” I screamed, the spell right there, orange, vicious, ready to burn our flesh from our bodies.
He wouldn’t listen. I felt his answering pride and honor through the bond. And then we hit the spell.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jessie
PAIN.
No, the word pain wasn’t large enough to encompass what my world had plunged into. Torment.
Suffering.
The spell slowed us down, like we were blasting through a brick wall. Agony seared across my skin and clawed down to my bones. Anywhere the spell touched roasted away my flesh and fried what was beneath. Blackness encroached, my primal senses wanting to cut off my consciousness from what was happening.
“Stay strong,” Ivy House urged me, pumping in my middle. “Stay lucid.”
Thinking was impossible. My brain couldn’t function. A weight from around me fell away, and I struggled to remember what it was. Struggled to remember what I was even doing, why I had to stay awake.
“Fly, damn you,” Ivy House said within me, her words echoing around my head, stuck in the sea of this horrible misery. “Do not let his death be in vain. Fly! ”
His death…
I half felt my lips moving, trying to say that out loud. Feeling points of pressure on my body and not quite sure what those momentary blasts were. Everything just hurt too much. It hurt too much to move. To try to make sense of any of this.
That blackness crept in a bit more, and it felt like I was floating. No, not floating, falling. Air leafed through the black ashes flaking off my body. Not all over, though. The pain wasn’t all over. Just certain places. Places the spell hadn’t hit…because I’d been protected.
A new sort of agony welled up in me, emotional this time. Lodging in my middle and withering my insides.
Nathanial.
He’d sacrificed himself so I could get this done. So we could save our people. I couldn’t let him down. I couldn’t let any of them down.
Determination competed with the ongoing torture of my flesh. Anger stole in to block my sorrow. I blinked my eyes and snapped out my wings, everything hazy but seeming to work. My descent slowed as I set my sights on the mages below me, looking up with wide eyes. Gun blasts pummeled me, those points of pressure I’d felt.
Summoning my magic forth, I put up a defense, deflecting most of the blasts and attempting to heal.
It felt like a light bulb with a faulty wire, though, flickering and catching, only to blink out again. It would have to do. I just needed to live long enough to send two mages to the grave.