Chapter 334: You Made The Right Choice

Cecilia looked at Noah.

He hung in the air between them, his skin pale, with his dark hair falling across his face. She could see the dried blood across his face, which seemed to have poured from every opening he had there, and the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

He looked smaller like this. Younger. Stripped of all the careful distance he kept between himself and everyone around him.

She looked away.

The dagger sat in her spatial ring, invisible, weightless, and she could feel it the way you feel something you’ve carried long enough that its absence would feel wrong.

Her brother had left it to her as the last guardian, with only the instruction to keep it safe. And she had kept it safe. Until now.

Lady in Dark stepped closer, boots crunching softly over ash and broken stone. Behind her, the battlefield continued its work. Lightning crashed somewhere to the east. The bone spider had one of its legs shattered by her stone golem.

“Consider your position clearly,” Lady in Dark said, her voice almost kind. “Even if you let him die and keep the dagger, do you imagine that’s the end of it? I will find another way. I always do. Another pressure point. Another night. Another version of this moment, somewhere down the road, when you are more tired and less prepared.”

She stopped just out of arm’s reach, head tilting.

“You are not choosing between the dagger and Noah. You are choosing between giving it to me now, or giving it to me later, after I have taken something else from you first.”

Cecilia closed her eyes.

She thought about the first time Noah had walked into her classroom. The careful blankness he wore like armor. The way he absorbed everything and gave back nothing except exactly what was necessary. She had told herself it was professional concern. That she simply didn’t want to see a student wasted.

She had apparently been lying to herself for some time now.

He felt like a younger brother. Infuriating and guarded and quietly remarkable. And she could not watch him die when she had the means to prevent it.

She exhaled.

Her hand moved to the ring.

Lady in Dark clapped once, her voice filled with delight. “There,” she said warmly. “You made the right choice.”

The telekinesis released and Cecilia dropped, catching herself on one knee against the broken ground, her legs unsteady beneath her. She stayed there for a moment, breathing, before she reached into the spatial ring.

The dagger came free with no resistance, as if it had always known this moment was coming. Its golden blade caught the firelight from the burning buildings around them, throwing warm light across her fingers.

She held it out.

Lady in Dark reached forward and took it with both hands, slowly, the way you handle something you have waited a long time to hold.

She turned it once, her thumb tracing the flat of the blade, her breath quiet and even. Her eyes behind the hood were soft in a way they hadn’t been all night.

“Thank you,” she whispered reverently.

Then she opened her hand and let Noah fall.

Cecilia was already moving, crossing the distance before he hit the ground, catching him against her chest and pulling him close. He was heavier than he looked. She adjusted her grip, reached for her fire, felt the teleport beginning to form around them both.

Then it stopped.

The telekinesis closed around her like a fist, locking her in place, and her heart dropped. Her eyes snapped upwards, even as her body froze.

Lady in Dark was tucking the dagger carefully inside her cloak.

“You said you wouldn’t kill me,” Cecilia said through gritted teeth.

“I won’t.” Lady in Dark stepped closer, her voice unbothered. “But I never said I couldn’t do anything else.”

Her hand closed around Cecilia’s head.

The psychic energy hit like a door slamming shut. White, then nothing. Cecilia folded to the ground with Noah still in her arms, blood running freely from her nose, her eyes closed before she finished falling.

Lady in Dark looked down at them both.

Then she laughed, the sound bright, genuine, and completely at odds with the burning world around her.

And then she was gone.

***

The axe came down and the dragon met it with fire.

The white column slammed into the wooden blade and held it back, the force pushing Edric’s arms upwards despite himself.

He held his ground, boots grinding against the ground, and pushed back. The wood of the haft didn’t burn. The purple edges of the blade ate into the fire where it made contact, dissolving it strand by strand.

Then Edric stepped back and let the dragon follow.

It surged forward, exactly as he’d needed it to, and the trees responded.

They had been growing quietly this entire time, roots spreading beneath the battlefield, trunks thickening at the edges of his awareness.

Now they moved, shooting upwards and inwards simultaneously, branches thickening into chains, wrapping around the dragon’s legs, its body, and its neck, layer after layer of golden-sheened wood locking it into place before it registered what was happening.

It roared and strained and the branches groaned but held.

Edric was already in the air.

He brought the axe down cleanly at the base of the dragon’s neck, and the purple edge did the rest. The roar cut off, and the dragon’s head rolled to the ground.

The trees held the dead dragon upright for a moment longer before Edric released them, and it came apart as it fell.

He turned away before it hit the ground.

He found Cecilia by her heat signature, crossing the debris field in seconds. She was on the ground with Noah pulled against her, blood drying beneath her nose. He dropped to one knee and pressed two fingers to her throat.

Alive.

He placed his palm against her head and let the energy of his life affinity flow, spreading through her in a slow pulse. The bleeding stopped. Color returned to her face, and her breathing steadied.

Then he looked at Noah.

He healed him too, the same warmth, pushing back whatever damage the night had left in his body.

He straightened as one of his mages landed beside him, boots hitting the rubble hard.

“Read it,” Edric said simply.

The mage closed his eyes. Yellow energy spread outwards from him, moving across the ground, the rubble, the air itself. His affinity allowed him to read events after they’d happened as long as he was at the location and the event was still fresh.

When his eyes finally opened, he looked at Noah without hesitation.

“Him,” the mage said. “He’s the one that brought the monolith through.”

That was when a quiet sound came from the ground between them.

And Noah’s eyes opened.

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