The Touch of Salvation

44: The End

ADALIND

When the Riders fly back, it isn't filled with the joyous celebrations of a victorious fight. Instead, their heads are hung and their eyes are cast with something unreadable - unbearable. On the balcony of the palace, Goliath and I watch as they pass overhead.

His grip on my waist tightens. He knows something wrong just as I do.

Not riding at the head of the dragons was Lucian. He and his dragon were not among the Riders who are returning. My heart lurches in my chest and I can feel myself running to meet them before I even process my movements.

My breath is so heavy within me it nearly brings me to my knees. Coming to the cliff right before the seas, I watch the Riders land. Daario's face, harsh and resigned, makes my knees buckle. "No," I gasp out, a sob tearing through me. "No. Lucian-"

It's Lux that interrupts me, cold and resounding. "Is dead."

My friend. My best friend. My family. My brother.

Dead. He's dead. Before I can ask how or why, a Rider from the back of the clan promptly turns and pukes onto the grass. Another collapses as if he can't fathom what he has seen. Terror rips through the eyes of my warriors, warriors who have seen the worst of war and came out not nearly as scared as they are now.

Some look as though they're in a trance. Their eyes are straight and forward without a single thought burning behind them.

Some are shaking.

Some are crying.

Some are angry.

"What was that thing," a Rider asks.

"What happened," I ask.

"It was a titan," Lux says. Daario is eerily still. He's never this still, not even in the worst of times I've seen him endure. "Exceedingly large, robust. Unpenetrable. Nothing would stop him, nothing could wound him. He just...rose from the waters. He reached the height of our dragons in the sky."

Beside me, Goliath freezes. His arm locks itself around me sturdily as if to shelter me from this beast that was nowhere near these parts of my lands.

"Lucian," I interrupt. "What happened to Lucian?"

"He," Lux begins and then falters. I have never seen her falter like this before.

"It ate him."

Wild eyes of a woman who could feel it all meet mine. "It swallowed him whole."

I twist myself out of my mate's arms and go to Lux putting my hands on her shoulders, forcing her to pay the closest attention to me. "Did you feel him die?" She says nothing, shocked and dazed. I shake her somewhat forcibly. "Lux, did you feel him die?"

"I felt fear," she curses out, ripping herself from my hold. "He was so scared," her voice breaks. "I only felt fear."

"Fear? You only felt fear?"

"Yes!"

My heart stammers in my chest as a slight hope fills it. "Nothing else?"

"I felt pain-"

"But you felt no calmness...no peace?"

"No," she says emphatically. "What is wrong with you? Why are you asking me these things?"

"Because you have always said before someone dies, you always get a glimmer of calmness. Of peace. You always have said that before death is peace. You always feel peace."

Her eyes burn with understanding, but it dims. "It ate him," she repeats. "How could anyone survive that?"

I don't know, but if anyone could, it would be Lucian.