Song of Blood and Reign

Chapter 63

"What happens when your conduit dies?" Lyv questioned as she continued her advance. "Does something happen to you as well? You know, since they are a part of you in a sense. Do you feel everything? What happens if one of these shards goes straight through that head of hers? Will you die, too?"

She was just a few feet away from the two of them then. Corliss still didn't make a move while Guinevere screamed in rage and pain...until she shifted her eyes to another who had come up behind Lyv, wrapping his hand gently around her wrist.

"Lyv, we have to go," Jai told her softly, though his steely eyes were locked on the two in front of them.

Lyv all but punched him when she yanked her arm from his grasp. "No! I refuse to surrender Escarral. I refuse to let her have it again, even though she will rule over nothing but ash and decay. It is not hers!"

But the look he gave her then...well, it would have broken her had her rage not been feeding every bit of her it could. "We have to get everyone we love out of here before that happens. We have to give Bence peace and comfort for...for the time we have left with him."

And at that, Corliss began to smile. "No, you will not, Crown Prince."

It happened as it did that night when Lyv found her way into her dungeon in Asturia, the night when Corliss had put the stone in her arm, the one that now glowed brighter than ever before beneath her skin. The rumble so deep within the earth beneath their feet that grew and grew until it began taking down buildings, creating cracks in the ground that swallowed buildings and bodies whole.

Lyv found her fear breaking through her rage as a crack then formed right between her and Jai. He yelled out, now gripping both of her arms, and yanked her forward into his chest. The ground disappeared beneath her boots, but Jai held her strong and steady, easily yanking her up and out of harm's way.

The ground continued to quake and groan and Lyv lost hold of the magic that pinned Guinevere against the wall. Whenever the last shard disappeared, Guinevere dropped her knees, clutching at her blood-stained chest with both hands.

All she wanted to do was jump the distance of the fissure, take them both out for good while she was still so close...

"Lyv, let's go!" Jai yelled then.

And when she looked up at him, his eyes weren't on her anymore, but rather on the wide expanse of a rumbling, flashing cloud of darkness that was advancing on the city from the north.

Corliss was kneeling down in front of Guinevere, who had managed to heal her own injuries, and yet still had the nerve to look up at Lyv and Jai with an even brighter smile. She stood then, violently dragging Guinevere up with her, making her cry out.

"Thanks to your adoptive mother's efforts, say goodbye to your beloved Escarral...and its king, my sweet niece," her aunt laughed.

And disappeared in a rush of shadows.

Lyv screamed again, trying to get out of Jai's hold, but his hands were iron around her. "We need to go after them!" she spat at him. "We need to..."

"We need to go. Now, Lyv," he told her, his face close to hers as he lifted his hands to hers. "We're not going to make it on horseback or even on Roshan and Erly."

The wind picked up, howling between the crumbled buildings, and another earthquake rattled the whole of the capital city.

"I don't want to leave," she choked out as tears welled in her eyes and immediately started falling. "I can't watch this. I can't watch everything I love here disappear..."