Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Seventy-ThreeEvaline

Chapter Seventy-Three

Evaline

S age’s portal opened to the main street of Neomaeros, directly in front of Aurora’s boutique, where we’d once stood while she consoled me as I missed my friends, peeking in on a little slice of their life through the panes of the shop’s display windows.

Now, the glass was covered in blood.

There was no time to regroup or to think as we landed. There was only time to act.

Sage disappeared beside me, then appeared again and again with the rest of the Kova in tow, before she, Dean, and Eliana portaled for the wards.

I felt Maddox somewhere to my left, saw some of the other Kova to my right.

But then, we scattered.

A Vasi, who’d just slit the throat of a woman mere feet away, lunged for me. Eyes ablaze and mouth twisted in fury.

He reached for my left arm, and I didn’t move it. Allowed the target to remain still for him as I curled the fingers of my right hand around the hilt of the silver sword holstered on my right hip. The same one I’d found in my childhood home, in this very kingdom.

I swung my right hip back, used the leverage to extend my reach as I unsheathed the sword across my body.

The Vasi’s hand closed around me, but I flicked my wrist and swung straight up. The Vasi screeched as his wrist and hand were severed from the rest of his body, but I never stopped the momentum of my blade. I let it continue until the upward arc of my sword crested as the sword pointed straight toward the heavens, and then I pivoted my shoulder, swung my elbow in, and brought the sword slicing down through his neck. In his daze of distraction from losing a limb, he hadn’t seen it coming.

Another Vasi was already reaching for me when his hand and head hit the stones at my feet.

There were so many Vasi, I could barely make out a few of the Kova spread out around me, paces away. But Gods, I hadn’t made it a single pace from where we’d portaled in before the Vasi were on top of me.

This one, a woman, lowered her shoulder, preparing to tackle me to the ground. I let her get close and then threw up a wall of fire in front of me.

She screamed as she met it, tossing herself through the flames, her own momentum unable to slow her, and took the opportunity to swing my sword over her neck.

I spun out of my swing, and away from her dead, burned body.

I heard a rhythmic beat behind me, realized too late it was the sprint of horse hooves on cobblestone, and only turned fast enough to see the stampede of horses freed from their stalls, either by mistake or by the Vasi to cause an added level of chaos.

By the time I turned, it was too late to avoid collision. I was still close to the shop fronts and could only launch myself closer to the windows as a horse on the periphery of the stampede clipped me.

I gasped as my head slammed into the stone behind me, and felt the immediate trickle of blood down the back of my head, sliding down my neck.

The world spun, tilting this way and that as I caught myself on the ground and straightened to stand, one hand clutching for purchase on the jagged brick. I tried to walk forward, despite the slope in my vision.

I felt the swell of the bond, felt Maddox’s worry as he no doubt smelled my blood, but sent a message down the bond.

I’m okay.

My vision evened out as he responded. Good.

I looked across the battleground to see that he was caught up in a high-speed spar with a Vasi.

I took another step forward, able to walk on my own, but grew worried as I realized that I faced a new threat of disorientation.

Blood loss.

It hadn’t let up, and my braid grew heavy with the weight of it as the blood soaked through my hair. I wondered how I must look, with half-white, half-crimson hair.

Another Vasi came for me, but I didn’t trust my swordplay.

Where had my sword gone?

It’d fallen from my hand when the horse had hit me.

I used my magic as my defense. My Air blew out the windows of whatever store I stood in front of now, before sending the shards in a clumped mass, straight through the Vasi’s back.

When his heart hit the ground in front of me, the glass fell along with it, preventing it from harming me, too.

I looked up, stepped over the Vasi, and for a singular moment, there was reprieve.

For me at least.

A few paces ahead, Nash was fending off a hand from his chest, while his other wrapped inside the Vasi’s.

I took a step to intercede, to try to help him, when I was jolted back.

By a hand wrapped around my braid.

I screamed as the pain blistered up and through my already injured skull, and fell onto my back, lying beside the corpse I’d just killed and falling amongst the glass I’d killed him with. I gasped as I felt the shards bite into my back.

“Easy now,” the Vasi above me said, moving slowly to walk around me, staring down at me all the while.

He’d yanked my braid. And Gods knew whether he knew what that meant. Whether he’d only yanked it to stop me, or because he’d been there, in that ballroom, when Vasier had stripped me of my defense and weaponized it against me.

The Vasi hadn’t reacted to the bite of my new wire, locked into my braid. But the bite didn’t matter.

Only the sting.

I eyed him and watched his brows furrow as he lifted his hand into view to look at the Rominium burs locked inside of it.

When he brought it up, I saw that it was covered in blood. Too much, too quick to be his own.

My blood, from my braid.

I leaned up onto my elbows and ground my jaw against the pain of the glass as the Vasi shook his head.

“I don’t understand…” he mumbled to himself as I pushed myself onto my bottom now, and swung my legs beneath me, trying my best to avoid as much glass as I could.

“How is this…?” He trailed off, breathing labored and eyes narrowed onto his injured hand.

I got to my knees, reached for a weapon, but there was a movement, a cracking noise, and then the Vasi’s head was on the ground.

Nash stood above me, eyes wild, and reached down to lift me up.

“You okay?” he asked, wrapping an arm around me while biting his wrist with the other.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, reaching for his arm.

Nash ducked us into the doorway of a shop, protecting me while I drank until I was healed.

I felt a swell of worry down the bond from Maddox, wondered whether he could see me or if he could tell I was being healed, but ignored it as my eyes darted around the battle.

There were so many Vasi, far more than us, but we were holding our own.

When I finished, I pushed Nash away.

“Go, they won’t kill me, but they’ll kill you if you’re in their way.”

He nodded, squeezing my arm before running off to help Fredrik with the two Vasi he was surrounded by, and I stepped out of the doorway I’d been hiding in.

A group rounded the corner of a building and headed straight for the Kova. I was healed, which meant my strength was back. And that meant my magic was at full capacity.

I unleashed several beams of fire, aimed for each of their hearts, and watched as they dropped one by one.

As if on cue, the moment the Vasi fell to the ground, Sage, Dean, and Eliana burst into the space, taking their place.

Dean turned to Sage, eyes wide as new Vasi came down the opposite side of the street, but she shoved him off, as if telling him to fight.

I watched as she held up her hands in the defensive pose that Cora and Dean had taught her, empty, despite the weapons holstered all over her body.

A Vasi appeared from the rooftops of the buildings behind her and dropped to the ground, and I ran for her.

Her eyes widened at my approach, but she only let out a sigh of relief as we met, and I threw myself in front of her as the Vasi who’d been lurking behind her faced us.

“How easy you make it, both the ladies that Vasier wants in one easy grab.”

Sage’s breath hitched, her face just over my shoulder, and I straightened in front of her.

“Don’t take another step,” I warned, voice stern.

His red eyes twinkled as he tilted his head. “Do you think you’re the one to give orders?”

Fear locked down my frame at his words, words so similar to those that the Vasi who’d killed my father had said.

I clamped my jaw down, locked the fear away, and pulled my Rominium dagger in one hand, holding fire in the other.

The Vasi’s smirk grew, and I was so focused on protecting Sage from him, that I didn’t think to cast my magic out around us, to protect us from any more Vasi.

Sage’s shriek blew through my ear and I felt her hands grasp at my shirt as she was yanked away.

“Sage!” I cried, spinning to help her. She was grabbed from behind, arms of the burly Vasi behind her locked around her torso. He pulled her back to pin her against his chest as her legs kicked out wildly. I took a step for them, my magic already rising to attention, when the Vasi behind me moved, and ropes wrapped around my arms.

“No!” I shouted, and tossed my weight around, trying to come free of his ropes.

His hands were at my back, he must’ve been trying to tie them.

“Stop moving,” he hissed as the rope tightened around my chest.

But I wasn’t concerned with that, because Sage was still fighting. And I knew Vasier wanted me. And now that he lost my mother’s hair, a requirement for his spell, I didn’t know what he’d do with me. Either find a new way to join the two of us, or simply use my magic in the war he was waging.

He wanted me, and he would probably hurt me again. But what would he do with Sage? He treated her poorly when she was still loyal to him, his daughter. But now that she’d betrayed him…

I kicked out, trying to get to her, afraid of what Vasier had planned for her. Feared whatever it was, would be similar to what he’d had planned for Maeve.

The thought of her threw a barb of guilt through my heart, but I shoved it away as I tried to focus my magic on helping Sage.

She saved me and she betrayed her family to do it. And even if she put me in the situation in the first place, she’d done nothing but try to make up for it since.

And the thought of her, back in Mortithev, around beings who treated women as second class, but treated non-Vasi even worse, I refused to relent. I refused that life for her.

The Vasi behind me lowered ropes over my hips now, but I still fought, I still called my magic.

All of this had only taken mere seconds to occur, so no Kova had noticed. And that was when I realized that they hadn’t gagged me yet, and they couldn’t control my bond.

At the same time that I shoved word down the bond, and opened my mouth to loose a scream, another rang out in front of me.

The Vasi dug his fangs into the side of Sage’s neck, and I screamed.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The Vasi who held me snapped. “Vasier said to bring them both back alive!”

Sage’s face was white, her eyes were wide and scared, and her legs kicked out even fiercer as the blood dripped down her neck, the fangs still embedded into her skin.

The Vasi broke away only long enough to roll his eyes. “I never said I was going to kill her. She’s a traitor. Let me have my fun.”

Sage’s wide eyes met mine as his teeth sank back in. I saw vines crack through the cobblestones beneath us, saw them snake up his body, and I brought mine up right alongside hers.

“Stop!” I screamed, and I called for Maddox, called for Dean, called for help.

I remembered that my fire wouldn’t burn me, but would others, and I willed flames to dance across my back.

The Vasi behind me shouted in surprise and I flexed my arms and felt the ropes break free, but just as I ran toward her, he locked his hands around my arms and held me back.

“Sage!” I screamed, I looked for the others, but they were all in battle. They were all fighting for their lives, too.

I couldn’t see Maddox, I couldn’t see Dean, all I could see were decapitated heads, fallen hearts, and blood. So much blood.

Sage’s cry drew my eyes back to her, to the vines of hers and mine that crawled up the Vasi’s form and wrapped around his throat.

Her eyes were wide, filled with tears, and she shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, and the sound barely made its way through the air to me.

“You’re taking too much!” the Vasi behind me said, taking her apology just as I had, as a goodbye.

“No,” I whispered back, tears springing into my own eyes as I fought to get to her.

My eyes focused on the Vasi behind her, and I recognized him as the blond human slave I’d seen the first time I’d attended Vasier’s family dinners. The same one I’d seen turned, as a new Vasi when the First gave me a tour of the castle.

The Vasi was new. And they must not have had time to work his bloodlust out yet.

Because he was draining her.

I tried to find my vines, they were still looping around his throat. It was chaos, it was confusion, it was hard to maintain focus on my magic as I watched my friend die in front of me.

“I’m so sorry for it all,” she whispered again, face crumpling in tears and her breaths coming fast as her face paled further.

“Sage,” I whimpered against the space between us, against the tension that I’d let mount between us since her betrayal. “I’m sorry,” I said between breaths.

Her eyes cleared for a moment and as her fighting slowed, her vines loosened. She’d lost too much blood.

I tried to summon a beam of fire, just as I had before, but there was too much chaos, all around. My magic couldn’t find the target because I couldn’t find it through the air. There were screams and the smell of blood and the Vasi behind me raised his hand to my throat.

“Submit and we can save her,” he hissed in my ear.

My body stilled in an instant and I felt him pause, as if to test it. But then he was making a move to step around me.

He didn’t make it a pace before Sage and the Vasi stumbled forward a step. He ripped his teeth from her neck, eyes wide as he tossed her away, and a hand plunged through the front of his chest, holding his heart.

Sage hit the ground and the Vasi beside me made a move forward. I crashed down beside her, pulled her onto my lap. I smoothed her hair out of her face, moved my shaking hand to her neck, and thanked the Gods when I felt a pulse.

I screamed for Maddox again, called for him down the bond. He was alive, and I pushed to see down through his eyes, and saw he was fighting several Vasi at once.

My mind was jerked back to where I held her as the Vasi who’d been feeding from her jolted again, the hand pulled out of his chest and the Vasi fell.

Dean stood behind him and tossed the heart to the ground. His usual brown curls were mussed, and on one side were plastered back with blood, the side of his face equally smeared with it. But even that wasn’t the deadliest look about him.

His eyes were dark and wild, his teeth were bared, and his chest heaved. He met the Vasi who’d restrained me and tore his head off with barely a second’s pass. Then, without hesitation—before the head had even hit the ground—his knees slammed down on Sage’s other side.

His face fell out of rage. The hatred and murderous intent dissipated into a look that could only be described as love.

The fear and pain and desperation were all displayed in that one look, his brows knit, tears in his eyes, and hands shaking as he reached for her.

“She’s not dead, she’s not dead, she’s okay,” he repeated in a whisper to himself. I knew he could tell through their bond, just as I could with Maddox, and that he was just trying to remind himself that she was still alive, but still, I spoke.

“She is, there’s a pulse.” I gently handed her off to him. He pulled her onto his lap, one arm over her torso to hold her to him, the other curled underneath her head until his hand tangled into the hair at the crown of it and tilted her face towards him.

“Sage,” he whispered, his voice wavering.

I touched his wrist. “She needs your blood,” I reminded and his eyes widened as he looked down at her. He nodded, eyes filled with tears, and brought his wrist up to bite into it, before he slid it over her lips.

“You have to drink,” he whispered, and rocked the two of them softly, and I wondered if this was what Maddox had looked like, when he’d had to do the same for me, when he saved me from Gabriehl.

Her mouth widened over the wound and Dean and I both breathed a sigh of relief. His relief extended to his eyes, which were glassy with tears as his lips lowered to her forehead and his hand tightened in her hair.

A Vasi appeared behind him, and I jumped up in an instant and sent a beam of fire through his chest.

Now that Dean was here, now that he’d stopped the Vasi from feeding and was giving her his blood, I knew she’d be okay. I knew she’d survive. And with that clarity, every action became easy, became faster.

A few more Vasi came through an alley, and I sent another arc of fire toward them, this time a whip that lashed out and slit their necks in two in one long line.

More poured out, there were so many, but I remained at Dean and Sage’s side, making sure they were protected as he healed her.

I killed the new group, and felt my magic buzz in my veins, as I directed my flame toward another group of Vasi who fought James and Charlotte.

And just like that, the tides turned. We weren’t as outnumbered anymore, not with the amount of Vasi we’d already killed.

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Where are you? Maddox’s words were a rush down the bond and I peered down it to see that Grant had helped him to kill the rest of the Vasi he’d been fighting.

I’m okay, I whispered back and before I had to tell him where I was, a weight crashed into me before the smell of amber did.

His hands were locked on either side of my jaw as he tilted my face up to his, and then his lips met mine. His thumb caressed down my cheek and I felt the tremor in his hands against my skin.

“It’s okay,” I said when we pulled away. “Dean saved Sage, and killed both Vasi trying to take us.”

Maddox’s eyes widened as he turned to look down at Sage.

We kneeled beside them both now that there were only a few Vasi left, and the other Kova had a handle on it.

Sage was healed, but her eyes were still wide with tears as she looked up at Dean.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, shaking her head.

His brows furrowed as he pulled his wrist away from her lips but raised his hand to wipe her tears away with the pads of his fingers.

“Don’t apologize,” he whispered back as his breath of relief fluttered over her lashes. “Just don’t ever let me know life after the still of your heart.”

Her chin quivered and something flashed over her eyes before she threw her arms around him, and lifted herself up against his chest.

“I’ll try,” she breathed.

Maddox and I straightened to stand, and when the two of them did too, Sage turned to me.

“Thank you for fighting for me,” she said, her voice soft.

I shook my head as my face crumpled before I threw my arms around her and pulled her against me.

She’d hurt me. Worse than anyone ever had. She’d confirmed the fears I’d had since my father died and I was stranded in Kembertus. That if I let someone in, they’d have the power to hurt me. Maddox hadn’t, but Sage had. In such a wholly and devastating way.

I thought that nothing she could ever do would be enough to prove that she could be trusted. That always, deep in my mind, I’d be waiting for her to decimate me all over again. And I’d never forgive myself for allowing that pain twice.

But watching her nearly die in front of me, to know that so much between us was nearly left unsaid, tore through all of that. Through all of that worry for the future.

There was no time to dwell on what might happen, especially after all she’d done to prove herself.

She’d saved me from Mortithev. She saved my friends. She portaled all of us all around the Madierian Kingdoms to save countless humans and Sorcerers. She fixed the wards.

She could be forgiven. She could be trusted. She could be my friend again.

She deserved it all.

“I’m so sorry, Sage,” I whispered against her hair. “I’m sorry and I don’t need any more time. I forgive you and I trust you and I want it all to go back to the way it was.”

I felt the bob of her head beside mine, felt the shake of her chest as a sob wracked through her, and her arms tightened around me.

“Thank you,” she cried. “I swear to the Gods I will never do anything to betray your trust again.”

I smoothed a hand over the back of her hair.

“And I promise not to hold this over you ever again. This is our fresh start.”