"I've got you," I say. "Hold on. I've got you."
She holds.
But she’s still flickering, the Cathedral fighting the anchor every second. Elle is running toward the core alone.
I hold my daughter’s hands and watch my mate disappear into the green dark.
And I do the hardest thing I have ever done.
I stay.
The third-ring barricade collapses at roughly the same time that Kevin decides to sting a Root construct in the face.
I want to be clear about the order of events here, because Kevin will later claim he did this on purpose, and I need the record to reflect that he absolutely did not. One second, the barricade is holding. Defenders braced, ward lines glowing, Captain Rhyven’s voice cutting through the noise with orders that sound rehearsed a hundred times. The next second, a Root construct the size of a horse slams through the reinforcedsection, and Kevin, who was perched safely on my shoulder doing nothing, launches himself directly at its head.
His stinger punches through something that looks like bark, but sounds like bone. The construct shudders, staggers sideways, then takes out six feet of remaining barricade with it.
“Kevin!”
He buzzes once. Proud. Completely unaware that he has just created a gap in the defensive line large enough for three more constructs to pour through. My best friend, everyone. Strategic genius. Future military consultant. I’m going to have words with him later, assuming we survive, which at the moment feels optimistic.
I grab him out of the air, tuck him against my chest, and unleash a sonic pulse that catches the first construct mid-charge. It flies backward into the second one. The third one gets through.
Sarnyx handles it.
She appears from my left, cutting the thing’s front legs out from under it before I can blink. It crashes face-first into the root-path. She puts a blade through its root-node before it stops sliding. She’s terrifying. I love her. I would never tell her that because she’d hit me, but I love her.
“Plug the gap,” she says.
“Plugging.”
I send two more sonic pulses into the breach while a team of the Verdance defenders drags reinforcement panels into position. The panels are living wood, and they fuse with the barricade’s edges when pressed into place, sealing shut with a sound like knuckles cracking. The gap closes. The line holds.
For now. Which is the unofficial motto of this entire battle.For now.Someone should embroider it on a banner.
Nobody has told us what’s happening inside the Cathedral, which is fine. I love not knowing things. It’s my favorite.
I watched them go.
Sarnyx carved the path, cutting through constructs and the Verdance defenders alike. The constructs fell. The defenders moved, because the alternative was being in her way, and nobody with functioning survival instincts wants to be in Sarnyx’s way.
Vashael’s toxins barely neutralized the pollen bursts spilling from the Cathedral’s petal-mouths. Sarnyx severed a tendril midair, the cut so clean both halves dropped separately.
Then Elle, Thalia, and Kaelren ran through a four-second gap between the Cathedral’s root-legs.
I stood on the wall and watched. I did not scream, which I think shows tremendous personal growth.
Nimor was already in there, scouting through shadow, doing that thing where he phases through solid matter and comes back looking like someone drained half the color out of him. Peeble went with them too, because Peeble has never once in their existence stayed where it was safe.
That was maybe thirty minutes ago. Maybe forty. Time stopped making sense around hour three of this siege. I’ve been operating on pure adrenaline and spite ever since.
Since then, nothing. No word. No signal. No convenient burst of light from inside the Cathedral to suggest everything is fine and we can all go home.
Just the battle getting worse. The Cathedral pressing harder, as if it’s trying to crush the city flat while something unfolds in its belly that it very much doesn’t like.
So I do what I do best. I look around. I take stock. I make inappropriate observations during a crisis.
Sarnyx comes back from the corridor approach covered in construct residue and takes command of the eastern section within minutes. She has four Verdance soldiers under her direct command now, and they move when she tells them to move. She earned that in about six hours of fighting alongside them. Rhyven saw it happen and adjusted his formation to put her at the weakest point of the perimeter. Smart man. Scary woman. Excellent combination.
