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All he could see was the man underneath him.
“You’re just like him. A back-stabbing monster that used my love for your own gain.” Leir’s blood dripped from his lips, trailing down his chin as he choked.
Tears stung Arkimedes’s eyes. What could he say? This could so easily have been him if the same had happened to Nava. Losing her was the only thing he truly feared. “The king killed my mother, your soulmate, just as you tried to kill mine.” Arkimedes tightened his burning fist around the handle of the weapon and held it steady.
Where was Nava? Her presence was stronger now. Was she coming to him?
Leir’s eyes widened, his gaze drifting past Arkimedes’s shoulder, up to the burning canopies of the forest. His lips parted and shut in a silent gasp for breath as comprehension flashed behind his uncle’s red gaze. His expression softened. “The Beekeeper girl?”
“You shouldn’t have come for her.” And Arkimedes pushed the sword deeper. He didn’t want Leir to suffer any more. The artifact clung to his fingers and wrist, seared into his skin.
Blood rushed through his head, numbing the sounds, the pain—everything.
“Arkimedes!” Nava’s pounding feet brought her voice closer, her golden aura warm and beckoning him. But the tendrils of the magic emanating from the sword had taken over his body. He was cold. So cold and confused.
The land shook with tremors as more black shapes landed around the clearing. Zorren? Dark Ones? He couldn’t tell anymore.
Nava scrambled past his shield and pushed him off the emissary’s body. The chaos muffled her panicked screams as the demons continued to crawl out of the open portals. Was her face purple and bloodied?
“Stay with me,” he read her lips, but his vision was already closing in.
He swallowed the bitterness in his mouth and tried to raise his hand to touch her skin. To reassure himself she was truly here. But his arm was too heavy to lift.
Her healing magic was a warm embrace chasing away the cold. “Ark.”
Behind the blurry glow of Nava’s and Aristaeus’s combined power, darkness consumed his vision, and Arkimedes fell inside it.
43
NAVA
Nava reached for Arkimedes face—icy to the touch—and called on whatever power remained within her to funnel it into him.
She could feel Aristaeus’s warmth coming from behind her before she heard his heavy feet settling on either side of her body. He loomed over them in a protective stance, looking out for attackers.
“Is Orion alive?”
She lifted her gaze and met the king’s eyes. He lay on the ground a few meters away, supporting his body with trembling arms. His face was bloodied and burned, his hair a halo around his scalp.
Tears sprang to her eyes. She couldn’t tell him that Arkimedes would make it. His skin remained too pale, and he wasn’t responding to her touch. A sob tore past her cracked lips, and she sagged over his body, clinging to the metal chest plate.
He couldn’t be dead. She would feel it in other ways, right?
“We need to take him to the cave,” Aristaeus said, but he didn’t sound as calm as he usually did. “You’re too ill to heal yourself, let alone properly help your mate.”
“But he is too weak to be moved.”
Aristaeus shifted forward, the wood on his leg gracing her arm. “There is something in his blood. An old magic that feels similar to the emissary’s artifact.”
Old magic? Could it be Alera’s potion?
Ari squinted at Ark’s body, his face twisted with worry. “He would be dead without it, but we need to go now. Can you transfer?”
Nava nodded. Could she? She’d claw her way there if she had to. Aristaeus leaned forward and coiled his wooden arms under Arkimedes’s body, lifting him up in the air. The branches above him blurred with her tears as Ari took one step and glanced at her over his shoulder.
“Meet me there, dearest, and don’t longer here too long.” And then he was gone, sprinting past the trees and away from her.
“Was that a Beekeeper?” The king stared at the spot where Ari had just stood. Nava looked at him, but there was no point in responding. She felt too numb to be angry.
