Chapter 55 The Vow of the Second Brother
"Kael!" I screamed, my voice tearing through the freezing mist that now filled the Great Hall. I tried to reach for him, but his body was a conductor for that jagged, silver electricity. Every time I touched his skin, a shock threw me back.
"Don't touch him, Lyra!" Caspian yelled, his own hands glowing with a terrifying, ethereal light. "The bond is corrupted. It’s feeding on him!"
The Great Hall doors were gone, replaced by a wall of swirling frost. Vane’s Northern army was out there, but they weren't attacking. They were screaming. Something worse than an army was moving through the mist.
"The ritual!" A voice shrieked from the high balcony. It was the Fae Envoy, his iridescent robes tattered, his eyes wide with frantic terror. "You fools! If the Second Vow isn't taken now, the resonance will shatter! The rift in the courtyard will expand until it swallows the entire territory! Finish the binding or we all become fuel for the Shadow-Beast!"
"Finish it?" I turned on him, the silver circlet digging into my brow. "Kael is dying on the floor! Look at him!"
"He is the anchor!" the Envoy shouted, pointing a trembling finger at Kael’s jerking form. "But the bridge is broken! Rune! Step forward or the world ends!"
Rune moved like a mountain caught in an earthquake. He stepped over Kael’s seizing body, his eyes fixed on me with a grim, suicidal determination. He looked like a man walking toward his own execution, and he knew it.
"He's right, Lyra," Rune rumbled, his voice deep enough to shake the stone beneath us. "Kael took the Mind. I take the Body. If I don't anchor you, that thing in the mist is going to walk right through your front door."
"Rune, no," I breathed, backing into the altar. "My vision... I saw the blood. I saw the sacrifice."
"Then let it be mine," Rune snarled. He didn't wait for my consent. He grabbed my waist, his massive hands spanning the width of my torso, and hauled me against him.
The heat coming off him was staggering—a raw, protective furnace that fought back the creeping frost of the hall. Unlike Kael’s cold desperation, Rune was a wall of solid meat and burning intent.
"The Body-Vow!" the blinded priest wailed, his hands clawing at the air. "The Second Brother shall offer the ichor of life! The vessel must be filled!"
Rune didn't use a knife. He bared his fangs, the elongated ivory gleaming in the torchlight, and slammed them into his own wrist. I gasped as the dark, thick blood began to well up, smelling of musk and ancient earth.
"Drink," he commanded, his eyes turning a deep, molten amber.
"Rune—"
"Drink, Lyra! Before the frost takes us!"
He pressed his bleeding wrist to my lips. The copper taste hit my tongue like a lightning strike. It was hot—boiling—filling me with a strength that made my heart race. I gripped his arm, my fingers digging into his massive forearms as the "Body-Vow" took hold.
The oils on my skin—the gold and the crimson—seemed to ignite. The white silk robe I wore became a second skin, translucent and heavy with moisture. Rune let out a guttural sound, his head dropping into the crook of my neck.
"I am your shield," he whispered, his breath scorching my skin. "I am the meat and the bone that stands between you and the dark. If Caspian is your soul, then I am the cage that protects it."
"Rune, you're hurting yourself," I whispered, feeling the sheer volume of power he was pouring into the bond. He was hollowing himself out, giving me every ounce of his physical vitality to stabilize the corruption Kael had introduced.
"I don't care," he groaned.
He pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes, then he crashed his mouth onto mine.
If Kael’s kiss was a cold battlefield, Rune’s was a tidal wave. It was primal, bone-melting, and utterly selfless. He poured his raw, protective heat into me, his tongue sweeping through my mouth with a possessive hunger that was fueled by the knowledge that he was saying goodbye. I felt the oils between us act as a lubricant, our bodies sliding together in a frantic, high-heat friction. His hands moved down, cupping my glutes and lifting me high against the altar stone, his hard, muscular frame pinning me into the cold marble.
"You’re mine," he growled against my lips. "For as long as this heart beats, you are protected."
The resonance in the room shifted. The boiling water from the ritual pool nearby erupted in a geyser of steam. The silver light from the circlet on my head began to bleed into a deep, sunset orange—Rune’s color.
I felt his strength flowing into me, a physical reinforcement of my very bones. The blackness in my eyes receded for a moment, replaced by the amber fire of the Second Brother.
"The Body is bound!" the priest cried, falling to his knees as the ground stopped heaving. "The Shield is set!"
Rune pulled away, his breathing ragged, his face pale beneath the tan. He looked at Caspian, who was standing guard at the edge of the altar, his sword drawn against the shadows.
"Keep her alive, Caspian," Rune rasped, his voice breaking. "I've given her everything I have left."
"I will," Caspian promised, his voice thick with an emotion I’d never heard from him.
Rune stepped back, his legs wobbling. He looked down at Kael, who had finally stopped seizing but lay still as death, his skin still shimmering with that oily black residue.
"Two down," I whispered, my head spinning from the influx of Rune’s blood and power.
The frost at the door began to recede, but the silence that followed was even more terrifying. The Shadow-Beast’s scream had stopped. The wind had died.
Then, the laughter started.
It wasn't a sound from the hall. It was a cold, needles-in-the-brain cackle that echoed directly inside my skull, vibrating against the silver circlet.
"Very good, little wolf," a voice hissed—a voice that sounded like grinding stones and dead leaves. The Witch Lord. "The Mind is fractured. The Body is drained. You’ve done the work for me."
I clutched my head, falling against the altar. "Get out of my head!"
"Lyra? What is it?" Caspian was at my side in an instant, his cool hands on my face.
"Two down, one to go," the Witch Lord laughed, the sound growing louder, more triumphant. "The ritual is almost complete. You’ve prepared the vessel perfectly. Now, bring me the Soulmate. Bring me the one who holds the key to the abyss."
I looked up at Caspian. His face was a mask of horror as he realized what the voice was saying.
"He wants you, Caspian," I choked out, blood beginning to leak from my nose as the mental pressure intensified. "The Third Vow... it’s not for us. It’s for him."
The shadows in the corner of the room suddenly coalesced, forming the shape of a man with no face, holding a sacrificial blade that pulsed with the same black light I’d seen in my vision.
"Caspian, run!" Rune yelled, trying to stand, but his knees gave way.
The faceless shadow stepped into the light, and as it did, the voice of the Witch Lord boomed through the entire hall, vibrating the very marrow of our bones.
"The Soul-Vow is next. And when the Soulmate bleeds, the Gate stays open forever."
I looked at the altar, then at Caspian, and then at the shadow. The cliffhanger wasn't just about the army at the gates—it was about the man I loved being the final piece of a puzzle I never wanted to solve.