Chapter 57 Anything To Save Her
Rayne's POV
The dust settled slowly. I was faced down over both of them. Brea beneath me, Brandon beside her, my back absorbed the impact of the blast.
I tried to stand. My knees buckled. I caught myself on the debris and stayed there, hands against rubble, trying to understand what was happening to my own body.
My lungs burned as my heart which had simply existed as a background function for centuries, requiring no attention felt painful.
"Get up," I told myself. My legs didn't respond. I checked Brea's breathing..she was still fine.. If her heart stopped, mine would follow.
"Still alive," I said quietly. To myself. To her. "Stay that way."
Brandon pushed himself up beside me. He coughed dust out of his lungs and pressed one hand against the wall to steady himself.
His eyes found a gold and black thread running between Brea's chest and mine, visible to his Witch-Sight, impossible to miss.
He stared at it for a long moment. He said nothing else. Neither did I.
But he reached over and got his arm under mine and helped me to my feet without being asked and without commenting on the fact that a Sovereign needed help standing up.
I chose not to comment on it either. The engine came before the light did.
We were both shocked when we heard the roar of something built for tactical terrain cutting through the dust and the settling debris of the corridor exit.
Drake skidded into the wreckage on an armored cycle, both boots down, visor up, scanning the destruction and I could tell that he had been tracking us. His eyes found Brea first.
Then me as he saw blood on me from the shredded muscle of my back and the cut on my palm and the places Brandon's dark current had burned through on contact.
Drake's face moved, in rapid sequence, he was shocked and had finally found sufficient justification.
"You're bleeding red," he said.
"I'm aware," I said.
I gathered Brea into my arms. My muscles screamed at the weight, but I forced them to hold.
“Drake,” I said, voice calm and even. “Bring the bike closer. We’re
going back to the Palace.” Drake stared at me like I had lost my mind. His jaw clenched, shadows flickering around him.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he spat. “You want me to help you take her back to that snake pit? After everything?”
He didn’t move. His hands stayed on the handlebars, knuckles white.
“She needs real medical help, Rayne. Not your mother’s prison.”
I took a shaky step forward, still holding Brea...
“The Palace has medical,” I replied, keeping my tone flat. “And it’s home ground. That’s what matters right now.”
Drake’s eyes burned with pure hatred as he looked at me holding her.
“No,” he said coldly. “I’m not handing her over to you or your family. Not after what you’ve done. She stays with me.”
Brandon shifted uncomfortably beside us, saying nothing.
The tension crackled in the air like static..
I met Drake’s eyes, still nonchalant on the surface even as pain throbbed through my back.“Then I’ll walk,” I said simply.
I started moving toward the exit with Brea in my arms, legs unsteady but refusing to stop.
Drake cursed under his breath but finally revved the bike and brought it closer, his face twisted in disgust the entire time.
“Fine,” he growled.
“But if your mother tries anything, I’m taking her back. And I won’t ask permission.”
We moved.
All if a sudden Dreadborns came through the exit corridor.
Six of them. bodies that didn't understand how to be alive moving through the dust with the specific hunger of things that had been contained and were no longer contained.
My speed was gone. I set Brea against the wall carefully and drew the tactical knife from my belt. . Nothing I had needed to rely on as a primary weapon in longer than I could clearly remember.
The first Dreadborn reached me and I put the knife through the base of its skull the way someone who has been studying how efficiently, without wasted motion, the muscle memory surviving long after the power that usually backed it had gone.
The second one I shot. The third and fourth Brandon took before they reached me the dark current tearing out of him in jagged purple arcs, entropy finding the Dreadborn biology and simply refusing to let it continue.
He moved through them the way I used to move through things. Without hesitation. Without particular expression. Just handling it.
The fifth and sixth Drake took from the flank. Then the corridor was clear.
I picked Brea back up and placed her on the Mike as we kept moving.
\---
The Palace courtyard was lit when we arrived.
The Nikolai Legion already formed — silver armor in two lines, the formation that meant something significant had happened and the response to it was still being determined.
They parted for the cycle without being asked and closed behind us before Drake finished braking.
My mother was at the top of the steps.
She looked at me the way she looked at things she was categorizing damage assessment, strategic implications, the calculation happening behind her eyes before her expression settled into anything readable.
Her relief at seeing me alive was real. I knew her face well enough to see it.
It lasted approximately three seconds.
Then her eyes moved to Brea in my arms. To the red blood on my back. To Brandon standing behind me with purple current still crackling at his fingertips.
"Secure the Prince," she said. Her voice was completely level. "Throw the girl into the lower holding cells. She has cost this bloodline enough."
The Legion didn't move immediately. They knew my face.
I tightened my grip on Brea.
"She stays in my quarters," I said. My voice came out rough. The effort of making it carry authority from a body currently running on nothing but thousand-year habit was considerable. "Under my protection. If she goes to the cells I go with her."
My mother looked at me for a long moment.
"You are not in a position to issue commands tonight, Rayne."
"I'm always in a position to issue commands," I said. "I am the Sovereign of this bloodline. Not the heir. The Sovereign. And I am telling you she stays with me."
"Then you don't enter this Palace," she said quietly. "Not with that girl. Not in this condition. Not until you have explained to me what you have given away and why." Her eyes dropped to my chest — to the gold pulse visible through my torn shirt, the tether running to Brea's sternum. Her expression changed.
"What have you done to yourself."
Drake stepped forward before I could answer.
"I told you." His voice was tight with everything he had been holding since the alley. Since the facility. Since before any of tonight. "I told you this was a mistake. She is going to die out here because you wanted to play Prince and now you've given away whatever you were and for what—"
I stopped listening. I looked at my mother. I walked back toward Drake's cycle.
Every step cost me something my body didn't have available. My back. My lungs. My heart beating too loud and too human against my ribs. I walked anyway.
"Rayne." My mother's voice behind me. Not commanding this time. Something else underneath it. "You will not survive the night outside these walls. Not like this."
I didn't stop. I reached the bike. Looked at Drake. He was watching me with that expression fury and fear in equal measure, the face of someone who had been right about something and found no satisfaction in it.
"Take us to Elias," I said quietly.
Drake looked at Brea in my arms. At my back. He got on the cycle.
I sat behind him with Brea across my lap and Brandon mounted behind me and the Palace gates still open at our backs and my mother still standing at the top of the steps watching us leave.
I didn't look back.