A Court of Innocents

42: Tumultuous Reckoning

The world held its breath in silence. And then that silence rose to a deafening ringing, and it was so loud, so overwhelming that it ripped my head apart, and I realized that something—something wet and warm was dripping from my ears.

Blood.

My eardrums had burst, and now I was dizzy with the pain, my vision completely white.

I drew on the power that had awoken during my dance, called enough of it to the surface to heal the wounds inside my head. The seconds stretched into minutes, but finally, finally, that ringing stopped. The blood dried and caked onto the sides of my face.

Once that problem was solved, another arose.

I couldn't breathe. Something much heavier than me crushed my legs, pressing me down into the limestone of the palace courtyard—or what was left of it. My vision cleared just enough for me to see a mountain of rubble where half of the palace had stood tall just minutes ago. But—there, beside me. A hand. Tanned, and calloused, and faintly burned.

It wasn't rubble that pressed me into the earth. It was Azriel.

I bared my hands against the ground and gritted my teeth, struggling to rise, to push his unconscious body off me. A groan of agony ripped from my mouth. Pain licked down my leg, pulsing around my hip, and I knew I had broken something. But, at last, I managed to move him.

I clawed at another handful of power just as my vision blurred again, the pain in my leg threatening to knock me unconscious. Several minutes passed before I could breathe normally again, before my power could stitch my broken bones back together.

Azriel groaned beside me. I turned him onto his back just as his eyes fluttered open. But his gaze was unsteady, unfocused, seeing right through me. I angled his face to look at me, calling out his name, my voice loud over the roaring silence.

A courtyard filled with a thousand people—completely silent.

Deadly silent.

I couldn't focus on what that implied, couldn't see past anything but Azriel right now.

His eyes finally drifted towards me. "Yara..."

I smiled, for his sake, because he looked pale—too pale—and I couldn't imagine the amount of pain he was in. Something wet tickled my leg.

"The Chi... meras... it was them. They knew... we tried to stop it... too late..." Azriel spoke so softly, his voice cutting out every other word, and I couldn't understand what he was trying to tell me.

"It's okay. Don't try to—"

"They're gone..." he murmured, his voice void of strength or power.

"What? Who's gone?"

"I lost them... they're... they're gone..."

"Azriel—focus on me. Yeah, just like that. Good. You're doing good."

His eyes drifted in and out of focus, but when they returned to me, they widened. "They're gone."

"Who's gone, Az?"

"Wi... wings..."

And then I realized—the wet thing trickling down my leg—it was blood. And it wasn't mine.

Azriel lay flat on the ground, dark liquid seeping out beneath him. He lay flat on the ground.

I scanned the courtyard to find half a jagged wing thirty feet away. That was all that remained of them.

It was an effort to school my features, to not lose it in that moment. If I hadn't undergone eighty years of army training, I would have lost my mind and its precarious grip on sanity five minutes ago. But I managed to stay calm, managed to look back at Azriel and assure him, "It's okay. It's fine. Everything is going to be fine. We'll fix this. We can fix it. Rhysand will—"