Chapter 387: A Stolen Moment

Chapter 387: Chapter 387: A Stolen Moment

Damon felt the gold before he saw it.

It hit the back of his neck like sunlight through a window, and every cultist in front of him flinched toward it. He cut down the nearest one, flicked the blood off the Chaos Devourer, and looked over his shoulder.

Lumina stood at the edge of the stage with the Radiant Dawn Sword blazing in her fist. Ariel was a step behind her, one hand still raised from the grip Lumina had just broken.

Her knuckles had gone white, and her jaw was set the way it used to be when she walked into rooms as Lark.

She’s going to throw herself at them, he thought. And she’ll do it because she thinks she owes someone.

Eclipse Sovereign could wait a few breaths.

Damon stepped sideways and Astral Steps carried him across forty meters of broken stone. He landed beside Lumina just as a lance of eclipse fire came screaming off the east wall, and he caught it in his bare palm. The black flame died there and scattered across the floor like spilled ink.

Lumina stared at his hand, then at his face. "You were facing the other way."

"I was." He shook the ash from his fingers. "You’re glowing like a lantern, you know. Half the arena can see you."

"I know." Her voice cracked on the second word. "I’m sorry. You told me to stay with Ariel and I tried, I really did. But they keep shouting my name, Damon, and every time they do, somebody else bleeds for it. I can’t stand behind a wall and watch that."

Damon’s expression didn’t change, and the fire and screaming around them didn’t seem to reach him. He turned all the way toward her, took her chin between two fingers, and tilted her face up until she had no choice but to meet his eyes.

"Listen to me." His tone was low and even. "I told you to stay with Ariel because I wanted you alive when this ended. I never said it because I think you’re weak."

Her lips parted.

"A few nights ago you woke a Heaven Grade bloodline, and now you’re burning the shadows off a battlefield. You ran from those people for ten years and you’re still standing. Do you know how many people could say that?"

"Not many," she whispered.

"None." A cultist came at them from the left, and Damon backhanded him without looking. The man cartwheeled across the stage and hit a pillar hard enough to crack it. "They want you because you’re worth wanting. Not because you’re helpless, and don’t let the man in the sky tell you otherwise."

Lumina’s eyes were wet, and she blinked hard, furious with herself. "I don’t want to be the reason someone dies."

"You won’t be. You’ll be the reason they don’t." He let go of her chin, but his hand stayed near her cheek. "You’re not alone, Lumina. Not on this stage, not in that palace, not anywhere. Ariel is behind you and so are the twins, Selene, all of us, and I’m either in front of you or beside you. You choose."

She drew in a shaky breath and the light along her arm steadied.

"Beside," she said.

"Good."

Gold fire surged up the Radiant Dawn Sword until the blade hummed. It climbed her shoulders and lifted her hair off her neck in a bright, slow wave, and when she wiped her eyes with the back of her glove, she was smiling a little, wet and crooked and real.

Then the arena came back.

Forty cultists broke through the guards on the left, howling, and the sky above them split with a sound like tearing cloth. Eclipse Sovereign’s laughter rolled down through the crack, slow and delighted. Somewhere behind them King Aurelius roared an order, and the royal guards slammed their shields together.

"Damon!" Ariel shouted from behind them. "Left!"

"I see them."

He pivoted, and Lumina pivoted with him until their backs touched. She was warm through her robes, and her breath came fast but even. Damon could feel the light gathering in her spine like a drawn bow.

"On three?" she asked.

"On your word."

She exhaled.

"Now."

Lumina lunged forward and swung, and a crescent of white-gold light tore across the stage and split the first line of cultists open. Damon moved in the same breath, shadows peeling off the floor around his boots, and the Chaos Devourer opened a silent rift in front of the second line. Men stepped into it and did not step out.

A scythe came in low toward Lumina’s knees. Damon’s boot caught the haft and snapped it in half, and the blade spun away into the dark. When he looked back she had already dropped to one knee and driven her sword through the cultist’s guard.

"Behind you," she said, not even breathless.

He didn’t turn. He angled the Chaos Devourer over his shoulder, and a cultist who had been creeping up on his blind side dropped in two pieces.

"Thanks."

"You’re welcome."

Fire raked the stage from the east. Damon stepped in front of Lumina and swallowed it with the sword, and Lumina stepped in front of him a heartbeat later and cut down the man who had thrown it. They were moving like they had trained together for years, though they had never once practiced this.

For one moment the wave of cultists thinned. Smoke rolled between them and the stands, and the noise of the fight dulled to a roar.

Damon looked at her.

Lumina looked back, her sword still burning, her hair full of light, soot smeared across one cheek. There was no fear left in her eyes, only something fierce and steady that hadn’t been there before.

Neither of them spoke.

He tightened his grip on the Chaos Devourer. She lifted the Radiant Dawn Sword to her shoulder.

Then they turned together to face the next wave, and neither one looked away from the other until the first blade fell.