He uncapped the powder horn with his teeth—
And then something invisible caromed off him, sending him spinning up and sideways, tangling the cords of his canopy and throwing him wildly off course. The powder horn went flying, and he nearly lost the sword, too.
He saw a flash of light that illuminated two winged figures fighting, tumbling through the air away from him, locked in combat.
Spinning and swinging wildly off course, Dazen gripped the sword with white knuckles, trying to get his bearings. He was fast approaching the luxin tower—but not the part where he wanted to land.
He was too far away. Now he was going to land behind Karris, at the very, very edge of the tower. He might not be able to stay on it at all.
He had only moments to make a decision.
Without black powder, he couldn’t shoot the gun-sword, but he could throw it like a spear. That worked, once in a while, throwing your sword. Once in a long while.
Almost never.
And throwing a sword like a spear while spinning and swinging . . . ?
But Dazen was the Promachos. That was who he was! He was the hero who arrived on the wings of the dawn and saved everyone at the last second. He could make the throw! He had to!
Or . . . he could give up all that.
* * *
“Hey! Hey!” someone shouted in the air above them. The voice was familiar.
Locked in place by the green seed crystal’s influence over the green luxin in her body, Karris couldn’t move, but she saw Koios look up quickly, alarmed, blinking against the glare of Orholam’s rising eye.
A black blade landed across her open hands. It cut her palm as it slid through her grip, and the black luxin sucked greedily at the green luxin in her blood.
And suddenly, as the green luxin immobilizing her was devoured, she was freed.
But then Koios saw her moving, and saw the blade in her hands.
He lunged at her, blade extending.
Karris was nothing if not fast—it was the reason she’d made it into the Blackguard—so she lunged faster, batting Koios’s blade aside with a forearm and ramming the black sword home, all the way home into the Wight King’s chest.
For a moment, it was as if nothing had happened. No blood poured from around the blade. Then, abruptly, it was as if he were collapsing in on himself. She realized what was happening: the blade was sucking every bit of luxin out of him in turn: sub-red, then red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and superviolet—
—until Koios was, quite suddenly, merely a burned man with rage and disbelief in his wide eyes, wearing a necklace with colored and black jewels on it. She ripped the necklace off him and threw it off the tower.
Then she ripped the sword out of his chest. There was no blood, still, which stunned both of them.
He threw a hand at her to lash out with magic, and she moved the sword desperately to parry the attack—but no luxin missile flew from him.
Koios looked down in horror at his mortal flesh.
His head shook, no, no. He threw his hand forward again, again, as if trying other colors in turn and finding none of them.
His eyes filled with fear. He backed away, desperate. “Ye immortals! My servants! Come to me now! I command it!” Koios cried. “Save me now!”
Extending his arms, he leapt off the tower as if he fully expected to be caught.
His body crunched on the deck of the ship far below, crushed.
“Um. Hate to be a bother,” a voice called out behind her.
Gavin? “Gavin!” she cried.
Her husband stood with his toes on the very edge of the tower, his hands cartwheeling as he tried to keep his balance.
“Uh . . .” he said. “Hi, honey. Help?”
Then, before she could move, he plunged out of sight.
She was at the edge the next instant, as if she hadn’t had to cover the intervening space.
She looked down, afraid of seeing his broken body beside her brother’s far below, but instead she saw Gill Greyling. He’d almost climbed the entire tower, coming after her—and now he’d snagged Gavin out of the very air.
Twisting as he held Gavin’s wrist in his hand, the Blackguard said, “I lost one Gavin, sir. I’m not losing another.”
And then she was helping hoist her husband up the tower. The battle immediately below them was finished—the Blood Robes had broken at the sight of their master leaping to his death.
And then her husband was up, and safe, and in her arms.
The dawn was glorious, but there were a million things to do. But none of them mattered right now. The feelings were too big to hold in for one more moment.
She had never cried so hard in her life.
Chapter 144
“Will you . . . uh, will you look at my eyes?” Kip asked Tisis. He’d thought that it was simply the night, bleeding the colors from the land as it does, but the rising light of the incipient dawn was making it clear. There was something wrong with the colors; they were wan and weak. He said, “I blew my halos. On the Glare. It’s been really nice holding and being held by you, but now . . . I have to know.”
Tisis took a deep breath. She’d hadn’t looked in his eyes since the beginning. But as she looked at him now, she seemed relieved. “They were stark white, right after. All the way through. Now they’re blue. Just your natural blue.”
“No halos at all?” he asked.
“No, none.”
“Well . . .” he said. “That’s, um, great. I guess.” He wasn’t going to have to be Freed in the next few days, so that was something.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I can’t draft,” he said quietly. Grief speared through his stomach. That was why the colors felt weak, emotionless. His vision now felt as impoverished and textureless as a drafter’s vision is compared to the immortals’. He was seeing the way munds do.
“What?” she asked. “No. Maybe you’re just tired? Lightsick?”
He shook his head, forcing a smile. “My life was spared, but not my powers. I’ve tried every color. They’re gone. They’re all gone.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth.
He could’ve been the Lightbringer; now he couldn’t even draft. He was a mund. Many drafters would have preferred death to that. He would have, a year ago. He looked away. “Do you think—do you think you can love a man with broken eyes?”
She didn’t get mad at him, which he would have deserved. She only squeezed him tight.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again.
“Me, too,” he said, wiping his eyes clear. He took a deep breath. “And now let’s be done with that.” He was almost surprised that the words rang true. “I think . . . I think I’m kind of finished with self-pity. It probably should’ve taken less than dying to figure out how good I’ve got it, but I do. I’m here. With you. So I’m a mund. So what?”
“A mund?” she objected, a smile turning her lips at last. “Kip Guile, the last thing you are is mundane.”
Did you think I would forget you, little Guile?
“Huh?” Kip asked Tisis. She and Commander Fisk were helping him stand.
“I didn’t say anything,” she said.
He was wobbly, but maybe he’d recover quickly if he walked around a bit. “I think I’ve figured something out about myself: I really hate watching a battle.”