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The Basilisk didn’t have time to turn back.
Its face collided with the staircase, stone exploding with an earsplitting smash, shards of rock slicing through the air like shrapnel.
“You!” the serpent seethed, whipping its head about, dust and bits of stone flying off. Its voice was so loud, the cavern shook, debris raining down as Darien soared through the air. “HOW DARE YOU ATTEMPT TO KILL A NAMELESS, DARIEN SLADE—”
Darien landed on the back of its neck.
The serpent screamed and bucked, launching Darien eighty feet into the air—straight into that swirling, poisonous mist that no longer whispered with cunning but balked. As if bowing to him.
Its new master.
Using the Venom to his advantage, his magic sweeping out to hold the mighty serpent in place, Darien leaned into the fall, angling the blade behind his head. “IT’S DARIEN FUCKING CASSEL!” he roared, eyes black with magic, blade poised to kill—to slay.
The Basilisk screamed, its thrashing body nearly bringing down the cavern as it tried to flee.
“And you,” Darien snarled, the earthward plummet weaponizing him, “are fucking dead.”
He cut the snake’s throat.
113
Angelthene
STATE OF WITHEREDGE
The weight of that spell was so heavy that the moment it was cut, Cyra sucked in a sharp, gasping breath, her body so light she felt like she was levitating.
She set down her book and lurched out of bed, her feet catching in the blankets. Bracing her hands against the wall for balance, she searched for Erasmus. The room spun around her in a blur, every step she took like bouncing on a trampoline.
Many long years had passed since their tongues had been frozen by that gods-awful spell. After Loren was born, they had gone back to the Basilisk—the serpent king that ruled the tunnels below Yveswich—for one final trade.
Little had they known the Nameless creature had been waiting patiently for the moment they came back—the moment it would have the opportunity to curse them. It had taken so much from them—their freedom of speech, Erasmus’s immortality. Only the beings of the Void had the ability to take advantage of the loopholes in a bargain.
It had not hesitated to strike.
“Erasmus?” Cyra called, his name cracking on its way out. She was weightless as a balloon—a planet drifting out of orbit. “Erasmus?” With shaking fingers, she pushed open the bedroom door—
And nearly bumped into Erasmus. He was breathing just as heavily as Cyra, his eyes lit with hope.
“It’s happened,” Cyra whispered on a sob.
Erasmus took her by the hands.
Cyra squeezed them, tears of joy flooding her eyes. “The spell is broken.”
It took an incredibly powerful person to kill a serpent king—a task they had believed impossible, and had given up hope in thinking it would ever happen.
But it had. Someone had slain that fell beast.
And Cyra and Erasmus were finally free.
114
The Cavern
YVESWICH, STATE OF KER
Darien hit the ground in a crouch. Panting and soaked in the Basilisk’s reeking black blood, the sword dripping with it. That blade hummed as if with pride, magic rippling through the adamant from hilt to vicious tip in veins of neon.
