Unfortunately, my triumphant delight was short-lived. Deira reacted instantly. The roots binding me tightened their grip. One thick root coiled around my neck, a clear threat. A choked cry escaped my lips and halted Rada’s advance.
“Let him go, Deira,” she commanded, her voice deceptively calm.
The Chiasma’s face contorted with rage. “I should have known you would come, Lady of Light,” she hissed. “So eager to die alongside your lover?”
Rada stepped closer, her weapon trained on the Dryad. Her lip twitched as she glanced briefly at Kaius’s corpse at her feet. “From where I’m standing, it won’t be us who die today.”
“Perhaps I should kill him quickly, then,” Deira answered, painfully twisting her hand into my hair as she dragged me closer to shield herself. “A lover for a lover.”
Rada froze. Worry flashed across her face. She quickly masked it, her gaze calculating. I recognized that sharp, focused look in her eyes. She was waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
“I doubt his death means much to you. Besides, you won’t risk losing your hold on the magic. Not when you’ve come this far.”
The roots tightened with their mistress’s agitation, their tendrils burrowing deeper into my chest, forcing a pained cry from my lips. Deira laughed. “Oh, but I already have all the power I need.”
More roots erupted from the dark earth around us, writhing like tentacles, her Earth magic intertwining with the Chaos magic of the Other.
“Your pretty little staff will not be enough to stop me,” the Dryad screamed at Rada, her roots lashing out like a row of deadly spears. “Iam not afraid of your powers. You cannot defeat me.” Deira yanked my head back. My vision dimmed. “You cannot save him.”
The Chiasma loomed over me like a giant spider over its hapless prey, ready to tear me open and devour what was left of me—my blood, my power.
Only one light remained, the only thing I could see: my queen.
Starfire blazed in her hands as she moved between the grasping roots in a mesmerizing dance of violence and grace. But it was not enough. For every root she severed with her sharp blade, a new one burst forth, slowly caging her in as the light of herlyr-stone grew fainter and fainter. She stumbled, her left leg giving out under her. A desperate groan escaped me, one last plea of her name, as the first root landed a glancing blow on her arm, red blossoming on the white fabric of her blouse. Somehow, she heard me, through the hissing roots, through the terrifying roar of unleashed magic.
Our eyes met.
I would never have asked her to save my life, but I would always demand that she do everything to preserve her own. She froze, Starfire held high, unmoving for what felt like an eternity as the roots crept closer.
Deira’s gleeful shriek echoed in my ears as she prepared for a final strike. Rada’s hands shifted on Starfire. The metal around the handle rotated, revealing a secondlyr-stone embedded beneath the first. It glowed not with the power of the Lady of Light, but with my essence. The essence of its creator—Darkness and Chaos. I had added it to the bladed staff when I forged it all those millennia ago. A desperate attempt to give her access to enough power to protect her against any threat, even against myself. As far as I knew, she had never used it during all that time.
The untamed magic of the Other flowed to Rada as if it had beenwaiting for her call, swirling around her in a tempest of shadows and Chaos-streaked lightning. Her fiery hair twisted in the storm, her eyes blazing with a dark flame. She looked deadly. And utterly beautiful.
“You have no idea what I am capable of,” she told Deira, her voice sizzling with barely contained power.
The Chiasma screamed in fury. Her roots lashed out, only to be shredded by tendrils of shadow. Deira glared down at me, her lips twisted into a snarl. She tried to draw power through me again, but Rada gave her no chance to regroup. Starfire sliced through the air in a brilliant arc. A wave of pure Chaos erupted from its blades. It struck Deira squarely in the chest, hurling her backward so swiftly she didn’t even have time to scream as she plummeted over the edge of the Abyss.
A relieved sigh escaped me as the thick roots around me finally loosened their grip. Yet I still lacked the strength to sit up, my hands digging uselessly into the ground beneath me as I tried.
“Baradaz,” I called out, noticing she hadn’t come to my side, her gaze fixed on the Abyss. Starfire still glowed in her hands, tendrils of Chaos magic wafting around her. At the sound of her name, her eyes snapped to me—not bright silver, but a pulsing, fathomless black, shimmering with amethyst and emerald.
Was that what she had always seen when I allowed Chaos to consume me?
“Saeraery,” I tried again when she didn’t respond. “It’s over. You can let go of the magic now.”
Something in her eyes shifted, the otherworldly glow slowly fading, replaced by the warm silver I knew so well. “Oh,lyr,” she gasped, rushing to my side, a visible limp in her step. She was hurt. “Belekoroz.” She sank to her knees next to me and her hands flutteredover my body aimlessly, as if she was unsure of what to do. “How do I remove these things?” she asked, a hint of terror in her voice. “Do they hurt you?”
Those bloody tendrils were still buried inside me. With the realization, the pain was back, accompanied by a wave of panicked revulsion that made me claw at my chest.
“Just get them out,” I groaned. Rada nodded, her face suddenly filling my vision. One of her hands squeezed mine reassuringly, while the other reached for my chest.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “This will hurt.”
She gave no further warning. The agony was so intense that my mind plunged into darkness once more.
I awoke to a gentle hand caressing my cheek, my head resting on something soft. The air was thick with the sharp scents of blood and Chaos, but beneath that, I caught the faint fragrance of snowdrops. I smiled.
“We really need to stop doing this,” I murmured, my voice hoarse.
