Not like this.
Not when I’ve just gotten her back.
Not when my life had finally started to mean something.
Not when I had purpose.
When I’d started to believe I could have something pure, something perfect, something beautiful, even with the curse upon my soul.
I close my eyes. Shadows press against the edges of my vision. I try to blink them away.
But I can hear it now…the darkness. It sings to me.
It tells me I do not have to be helpless. That there is power waiting. Terrible, ancient, endless. All I need do is call to it. Summon it. Let it in, and I can make this all go away. I can make themsuffer. I can make thempay. I can tear them into pieces and feed them to the void.
But I know what else it brings. What waits inside me. Something monstrous.
And still… I have no choice. Because I swore I’d only call on it if my life depended on it.
But this isn’t about my life anymore.
This isherlife.
Smoke slithers between my fingers. Shadows pour from the edges of the courtyard, rushing toward me like a dam breaking. They swarm me. Swirl in a furious, hungry vortex. The air hums with the echo of a thousand ancient voices, speaking in unison, welcoming me back.
I feel him. His hand presses on my shoulder, and when I open my eyes, they are black.
Death Singer manifests in my grip, inch by inch. As the blade finishes its descent, my bindings melt into smoke and then, with a roar of shadow, I walk the void.
It is cold, suffocating, endless, but I cannot deny the way my skin hums at its touch. White eyes flicker in the dark, demons watching from the depths. Then I walk again, tearing through space and shadow to appear at Vasheeth’s side.
She gasps when she sees me. They all do. They realize too late what they’ve forced me to become, what they’ve unleashed. But I give her no time for regret. I drive my blade between her shoulder blades, the steel erupting through her chest. Vasheeth chokes, blood dripping from the corners of her mouth, her limbs trembling, her eyes wide and glassy with the knowledge of her death. I watch until the sounds she makes bore me, then yank Death Singer free. Her body is swallowed by smoke, devoured before it ever hits the ground.
But even in death, she leaves behind her dagger, slipped from her grip before the void claimed her. The blade spins slowly through the air, landing beside Amara’s face with a sharp, ringing clang and her eyes flash open.
Chapter 33
Amara
It’s weightless where I am. Weightless and warm and untethered, like I’ve finally slipped beyond the grasp of all that ever hunted me. I’m floating, drifting somewhere soft and golden, suspended far away from the death and cruelty and endless hardship that’s clung to me like a second skin since I left the Grove. There is no fear here. No pain. Just quiet, perfect stillness. For the first time in what feels like lifetimes, I am not afraid. Not for myself. Not for the ones I love. It’s just peace. Soft and whole and final.
Am I dead?
Is this what waits for us after our light flickers out and the world lets us go?
But then, like a crack shattering across glass, a metallic clang rings in my ears, so loud and sudden I think my skull might split open from the sound alone. My eyes fly open on a gasp, and the weight of this world returns with cruel precision, rain slicing at my face like knives, my spine throbbing where stone juts against it. Lightning cracks across the sky above Baev’kalath, followed by the deep, rolling growl of thunder.
I’m back. Here. Alive. My journey far from over.
There is no peace. Not in this world and as the fog clears from my mind in tatters and wisps, it leaves only chaos in its wake and a blooming pain at the base of my skull that throbs with each passing second. I blink through the haze, through the sting of rain and blood in my eyes, and see them. Zyphoro and Orios. Reon and Solena. All of them bound and facedown on the courtyard stone like discarded scraps. Ronin lies sprawled opposite me, unmoving, and lining the courtyard walls are poles, too many to count, each one strung with a grotesque offering: bodies, slack and rain-slicked, their lifeless forms swaying in the storm.
But worse than what I see is what I hear.
A cry, high and terrified, slicing through the sound of the rain and my heart stops.
My daughter.
She’s in Modok’s arms, while his sister hovers too close.
