“No.” My voice is steady now. “I will not let my sister suffer for me. Not again.”
Before she can scream another word, I cup her face and kiss her, leaving every breath I won’t get to take, every word I’ll never speak, every future I will not see, upon her lips.
She trembles against me. I let her go.
The void rips open at my call. Darkness claws across my skin as I step through, reappearing in the air before Zyphoro. Her eyes widen in shock, wings flaring as she jerks to stop before colliding.
“What are you doing?” she roars. “Move!”
“No.” I plant myself in her path. “You cannot do this.”
“I didn’t ask you!” she snaps, rage shaking her frame. “Don’t you see? This is the only way. Then you will be free. Your family will be free.”
I meet her gaze. Twin storms, twin sacrifices and finally, softly.
“I know.”
I draw in a long breath. A strange lightness fills me, like air before dawn.
“Zyphoro.” Her name trembles on my tongue. My fingers move to the moonstone at my neck. I tear the cord free and fling it toward her. She catches it on instinct, confusion flashing across her face.
“Now we are even.”
Her brow tightens. “Daed…”
I do not let her finish. Shadow rises at my call, a whip of smoke snapping toward her. It coils around her body, binding her arms, winding again and again until she cannot lift a finger. Her wings falter, and she plummets toward the earth screaming my name.
I watch as she falls, as the ground rushes up to claim her. At the last breath I catch her descent, slowing it so she crumples rather than breaks. But I do not free her. If I release her now she will rise again, furious and relentless. Infuriating, stubborn sister of mine.
She would follow me into death without hesitation.
So I must leave her behind to live.
For a moment I hover, breath shaking, fingers tingling like they are waking or dying. I do not know which.
Then I turn away.
I spread my wings, pin them back tight against the wind, and take the path my sister meant to fly.
The one she will not die for.
The one I will.
I turn to face Gygarth. All my life he has haunted me. Controlled me. Made me his weapon. His shadow. His mirror and yet, now that I stand before him, ready to end this, ready to take him into the dark with me. I feel no hatred.
Because when I fall, I will take the Father Below with me, and the world, and everyone I love will finally be free.
I soar high, wings cutting through smoke. Gygarth lashes his tentacles at me, the air screaming with every strike. I summon a shard of shadow. It spears through one tendril and pins it to a crumbling column of the temple. Another comes. Then another.
I throw more shards of darkness, each one sharper, more lethal than the last. They sear through Gygarth’s flesh until the god howls, black ichor spilling across the stone like spilled night.
His voice follows, not from his mouth, but inside my skull, a thousand whispers layered as one.
“Favored son. Little prince. I command you. Kneel and serve me!”
My jaw tightens. Wings flare wide. Every muscle in me trembles with the pressure of his command. But I do not kneel. I do not bow. I hurl another shard and another until the air fills with them.
He roars once more, summoning the remnants of his army, the twisted demons still crawling through the ruins, but below me, Amara and Zyphoro meet them. Green fire and daggers of smoke and shadow.
