I see Brinda’s face in my mind, her eyes as cold and empty as a starless sky. I see the sterile obsidian labs, the cold stone tables. I see the faces of my brethren as The Fading consumed them, their minds fracturing into the hot, messy chaos of emotion before their bodies followed. My purpose, for centuries, has been to prevent that.
But then, another image rises to meet it. The image of a crude charcoal drawing of a winged monster with sad eyes. The memory of her, standing over me in the courtyard, her eyes not filled with fear, but with the cold, hard light of victory. The feeling of her body, surrendering and defiant, beneath my own. The sound of her screaming my name. The warmth of Lyren’s small hand on mine.
These are not logical arguments. They are chaotic, emotional variables that have no place in the equation. And yet, they are throwing the entire calculation into disarray. Logic fails. It cannot provide the correct answer, because the correct answer feels like the damnation of my own soul.
I look at the Wildspont. This nexus of pure, untamed life. Its power amplifies. It creates. With my knowledge of Vrakken alchemy, I could use its energy to draw the Purna essence from her blood. I could synthesize a cure. I could save my people.
But raw power can also be used to unmake. To corrupt. To sever.
And in the ruin of my logic, a new, singular truth emerges, a choice made not by my mind, but by the new, possessive, protective thing that has taken root in my soul.
I walk to her, my movements silent. I kneel beside her and gently touch her shoulder. “Elza.”
Her eyes flutter open, dark and wary. She sees the look on my face, and she sits up, her hand instinctively going to Lyren’s shoulder. “What is it? Are they here?”
“No.” My voice is a low, rough sound I barely recognize. I must tell her. I must have her understand the choice I am about to make, the path I am about to destroy. “The cure for The Fading. The reason the Matriarch hunts us. It is not Lyren.”
Her brow furrows in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
I hold her gaze, and I deliver the truth with the clean, brutal efficiency of a blade. “It is you. Your blood is the cure. Its potency, its purity… it is the key. But to forge that key, to extract the essence in the quantities needed, would destroy the source.” I pause, letting the weight of the words settle. “It would kill you, Elza.”
Ice floods her eyes, followed by a wave of dawning horror. Her hand goes to her own arm, a gesture of disbelief. I see the thoughts warring in her expression—the terror of her own death sentence, the impossible, noble flicker of a woman who might consider making that sacrifice.
I will not allow her to make that choice. It is not hers to make. It is mine.
Before she can speak, before she can argue or plead or offer herself up, I rise and turn my back on her. I walk to the edge of the Wildspont, the decision now a cold, hard stone in my gut.
I unsheathe the dagger I took from the Vrakken I killed at Haven. I slice my own palm open, letting my own dark, diluted blood drip into the swirling, pearlescent mist of the pool. Then I begin the ritual.
They are ancient words, words of unmaking, forbidden for millennia. They are the antithesis of the Vrakken way, which is to preserve, to endure. These are words of severance, of corruption. I draw the raw, pure energy of the Wildspont into myself, a torrent of life so intense it feels like I am being torn apart and remade.
I channel that power not through the filter of my discipline, but through the lens of my new, cold rage. I pour it back into the Wildspont, a corrupted, chaotic stream of energy, tuned to a single, unique frequency: the signature of her Purna magic. I am not just destroying the potential for a cure in this place. I am poisoning the very wellspring, making it impossible for her essence to ever be used this way, by anyone, ever again. I am salting the earth of my people’s only hope to save the one person who has become mine.
The cavern reacts with a violent, shuddering groan. The ground trembles beneath my feet. The emerald light of the glowing moss flickers, sputters, and dies, plunging the cavern into a near-total darkness, illuminated only by the dying heart of the Wildspont.
The swirling, pearlescent light of the pool churns, turning a sick, murky brown before its light is extinguished completely, the thrum of life in the air falling utterly silent.
I have just doomed my race.
I turn, my body aching from the strain, the forbidden ritual leaving me hollowed and weak. Elza is standing, her face a pale mask in the gloom, her eyes wide. She is staring at me, at the dead pool, at the darkness that has consumed the life of this place. And in her eyes, I see not just shock, but the dawning, horrified realization of the true, absolute, and irreversible magnitude of the sacrifice I just made for her.
23
ELZA
The silence is pressed in on my eardrums, a dead, heavy weight where the thrum of life and magic used to be. The cavern is dark, the vibrant emerald moss now a dull, lifeless grey. The only light is the faint, dying ember of our small fire, casting long, skeletal shadows across the stone. The Wildspont, once a swirling pool of pearlescent light, is now just a circle of murky, still water. The air, once warm and humming with energy, is now cold and thin. It is a tomb. He has killed this place.
For me.
Eoin stands by the dead pool, his back to me. His shoulders, which have always seemed to hold the strength to carry the world, are slumped. The sheer force of the ritual has left him drained, a hollowed-out echo of the terrifying power he once wielded. The link between us is a quiet, aching void where a storm used to be.
“Mama?”
A small, frightened voice cuts through the silence. Lyren is awake, sitting up in the nest of cloaks, his silver hair catching the faint firelight. He is shivering, his small arms wrapped aroundhimself. “It is cold. The lights went out. What happened to the glowing water?”
I rush to his side, my own shock momentarily forgotten in a wave of maternal instinct. I wrap a heavy cloak around his shoulders, pulling him into my arms. “I know, little lion. It is alright. We are safe.” I hold him tight, but my eyes are fixed on Eoin’s back.
Lyren looks past me, his gaze finding the still figure by the pool. “Is… is he okay?”
