It feels like…starlight. It feels like light and darkness together, entwined. The separation between them gone, the power of light and darkness merged into one.
It’s just a spark, but even that feelsimmense.
Extraordinary.
I push out with it, and a pulse of blinding light chased by swirling darkness flows outward, a shockwave roaring across the room.
The other Sylvie’s shadows vanish. Her eyes go white as I reach for my sickle.
In the time it takes her to raise her own sickle, I strike, slicing through her throat.
She reaches for it, stumbling forward, and then the image changes.
It’s Ronan.
Gods. It’s Ronan, and I’ve just killed him.
He drops to his knees, and I reach out with the power once more, screaming soundlessly as I try to heal him, as I try to find his healing light in the room. Ronan, the torch, my power, the new power. Anything to save him.
I draw on it all—every drop of magic I can find. I pull it into me, feeling the energy grow and pulse, the magic as potent and timeless as the stars themselves.
And then I push it outwards into Ronan, healing him.
The image vanishes. I reach out for it, trying to find him once more, terrified that I’ve lost him, but it’s gone.
It wasn’t him.
The braziers burst into light, their daylight flames reaching for the roof of the cavern and then shrinking to fill their basins, flickering softly.
On the other side of the platform, an illusory Sylvie has Ronan pinned against the pillar with her shadows. She’s strangling him to death.
And he isn’t even fighting it. Gods, of course he isn’t. He’s going to let me kill him.
“Ronan! It isn’t me!” I shout, and though I hear my voice, it’s clear that he can’t. He’s still under whatever spell had me moments ago.
I race to him, thrusting the sickle up and through the heart of the other Sylvie. He cries out silently, reaching for her the moment her shadows drop and release him. This time, the illusion doesn’t become him. It simply vanishes, and the flames in the braziers turn red.
Ronan falls to his knees. “Sylvie!” he screams.
“I’m here,” I say, reaching for him. “I’m here. It wasn’t me.”
“Oh gods.” Ronan holds me to him as tightly as he ever has. “Oh gods, I thought you were dead. I watched you die.”
“I know,” I say, my arms shaking around him. “It did that to me too. I’m here, my love.” I sink down to my knees to hold him. “I’m here.”
“I feel—something is different. You feel different.Wefeel different.” Ronan strokes my hair and searches my face. “It’s really you?”
“It’s me.” But I understand his meaning. He feels different to me as well. It’s almost as though he feels likeme. And himself. Both of us, together.
Like we’re one soul in two bodies.
There’s a scraping sound behind me. I turn to look as a hidden hatch opens between the tombs, revealing a staircase leading down.
The sickle and the torch urge us towards it, but for the first time, I truly don’t want to go. “What if we just leave?” I ask Ronan as he helps me to my feet. “I have some kind of new power now. I feel it in you too.” I don’t understand why, but I don’t want to know what’s down there.
“We have to know what all of this means. There’s an answer down there. I can feel it. Can’t you?”
I can, but it doesn’t feel like I expected. I don’t like the way I’m being pulled down there like there’s something at work here beyond our control. It doesn’t feel right.
