Page 169 of Black Sea

“You know that, as soon as I attack you again, you’ll have to release that barrier,” he said in the same intimate tone he’d used just a few hours earlier, in my bed, as he possessed me with such intensity that I wanted to die and be reborn within him.

To live within him.

He grabbed my bloodied chin with two fingers to force me to turn to him, but I lacked the courage to look into his eyes.

“And the moment you do . . .” he continued, brushing his nose against my temple as his breath warmed my cheek. “The moment you get distracted while trying to protect yourself, I will kill them.”

I jerked free from his grasp with a furious expression, torn apart by the tremendous truth in his words.

I sensed his cruel smile as he straightened to his full majestic height, towering over me like the most unstoppable of disasters. “You can’t win against me, Elf. You never will.”

He was right. Even when combining the powers of the Spirits and Lady Calien with my fighting skills, I still couldn’t match Mornon the Abomination.

I had been so arrogant, thinking I could do it. Thinking I was destined to defeat the greatest evil our world had ever known.

I had let down my family, my people. There was nothing more I could do.

I had failed.

Nauriel, my grandmother’s voice suddenly echoed in my mind.

93

I felt like I was being lassoed around my waist and pulled backward. No, not backward. Inward.

I found myself in a meadow, surrounded by endless green hills and a calm stream to my right. Soft pale blue clouds drifted slowly across the white sky.

Where was I?

“My child.”

I turned slowly, my heart pounding in my chest from the emotion.

“Calien,” I exclaimed in a whisper.

My grandmother was even more beautiful and ethereal than in the many paintings portraying her. As tall as Mornon, she wore a simple white robe that exposed her bare feet, with long lace batwing sleeves. Her very long, wavy, white-floral hair framed her face with pronounced cheekbones and a tad large nose.

The kindness and immense wisdom in her eyes, blue like mine and slightly hooded, overwhelmed me so much that I had a lump in my throat.

I looked down. “I didn’t succeed,” I said, feeling terribly embarrassed to desecrate this bright place with the violence that oozed from my appearance. “He’s too . . .”

Everything.

Calien’s soft hand rested on my dirty cheek. “I know, dear.” Her full lips curved into a compassionate smile. “I know it well.”

Still, I suspected she couldn’t truly understand how helpless I felt in front of Mornon—how inferior I felt—since she possessed the same divine and unattainable aura as him.

It was as if Calien and Mornon represented the two ends of a straight line, one half white and the other half black. I was the midpoint, and because of me, that line was about to turn completely and irreversibly black.

“So, is it really over?” I asked desolately. “Is there anything at all I can do to stop him?”

“There is only one solution.” She wiped away my tears with the back of her slender fingers, showing no disgust at the burst capillaries branching from my eyes. “A solution you’ve already found.”

“My sacrifice,” I thought aloud. The gruesome images of what had happened in the Forest of Witches inevitably replayed in my mind, and I shook my head faintly. “I’ve already tried, and it didn’t work. He blocked Araton’s arrow and—”

“You no longer need your brother’s help,” Grandmother interrupted me.

My brows drew together. “But how . . .?”