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This is my power.
All mine.
All light and all good.
Then I hear an unmistakable chuckle, one that makes my blood run cold.
I turn to look at the crumbling ruins and see Skarde standing at the edge of the dock, staring up at me with an awestruck expression on his face, his chest marked by a blackened wound where the witch’s blade went in.
He’s fucking alive.
“It’s too bad you didn’t discover that earlier,” Skarde shouts at me. “It would have come in handy, no?”
I gape at him, shaking my head in denial.
No. No.
“You’re dead,” I say.
“Clearly I’m not,” he says. “Maybe you should come down from there Lenore.”
Before I even have a chance to fly off in the opposite direction, I’m suddenly being pulled toward him, screaming as I go against my will, and then, like a cord has been severed, I drop from the sky, landing on a heap on the dock.
He picks me up by my arm, pulling me roughly to my feet, staring down at my soaked dress. “You lost your crown, but you’re still dressed as a bride. Guess Kaleid didn’t get his chance.”
“Where is he?” I manage to ask, my bones feeling bruised from the fall, the air knocked out of me. Fear clutches my heart. A sinking, bone-deep fear.
“Oh, you care?” he asks, his gaze burning over my breasts, my neck. “He ran off. Guess he was a little embarrassed. You see, he thought a witch’s blade, the blade of mordernes, would kill me. It did, but only for a little bit. The fool thought he was a slayer for a moment. It doesn’t quite work like that, but desperate times call for desperate measures, doesn’t it?”
I don’t say anything about Jeremias or how he’s taken control of the Dark Order. We’re all alone out here. If he knew Jeremias was here, he’d bring him up.
“Now come along,” he says, yanking me along the dock and back to the shore. “Let’s finish what we started. Least we can have privacy this time.”
But we only just step onto the snow-crusted shore when a low rumble fills the air, shaking the ground.
Skarde stops dead, adjusting his grip on me so his hand is at the back of my neck, gripping my spine. He sucks in his breath, the first sign of uneasiness that I’ve ever seen from him, sending a new spike of terror through me.
The rumbling continues, the ground shaking harder.
“What’s happening?” I whisper.
Skarde grunts. “Our worst nightmare,” he says. He glances at me, brows raised. “This won’t end well for either of us, Lenore. I’ll take solace that at least we’ll both die together.”
Oh my god. What the fuck is he talking about?!
And then, the ruins in front of us start to shake, pieces of the building falling down, then the stones explode outward as a giant black beast bursts through the middle of the wall.
“Solon!” I scream, as the beast runs right for us, overjoyed to see him.
And then I remember what the beast did to me last time.
This isn’t Solon.
I scream and try to wrestle out of Skarde’s grasp to try and run away, but he holds me in a vice-like grip, and sticks his arm straight out in front of him.
He’s using me as an offering.
“Take her!” Skarde commands as the beast gets closer. “She’s what you really want.”
The beast comes to a stop in front of us and snarls at me, those beady red eyes locked on mine, those knife-sized fangs bared as he snaps his jaws and my body aches in memory of the pain and horror he caused. There is no hint of Solon inside. No one in control.
“Take her!” Skarde yells again, shaking me by the neck like a ragdoll, my feet dangling off the ground.
Please no, I say to Solon inside my head, begging for my life. I know you’re in there, please don’t do this. It’s me, it’s me. I love you, it’s me.
The beast curls its lips, showing me its gums.
Then it lunges for me, mouth open, claws out.
Guess I’m still not special.
I close my eyes, ready to be ripped to shreds.
Suddenly I feel pressure around my waist and then I’m being whipped through the air, yanked out of the way, landing on the ground in a heap, lifting up my head just in time to see the beast jump on Skarde instead.
I look up for a second, to see Jeremias standing above me, his eyes trained on the fight, and I’m momentarily thankful that he just saved me despite everything that went down earlier.
But then I too have to watch it all unfold.
It doesn’t take long at all.
The beast slices Skarde right down the middle, cutting through bone, exposing his organs, his intestines falling out to the ground to a bloody lump.
Then he slices him the other way, cutting his body nearly in half.
