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“Put them down!” I screamed, shadowed fire already burning in my palms again.
Sylas’s gaze cut to me. Several of his shadow tendrils curled around my ankles at the same time. “Let that fire go or you’ll be the next to die.”
Mrak roared and hurled Sylas’s blade and sword arm aside only long enough for Sylas to get a shoulder under Mrak’s and shove him sideways onto his back. Mrak landed hard against the red brick.
The shadow demons Sylas held in his hold screamed—for all of a split second before those screams were cut off. More blood sprayed the floor. My face. It reminded me too strongly of Lazarus’s community, but I stayed frozen, afraid to tempt fate and more lives lost by reacting.
“Have enough died yet for you to listen, brother?” Sylas asked. He inhaled sharply, which I thought was weird, except that I was close enough now to notice tiny golden particles enter his nostrils. Particles I’d not seen before. “Have enough died to your insolence?”
Sylas was feeding off their deaths. Just like all shadow demons fed off pain and suffering and death.
That, along with the ward against Mrak, was why he was so much more powerful than anyone else here.
It was why these shadow demons, all of Mrak’s people, feared him.
I straightened and raised my chin. Sylas had come here looking for more power and to chase Mrak away. To show off his nightsteel blade, and the true extent of the threat he was.
But why?
A flash of Karn’s warning filtered through my mind. If nightsteel was rare here, why would Karn warn of it if he meant just one singular weapon? If Sylas wanted more nightsteel to help him conquer this world, going to Earth made sense. There were large deposits of it there, even rare as it was.
Sylas has a stockpile here, too. The realization hit me hard. That was the reason Karn had been so afraid. So desperate to get his words across.
A stockpile here would give Sylas the ability to cause enough deaths, to gain enough power, to permanently open a rift to Earth. And with humans and other supernaturals unable to best a shadow demon’s power, Earth would be his, too.
That had always been Sylas’s endgame. We’dassumedhe’d wanted to conquer both worlds.
But this… I was starting to wonder if his plans ended with conquering, or if he had something far more cruel and selfish in mind.
But does Sylas know I can forge nightsteel?Did he know I had in my head designs for a weapon that could, with the right ward againstSylas, kill him?
A bad plan formed in my head. A terrible one with so many risks, but a reward so sweet, it’d lessen any more deaths. And that would be worth it.
I was tired of being surrounded by death and suffering. By fear and hatred. And if I played my cards right, I might even be able to take out Sylas himself.
“I will never surrender to you, Sylas,” Mrak ground out. “You can kill me here. You can take everyone’s lives. But you’ll always be a monster whose brother never once surrendered.”
“Gods, you’re predictable.” Sylas moved to swing his blade again, this time at a group of children hiding behind their parents.
I ran forward and stepped between them, all too aware of what that nightsteel blade could do to my very new shadow demon body. “Take me. Take me instead.”
“Aisling!” Mrak called.
I shook my head, holding Sylas’s gaze even as I held up a hand to Mrak. “Take me. You’ll get nowhere with Mrak, but I want this killing to stop. If you take me, he’ll be forced to back off, and then…”
Then what? I didn’t know. But Sylas must have had some idea spark in his mind because his grin deepened into something truly evil.
“Yes,” Sylas said slowly. “Yes, I think I will do that. Take your bride, brother, bed her as my own and make her bear my children so you can watch your nieces and nephews take a throne that once was yours. And every time you look at them, you’ll know your pathetic, once-mortal queen had to save your people. That you couldn’t stop the death without her.”
Sylas stepped closer to me and drew a hand down my cheek. Lucky for him, I’d long ago become well-versed in how to not flinch when bastards touched you without consent.
I swallowed hard and tried with all my might to convey to Mrak that I had a plan. That I wasn’t throwing myself into danger just to save him or his people. There was a reason for this action. Logic.
“I can offer you things no one else can,” I continued. “But you need to walk away now. No more killing, Sylas. Enough have died.”
Sylas lifted one of my hands to eye level between us. “Yes, quite a great many, or so I hear. How many died so you could bring my exiled brother back to Kithonia?”
Tears pricked my eyes. I blinked them away.
