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All that existed were Mrak and me. And the one shadow demon who could destroy us forever.
As soon as I was a few feet away, I leapt, holding the knife in both hands before me. Sylas turned at the last minute, lashing out with his tentacle of shadow. It slammed me in the stomach and I went flying through the air until a force of some sort caught me.
I glanced over my shoulder to find a radiant, magical shield around me.Willa.
I grinned and pulled forward again as Mrak lunged, sliding his shadow sword through Sylas’s shoulder. It bought me a few seconds of distraction to get close again as Mrak slid it sideways and down, cutting across his chest.
“Brother…” Sylas grunted. “You’d kill me?”
“After all you did?” Mrak roared. “It’s the least you deserve.” He drove the blade deeper.
Sylas grabbed Mrak’s sword arm. “You’ll never know… how close we came… to true power.” Sylas’s six red glowing eyes dimmed.
Then shook, forming into one singular massive red eye. Power built there, a swirling magical energy unlike anything I’d ever seen. Mrak tried to pull away, but Sylas held him in place as blood and shadows collected from the fallen demons on the ground, from the injured, from the hurt.
Sylas was drawing on their energy.
Dread rolled over me in a familiarity that froze my veins. This feeling of death, of being watched, of being followed. Like the shadows I’d seen form an entity when I’d been poisoned. The same as the feeling of being watched on Earth before returning to Kithonia.
The answer had been there all along. I just hadn’t had the knowledge to see it for what it was.
“Shit!” I screamed as I ran close.
Sylas lifted one hand and held me in place. When he spoke, Sylas’s voice was not his own. Many voices in one spoke when he did, in a language I could barely understand save for the one voice speaking English. “I will rise!”
“Dakta.”No. Even with its physical form on Earth, it could project like Mrak could to me. Sylas must have already had a solid pact with the old god. A binding like Mrak and I.
“Get out of my brother!” Mrak yelled as he threw Sylas’s shoulders and head back against the stone floor. It only caused Sylas to gain more power, this time from his own pain.
I fought against Sylas’s hold with everything I had, but the longer he held me, the more I realized that wasn’t Sylas keeping me and the one thing that could end Sylas at bay. It was Dakta.
Which meant fighting wasn’t the answer.
The realization slammed into me as I met eyes with Mrak.
“Hold him.” I had the answer. I’d known the answer all along.
The only way to stop hurt and pain, to break out of Dakta’s hold, was love. I closed my eyes and thought of Mrak. Of the way he’d come into my life—that wasn’t love. It had been desperation. But it had been needed by both of us, and we’d taken those awful experiences and needs and had turned it into love. With time and difficult conversations, and a lot of pain, we’d created something greater than ourselves.
I loved Mrak. And because of that love, because of what we’d come to Kithonia to do, our love would hopefully bring a new era of peace to this world. To this kingdom, the same way our love had brought peace to Willa. My best friend had gotten freedom because of our actions, and she would again once this was through. And Leif would be with his sister as she was before.
I opened my eyes and took a step. Sylas and Dakta cried out as I moved. I ground my teeth together, fighting with everything within me to move, foot by foot, closer to Mrak and Sylas. The distraction kept whatever energy was building in his one eye at bay, and it diminished the closer I got. The force holding me back lessened until I was close enough to raise the warded knife.
“Do you want to do it?” I asked Mrak once I was in range.
Mrak seethed as he stared his brother in his eye. “This is an act of mercy, brother. You’ve lost yourself.” He grabbed the knife from me and stabbed Sylas’s eye through.
Sylas’s scream shook the foundations of the castle. Beams fell and were dodged by demons and hunters. Stones fell loose. But the castle stood the test, and one by one, Sylas’s court stood down. Their leader, once though the most powerful, was dead.
“Capture them,” Mrak directed his own demons. “We’ll hold them in the dungeons overnight, and there will be a trial tomorrow.”
Karn approached with Willa. Quinn and Leif weren’t far behind. “Are you sure?”
Mrak nodded. “There will be no more deaths on my hands.”
“A good decision, my king,” Karn said. “A merciful one.”
I frowned and reached out for Willa. We held each other while Mrak and Karn dealt with the aftermath.
That mercy had come too late for Sylas.
