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“I love you,” I choked out. “Please stay.”
“Ren! Look out,Ren!”Charles was shouting, frantic.
I glanced up to see a wraith-like form breaking free of its bonds of vines and roots and sweeping toward me, its skeletal hand extended. Despair pommeled me, but I was no stranger to the feeling. I was already drowning in it. The tears I’d tried to fight slipped down my cheeks.
Hopeless.
Someone slammed into me, forcing me to a stand, where I teetered on my one good foot. Aspen. Her eyes were fierce as she tossed a glance at me, refusing to let me shy away from her order or break down any further. “Stop them.”
“I can’t,” I blurted, but Aspen was already charging the wraith, her sword lifted high, fending it off so I had a clear path to the underworld entrance.
My heart throbbed in my head. I couldn’t leave Garrick here. My breaths came out strangled. I’d sapped all my strength. Numbly, I lifted my still-bleeding hand, wondering if there was any light left in me. It seemed as if it had all drained from me when I’d watched Garrick fall, when I’d poured out my last bits of anger. Now I was a shell of myself.
Charles grasped my shoulder. Like me, he was crippled, staggering on one good foot. “Together,” he said, and when I looked into his pale face, scrunched in pain and determination, I knew I couldn’t refuse him.
For Charles. For Aspen. For the glamoured humans trapped here. For every last fae who had shown me a shred of kindness in this harsh land. For the humans in Altidvale.
I could summon one last bit of magic to save them, even if it was too late for me. Too late for Garrick. Our freedom—our dreams—were lost.
As my half-brother and I clung to each other, supporting one another in our uneven gait while we half-shuffled, half-hopped across the floor, the rebels cleared the way for us. Prince Holden entangled any looming demons with vines, or fended them off with a bow, each arrow a distraction. His brother and Princess Elle shocked creatures with their lightning, stunning them enough to drop them to the floor, twitching. Aspen flitted between her high fae and pixie forms, one moment tall enough to swordfight the monsters, the next small enough to dart between their legs and seemingly vanish before their eyes.
Where’s Kinsey?I thought desperately as Charles and I struggled over a crack in the floor, dodging roots that shuddered as if they were limbs attached to a living being, just waiting to seize their next victims. I saw no sign of the Ashwood healeramong the dead or the living. If Garrick was still clinging to even a shred of life, surely the fae would be able to use his magic to save him.
Holden, Fitz, and Elle circled in front of Charles’s and my slow progress as more demons poured forth from the entrance. A cluster of rebels joined them, unleashing battle cries as they poured all manner of nature magic—lashing rain and howling wind and tangling vines and roaring fire—toward their enemies, drawing them slowly away.
Until at last, there was nothing and no one besides Charles, that awful, yawning entrance, and me. Fighting raged all around us. The sounds of hissing and rattling bones echoed from the darkness within, but nothing else was emerging—not yet.
Sucking in a breath against my fear, my pain, and my grief, I forced everything away as I lifted my bleeding palm toward the entrance. I brushed my blood along the entryway, rough stone scraping against my stinging injury.
I have nothing left,I thought helplessly. My cheeks were sticky with drying tears. My body screamed at me to lie down, to lose consciousness and escape the agony of every broken bone I was trying so desperately to forget. I was empty, hollower than if forget-me-nots had forced my magic away. When I reached, there was nothing at all.
A voice sounded in my mind, as if my blood had awakened some ancient magic emanating from the stone door itself. Except it wasn’t an unknown voice. It was mine, reminding me thatIwas connected to this door by magic and blood.I don’t need to fight to the entrance or send away the demons. The power to perform my duty as a Silverfrost isinmy blood.It was what Garrick had said—what he’d believed from the beginning, that my light lived on in me no matter what. The gods had given this calling to my ancestors, and I had inherited it. It was what I was made to do, with a light that burned in my veins as longas I lived. It didn’t matter how scattered my mind felt or how depleted my magic and my body were—the power I’d been gifted was ancient and unstoppable.
I’d been trying too hard, attempting to force something that should have come naturally. Thinking I had to concentrate on my power and channel it, when it was as much a part of me as my silver hair or the breath in my lungs. I couldn’t weaken the light that lived in me, not with my doubt or distraction, fear or regret. All I had to do was trust and lean into my power.
Leaning heavily against the frame to keep my weight off my ruined leg, I narrowed my gaze and reached into the darkness, groping to find where the open stone door rested. My fear evaporated, for nothing at the underworld’s edge could withstand my light. My fingers brushed against stone, and despite the drying tears on my face, despite my shattered heart, I grinned.
It was time to send the demons back for good.
I slammed my hand against the door, feeling my light glow like a steady warmth through my body. Through my soul. Through the air itself. It pulsed outward, shimmering and silver and irresistible.
I could feel its power at work, like an extension of myself. Banishing darkness. Obliterating the oppressive sense of despair and terror that had permeated our surroundings. Dispelling demons and undead spirits like smoke chased away by a pure breeze.
Instinctively, I knew they were all being sent back, even those imprisoned within the fortress, awaiting the moment Preston and Nerissa had planned to unchain them upon the world. My connection to the land and to the power in my blood could feel it like the lifting of a burden, like a cleansing rain washing away dust and filth.
As I withdrew my hand, the stone door closed, clicking with a sense of finality that echoed in the suddenly-quiet room. I exhaled raggedly. Blinding pain turned my vision black, and I collapsed.
