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With her damaged eye, she caught a shimmer of faint, gold light. She snagged the feathery strand of energy, sucking at her teeth when it filled her with the comforting warmth of a summer breeze.
Why do you feel so familiar?
She kept a hand running along the string as she followed it, now and then glancing back at her rift to make sure it hadn’t shut. Delicately, she tiptoed around writhing sources of magic like they were graves, wary of touching anything teeming with ancient fury.
Her body seized up, halting her before a Corrupted source. Tiny, imprisoned storms of black lightning crackled within its veins of silver light.
This was why she’d come. To seek this power. To pump herself with so much darkness that she’d blot out anything that threatened innocent lives again.
Bring this world’s pain to an end,guttural voices chanted.
Tenah shivered, disturbed by the foreign entities speaking temptations into her mind. The strand of mysterious energy burned hotter in her palm, almost as if warning her away from Chaos.
Her head turned toward it.Where do you lead?
Never one to restrain her curiosity, she followed the strand deeper into the Void.
A lone, red temple rose up in the distance. Her steps faltered when she noticed her little strand cutting right through its pitch-black entrance. What was a temple doing here in the Void, where supposedly few shadows trekked and none survived for long? This was a space for magic, not worship.
As she moved closer, the voices of Chaos began to chant once more. Tenah wasn’t sure if they resided in her mind or if they echoed from somewhere in the depths of the temple. All she knew was the weird energy urging her onward held a peculiar hint of vanilla that quickened her pulse.
She glanced back once more, panic jabbing at her chest when she no longer saw her rift. Her palms slicked over with sweat. She exhaled a hot breath. Whatever dangers threatened her, they didn’t matter. Her life didn’t matter. She shouldn’t evenexist. The most she could do now was ensure that no one else had to suffer. There would be no more deaths by her father’s hand.
When Tenah ascended the temple stairs, an orb of blue light burst to life. Blood drained down into her boots as dread replaced it.
The orb expanded, revealing the death king waiting for her.
“You weren’t supposed to be so broken.” His frigid tone and smoldering eyes siphoned the residual warmth from her body. “I give you life, and this is how you return the debt? By cowering in fear and avoiding the truth? You haven’t changed at all. You’re still that pathetic, cowardly child.”
Tenah stumbled back a step. The orb light bobbed at his side like some sort of sentient pet as he glided closer. She needed to leave this place, yet Chaos wouldn’t heed her demands to open a rift home.
“This was a mistake,” she uttered. “I can’t be here.”
The death king flashed his teeth so fast Tenah almost missed how they’d all sharpened to monstrous points. “You’re not dead, but you will be again if you don’t incitechange.”
“Change? What change? You don’t know anything about me.”
Long fingers shot out from his robes and grasped her jaw. His mouth brushed against her ear, drawing her breaths short. “I know everything about you. Every horrible thing you’ve done.”
She knocked his hand away and bolted for the entrance.
“Not so fast,” the death king called out. “I have use for you.”
Smoky hands of magic latched onto her arms and dragged her back into the center of the temple right as the orb light flickered out.
Chapter21
Renton
Renton strolled Denoden’s boisterous streets as if he could outrun his troubles.
The consuming defeat on Tenah’s face, combined with Aeyis’s claim that the missing Chaos tome was not the stuff of nightmares but a potential tool for overcoming darkness, had ignited a fire within him.
If Kherathi hadn’t swiped it, Renton had a hunch on where it had ended up. It was exactly the kind of artifact Boedworth would go to great lengths to obtain. Another invaluable piece to add to his collection.
Renton had left a note in the Embassy lobby for the employee named Hass offering intel on the theft of the tome. Should Hass take the bait and travel with him to retrieve it, the assassin would prove a more credible witness to testify against Boedworth in court. It was a start to dethroning Boedworth and keeping him from Tenah.
What Renton needed now was an efficient method of travel, should Hass decline his invitation.
