by Bec McMaster
The next blow scored along his ribs.
His knee buckled beneath him as he dodged, and he grabbed the shaft of the spear as he fell, wrenching it from Illarion’s hand.
Landing on his ass in the dirt, he bared his teeth as Illarion merely unsheathed a dagger from his belt.
“Never thought I’d see this moment,” the bastard said. “Here you are with all your vaunted might, and you’re practically on your knees before me.”
Sirius’s eye narrowed.
Heat flashed through him as the storm inside him lashed out. His long hair whipped in the breeze. Magic couldn’t touch the bastard, but that didn’t mean Sirius couldn’t use it. Lifting his clenched fist, he tore rocks from the ground around him, huge, groaning stones lifting unsteadily out of the earth.
Illarion froze, his eyes narrowing as Sirius smiled through his teeth.
“Magic won’t touch you,” he said. “But it’s a shame you can’t fight off gravity.”
He flung the wave of rocks at the Void.
Illarion dodged, but one clipped his shoulder and he was spun off his feet, landing in the dirt.
Sirius took his time gaining his feet, flexing his shoulders as he fisted the spear. He glanced at its tip and sniffed the poison-coated blade. “Just so you know…. This will sting.”
He feinted forward and Illarion dodged, but the spear was never the real attack.
Sirius flung a hand and a rock smashed into the Void’s temple, throwing him backward. Illarion hit the ground, his senseless body catapulting over the edge of the mountain ruins and vanishing into darkness.
“One down.” Sirius smiled to himself.
Defeat me?
Never.
He turned to stalk Vadim.
His mother and the Void fought dramatically, their steel whirring in soft hands. Though Zorja had warned him about Vadim’s prowess, she’d clearly underrated herself. The Void was on the back foot, his face taut with fury as she pressed her attack.
Zorja grunted, shoving the spear deep into the Vadim’s shoulder. “I haven’t always done the right thing by Ishtar,” she grated out. “But I won’t let you hurt her.”
Vadim bared his teeth and then he drove himself forward onto the weapon, grabbing a fistful of Zorja’s shirt and hauling her toward him. It happened in an instant, and Sirius saw her gasp in shock as Vadim embraced her.
“Do you think you can stop me?” Vadim whispered, as Zorja fell back.
“Zorja?” Something wasn’t right. Sirius could see it in the way she swayed, her knees weakening.
And then his gaze dropped to the bloodied knife in Vadim’s hand. The knife he hadn’t seen until that moment.
Every inch of him went cold.
“Long live the queen,” Vadim mocked.
Blood dropped from Zorja’s fingers as one of her arms fell against her side. Each droplet hit the ground, and the echo it made ricocheted through Sirius’s chest.
Splash.
Splash.
Splash.
The bearded dreki fanatic bared his bloodied teeth at Sirius, before wrenching the spear from his shoulder. He kicked Zorja in the chest and she staggered backward, tumbling into Sirius’s arms.
“You only have time to save one, Blackfrost. Your mother…. Or the girl.” Vadim turned and walked into the humming whirlwind of power that lashed the portal, the bloodied spear in hand.
Sirius squeezed Zorja tightly as she collapsed against him. And then he saw the damage as she gasped, blood welling between the fingers she’d clasped over her chest. “No,” he said breathlessly.
No, no, no, no, no.
But the second he opened his Third Eye, he could see the truth: Vadim’s knife had struck her right through the heart.
“Ishtar!” Marduk yelled, one arm flung over his face as he staggered through the storm of Chaos magic. It felt like hours as he gritted his teeth and fought the rage of pure Chaos. Strips tore from his skin, and the magic stung as though it was cutting through him. But he couldn’t leave her there.
He had to stop her before she opened a portal she might not be strong enough to withstand.
Shadows flickered at the other side of the rune stones. A tall, bearded form appeared, splashed with blood.
Marduk lowered his arm as Vadim moved toward Ishtar with a spear in his hand.
They stood at opposite sides of the circle with Ishtar between them.
Marduk would never reach her in time, but he grasped the wind with his magic, using it to hammer the Keeper.
Launching forward, Vadim grabbed Ishtar and hauled her into his arms, setting the tip of the spear to her throat. “What now, princeling?”
The wind whipped past Marduk, howling down through the valley. The strain of wielding it drove down upon his shoulders, as if he was handling it physically. His knees threatened to buckle.
But he wasn’t the only one handling power.
Chaos magic burned in Ishtar’s eyes as she opened her eyes. Above them, a vortex of eerie green began to whirl slowly to life, sucking the energy from the marrow of the world.
Mother of dragons. Marduk’s jaw dropped open as Ishtar called the portal to life. He could sense the sudden yawning distance as if the portal snatched onto its destination. A thousand colors flickered to life within the circle, and he could have sworn he saw a rainbow bridge stretching into infinity.
She’d done it.
She’d linked both worlds.
“Ishtar,” he whispered, because he could feel her knees weakening, feel her hold on the magic slipping through her fingers as they linked.
Something must have shown on his face, because Vadim glanced up.
Chaos magic might slough off the bastard, but his sister was clearly no fool.
And now she was free of her warded prison, there was no checking her power.
Vadim screamed as the portal sucked at him like an enormous hungry mouth. The spear was torn from his hand, and Ishtar’s dress blew back in the wind as the portal enveloped them.
“No!” Marduk yelled, leaping forward, but the portal evaporated with a hiss, leaving only clouds and bare earth behind.
Little sparks of Chaos fizzed in the air, and then there was nothing but the piercing squeal of Bryn’s merlin as it soared overhead.
And his sister, stumbling out of nowhere to her knees in the dirt with a happy smile on her face. “I did it,” she told him. “I set the world right.”
Marduk slid to his knees in front of her, hesitating to grab her hands after the way she’d reacted last time. “Set the world right? What do you mean?”
He glanced around. The rune stones hummed, the runes still lit up with green fire, though they remained inactive. Something didn’t feel right. If he concentrated, he could feel the ground shivering far, far below him.
“He was locked away,” she whispered. “And he wanted me to release him from his prison. And so I did. But I had to break the chains first.”
“Who? What chains?”
“My friend. The voice in the moon. And these chains.”
She sent him a sudden flurry of images through the bond, though he could barely make any sense of them. The portal, silent and quivering, its power suppressed. And little golden runes stamped over each stone, that had been patiently carved by a circle of long-dead dreki warlords as they bound the circle into silence.
Marduk blinked back into the present.
There was no more humming.
No more violent cascade of colors.
The portal was closed, but it had been opened once, and as he looked at each rune stone in turn, he saw shivers of the boulder crumble into fine powder. No more runes lay dormant there, waiting for the moonlight to strike them just so….
And he could sense a heaviness in the air, as if power stirred through the mountain, just waiting….
“Ishtar.” He was breathing heavily. “What did you do? Who is the voice in the moon?”
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
“
You can tell me. I’m your brother. Your twin brother.”
And then she said a name that made the bottom of his stomach drop through his boots. “He calls himself Tyndyr.”
The King of Álfheimr’s most brutal warlord.
“Don’t you dare die,” Sirius snapped to his mother, blood welling between his fingers as he tried desperately to stop the bleeding.
Her heart. The spear had nicked her heart and he poured his magic into her, trying desperately to stem the blood flow internally and heal each and every last broken capillary. It was taking too long, and he wasn’t fast enough.
Every time he patched a vessel, another required urgent attention, and then the first one would start to leak. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t save her—
Zorja clapped a weak hand over hers. “Let me go,” she whispered in his mind. “You’re overtaxing yourself.”
No.
“I’m the fucking Blackfrost,” he snapped, as a pain began to grow behind his eye. “I can do this!”
“I loved you.” He could sense flickering memories pouring through their bond—a little boy running through grass and laughing. Him. And he could feel the smile on her face as she watched him, feel the love that poured down the bond between them. “I loved you so much it broke my heart to leave you. But I had to. I wanted… you to know that.”
He shoved her out of his mind so he could concentrate.
It was too late. Her heart pulsed once. Twice. And he was more killer than healer, though healing was merely a matter of reversing the flows.
For all his power he was absolutely fucking helpless right now.
Bare feet padded toward him and Ishtar appeared, her gaze locked on Zorja. Marduk hovered at her side and though he looked troubled, his face paled when he saw the body in Sirius’s lap.
“I can’t heal her,” he whispered to Marduk, though he meant the words for himself.
Not fast enough to prevent the bleeding.
A wheezing breath escaped Zorja, her hand half-lifted toward Ishtar. And then he felt her body slacken into his arms as she gave one last exhale.
No. No.
His grip around Zorja tightened as he hauled her into his arms. “I love you.” The words broke over his tongue, but it was too late. For she was gone and he’d never had a chance to speak them, because of his own fucking pride—
He felt Malin reach out to him across the distance as if she’d sensed his sorrow, the gentle caress of her touch wrapping around him as she realized what had happened. “Oh, Sirius,” she whispered in his head. “I’m so sorry.”
And suddenly it didn’t matter that his mother had never been there.
She had chosen an innocent child’s life over his, because she had believed that what she was doing was right. And she’d failed them both in so many ways, but he forgave her for it.
Only now, it was too late.
A single tear slid down his cheek, as Marduk reached out to squeeze his shoulder, and that alone nearly fucking broke him.
“Mother?” It was a voice he’d never heard before.
Green light flooded the world. Sirius looked up as Ishtar reached out, a ball of pure power blazing around her hand as tears ran down her cheek.
“Wake up,” she whispered.
His heart sank like lead. “She’s not going to—”
Her power touched Zorja’s chest, and the light sank into the ravaged wound there, flesh searing as her skin swallowed that glowing orb whole. Zorja jerked, her spine arching and green power spilling from her lips and eyes and nose. And then suddenly there were two Zorja’s. The one in his arms, and the green spirit form of her body hovering just over her flesh.
It was like watching everything in reverse.
Sirius’s gut roiled as he sensed the world blurring around him.
Zorja’s spirit form lurched to her feet, wrenching her body along with it. He could almost sense a shadowy form kicking her in the chest, and then she was jerking forward, into the shadow’s arms. A sharp inhale, and then a spear of actinic green formed in her hands, and she stepped back, into a defensive position, while the shadow faded—
And then the two Zorja’s came together, the spirit form sinking into her flesh. His mother cried out, falling to one knee, the glowing spear fading in her hand as she shuddered and clapped a hand to her chest.
Sirius scrambled to his feet, the heat draining from his face. “Mother?”
Zorja sucked in a soul-ravaged breath and looked up, her eyes wild and lit with Chaos magic. They were no longer blue, but an unearthly green.
“What happened?” Zorja rasped, looking down at her shaking hand.
“Ishtar—” He had no answer for her. This wasn’t healing. It wasn’t anything he’d ever seen before. Zorja had been dead, her soul preparing to launch itself into the skies to ride the horizon forever.
“I reversed Time,” Ishtar said.
Sirius gaped at her.
“Chaos magic has no bounds,” whispered his tutor’s voice in his head. “It is the magic of the Goddess herself, as wild and untamed as she was. It is outside Time and Space, and though certain dreki can wield barely the most minute levels of its power, the possibilities for what a true Chaos-wielder can do are endless.”
But there was one more thing his tutor had said that struck him.
“That does not mean that such magic is without consequence.”
He looked around. The circle still shivered, waiting, lurking. And there was no sign of either Void.
But he couldn’t hide the feeling of dread premonition that itched down his spine.
He reached out to draw Zorja to her feet, squeezing her hand when he felt the warmth of blood pumping through her veins. This shouldn’t have happened. It was a miracle.
Or was it?
Ishtar staggered against Marduk, rubbing her fist against her temples. “I want to sleep now.”
And Marduk caught her as she slumped unconscious in his arms.
But Sirius couldn’t help looking around.
Because if Ishtar had invert Time itself, then what else had she reversed?
Twenty-Seven
Everything hurt.
Everything.
Tormund coughed, and he swore the inner lining of his lungs tore free. Rolling to the side, he tried to hack the lump loose.
“Here,” said a familiar voice, and there was a bowl in front of him and a gentle hand caressing the back of his neck.
He collapsed back on the bed when he was done coughing, blinking at the ceiling. Even his eyes hurt. And he was fairly certain Bryn was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a glass of water like some sort of angel of mercy.
She tipped the glass to his lips and helped hold his head up so he could drink. Nothing had ever tasted as good as that water.
But he was still confused.
“Did I die?” he rasped, his voice sounding like an angry bear’s. There were fingers in his hair, gently stroking his skull. Gods, it felt good. “Are you here to haunt me?”
“Haunt you?” Her voice rose. “Is that any way to speak to the woman you love?”
His heart skipped a beat. “I thought love was a god’s trickery? A lie that mortal men tell themselves to console them for the misery of their pathetically short lives? A means to control their women?”
Bryn’s fingers stilled in his hair. “Those were words I told myself before I met you,” she admitted gently. “Because I knew there was nobody in the world who loved me, and sometimes, it aches less to deride such a notion. Sometimes, you don’t feel so lonely when you make a mockery of something that everyone else seems to have except for you.”
“You were always destined to be loved, Bryn. I just hadn’t been born yet.” Tormund captured her hand. The backs of his eyes ached, and he could have sworn there was ash in his lungs. “What happened? The last thing I remember is….” His thoughts skittered away. A swirling green vortex of magic. An arrow. Pain. “Holy shit.” He clapped a hand to his chest. “He shot me. I… I
thought I died.”
Bryn curled under the covers with him, sliding her arm across his midriff, which was another unusual event. “Yes,” she finally whispered. “You died.”
Shock sent an icy splash of water through his veins.
He froze.
“I…. What?” How then was he breathing? How then was he holding her in his arms? Horror tiptoed down his spine. He grabbed her arms. “What did you do? What the hell happened to your eye?”
There was a jagged lance of gold slicing through the iris of her right eye.
“Perhaps you should ask what happened to yours,” she murmured.
He clapped a hand to it, but it felt no different than the other.
“You were dying,” she whispered. “One of my Valkyrie sisters appeared, in order to take you for Valhalla. I had no other choice. I offered my life for yours. My immortal life.”
He sat up abruptly, a hollow forming in his midriff. “What does that mean? You’re mortal now?”
Bryn closed her eyes. “As mortal as you are. Great Freyja does not give her children gifts without a cost. She demands a sacrifice to prove the gift is worth it.”
No. Wait. “But Valhalla? Your sisters—?”
“Are no longer my sisters,” she said firmly.
“But you had your confession! You had—”
“I burned the confession,” she told him stubbornly. And then she smiled. “I don’t need it anymore. I don’t need that pathetic excuse of redemption. I don’t need vengeance. It was nothing more than an anchor around my throat, slowly drowning me. You are all I have ever needed.”
“Bryn.” He reached for her hand. “You would do that? For me?”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “How could I not? I love you, you big fool.”
The sound of the word on her lips nearly choked him. He’d not expected her to ever say it, let alone concede to it.
She launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around him. A breathless kiss took him by surprise, but he barely had time to taste it before she was drawing back.
“I couldn’t bear to lose you. For everything I’ve suffered—my mother’s death, my honor, Valhalla—you were the one loss I couldn’t survive.”