by Mary Weber
The lightning I yank down bounces off that curling, growing mist as Isobel holds her palm, face out, to me before turning to set it against Rasha’s heart.
“No!” I lunge forward, but it’s too late. Rasha’s already screaming and writhing beneath Isobel’s hand and Draewulf’s grip. The atmosphere around us wavers, as if the magic veil Draewulf’s wrapped most of the Valley in just expanded.
Except . . .
With an expression of indecisiveness, Lady Isobel yanks her hand back even as the air continues rippling. Growing. Rasha’s head is thrown back, her shoulders stiffen, and her eyes turn a deep hue of red I’ve only ever seen on her mother. The air around her shimmers and bulges.
It takes another moment to realize Lady Isobel hasn’t yet done anything.
She’s waiting. Watching her father with an expression of displeasure.
And it’s clear this is different magic.
This is Luminescent.
Oh. Oh hulls. This is what Rasha is capable of.
The expression on Draewulf’s face says it’s what he’s been waiting for—to pit his newly acquired Luminescent ability against hers in a game of play.
Eogan’s broadsword comes down on the beast just as he lifts a claw to Rasha’s neck. It’s met by the blade of one of Draewulf’s Uathúil-wraiths.
I fling ice stones at him and land two against his chest, but he doesn’t even flinch. Just thrusts his weight against Eogan to push him backward into an earthen crevice he’s just created as Princess Rasha screams.
I thrust more ice picks and then jump for her, but Isobel is abruptly in my face, smirking, holding her hand out—the indecision gone from her face. “Ready for your turn, dearie?”
I meet her palm with my own and a spark of friction explodes between them. My ability against hers. Reacting to hers. Her hunger reacting to the spider’s thirst in my blood. They both reach out for each other and in that moment are well matched.
I yank out the blade from my bootie and shove it into her shoulder.
Isobel’s scream is followed by a second change in atmosphere and a flickering of the mirage around us. Abruptly the dungeon image Myles has been exuding dissolves, and when I glance over he’s frowning and blinking and staring first at Lady Isobel, then me. Until his gaze lands on Princess Rasha.
His face darkens and his mouth opens. I duck Isobel’s swipe at my chest with my blade she just pulled from her shoulder and see Draewulf’s body turn ethereal, as if he’s beginning to dissolve.
And Rasha has stopped writhing.
Bracken.
I yank out the blade from my other bootie and slice out at Lady Isobel’s knee. Miss. Swipe again. This time I catch her in the thigh and make her scream again.
Suddenly the mirage flickers back on around us. But this one’s different. This one’s of Princess Rasha in one of the hallways in Bron. Then in the Throne Room. Then on the airship. Draewulf pauses and looks around at it just as Lord Myles steps forward.
His expression is so clear, so settled, I almost miss it. The affection.
What the—?
He’s showing every image of every interaction he’s ever had with Rasha. And in the moment of distraction—of confusion—Draewulf’s grip loosens the slightest bit. Apparently the queen’s ability to see through mirages didn’t quite transfer all the way.
Myles steps in, pulls Rasha away, and shoves her behind him.
Good mother of— Does he—?
“He stands on the edge of a precipice. One choice will bring destruction; the other will help the Hidden Lands survive.” The essence of Queen Laiha’s words rings in my head.
Clearly he chose our survival.
Except there’s no time to think about it because the next second Draewulf roars and Lady Isobel screams again. I look down to see that when I sliced at her leg, I cut deep enough to hit an artery. Draewulf jerks his head toward her, and before I can react or back away, he’s grabbed his daughter and yanked her away from me.
“Father,” she whimpers.
I allow the sky to crash above us as I bring down one, two, three strikes on them both—only to have the magical mist defuse each one before it reaches them.
Draewulf reaches out for Isobel and she folds into him.
Then he’s slicing her open at the neck and his body is fading fading fading in front of me as he slips like a black plague into the wound and beneath her skin and takes over the Mortisfaire power of his daughter.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Nym, look out!”
I turn at Eogan’s words just in time to duck from the two wraiths coming at me. I shred ice from my hand into the ground and erupt it beneath them, causing both to slip and fall. I shove it forward to cover and crawl over them until the ice reaches into their mouths and noses and throats and hardens inside their heads.
I stand to turn toward Draewulf—to attack him with that same ice, to infuse it into Isobel’s dead bones—when the sight below us gives me pause.
The war below . . . the war around us . . . the wraiths, the archers, the farmers, the mothers, the Cashlins and Terrenes . . .
Bodies of our people lie everywhere.
So thick and widespread and being run over by the black magic and wraiths that I can hardly see anyone who’s still alive. Still standing.
My gut clenches. Oh litches, what have we done?
I open my lungs in horror at their lives spent on a futile struggle. Their last breath they’ve given for a nation that oppressed most of them. And I swear the moment I choke and gasp on my own grief for them, their voices are drawn into me. Their hearts, their beliefs, their courage. It permeates my lungs and mixes into my blood until it’s churning churning churning and then it’s abruptly coming up and, oh hulls, I don’t know how to stop it, but when I open my mouth, it comes out as a song.
Their song.
The melody of old. Of Faelen. Of the original Valley.
Our song. The one I used to sing so long ago with my father.
My lungs expand and widen along with my mouth, and the force of the refrain comes out like a flood that reaches straight up through a hole in the sky and I swear it hits the sun. Because now it’s as if the light is paused, the day is paused, and the sky itself is on standstill.
Only the people and wraiths and war around us keep moving.
The song ripples and threads through the air, across the expanse of black atmosphere hanging above this entire battle scene, permeating where my powers can’t to the land and trees and hearts of the few people we have left.
I don’t know that I would’ve noticed it if the rustle from the Litchfell tree line hadn’t caused the trees to catch the paused sunlight just right. I squint.
The movement grows as the trees begin thrashing.
One, two, five seconds later the trees are snapping, and a herd of bolcranes pour forth in giant, horrific, slimy, black-scaled terror. As I watch, the beasts set upon the wraiths—and begin shredding through them like a tidal wave taking on the sand.
“Bleeding hulls,” Myles mutters from somewhere behind me.
The next moment cries erupt across the plateau around us—cries from our own people, as if a quarter of their voices rose up in unison to join the song, but in pain.
I peer at them to see what I’ve done—where it’s coming from—even as my own song continues to pour from my mouth.
I blink. Blink again. Because what lies in front of me, what is happening around me, is impossible.
Uathúils.
Many of the Fa
elen peasants are turning into Uathúils. Terrenes. Red-eyed Luminescents. And some types I’ve never seen before in my life—perhaps a blending like Lord Myles. The only way I know is because suddenly some of the people who were here moments ago have morphed, altered, come forth, and they’re earth-moving and static-wielding.
I watch as they discover their powers and use them against the large wraiths attacking them.
The cries of my people turn to shouts as the realization sets in. Whatever dormant power lay within much of the peasantry has just been called forth. And their abilities are greater than any physical weapon. They begin cutting through the Dark Army in batches rather than one at a time.
“Nym, here!”
I flip around to refocus on Eogan and Rasha and Draewulf-who-is-Isobel, except the monster has already erupted from his daughter’s skin and is standing there, snarling over Eogan.
What in—? No!
Eogan raises his sword, only to have Draewulf’s enormous claw smack it aside.
I step between them.
CHAPTER 39
NYM, DON’T!” EOGAN’S HANDS PRESS INTO MY side to shove me back, but I hardly feel them and they can’t move me. If anything, my blood jumps at the magic they contain. The remnants of that dark ability itch in my veins and suddenly draw Eogan’s power in, melding it with my own as my feet plant firm to the ground and my gaze fills with only one image.
“What in bleeding hulls are you doing? Move!” Eogan growls in my ear. But I’m no longer listening. I’m staring into the face of the wolfish beast that is looking more human by the moment.
His black eyes flicker, and for a second, I swear I can see the faces of Breck, King Mael of Tulla, Queen Laiha, and the tear-stained face of his own daughter, Isobel.
In my peripheral I catch sight of the world around us rippling, then altering into a bigger mirage than I’d known Myles could make. Rasha must be magnifying his powers as he projects images of wave after wave of Bron soldiers seemingly coming to our aid. Confusing the wraiths—even the Uathúil ones, from what I can tell.
Draewulf grins, and it’s neither toothy, nor gaping, nor wolfish. It’s simply the grin of a man who knows he’s about to achieve the one thing he’s lived his life for. The one thing he’s destroyed everyone else’s life for. He’s taken what he needed from Tulla, from Cashlin, and from Drust. And he’s about to take the rest of Bron and Faelen. And within that sly slip of a smile is no shame that I can find. No guilt. Nothing but pure, unadulterated greed for everything that is not his but soon will be.
The face of his daughter flickers across his features one more time as he grips his sword and points it toward me. “Move, pet, or I will maim you before I take him.” He tips the point of the sword toward my belly.
I smirk and raise both arms straight out, my fists tightened to the sky as Eogan’s hand is now fused onto me, my energies mixing with his, boiling the blood between us. My skin burns like fire where he’s touching it, yet even the heat feels good.
Feels powerful.
Feels different.
I can do this.
I glance at the sky to where the dying sun is slipping away on the horizon and summon the atmosphere. Draewulf leans in, and the point of his blade cuts deep enough to make me wince the slightest moment before I sense the water from the ocean and air from the heavens respond with a burst of friction.
Flashes. Brief bursts of light overhead. They’re enough to make Draewulf frown and look up. Because there are no clouds. No indication of a storm other than what is bristling in my veins as it connects with the energy around me.
The pull physically begins to tug at my sinew—from the ocean currents, the wind, the cracks running beneath our feet far under the earth, just as I feel the pull of Rasha and Myles’s mirage they’re sustaining.
Draewulf starts to step around me, but I move in front of him to the left. Then to the right. He barks and slashes a warning at my hip, drawing blood immediately and making me flinch. Even Eogan is trying to get around me. But whatever has fused his hands to my waist is also keeping him in place.
I turn my gaze again to the setting sun.
My hands begin shaking first. Followed by my legs, then torso, then neck.
I am summoning pure Elemental energy, which is more than any of his Uathúil-wraiths running around can do.
Next thing I know my back is bending and my chin is thrust toward the sky as the energy spirals up my spine and through my throat to burn its way from my mouth and tear, like a lightning strip, up to the sky. I blink, nearly blinded at the light. And suddenly it’s not just pouring from my throat, it’s shooting out from my fists, far and wide enough to shred through entire ranks of wraiths.
In my distant hearing I perceive a cheer go up, but it doesn’t matter. I’m trying to focus the beams in front of me. Onto Draewulf, who’s watching with sick fascination—as if enjoying a part in a theatre play he knows he is soon to take over.
And if what it’s doing to my insides is any indication, once Draewulf consumes it he’ll be intoxicated past any level of awareness when it fuses with the other abilities flickering in and out of focus beneath his overstretched, blue-veined skin.
Black wisps rise from around him and pour out of his mouth, and abruptly something’s wrong. No matter how I move my arms to shove the energy at Draewulf and melt him alive, it won’t reach him. He’s deflecting it using the shadows as a shield around him.
I grip the energy tighter just as a voice, not my own, breezes past, causing my skin to tingle in its softness.
I ignore it and shove harder, only to watch the light from my fists bounce off his shield. At least it’s keeping him from lunging for me or Eogan, and yet . . .
And yet it’s not working.
Oh litches, it’s not working. The dark ability is insufficient.
“Eogan,” I gasp. “It won’t—I can’t . . .”
The voice comes again, and for a moment I think it’s Eogan, but it’s off. I listen closer, and this time I swear it’s that of Queen Laiha. As if her ghost is whispering, reminding me of words once spoken.
I lean my ear toward it even as I summon every particle in the atmosphere above and around and beneath us until the light coming from me rivals the darkness surrounding him. And prepare to bring all of it into a shaft that will slice right through the beast in front of me, like the edge of a blade that has just been sharpened.
And then Queen Laiha’s words come to me. “Hold it all lightly.”
I freeze.
The static is now burning my insides so badly I’m forgetting that I am, or ever have been, anything but energy. But power. But fire.
“Hold it all lightly.”
What does that mean?
I tighten my grip and the burn digs in. I glance around at the writhing armies below us, at Kel and Sedric and Rolf, fighting back to back mere yards away from us, and sense Eogan behind me.
But I suddenly know exactly what it means.
Hold it all lightly.
Because otherwise it’s not going to work and we’re not going to win.
I know that in this split second clearer than anything I’ve understood before. It’s why I couldn’t defeat Draewulf in Bron. It’s why I couldn’t defeat him on the airships.
Hold it all lightly.
Because it was never mine anyway.
This power. This gift.
These people.
I drop my arms and let the energy falter, then die off.
And turn round to face Eogan.
CHAPTER 40
TWO HEARTS BEATING TO T
HE MOMENT.
Two souls bleeding.
I press my lips to Eogan’s in a promise that offers him all my hopes and wishes and joy that his life will be good. That his heart will be full.
That he will be loved.
Then I shove him off me and, releasing my shield, lunge forward onto Draewulf’s outstretched blade as I grab his throat.
One.
Two.
Three seconds go by in which I can’t feel anything but the atmosphere assembling around us. Building, condensing, creating static and energy and a mist filled with lightning and raindrops rubbing against each other. A crack rips across the sky and it’s as if the sun is undone, unpaused, as slack clouds roll in to cover it. Suddenly they’re bringing with them storms full of ice and hail and death. Storms this world hasn’t seen in a millennia of Elementals.
Storms made of magic. Storms made of melody and beauty that are complementing Rasha and Myles’s continued mirages. Threatening violence not just to these people near and far, but to this world. As if they are about to tear the entire earth apart at its seams.
The ground shakes, and from the mountains comes a rumble as if in reply.
Draewulf’s not noticing the gathering storm, though. His eyes are too full of delight. He’s staring at the blade he’s just gutted me with, and he slips a long wolf claw against my skin. And slides it to the back of my neck.
That’s when I feel it. My blood charged with the air, beating furiously to engage the coming storm. Except as fast as it’s quickening, it’s draining, flowing from my stomach in warm, red currents. Like ocean waves, I think as my gaze becomes foggy.
I blink.
A pain much sharper and more sickening pierces my skin at the top of my spine, and suddenly my vision’s wavering and Draewulf is smirking. And then he’s starting to dissolve into a thin black wisp that will invade my body for the few seconds it needs to own me.