“This is the Heart of Sulit,” Mara continued, brushing away the last of the grime covering the crystal box. She tilted it so Coren could see, and moonlight glinted off the case.
Inside rested a real, beating, bloody heart.
Coren blinked, understanding slow to come. “The Heart of Sulit is a real heart?” she asked, her voice trembling. She’d assumed it meant the center of Sulit, or a sacred place, or even a talisman or weapon of some sort. But the answer lay before her in this mass of red flesh, beating away in its little crystal box. The whole thing was surreal and ghastly.
Hearts couldn’t exist without bodies.
Bodies couldn’t live without hearts.
And yet, here it was.
“The Heart of Sulit is what I was promised, all those years and years ago. It is what I traded my soul for,” Mara said, stroking the box with a delicate touch. Aram stepped behind her like a shadow, tall and dark and expressionless.
“You’ve lived for two generations. Without a soul or a heart?” Coren asked, bone-deep fatigue muddling her mind.
Mara shrugged. “My soul is mine until I die, which I don’t plan to do. But my heart is gone. See for yourself - send your senses through my body.”
Coren pushed her senses forward, searching the husk of Mara’s body for anything like a heart. She was no healer, but the empty cavity between Mara’s ribs was impossible to miss.
“Some say ribs are cages for the heart,” Mara said, smiling down at the box. “But not for this one. This heart has been in a cage for a thousand years. My body will be like a ship, carrying it wherever it wants to go.”
Coren’s mind seethed with questions, but the trees beyond the clearing began to shiver and whisper, and a sense of urgency swept over her. She needed to get that heart away from Mara. Now.
Wrenching her shifter powers alive, she tried to pull the sources of the box and the Heart toward her, ripping it from Mara’s grip.
But the woman only laughed and nodded to Aram, who darted behind Coren and locked her arms behind her back. Something about the touch of his skin neutralized her power like one of Mara’s spells, and though she strained, she could no longer feel the sources around her. She could hear the Vespa shrieking in her mind, as though it suddenly realized it was caught in a cage of bone, nevermore able to shift and fly into the skies.
“What is this,” Coren cried, but Mara raised a brow and sealed Coren’s lips shut like she’d done to Resh once before. Coren had no shifter magic, no words. Not even a free hand to grab a dagger or her whip. What was Aram, that he could do this?
“My twin.” Mara smiled at him. “He carries my heart. It is the only thing that makes him exist - the only thing real about him. When you wounded him in Rurok before, you were really wounding my heart.”
Coren’s eyes bugged out of her skull at the realization, and Mara laughed, the sound lazy and amused.
“Yes, Shadow owns my soul. I traded it for a second body and the ability to read the Sulit Mother’s spellbook. But with you, my darling SoulShifter, and your siblings, and the Heart of Sulit, I’ve found a way out of my desperate bargain.”
Mara clicked open the crystal box, and the thump-thump of the Heart grew in the silence of the clearing. The starbirds ceased their chirping, and the trees quieted their leaves. Mara closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the night air, and Coren screamed in her throat as Mara’s chest began to dissipate.
Her gown slipped away, and her skin peeled back like a roll of parchment. The pink muscle beneath snapped apart, and Mara made an expression between a grin and a grimace. Her sternum cracked open, and the hollow, dark cavity behind gaped in the moonlight.
The crystal box clattered to the ground, and the Heart hovered in the air as Mara pulled its sources toward her.
Coren could see its shape now - two chambers that didn’t match, beating a one-two rhythm. There was no blood, though.
“One chamber is from a Sulit witch. Some say from the Mother herself,” Mara murmured, shuddering as the Heart settled in her chest. As soon as Mara’s veins began to link and weave themselves to the Heart, Coren felt a surge of power enter the air, and Aram’s grip on her grew painfully strong. “And one chamber is from the FatherSun. From a human.”
She gazed at Coren, her smile slow and satisfied. “And the blood must be that of a pair of Weshen shifters. Twin magic to fill the double chambers. The holy family, all together again. Right inside of me.”
A sick dread began to creep over Coren as the rest of Mara’s plans were laid bare. This.
This was what she wanted Penna and Kosh for.
Twin magic. Twin blood.
She redoubled her efforts to break free from Aram, but she might as well have been chained to a stone wall.
“And here are those wonderful children now,” Mara added, turning to the edge of the clearing where a figure staggered toward them, dragging a litter of some sort. As they neared, Coren slumped against Aram, her strength leaving her. A wail clogged her throat and misery coursed through her limbs, dragging them down like stones to the seabed.
It was Grand, and she was dragging Penna and Kosh behind her, lifeless and still on a bed of woven branches. Coren began to scream wordlessly behind her bound lips, but Mara only rolled her eyes at the distraction. Aram’s fist connected with her temple, and Coren’s eyes went dark, then alight with tiny sparks as her brain jostled inside her skull.
“I’ve brought them,” Grand said, shrugging off the rope. Kosh’s limp arm fell over the edge as the pallet dropped, and Coren cursed the Mirror Magi in her mind. How could they let this happen?
Where were Nik and Shuri? Surely, Draken magic was more potent than Mara’s spells.
Where was Sy? He’d had the fortitude to kill Graeme. He could do it again.
By the Magi, where was her own brother? She and Jyesh could give their magic instead and save Penna and Kosh.
Coren’s head spun as she ran out of possibilities to save her siblings. This couldn’t be it. What was the point in all of this, if Mara was just going to gain it all?
“Now for my payment,” Grand said, leering at Coren. Mara laughed, the movement shaking the gruesome, jagged edges of her open chest.
Grand glared.
Mara sobered, raising an eyebrow at the Brujok. Then she turned to the dead witch at the base of the tree. The sources of the body crumbled and blew away in a gentle breeze until there was nothing at all by the tree except the empty box.
“As it turns out, I have a new task for you,” Mara said. Her fingers flicked at Grand, and the witch’s shriek began and ended in an instant, as her body was flung so hard into the trunk that the wood cracked around her form. Grand sank two inches deep into the tree, her legs splayed on the forest floor. “I want you to be the next guardian, my Brujok sister.”
She stooped to pick up the box and laid it in Grand’s lap. The witch’s head drooped forward, and Mara laughed, the sound like the slither of a snakka through dry grass. “Of course, there’s really nothing left to guard, but no matter.”
Vines dropped down from the tree branches to tangle with Grand’s dark hair, and tree roots lifted themselves over her calves, gently weaving over her unconscious form until she began to resemble the tree’s previous occupant.
“There,” Mara said, smiling. “Can you feel it, Aram? My opposite, my duality. Our twin magic has served me well, but soon, I will not even need to draw from you.” She turned back to Coren, her eyes shining with magic and ancient power. “My strength is almost too much to control, and I haven’t even drained the blood from your siblings.”
MARA TURNED TO THE twins on the pallet, a greedy grin spreading across her face.
Something desperate in Coren gave way, flooding her with the energy she needed. Pouring all her strength into a single movement, she rammed her heel backward into Aram’s kneecap. It wasn’t much, but he flinched just enough for her to dart her hand to her dagger and slice deep into his forearm.
He snatched it awa
y, and she wriggled and ducked away from him. As soon as her skin was free from his grip, she felt her magic seeping back, as though the sources around her were coming alive again. It was too slow, though, and Coren seized her whip. She lashed it at Aram in a frenzy, drawing blood from a dozen vital places in the blink of an eye.
She glanced at Mara, who had already ripped open a vein in Penna’s arm and was shifting the blood into the Heart. It beat frantically as the fresh blood entered its chamber, and Mara groaned in a sick sort of pleasure.
Coren rushed her, whip snaking through the air, but it took Mara almost nothing to fling Coren aside. She tumbled to the wet ground, the breath knocked out of her at the force of her fall. Coren staggered to her feet and pushed at the sources of Mara’s skin, tearing the ragged edges even farther apart.
Mara screamed, and a broken branch hurtled toward Coren. Coren ducked, but the branch left a deep scratch.
Aram barreled toward her, and she lashed out with her whip, catching him across the chest. He jerked back, and she had a split second to notice a crashing sound from the woods beyond. Coren tumbled out of the way as an enormous Grizzlin burst into the clearing, stampeding toward Aram with a roar that shook more leaves from the outer trees.
Coren felt like she could cry in relief, but her mouth was still sealed. Her friends were coming.
Help was coming.
There was still time to save her sister and brother.
Sy roared again, and Coren glimpsed him locked arm-to-paw with the unnaturally strong Aram. Sy couldn’t wield any weapons in his shifted form. Coren hurled her dagger at Aram, catching him along the spine, and he stumbled, giving Sy the chance he needed.
Sy’s jaws hinged open and clamped on Aram’s neck and shoulder, shaking and tearing at the skin and muscle.
Aram thudded to the ground, and Sy growled as he tore a chunk of flesh from the man’s middle. Mara howled, but her twin’s demise didn’t affect her like it had in Rurok.
She had other power bolstering her now, and she didn’t even look at Aram’s dying form.
Instead, Mara worked faster to drain Penna, the blood undulating like a bright ribbon from the girl’s wrist to Mara’s thumping Heart.
Coren tried again to throw herself at Mara, but she was thrown aside a second time, her back wrapping the wrong way around a tree trunk. Her legs tingled with temporary paralysis, but as it faded, she struggled to haul herself up.
Sy roared in triumph, and Coren looked just in time to see Aram’s head separated from his body, the great Grizzlin’s maw covered in blood and gore. She held in another gag.
Sy shifted, whipping off his shirt to wipe the muck from his face. He was heaving, and Coren could sense his shifter magic faltering. He must have run most of the way here in Grizzlin form.
“Mara!” he yelled, and the woman glanced at him with heavy-lidded eyes. She swayed a bit and grinned, looking for all the world like she had drunk too much chokecherry wine. “Now!” Sy cried, and Mara tilted her head in question.
But the answer came in a whistling bow sword arrow, fired from beyond the clearing. Its metal tip thunked neatly into Mara’s open chest, spearing the Heart of Sulit straight through its pulsing middle.
Mara’s magic sputtered. Coren’s mouth came unstitched, and her shifter power surged. Without hesitating, she sprinted toward the reeling woman, but Mara had just enough magic to fling up a wall of earth between herself and Coren.
Sy dodged around it, disappearing behind the dirt as Coren darted the other way. But they quickly met on the other side, realizing Mara had created a dome of rock and soil around herself and the twins.
“Sy!” Coren wailed, pummeling the dirt with both fists and shifted magic. The sources didn’t budge; their alliance to Mara was as complete as the maze had once been to the Brujok.
There was little composite to shred and reform. Coren tried again and again, but the earth here was too pure - too single-sourced. Mara had somehow made certain of that, her shifter magic mixing with her Sulit magic with deadly effect.
“Get back,” a voice yelled, and Coren stumbled as Sy dragged her out of the way.
Jyesh strode into the clearing, his eyes wide and glinting in the moonlight, his face much too pale. He tossed aside the bow sword and threw magic at the earthen tomb, hurling spells and shifting nearly as fast as Mara had before.
It wasn’t enough.
Coren tore her fingernails until they bled trying to hack a hole in the dirt, and still, she only heard laughter echoing inside the structure. They were running out of options.
Coren sank to her knees on the ground, her brain shutting down at the thought of losing Penna and Kosh, losing Kashar, StarSeer, Maren. Even Sorenta and Lorental.
Mara had taken everyone.
A scream of rage tore from her throat, and her power began to build again, fueled by the emotion as it had been the first time when Resh had frightened her with threats of the hunt.
That was nothing compared to this.
Her wings unfurled, and golden, razor-sharp claws burst through her skin as her belly distended. Shooting into the air, she began the Vespa death spiral.
Higher and higher she spun, gathering the distance needed for the impact that might kill her, but would hopefully bust open Mara’s den. She flew so high the air became thin, and a sudden flash of fire and movement blurred her vision to the southeast.
Umbren.
Massive shapes were pouring across the distant horizon, tumbling over each other to reach higher. Just below Coren’s height, two other dark shapes flew and darted, pushing the shadow-clouds back with each attack.
It was Nik and Shuri, she realized, fighting Shadow!
Fear pierced her heart, and she knew she had to finish this job now. If Mara finished filling the Heart with blood, Shadow would return. Ferula had told her. Star had told her. She had to stop it.
Coren swiveled her body toward the ground, tucked her four wings, and sped like an arrow, faster and faster, toward the clearing below. Closing her eyes against the impact, she prayed to the Magi that she wouldn’t also kill Penna and Kosh.
She hit like a sledgehammer on a brick wall. The dome cracked and caved in under her impact, and her whole world went black with pain as she flopped onto the ground, dirt crumbling over her with the blackness of a grave.
Chapter 34
JYESH WAS AT WAR, AND it was mostly in his mind.
Seeing Mara had awoken old, reflexive loyalties, built from years of cruel training. But seeing his young sister and brother - blood he’d never even met - sacrificed to make Mara more powerful?
He couldn’t take it, and something in his training was unraveling.
So, when Coren fell from the sky and cracked apart Mara’s dome, he and Sy rushed inside to rescue the children. He took the girl. Sy dragged the boy to the edge of the clearing, where he was bent low, checking their injuries and breathing.
Jyesh shook his head. He already knew it was too late for the girl. Maybe for Coren, too - she was barely moving.
But not too late for Mara.
Jyesh spun from the little girl’s limp body and attacked Mara. Knocking her to the ground, he began to yank at the Heart, trying to rip it from her cursed body. His fingers were slippery with the stolen blood, so he wasn’t surprised when she regained her composure and shoved him away with her magic.
But he returned.
“You had everything,” he yelled. He wasn’t even certain what he meant, but he needed to tell her. “You’ve had it more than once, and you give it up every time to get more and more and more!” He scrambled to rush her again, flinging spells as fast as he could think of them, but she blocked each one.
Jyesh felt his rage boiling into something hotter and whiter than the sun.
Though it was the middle of the night, he felt as though he could see more clearly than ever before. He could have had it all, too. But he’d given it up, time and again, for the promise of more.
He was no better than Mara.
Nik’s beautiful face sliced across Jyesh’s memory like a blade, spilling open emotions that had been locked away for years. It was too late for him, too.
Too late for the lost little boy who should have died on the MagiSea, as the gods had intended.
Too late for the drowned girl before him, who should have never grown into this mistake of a Queen.
Jyesh welcomed the fury. He let it build and burn into every limb, every source in his body.
Beside him, Coren moaned and stirred, sitting with difficulty. Her wings flopped back, broken and shredded. She cried out as she shifted them away, and she looked so small on the ground next to him.
A sob left her lips as she crawled toward her sister’s body.
“Penna!” she wailed, and Jyesh felt the first spark of something that wasn’t anger.
If anger was white, this new emotion was blue. The hottest, deepest, most brilliant sapphire at the heart of a flame.
Mara straightened and rolled her neck from side to side, as though she’d just woken from the most delicious nap. She smiled down at the dead girl.
“Do you see her soul yet?” she asked Coren, and Jyesh saw the words fall like a blow to Coren’s head. She crumpled over the body, cradling it to her chest as though she could stop what had already happened.
“No,” Coren sobbed. “No! Not Penna.” Her words broke around the syllables, and the blue inside Jyesh grew. It sparkled like the glint of the sea at noon. Hot white skittering over a stronger blue.
Coren screamed without words as she leaped from the ground, grasping at something above her head, and Mara laughed in triumph.
“Her soul. Grab it if you can, SoulShifter!”
Coren tucked something close to her chest, her crazed stare intent on something Jyesh couldn’t even see. If Coren had accessed the SoulShifter power, then Mara would truly have everything she needed. He burned with determination.
“Coren, let it go!” he ordered. His sister’s golden eyes flared at him as though she would rather dissipate his blood from his bones. “Mara can’t get the soul. She already has the Heart.”
Dream of Darkness and Dominion (SoulShifter Book 3) Page 35