He bowed to her. “What the lady says must be so, since you once claimed never to have spoken an untrue word. If you would leave the keep with your lord, we will get to work on this rift.”
“I have no lord,” she said in a tone that almost expressed an emotion. She evidently realized her slip, because she said much more smoothly, “What you intend to do is too dangerous. Magisters from both Aryia and the High Lands have worked on the rift day and night for ten days. Half of them died in the attempt. The others went mad.”
“No effect at all?” Hallow asked.
“None,” Lord Israel answered, gesturing toward it. “I am about to raze the keep around it, with hopes that fire can do what the magisters cannot.”
Hallow’s eyebrows lifted as he considered the rift. I didn’t like looking at it—it gave me the feeling it was looking back—and after a few minutes, he strolled up to it. I fought back the urge to call him back.
“Go closer at your own peril,” Lord Israel called. “It has a habit of snatching up those who are near.”
Deo joined Hallow, almost instantly falling to the floor.
Idril exclaimed, while Lord Israel would have run forward if I hadn’t stopped him. “No,” I said, holding him back. “Leave him to his battle. He will triumph in the end. Just give him the time to master it.”
“Thorn,” Hallow said, turning his gaze back onto the rift.
The bird quivered.
“Yes. Are you willing to try? You know what it may mean.”
The bird separated from the staff and flitted around the room.
Hallow gave it a dark smile. “I swear that your name will be remembered.”
A little gasp escaped me when Thorn dove into the rift, causing the snaking tendrils to become agitated. One of them reached out toward Deo, but Hallow called down the light of the fading stars onto it.
Deo rose painfully to his knees, the black of the runes across his chest fading into a dark, shadowed red.
“There, you see?” I released Lord Israel’s arm. “I know you think he is weak, but he is stronger than the chaos magic, no matter how much it tries to master him.”
“I never believed him to be weak,” Israel said, taking a step forward. “Just foolishly regardless of his own life. Deo, do not continue forward. You don’t know the power of it.”
“Stay back, old man,” Deo said, his head partially bowed. Even so, I could see the red glitter in his black eyes as he held the rift in his gaze. “Take Idril and leave.”
“We are not so faithless—” Israel started to say.
“For the love of the twin goddesses,” Hallow snapped, looking directly at Lord Israel. I heard the latter gasp under his breath, and I had to say, I didn’t blame him. Hallow’s normally placid face was twisted with anger. “Get Lady Idril out now, lest you both be destroyed. The captain is coming.”
“What?” I turned to look at the rift, the chill of the grave rippling down my back and arms as I saw what Hallow must have heard from Thorn. The black oval center was twisting until it turned into the form of the Harborym captain.
Deo roared in anger, but it was Lord Israel who charged forward, throwing himself at the captain. A dull throbbing sound filled the hall, and I realized the rift itself was laughing. Just as Israel was about to reach the captain, two tendrils reached out and grabbed him. Deo lunged forward, and the rift turned to him, slapping him with a force that sent him flying across the room into the doors. Idril screamed and ran to where he was slumped on the floor.
I didn’t wait for an order, I sent a hurried prayer to Kiriah Sunbringer, and called down the power of the sun just as Hallow yanked Lord Israel from the grasp of the rift. He blasted the tendrils to powder even as I opened my mind and allowed the sun to flow through me to the rift.
“Do you think this makes any difference?” the captain said, looking around the room with mild interest. “We will take what we want. There is nothing you can do to stop us.”
“Where is Dasa?” Lord Israel cried, trying to charge forward again. Hallow cast his bubble spell, sending Israel backward several feet before turning to narrow his eyes on the captain. I could see symbols on the air glowing for a fraction of a second as he cast spells.
“Dasa?” The captain looked thoughtful. “Ah, you mean Deva. That is her chosen name now. She is my queen, and is most pleased with being in Eris rather than this pathetic world.”
Lord Israel uttered an oath that Sandor would be shocked I recognized, and tried to get forward to the captain again, but he was powerless against Hallow’s spell.
“She will accompany me later, once I know it is safe for her,” the captain said, his gaze lifting to Deo, who was groggily shaking his head and trying to get to his feet. “Once the last of the threats have been eliminated.”
“Free me!” Israel demanded, swearing profanely against Hallow.
I glanced at the man who held my heart, the man who wore responsibility and power with such ease, and yet still managed to laugh at himself. He was truly everything I could ever want in a mate, and I was suddenly possessed with a desire to tell him so. “I accept your offer,” I told him.
He shot me a disbelieving glance. “You want to do this now?”
“No. But I wanted you to know I accept.”
“I’m delighted to hear that, but I’m a little busy at the moment, so if you will excuse me for not kissing you, we can get on with this business.”
I grinned at him. “I love you, too. Shall we?”
“Yes,” he said, and we both turned to the captain, who was slowly advancing into the room. Behind him, in the rift, I could see the shape of a Harborym forming. I released the power of the sun that I’d been holding, directing it into the captain. It burned through him, causing him to cry out and half turn toward the rift. At the same time, Hallow stepped forward and, with a spoken word of command, slammed down the staff, sending a ripple of arcane power directly into the rift. The captain toppled, and the rift itself gathered him up, sucking him into its depths.
“Again!” Hallow yelled, and I gathered up more light, but before I could send Kiriah’s power into the rift, it swung around and lashed out at Hallow, catching him by one leg.
He fell, and was dragged across the floor until his legs were both pulled into the rift.
“No!” I screamed, and leaped forward, throwing myself on him. The chaos magic in me roared to life, eating away at me.
“Allegria,” Hallow cried, desperately casting spells above him, but they didn’t stop him from being dragged into the rift. “Release the chaos into it.”
“It’ll just give it more power,” I said, turning my head to squint into the rift, only a few feet from my face. Pure chaos energy poured out of it, making my eyes stream and my ears ring.
“Do it!” he cried, and twisted to turn over in an attempt to claw the floor.
I didn’t stop to question him. I took the light that glowed around me and, instead of sending it outward into the rift, poured it inward in an attempt to burn out the chaos. I felt as if I’d leaped into a bonfire, every inch of me alight with pain and heat, the fire within me turning me into a blazing inferno of anger. If I was berserk before, now I was wildness personified. I hauled Hallow out of the rift, snarling at it as rage and fury filled my burning self.
I was light. I was fire. I was the sun itself, and I would see everything before me burned to ash. A hand grasped my ankle as I prepared to throw myself into the rift, my madness demanding that I fill it with my wrath. Words filled my mind, foreign words, ones that echoed from the heavens. I chanted them as I struggled forward to the rift, dragging Hallow with me despite his attempts to stop me. The words rolled around the room, driving the chaos magic from my body.
The keep itself began to tremble and smolder, the stones burning with the intensity of my wrath. The floor quaked as I took another step, the words of the goddesses pouring from me, and causing the very land to protest.
“Allegria, stop!” Hallow yelled above the noi
se that filled the room. “You must not go closer!”
He cast a spell to bind me, but I simply waved it off. I was the light that filled the deepest reaches of the stars—I would not be held back now. I had almost reached the rift, the snaking whips of power from it trying to grab me, but jerking back in obvious pain.
Just as I reached it, a shadow flickered past me. Deo faced me, his eyes red, his runes glowing gold with the heat of ... me.
“This is not your battle,” he said, and then stepped into the rift.
The rift gave another one of its horrible chuckling noises; then suddenly it spoke, in a horrible noise that made my every iota of being repulsed. “At last,” it said, and then was gone. Completely gone, just as if it had never been there.
I stood there, radiating the power of the sun, and the rift was gone.
And just as suddenly, the strange rage left me. Kiriah withdrew her presence, leaving me empty and cold and dark. I collapsed, hearing Hallow’s voice before the blackness swept over me. “My heart, come back to me. Don’t leave me now. Come back, Allegria. Come back.”
EPILOGUE
“Allegria, you have slept enough. It is time for you to wake up.”
I burrowed my head deeper into my pillow. “Just a little longer, Sandor. I’ll stay for extra prayers later.”
“She was always ever thus,” Sandor said. I snuggled into my blankets, wondering at a Sandor who would let me sleep when I was to be up working at my chores.
“My heart, if you do not wake up, the water will cool, and you won’t have the bath you have so long desired.”
My heart? No one called me that but ...
In a rush, memory returned to me, and I sat up in bed, pushing my hair back from my face. The first thing my bleary eyes noticed was that there were no silver cuffs on my wrists. The second was Hallow sitting at the end of my bed.
A surge of joy overwhelmed me, and I flung myself on him, knocking him backward against the wall of my room. “Hallow! I was dreaming I was back at the temple, and Sandor was nagging me to do my chores.”
I kissed his chin, his nose, his lips, all the while he was laughing and trying to speak.
“I never nag, child. I urge.”
I froze in mid-kiss, looking over my shoulder to see Sandor standing with Lord Israel. The latter looked like a different man, his face gray and lined, his hair lank, and laced with black streaks. But it was his eyes that would haunt me, eyes filled with despair and pain.
The joy inside me dimmed.
“Deo,” I said on a breath, and sat back on my heels, allowing Hallow to sit up. “Goddesses of day and night, Deo went into the rift. I could have stopped him, and I didn’t. It’s my fault he went into it!”
Hallow’s arms were around me as a lone tear rolled down my cheek. “You are not to blame, my love. He chose to enter the rift.”
“He said it wasn’t my fight, but it was,” I said, clutching Hallow’s arms. I turned my gaze to him, needing to make him understand. “It was my whole purpose! I am a Bane of Eris.”
“No, you aren’t,” Hallow said, lifting my hand to his lips. He uncurled my fingers and kissed my palm. “The cuffs guarding you are gone. They fell off when the chaos magic was overwhelmed by you channeling Kiriah Sunbringer. You are as you were before you were transformed.”
Sadness permeated every inch of the room. “But Deo ... why did he do it?”
“To save his mother,” Lord Israel said, his voice cracked and grating.
I slid off the bed to face him, feeling I owed him an apology.
“I’m sorry,” I told Lord Israel. “Something happened to me. The sun ... it was as if I had tapped directly into the power of the sun. I should have fought it to save Deo.”
“There was no saving him,” Lord Israel said in a toneless voice. His expression was as bleak as his eyes. “We can only pray to the goddesses that they will watch over him on Eris as they have on Alba.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. There was nothing else to say.
Lord Israel took his leave shortly after that, Sandor escorting him out. While fresh bathwater was being heated, Hallow fed me small pieces of bread and cheese, and caught me up on the happenings after I’d swooned.
“We brought you here because Lord Israel said Lady Sandor was the only one who had the learning needed to treat you.”
I looked down at my arms. The silver bands were gone, but my arms and hands were swathed in white bandages up to my elbows. “What happened to me, Hallow?”
He sat back in the chair next to the window seat where I was curled up, voraciously eating the tidbits he offered. “What do you remember?”
“I remember the rift laughing at us, and pulling you in. I remember the captain being hurt, and it sucked him back. And then, I called on Kiriah and ... and it seemed as if I became the sun itself.” I shivered and touched the bandages. “I felt like I was burning from the inside out.”
“You were burning. The words you spoke, they were like nothing I’ve ever heard. I believe you were channeling Kiriah herself. I told Lady Sandor a few of the words I recall you saying, and she turned whiter than your bandages.”
I stopped with a grape halfway to my mouth. “How is that possible, Hallow?”
“For you to channel a goddess?” He shrugged, and popped a piece of cheese into his mouth, saying around it, “I don’t know. It is beyond my knowledge. After Deo went into the rift, and you collapsed, Lord Israel helped me bring you here.”
“And Deo? What will happen to him? His runes ... they were different.”
“Yes. I think somehow he changed the chaos magic. Whatever he did to it, I believe that he survived the passage through the rift. If anyone can find his mother and rescue her, it’s him.”
“Yes,” I said slowly, unable to shake the guilt that I bore in the matter. “If only I hadn’t gone berserk again, I could have stopped him.”
“Do you not think that, perhaps, the goddess chose that method to keep you from doing just that?” he asked.
I met his bright blue gaze, and once again, the lines fanning from his eyes made me feel warm inside. “You think Deo meant to go through the rift all along, don’t you?”
“The last one? Yes.” Hallow’s jaw tightened. “He said himself that revenge drove him. We assumed it meant revenge on his father, but it was his mother’s fate that he sought to change. I think he is where he wished to be.”
I sighed, and pushed the plate away. “It just seems like such a sad end. Lord Israel looks like a different person.”
“We rode hard to get you here. On top of the shock of losing both the queen and Deo, he has had a hard time of it.” Hallow gave me a little smile. “You’ve been asleep for almost a week. I was half-afraid you would not return to me.”
I moved over to him, seating myself on his lap just as the door opened, and a handful of servants brought in a large copper tub, and several leathers full of hot water. “And turn down such a promising suitor? The sun and moon would have to change places for me to do that. Did you tell Sandor that you are promised to me?”
“I did. She forbade it,” he said, the lines from his eyes crinkling delightfully.
“Because you’re an arcanist?” I asked, surprised. It wasn’t often that priestesses left the temple to marry, but Sandor allowed it in certain circumstances, and I had a feeling she would be more than a little relieved to have me off her hands.
“Because I’m half-Starborn.”
“What?” I asked loudly enough that the servants, giggling to themselves as they filled the tub, gawked at us.
“Like Deo, my mother was a Starborn. It’s why I am able to master the arcane arts.”
“But ... you said you learned it from a Starborn master,” I protested.
“And so I did. But I wouldn’t have gotten very far if I did not have the blood of the arcane flowing through me. No, my heart, no more questions. Your bath is ready, and I know how much you were looking forward to it. You take it, and later, I’ll te
ll you all about how my mother and father met and fell in love.”
The servants filed out of the door, giggling once again when Hallow stood up and, with a gentle pat on my behind, followed them.
“You’re leaving?” I asked, bemused to find out that the world I thought I knew was topsy-turvy. I gestured toward the tub. “It’s large enough for both of us.”
“Allegria,” he said, tsking. “And you a priestess.”
He closed the door behind him.
“Well, blast,” I said, feeling distinctly let down.
The door opened and he popped his head in. “I’m just fetching the scented oil. If you’re not in the tub by the time I get back, you have to wash my back first.”
I grinned, and started peeling off my clothing. There was sorrow in my heart, but Hallow filled the rest. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to let the situation with Deo go, and I would be at his side, fighting with him to bring Deo and the queen back.
The future looked almost as bright as the sun that beamed down her love onto all of Alba.
ABOUT KATIE
For as long as she can remember, Katie MacAlister has loved reading. Growing up in a family where a weekly visit to the library was a given, Katie spent much of her time with her nose buried in a book.
Two years after she started writing novels, Katie sold her first romance, Noble Intentions. More than fifty books later, her novels have been translated into numerous languages, been recorded as audiobooks, received several awards, and have been regulars on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. Katie lives in the Pacific Northwest with two dogs and a cat, and can often be found lurking around online.
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