by K. A. Linde
Cyrene shrugged. “In a moment. I have to think that you released the damper on our bond for a reason. That you wanted me to find you here. You purposely chose the Ring of Gardens. And you probably even sent the Voldere so that I would arrive here alone. Am I close?”
“It felt fitting.”
It did.
Being here with him where it’d all started did feel fitting. Like the Circadian Prophecy had always predicted it would come full circle.
“I remembered something recently,” she told him.
“What is that?”
“When I came here for Reeve’s Presenting and he was selected into the High Order, you looked at me.”
“Did I?”
“You did. I was young. Only thirteen at the time, but I felt drawn to you all the same. Do you remember that?”
He froze, and their eyes met. “Yes.”
“Did you know when I came for my Presenting what I was?”
He nodded. “I knew when you were thirteen. When you stared back at me across the throne room. I’d received my father’s book the year before after he passed. I knew about magic then, and I could sense our connection.”
“I thought as much.”
“Why do you bring it up now?” He matched her steps as she circled the marble pavilion.
“This has been going on a long time, Kael. Don’t you think it is odd that it came down to us? To the second son of a king and the third child of two lords. We wouldn’t be who I would have chosen.”
“Viktor was the second son,” he said with a shrug.
“Was he?” Cyrene asked, stopping in her tracks. “I didn’t know that.”
“He mentions it in his book.”
“Huh. I’m not sure if Serafina was the third in her family, but it would make sense.”
She paused, considering what that meant. The ramifications that even their birth order was fitting. How it all seemed like divine intervention to get them to this moment, two thousand years after the first bond had been put together.
“You are stalling,” Kael said, his voice low.
“I am trying to put the pieces together. To figure out why we are here. Why this must happen,” she told him.
“That doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered, Cyrene. All that matters is that we are here. And I will defeat you.”
He withdrew his sword from the sheath. Shadowbreaker hissed as it was released. The Tendrille steel unyielding. The ruby bright red in the hilt that called to her and begged for her magic.
“That is my sword,” she bit out.
He smirked. “Then come and get it, Domina.”
She assessed him. The growing cloud of magic. No more but no less than he’d had in Tiek when he attacked her in the throne room. He hadn’t had blood magic. Or at least, nothing of significance in a while. He hadn’t killed Elea or Alessia or Kaliana. He had no advantage against her, as Malysa had ordered him to take. They were evenly matched.
She settled into a fighting stance and removed her Hohl blade from its sheath across her back. It was a beautiful weapon, forged of the same metal as Shadowbreaker. Both of the weapons hummed to her in greeting. But she would get back her weapon before this was through.
“That does not belong to you,” she said, raising her sword. “You stole it, and you will give it back.”
Kael lazily swung Shadowbreaker before jumping down off of the marble pavilion and engaging her. Their swords clanged against each other. Hohl meeting Tendrille. The metal of the gods from two different continents connecting for the first time. It was glorious, if not completely frustrating.
“You will have to tell me where you got it,” Kael said, bringing his face close to hers. “It’s perfectly balanced.”
She snarled and yanked back, throwing her weight around and bringing her sword in again. But this battle was never going to be won with swords. Kael was the better swordsman. He had been training since he was a child. He could dance circles around her.
The sword was just an extension of her magic.
And she intended to use it that way.
When their swords came together again, she unexpectedly slashed downward and then threw her magic into the form. The ground beneath them shook. The perfect concentric circles wavering as she worked to destroy it. And Kael.
He fell to a knee as he tried to regain his position. But then was quickly back on his feet and jumping toward her.
His eyes had turned from their beautiful blue-gray to something much darker and more sinister. The gray taking over the irises and turning them a murky, disconcerting color.
“We could have been on the same side,” he snarled as he threw a blast of darkness at her.
She pushed through it with a slice of her air magic. “No, we couldn’t.”
Then she threw a shower of flames at his face. He ducked and rolled effortlessly, bringing his sword up. She was a half-second too late. Shadowbreaker traitorously cutting through the sleeve of her fighting leathers and drawing blood in a crisp line down her arm.
She cried out and then hit Kael with an energy blast.
She ignored the pain that now lanced down her left arm. Glad that it wasn’t her dominate arm. That she could still hold the sword and control her magic.
Kael had moved backward a scant few feet, but Shadowbreaker had dispelled much of her magic. “You try to deny me, Cyrene. But it always comes back to me. Always.”
“That is because you are a homicidal maniac,” she shrieked at him. “We come back together over and over again because you keep trying to kill me and everyone that I love!”
“You are delusional. We could have ruled side by side. Our power would have been infinite.”
“I’m delusional?” she asked derisively, dodging his next blow and opening up a wound on his thigh. “Do you even hear yourself?”
“That was what the prophecy was about. It never said we had to fight.” He slashed his blade at her in retaliation. His breathing more labored as the fight progressed. “It said we had to meet. You chose what that meant.”
“I don’t think,” she began, dodging a blow and then rolling out of the way of another, “that the Heir of Light and the Heir of Darkness meeting meant we were going to sit down for tea.”
“No, it meant we were going to rule!”
He dropped his arm before pushing past her sword and into her space. She put a shield up around herself just in the nick of time. And he bounced off of it as he jabbed his elbow at her face.
In turn, she inverted the shield’s energy force and then propelled him backward out of her space with it. Her breathing was ragged as he fell back a dozen feet. While they both continued to get blows in against the other, neither could seem to grab the advantage.
They were as even as they had ever been. One so full of light that she couldn’t even feel her blood magic. And the other so full of darkness that it was all he could feel.
“I could never rule with you,” she told him. “Not while you work for Malysa. She is the goddess of destruction. I don’t think that she and I have the same priorities in any way.”
“My priorities do not always align with hers either,” he said as he leveled Shadowbreaker.
“Puppet king,” she taunted.
“You think that I want her in my country? That I knew what I was signing up for?” he asked. “I have the kingdom. That’s all I want.”
“Except that time that you killed the king of Aurum and declared yourself an emperor.”
“That was her,” he spat. “She was in my dreams. She told me what to do and how to do it.”
“Fine then, you killed your brother to take the throne!” she cried. “Keep trying to justify your actions to me, Kael. I see through you.”
He moved in close. They parried back and forth. Back and forth. He was so much stronger physically. It was his advantage. Hers was hanging at her throat. She needed to find a way to access it. To use the diamond in a way that could finally end this.
Serafina had been too i
n love with Viktor to kill him. Even when he’d destroyed her home and her people. When he had ruined her as the Domina, used her, and sacrificed their love for his ambition, she still hadn’t been able to do it.
But she had asked Cyrene to do what she could not.
To end this two-thousand-year-old curse once and for all.
And she had agreed.
Still, staring up into Kael’s blue-gray eyes, she knew that it would never be that easy. Because, in a way, she did love Kael. Not who he was now. What he had become. But the boy he could have been. The kinship they could have had. If they hadn’t been on this cursed path that led them straight to this moment.
But what she did know was that, if she didn’t win, nothing but more death lay before her. She had seen her greatest fear win out when she finished the dragon tournament back in Kinkadia. She had stood with Kael as she used her blood magic and killed all of her friends. As she had to sacrifice even Dean to rule these lands. And how she had fallen on her own sword before allowing that to happen.
And even as she tired, she knew that not all the magic in the world could save her here. It wasn’t her physical strength or the four elements or her spiritual magic that would win today. It was things that she had learned at a young age and nurtured despite it all. It was the strength of her heart. And her fierce will and determination. It was her fearlessness. The utter need to prove herself. Her sense of adventure. Every little thing that had made her who she was.
It was her soul.
Cyrene reached down deep and embraced that place within herself. Then she pushed that toward Kael. A full barrage of emotion and love and friendship and devotion. It was enough to make him pause. To make him stumble.
Then she brought the hilt of the Hohl blade down on his wrist. His hand opened reflexively, dropping Shadowbreaker into her other awaiting hand. The sword sang to her in triumph the second it touched her skin. Then she thrust it upward and into Kael’s chest.
Prophecy complete.
59
The Cleanse
Cyrene tugged on the bond to her dragon. “Sarielle, now!”
She hastily dropped Kael down onto his back in the center of the Ring of Gardens. Blood was pouring out of the wound, staining his black shirt and puddling onto the white marble surface. There was so much. So much, so fast.
“Sarielle, come on!”
Then Cyrene heard the beat of wings, and a couple of seconds later, Sarielle landed within the garden.
I am ready. Are you sure about this?
Was she sure? No. She was not sure. But she had to try. She had to.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m sure we have to do it.”
No one would blame you.
“I would blame me,” she said, looking down at the Kael.
His skin paled further. Whiter and whiter.
“It’s now or never.”
Be safe, soul sister.
Then Cyrene closed her eyes, pressed her hands to the wound, coating them in Kael’s blood, and delved deep into her spirit magic. She felt the texture of the spiritual plane like a liquid curtain. She pushed through it, finding herself in darkness. Utter stillness.
She thought of the Ring of Gardens where she had left Kael, and her body was transported there. But it was different. It was twilight, as it had been that first night that she saw it. Golden and glowing with candles flickering all around it. A perfect setup for illegal magic use.
Loyalty, duty, and acceptance.
She could get through this.
Cyrene circled the Ring of Gardens and called out, “Serafina!”
This wasn’t where she normally called her from. But it felt fitting tonight—to ask for her where she and Viktor had gone for solace.
She impatiently tapped her foot. Every second she was here, Kael was bleeding out in reality. And still, Serafina didn’t come.
“Sera, I need you, please. I need your help.”
Cyrene circled the garden once more. But Sera didn’t come.
She bit her lip and transported herself to the cottage on the coast. Little baby Anne was sleeping peacefully in her crib. The sea breeze coming in off the beach. This should definitely help.
“Serafina, please, you must help me.”
The silence was deafening.
She had always answered. And though Cyrene knew that Serafina had said that it was harder for her to cross the divide, that it was likely that she would not be able to do it again, except in great need, Cyrene had thought this was that moment. That she would be here for this.
She had banked on it.
Assumed that Sera would help as she had before.
Even knowing that her help with the awakening had been because it benefited the whole. While this arguably…benefited no one.
Still, she’d had to try.
She shook her head in disappointment and released her hold on the spiritual plane. Kael still bled out on the floor of the marble slab.
What happened? Sarielle asked.
“She did not come.”
You tried.
Cyrene chewed on her lip. No. No, there had to be more that could be done. There had to be. Serafina was not here. She was not coming. But she had no power anymore. She had given it all to Cyrene. And Cyrene would be the one to use it here how she saw fit.
Instead of crossing the plane, she delved into his mind. It was a place she had long wondered about. Though they had linked their magic and he had been the one to teach her how to slice into people’s minds, she had never been able to enter his own. His shields and mental barriers had always been too strong.
But here, now, as he died before her eyes, she was finally able to get in.
And what she saw was horrifying.
Ahlvie had been affected by Malysa’s darkness for months.
Kael had been under her influence since the moment his father gave him that book. Years. She’d had her claws in him for years.
Wading through his thoughts was like living in the dark. She had no idea how he had endured it. There wasn’t even a speck of light in here.
Fear shook her for the first time.
How could she get rid of this? Burn away this much darkness? With nothing to anchor her. Nothing to call her back home. All she felt was Malysa all around her. Crushing her completely. Just as Malysa had clearly done to Kael’s will.
But she had to try.
She had to.
She owed it to Elea and Alessia.
He’d sent them away for a reason.
Despite this utter blackness in his mind, coating everything around him, he had still rebelled. He’d found a way to save them. That was enough to make her want to try. To see if he could somehow still be in there.
Because she knew without a doubt that, under different circumstances, this could have easily been her. She and Kael were two sides of the same coin. Bound together by curse and destiny and blood magic. She would save him if she could.
So, she pulled up all the magic in her reserves and pushed the light of her magic into his darkness. She blazed through the night, fighting with all that she had. Every last drop a golden ray of sunlight.
But, unlike Ahlvie, when it burned away and the light filled it back up, the darkness seemed to eat the light. It devoured it whole. Took it as its meal and begged for more.
It refused to stay and light the way. To lead the way out of the darkness. And all she was doing was burning up her energy on a pointless task.
She fought against it anyway. Tried and tried.
But it was no use.
Maybe…maybe she couldn’t save him.
No. Maybe he didn’t want to be saved.
Blood magic ripped apart the human soul. It fragmented the soul into pieces until there was nothing left. If he had no soul, then there was no more light in him. The darkness had won. Malysa had won.
She couldn’t believe it.
After all this, Malysa had won. She had won Kael. Beaten him down so much until there was nothing of the boy Cyren
e had known within him anymore. And only the darkness.
And yet, Elea had made it seem like that wasn’t the case.
That, when he was with her…he was still himself.
When he had spoken of her minutes ago, he had seemed centered. The very mention of her name had changed something in him.
“My sister loves you. She told me that she loves you. Even after everything you’ve done, she still thinks you are worthy of her love. She said that you were worth saving. That, if I could try, I should. That I should do it for her and for your beautiful baby girl, Alessia.”
A single tear fell down Cyrene’s cheek as she fought a futile mission against the darkness.
“Show me something, Kael. Please, show me anything. Let there be a flicker of light. A ray of hope that your soul is still there somewhere. Anything that shows that you are not all hers. That Malysa doesn’t own you.”
She waited, pressing her hands harder against the wound. Waiting for him to reach out to her. To see her guidance of light in that ocean of black.
But he didn’t.
And she pulled back.
Because there was nothing left within him to save.
60
The Curse
Cyrene evaded the darkness as she withdrew her light from Kael’s mind. It kept trying to stick to her. Tried to keep her within its clutches. And, even in the safety of her connection to Sarielle, she could feel the cold emptiness of Malysa attempting to reel her back in.
But Cyrene couldn’t let Malysa succeed.
This was only one battle.
There was still a war to win.
Just as she was pulling away from the last of Malysa’s sticky darkness, she remembered something. And she stilled. Not even caring that her efforts were wasted, she sank back into the black.
There was something that had connected Kael to this world. Something that had held his soul in place despite Malysa’s attempts to control him. And, oddly enough, it was something that Malysa herself had put in place.