by Elly Blake
Her ghostly hand came over mine, palm to palm. My skin tingled then burned as silky tendrils of shadow entered my body, flowing from hers to mine. I sucked in a breath as the harsh passion of her darkest emotions flowed through my veins and into my heart.
Terror. Fury. Bleak despair. A tearing, twisted longing destined to go unfulfilled. Her memories might be long dead, extinguished by time and imprisonment, but the emotions remained. They all rushed into me at once, filling me with agony.
I shook violently as I absorbed her shadows, drawing the tendrils into my skin, pulling even as she gave, so the queen could never quite fill my cupped palm. With every second that passed, her spirit glowed brighter. Using little nudges of my mind, I coaxed her into surrendering more, even as my own spirit contorted in pain from what I was receiving.
The dark stream slowed, then ceased altogether. Her eyes met mine. She was made of pure, golden light, transparent but fully formed, every line of her face and clothing sharply detailed, like a begrimed painting that has been cleaned and restored.
“You can leave now,” I said, fighting the sick churning in my stomach, the heavy weight of desolation in my chest. “You are made of light. You can pass through and be free.”
I gestured to the Gate with a trembling finger.
The spirit’s face lit with happiness, relief, and gratitude. Hope. You will release all prisoners? Free us?
I blinked in shock; I hadn’t thought she could speak, but she had asked the question in my mind.
“I will release the spirits of mortals,” I told her. “But the Minax must stay here.”
Her brows knitted, her expression radiating concern and worry. Her outline grew cloudy as a hint of desperation darkened her eyes.
As I am, so are we all. Spirits twisted by the dark.
I shook my head in confusion. Maybe she didn’t know what else was trapped down here with her.
“The god Eurus created shadow creatures called the Minax,” I explained. “They are imprisoned here, too, and they must remain.”
No! She shook her head. There are only spirits here. All these. Spirits.
I looked around, releasing my hold on the crystal so more light filled the chamber. I caught glimpses of the spirits as they shrieked and fled to the darkness. Every single one looked like a Minax, with sharp edges and flowing tendrils around them.
“All of these are spirits of mortals?” I asked in growing horror.
She nodded, brightening again with hope.
“There are no Minax?” I pressed, needing to be sure.
One and the same, she replied. Spirits. Minax. The same.
“My gods,” I said, rocked to my soul by this realization. “He didn’t create creatures from darkness. He used the spirits of mortals and twisted them into the Minax.”
The queen nodded, satisfied now that I understood.
My knees weakened. So many creatures. Thousands. Countless. I was barely surviving the extra weight of a single spirit’s heaviest emotions in my heart. How would I survive all of them?
We suffer. We are not meant to be here. You will free us all?
“I vow I will free them all,” I found myself saying. I shook off the despair that told me I could never do it. If it took forever, I would end this. There was nothing waiting for me in the mortal world. Maybe this had been my purpose all along. Brother Thistle had believed all along that I was the Child of Light, but I was really the Child of Darkness. I would live in darkness, but the world would be safe.
The queen glowed brightly at my promise. Thank you. Then she turned, became a beam of light, and disappeared through the Gate.
Bracing myself with a deep breath, I faced the hordes of shadows pressing at the edges of the crystal’s light.
So many.
“Who’s next?” I asked, fighting a tide of hopelessness. “I can do this.”
“Can you, though?” a velvet voice said from somewhere in the murk.
I closed my eyes in recognition.
“Come now, Ruby.” Eurus’s voice was enticing, mesmeric. “You’ve freed one. There are tens of thousands more. If you keep this up, you will be one of them before long.”
THIRTY-FIVE
“I WILL FREE THEM,” I VOWED, MORE to myself than him.
His chuckle reverberated off unseen walls. In the shadows, spirits shifted, parting to make a path for him. He stopped just within the light’s edges.
Eurus was no longer in Prince Eiko’s body. He’d transformed into someone taller, broader, with ruthlessly even features. His muscular arms were bare, his chest covered in armor that looked like scales, his legs encased in leather and steel. He looked like war made flesh, aggressive and invincible. Like the other gods, he was almost too perfect, hard to look at directly, not meant for mortal eyes. I knew instinctively this was his true form. Deep, primal fear paralyzed my limbs.
Taking a breath and clenching my hands to still their violent tremor, I tried to mask my fear. “What do you want?”
“You already know.”
“I won’t take your throne.” I opened one hand, letting the crystal flash a single pulse to show I meant what I said. The spirits careened back, screaming.
“You should be prostrating yourself with gratitude,” Eurus said once the shrieks had died down. There was a hint of honest confusion tempering his frustration. “I claim you as my regent in the mortal world. Understand, you wouldn’t preside over one paltry kingdom. You would rule over all other monarchs. I have never bestowed such an honor on any other.”
I clutched the crystal for strength. Now that I was in the Obscurum, I felt the call of the throne, the consuming need to connect with it. The promise of power, to never be weak or vulnerable again. But I wouldn’t give in.
“I reject your claim and refuse your so-called honor.”
“Even now, I feel your misery.” His voice was honeyed with false sympathy. “Your hopelessness. Your utter despair. Do you truly want to defy me? To reject the joy I offer?” He sounded genuinely curious, almost surprised.
“I’m saying no.”
The spirits moaned and hissed, sensing Eurus’s growing annoyance. But when he spoke, his tone betrayed no anger, sounding calm and patient. “Perhaps you need a test of your resolve to make things clear. Release this spirit, and then we’ll see how you feel.”
From out of the shadows, a spirit floated into the light. It looked as if it wore a barbed crown and pointy protrusions on its shoulders that mimicked black ice.
“Come forward,” I said with determination. I wouldn’t back down. “I can help free… you…”
I trailed off as the shadow transformed into a dim outline of a person, the crown melting smaller, his flawless young face materializing along with a lean build and white-blond hair. High cheekbones, sculpted lips so like his brother’s, the eyes like empty voids. In life, they’d been a deep blue.
Fireling, the spirit said in my mind, the word a caress.
Rasmus. The former Frost King, Arcus’s brother, who had died when he and I destroyed the cursed frost throne. Rasmus had chosen death by the Minax over life without it.
“I think you two know each other,” Eurus said with obvious satisfaction.
I stepped backward. The spirit followed. His eyes pierced mine, regarding me with intense longing, the same way he’d looked at me in life.
Bile crept up my throat. I could not release the spirit of the monster responsible for my mother’s death, for murdering every Fireblood in Tempesia. I wouldn’t help him find the light he craved. He should suffer in eternal darkness.
“Well, Ruby?” Eurus prompted. “Don’t you want to perform this good deed?” His voice grew louder, more insistent. “Release this spirit into the light! Take all of his hatred and violence into yourself. Know his loneliness and pain as your own. And then live with it forever.”
“I—” I floundered, at a loss for words. My fist tightened around the crystal, making the light spill out in gashes between my fingers. Eurus had me bac
ked into a corner, and he knew it. Cirrus’s Gate had been broken once. If I left even one spirit inside, it could break again.
And yet… to free this one…
“Think carefully before you decide,” the god warned. “Because you will live forever, here, Ruby. The Obscurum lies between the mortal world and the afterworld. It is a place of suspension, where there is no decay. You will live on, eternal, without the escape of death.”
All the air left my lungs. “Can I choose to die?”
“Never.”
I closed my eyes tight. I wanted to howl with the sense of helplessness and fear and loss. I tightened my fists. As I did so, some of the light from Cirrus’s crystal seeped into my skin, giving me the tiniest measure of peace. Just enough.
I faced the spirit of Rasmus, staring straight into his eyes. He looked back at me with that strange intensity. I put out my hand flat, palm up. “Give me your darkness.”
He moved closer but didn’t lift his hand.
I wish to stay here, he said, his eyes flaring with something greedy. With you.
“You can’t,” I said, hardening my resolve. As if I would want his presence here to torment me for eternity! “You have to leave. Give me your darkness. Go to the light. Your…” I swallowed. “Your brother’s spirit waits for you.”
Tears filled my eyes, my chest exploding with pain.
Rasmus actually looked sorrowful for a heartbeat. He held his hand over mine, palm down.
It will hurt, he warned.
“I can handle it.”
He poured the shadows into my hand, into my heart. The force of it shocked me. I nearly crumpled, only staying upright by locking my knees.
There is more, Rasmus said, hesitating.
“All of it,” I whispered, choking on anguish.
Then all the fear and anger and jealousy and rage that he’d held on to came flowing through, hitting my heart with bruising force. Despair warred with the urge for violence, which morphed into terror.
That is all, his voice said in my mind.
I forced my eyes open, my vision hazy. He was made of bright, pure light.
“Go,” I said weakly. “Go.”
With a final touch against my hand, he turned into a beam of light and disappeared.
Now all his melancholy, wretchedness, and hate would be mine for eternity. My knees turned to water and I fell to the floor. I wanted to seep into the cold stone. I glanced at the crystal, squeezing tight. It gave off a pulse of energy, but the light was weaker now.
A sense of futility shook my resolve.
Each spirit would weaken me, and I’d be helpless not to use the crystal to help me each time. Its light would be depleted quickly. There was no way I could do this ten times more, let alone a thousand, or ten thousand.
I searched for Eurus among the shifting shadows. I let more light escape the crystal, needing to see his eyes, to remind myself who and what I was fighting.
I’ll defy you forever, I wanted to say. I’ll never give up.
The view of his piercing gaze startled me, almost made me drop the crystal. Raw, blistering rage shone in his green eyes.
“So,” he said, stepping into the circle of light. “You actually allowed his spirit to leave. The spirit of your mother’s murderer.” He nodded to where Rasmus had been a moment ago. “If you thought to impress me, know that I feel only disgust for your weakness.”
“I will do that again and again until every spirit is released,” I swore, forcing myself to meet his eyes, though I trembled. “I’ll fight this battle forever, if I have to.”
“No, you will not.” His lip curled. “Your refusals were a challenge at first, but I grow weary. Enough.”
He reached out and took my wrist in a crushing grip. There was a blinding flash, and when it cleared, I saw we were in a cavernous room filled with tall black columns and lit by torches. The black rock shone with reflected light, the ceiling so high it disappeared overhead.
Disoriented at finding myself in the same room I’d seen in my dreams, it took me a second to find my voice. “No matter what you do—”
Before I could finish, he shoved at my shoulders, sending me sprawling backward. I sat down hard, my legs meeting a rigid surface. It was a huge, flat slab of stone, with a tall back and armrests too far on either side for me to reach.
I struggled to stand. But the stone seemed fused to me, or me to the stone. I couldn’t rise. “What—”
“Finally, you are where you belong.” His lips pulled back, revealing flawless white teeth in a feral grin. “What do you think of the night throne?”
THIRTY-SIX
THE BLEAK TRUTH SANK IN. EURUS had tossed me on the throne without so much as a warning. All my refusals and defiance had still led to this moment. How naive I’d been to assume I’d have a choice. He was a god in the Obscurum, and I was still just a mortal. I had half a beat to absorb a deep sense of futility before chaos hit.
A thousand images assailed me at once. The earsplitting sounds of battle, the acrid taste of smoke and burned flesh. The hundred or so escaped shadows capering over the lava field, flitting between hosts, riding waves of bloodthirsty joy, transmitting every gory morsel to me. The throne connected me with them more deeply than ever before, sharing every nuance of what they thought, felt, and sensed.
Each spirit in the Obscurum was woven directly into my mind as well, their screams howling in my ears, their yearning to escape vibrating along my every nerve. It was a tapestry with ten thousand threads, all connected to my fingers.
Too much! The sensations and images attacked my mind, excruciating in their intensity. I tilted my head back, the cords in my neck straining, imprisoned by cold stone, besieged by the screams of the dying. I screamed silently with them.
“It will take some getting used to, I imagine,” Eurus said serenely. “But I have no doubt you’ll manage.”
Surges of raw energy were coursing through me like lightning. My limbs filled with strength, my mind sharpening with stark and brutal clarity as quickly as it had been overcome with sensations. Suddenly, the fog lifted and I was no longer fatigued or melancholy, but humming with power.
Experimentally, I gave a command for the shadows on the battlefield to leave their hosts. They did so immediately. I released them, and they returned to the fray.
I tried a few more commands, and they responded with complete and instant compliance. I could compel them with a thought. I could puppet them all at once. Within seconds, I had adapted, the connections fusing in my mind and heart and blood.
“Now do you see?” Eurus said, his mouth curving up at the edges. “You belong here.”
Though his features hadn’t changed, his form had grown into godlike proportions. He stood with his arms crossed, looking down on me even though I sat high on the massive throne.
“Back to your true form, I see.”
“Indeed,” he replied. “Neb’s rules have no bearing outside the mortal world, and I grow tired of that pathetic little body.
“You fought this, fought me, for no reason,” he said, emerald eyes glittering with malicious exultation. “You were born to wear the Nightblood crown.”
With a wave of his hand, a crown encircled my head. I reached up to feel the hard, smooth surface. It was made of curving antlers or twisted bones, the top reaching toward the sky in sharp points. My neck adjusted to the extra weight, my shoulders squared, my body accepting it as my due.
Eurus’s words rang with truth. This felt right. Seamless. A connection I was destined to make. A dark gift I could never relinquish, would never want to. The sorrow and grief that had nearly crushed me such a short time ago had been lifted away. I felt refreshed, reborn, made new.
“You are starting to understand,” Eurus said, wild excitement flowing from him. “This is your purpose, your destiny.”
I was only listening with part of my attention. I was outside in the battle, effortlessly asserting my will on the shadows. Without hesitation, their thoughts shifted
, and they targeted the Servants. The soldiers turned on their own, killing each other savagely. One after the other, they cut each other down in sprays of blood.
As I’d surmised, the shadows were an unbeatable force. In minutes, the slaughter would be over.
“Do you really want to do that?” Eurus asked, his voice melodious, compelling. “You draw strength from death, from bloodlust and pain. The battle will be over too soon if the Minax choose sides.”
I paused, considering, and decided he was right. It would be better to prolong the fight, to make the suffering last.
“Each death empowers you more,” Eurus said, urging me on. “Embrace your gift. We will rid this world of Frostbloods and Firebloods.” He stared, unfocused, as if seeing images in his mind. “And then we’ll harvest their very spirits. Make those proud Frostblood warriors and Fireblood masters subservient to our will.”
Something about his words made me pause. “Frostbloods and Firebloods? Why them?”
“Why not them?” he asked, anger sharpening his voice as his eyes snapped to mine. “They bleed like other mortals. They die. And yet they are revered above those with no gift. They are an abomination that must be stamped out.”
I stared at him. “Is that why your Servants follow you?”
“They see the imbalance, the unfairness of your world. Strong gifts are rewarded with wealth, power, and status. Those without gifts are left to rot.”
Confusion knit my brow. “You said I shouldn’t choose sides, that all deaths make me more powerful. Now it sounds as if you want me to choose.”
“At some point, Ruby, everyone has to take a side. Why destroy my Servants? They would follow you faithfully, whereas Frostbloods and Firebloods are only loyal to their own.”
“You have Frostbloods and Firebloods fighting on your side.”
He waved that away. “An unfortunate necessity. We can take care of them once we’ve wiped out all the others.”
The battle raged on, but I no longer felt the bliss of it. Something was clawing at my mind. “I don’t think I want to kill them all,” I said uncertainly.
“Why?” Eurus snapped. “Even your own people didn’t protect you.”