Bright Wicked 3: Infernal Dark (A Fantasy Romance)

by Everly Frost

  “I can destroy fae magic too,” I say, closing the gap between Imatra and me to make my point clear. I’ve never killed a fae. I vowed to protect the fae, not hurt them. I need her to know that right now, I choose not to hurt her.

  “King Cyrian won’t give up his kingdom easily,” I continue. “He will demand that the fight is fair. If you give Nathaniel his weapon, Cyrian will have nothing to complain about.”

  Imatra considers me carefully. “I will grant your request, but you must do something for me first. It will be a show of faith. Well, it’s not for me, really, but for your loved ones. Assuming you still care about Evander and Talsa.”

  I bristle at the implication that I don’t. “What do you want?”

  “You must stop the glitter field from sending out any more bulbs.”

  I arch an eyebrow at her. “The glitter field is your creation. I don’t control it.”

  She laughs, a sudden, almost hysterical sound. “Why do you think I was stopped from cutting out your heart’s stem, Aura? Why was I so far away from you when you woke up?”

  She continues to laugh, the sound rising in pitch until it grates against my hearing. “You created the glitter field when you woke up and tried to defend yourself against me,” she says. “I barely survived the blast of power you used to create the field, let alone the glitter shards that exploded around me.”

  She shakes her head, as if she’s trying to shake off her memories. “I never imagined such a horrifying retaliation. A field of crystalline starlight to tear apart anyone who steps near you. Oh, the tears I cried.”

  I remember her tears. They’d turned into pearls that had scattered across the burning ground. “What did you do with the rest of my heart?”

  “It crumbled to ash in my hands when I cut it out,” she says, her eyes glinting in my light. “You have as much of your heart now as you will ever have.”

  I consider the bulb floating at Imatra’s side and all of its messy, shattered edges.

  My fist darts out, making her flinch as I take hold of the glittering weapon. I yank it toward myself and snap the thread of dark magic that she’s using to constrain it. My power streaks around the shattering bulb, a bright flash, before I open my fist again.

  Imatra takes a reflexive step back, stopping when she sees that the bulb has transformed into a flower resting in my palm. It’s a poppy, its petals crushed and bleeding crimson sap, just like the poppies that Imatra gripped at the coliseum when the Vanem Dragon sealed the Law of Champions.

  “I will stop the glitter field,” I say, even though I have no idea how. “And you will return Nathaniel’s weapon to him.”

  She smiles again, regaining her mask of control. “Agreed.”

  I step away from her, my weapon raised again. “Do not try to imprison me or Nathaniel. We are caged enough as it is.”

  Imatra’s hair floats gently around her shoulders as her gaze runs from my face to my clenched fists to my hastily pulled-on clothing. “So you are.”

  Turning, I leap back to Treble, but this time, I position myself with a deliberate gap between Nathaniel and me.

  “Treble,” I call softly to my thunderbird. “Take us to the glitter field near the burn site, please.”

  When Imatra’s guards crowd their thunderbirds inward as if they’re going to stop us from leaving, she raises her hands to halt them. “Let Aura and Nathaniel leave. We’ll see them again soon enough.”

  Treble cracks his wings, I grip with my thighs to stay on his back, and we rise above the other birds.

  As Treble banks left, we soar away from the Spire.

  Nathaniel doesn’t attempt to close the gap between us, but he says, “She’s wrong. We always had a choice about whom we love.”

  My throat closes up and I can’t answer. His assertion confirms that he heard everything Imatra and I said to each other, including her contention that Nathaniel and I had no say in how we feel about each other.

  My emotions are in pieces.

  All I hope is that Nathaniel is willing to walk through the glitter field with me one last time.

  Chapter 16

  Glitter bulbs lift into the air ahead of us as we coast high above the field’s surface. Far to our left, explosions along the crystal peaks indicate that Evander and the others continue to protect the city from the power of the bulbs.

  Nathaniel and I are quiet during the flight, sitting apart.

  I ask Treble to land on the Bright side of the field so that we have a clear view around us. The Fell side is obscured by the Misty Gallows and even darker at night.

  Dropping to the ground, I hug Treble’s neck. “Thank you, my friend.”

  He keens softly as I turn to Nathaniel and draw myself upright. “You don’t have to follow me into the field. I won’t go so far that you can’t see me.”

  “I’m coming with you,” he says.

  I give him a nod and hold out my hand, waiting for him to take it. I’m prepared for the energy to rise between us. He slides his hand around mine and I fight the need to tug him closer. The last time we traveled through this deadly meadow, we were running for our lives, attempting to escape Imatra’s fiery anger.

  The grass never hurt me and now I know why.

  As soon as I step into the field, the sharp stems soften against my legs, becoming green and flexible. A breeze hums through the space and the bulbs sing as they bump gently against each other, making a chiming sound.

  I trail the fingers of my free hand across the top of the grass, finding myself humming with the bulbs as we make our way farther into the field. I allow my starlight to glow around my fingertips, warm and calming, the aspect of my power that I used to soothe Nathaniel’s mind this morning.

  Even though the bulbs transform from brittle glass to soft, living material beneath my fingertips, in the distance they continue to rise and float away from the meadow, hundreds of them.

  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do to make the glitter field stop sending out deadly memories. If vengeance and violence started this, then maybe peace and acceptance will end it.

  Tipping my head back, I consider the night sky, struggling to comprehend that is where I came from. If not for Imatra, I would still be there—somewhere in the ether—a formless blaze of light, unconcerned with the worries of humans and fae.

  The moment I lower my head, my humming dies in my throat.

  Three bulbs have suddenly risen up in front of us.

  They spin in the air, unmoving as I consider them warily. I expect that they’ll float away like the others, but it’s better if I defuse them than allow them to drift toward Bright—even if I can only defuse them one by one.

  The minute my fingers touch the first bulb, a flash of dark light fills it. A shock of energy runs up my arm. The contact knocks me to the ground like a punch across the back of my head. At the same time, my fingers clamp around the bulb, unable to let go.

  With a shout, I maintain hold of Nathaniel just in time, taking him with me as I fall into the now-soft grass. I manage to turn my left shoulder, landing with my left arm outstretched, the bulb clutched in it. Nathaniel falls half across me, punching the ground with his right fist to stop himself from crushing me and driving the air from my chest.

  Alarm shoots across his features. “Aura!”

  Releasing my hand, he rolls to the side but hooks his arm around my waist to maintain the contact between us.

  I gasp for air, feeling like my stomach was ripped out of me. The bulb is leaden in my hand, heavy and full. I struggle to raise it to my eyes, shocked when the other two drop onto my chest. Each one is a crushing force that knocks into me so hard that the remaining air whooshes out of my chest.

  Nathaniel reacts swiftly, hooking his leg around mine to free his arms, rearing up over me in a kneeling position, one knee between my legs as he makes a grab for the bulbs.

  “No!” My voice is a bare rasp as I struggle to draw breath. “Don’t touch them.”

  He hovers above me, ready to
swoop. “Aura?”

  I take a deep breath when the pressure on my chest eases, allowing me to inhale carefully. “The other bulbs came for you… for Mathilda… even for Imatra.” I squeeze my eyes closed before opening them again. “These must be for me.”

  Forcing my left hand to rise to eye-height, I focus on the bulb. The ground inside the bulb rushes toward me at sickening speed, faster than the dive of any thunderbird. I’m still high enough up to see everything below me.

  The earth I fall toward is scorched to ash, blackened and covered in human bodies. Hundreds of firehorses lie with them, latent steam rising from their silent stomachs. A squadron of thunderbirds and fae is scattered, dead, among the humans. A fae woman with arctic blue hair the same color as Evander’s rests closest to Imatra’s feet.

  Nearby, the outpost still stands, a tall wooden building—the place where I used to believe I lived with my fae parents, where I thought I was born. Except that I never had parents. And I really was born in the ash of the burn site.

  Inside the bulb, a flood of dark light washes around Imatra as she sucks the life energy from the bodies fallen around her. The dark magic turns her porcelain skin a sickly shade of gray, but her eyes are overly bright, an expression of euphoria on her face. The life energy of a thousand humans must make her feel more powerful than ever before.

  Behind her, a single man remains on his horse. His weapon—the gleaming halberd—is clutched in his hands like a shield. Imatra’s dark light washes around him in a stream, dragging at his body. His walnut brown hair flies back from his face in the rushing wind, his muscles straining as he grits his teeth and grips his weapon, protecting himself and his horse.

  “Do you see this?” I whisper to Nathaniel.

  “I see it. My father’s weapon is an object of power.”

  “It’s light magic,” I say, shooting Nathaniel a determined look. “But it’s not your father’s weapon now, Nathaniel. It’s yours. Just like the Fell throne. Yours.”

  Before he can answer, a sensation of weightlessness fills me, flooding me from the bulb and making me feel as if I’m about to rise up off the ground. At the same time, dread fills my stomach. I sense the energy within the bulb about to collide with me and knock me against the ground again.

  A second later, energy races through my arm, and my body thumps downward. White light explodes across the surface of the bulb. Inside it, the outpost disintegrates and burning shards of wood fly in every direction. Flame and ash fill the air, leaving the bones of the building behind. The sky ripples like an ocean made of white light.

  I try to focus on the glowing center of the explosion inside the bulb: me.

  My body is a gleaming silhouette, my hair spread down my chest and across the ground. My arms, legs, torso, head—all take shape, but they’re too bright to make out any details.

  I am the shape of a girl without being a girl.

  Imatra races toward me, sliding through the ash, her dagger raised, ready to strike my chest.

  She doesn’t see Tobias running after her until he swings his weapon at her neck.

  The bulb suddenly goes blank, becoming weightless within my fist, transforming into a thorny vine that pricks my palms and tells me the bulb has shown me everything it contained.

  I reach for the next bulb—one of the ones sitting on my chest—even though I know what I’ll see inside it next. The memories from my dream are unwanted, but I have to face them.

  As my fingers close around the next bulb, shock sizzles through me so sharply that I arch, the pain in my chest nearly unbearable.

  I choke back a sob as Nathaniel’s arms dart out, wrapping beneath my arched back and sliding beneath my head, cushioning me seconds before my back hits the ground hard enough to bruise my ribs. Instead, his arms absorb the impact. He grits his teeth as he takes the pain.

  Inside the bulb, Imatra drives her dagger into my younger self’s chest. While she holds the knife in her right hand, her left hand darts toward me at the same time. But the halberd glints at the corner of her eye at the last moment. She jerks to the side, her blade veering too far left, as she avoids the swinging weapon. She rips her left hand from my chest, screaming at the sliver of gleaming rock she cut off before she thrusts her hand out to defend herself, dropping the stone into the ash.

  Blood sprays across the surface of the bulb like crimson jewels in the air.

  Nathaniel is frozen above me, watching the bulb from its other side as his father deflects the firelight pouring from Imatra’s hand.

  Dark light washes across Imatra’s body, protecting her from her own rebounding power, but Tobias is already following up, the butt of his weapon cracking across Imatra’s cheek, knocking her down.

  He rams his weapon into the harness across his torso and scoops me up, his movements so fast that I don’t see him snatch up the fallen stone.

  He spins with me in his arms. His horse is already racing to meet him, the animal sliding to the ground, folding its legs the same way Flare folded his so that Nathaniel and I could climb on. Tobias and his horse move in synchrony, their timing so perfect that the horse is already rising with Tobias on its back before I can even blink. He grips me in his arms as the horse leaps into a gallop, steam gusting from its nostrils as it speeds across the burning landscape, jumping over the bodies in its way, veering around a fallen thunderbird.

  Behind Tobias, Imatra’s silhouette flickers. She disappears in a wash of dark light. Just like Mathilda does when she’s transporting herself across space.

  No.

  Imatra reappears on the horse’s back, slipping neatly into place behind Tobias, her dagger arm already descending. He jolts, prepares to jump off, but the blade sinks into his back.

  Three times in rapid succession.

  Nathaniel flinches above me, watching the events in the bulb with a growing storm in his eyes. At the end of our first day, Nathaniel demanded that Imatra tell him if she was the one who struck his father in the back and killed him. She retorted that Nathaniel was too much like his father, that he believed in truth and goodness.

  His father tried to save me, so Imatra killed him.

  Inside the bulb, Imatra’s movements are powered with dark magic, her vicious stabs cutting Tobias down as she screams, “You can’t have her magic. I won’t let you steal her!”

  They’ve reached the edge of the Misty Gallows. Tobias tips and falls, and I tumble out of his arms. My younger form rolls across the mud and comes to a stop beneath the tree where Nathaniel and I first fought. The dirt doesn’t cling to my skin. I don’t move. I still don’t try to defend myself.

  I’m not awake yet.

  In the distance, Tobias slips off his horse, his foot caught in the stirrup as it continues to gallop away from me.

  Inside the image, Imatra bends over me, grunting as she picks me up. I must be heavy—heavier than she expected—because she nearly drops me, my arms dangling as she tries again. Dark light flickers, the image inside the bulb flashes as if the air moved too fast to see, and Imatra reappears in the middle of the burn site again. She rolls me onto the ground, grunting with effort as she positions me on my back.

  She breathes heavily, making me think that her dark magic is all but exhausted now. There are no other living creatures around to steal energy from, and the far-off grass has already withered and died.

  With a heave, she raises her dagger above her head, but with much greater care this time.

  “The whole heart,” she mumbles. “It has to be the whole heart.”

  Her dagger rams into my chest a second before she looks directly into my younger eyes.

  I’m finally waking up.

  She pales. Her hand dives into my chest, her movements urgent. Just as she pulls out her hand, bright, white light blasts across her body, blowing her backward. She tumbles through the ash, landing on her side and sliding through the dirt, collecting blood and dust along the way. Screaming, she pulls a cocoon of dark magic around herself just in time, yanking her arms i
nward, tucking herself into a protective ball.

  The wash of magic continues to cascade outward from my body. Glitter grass springs up around Imatra, rising around the fallen bodies, spearing up through them, a vast ripple of light that spreads outward and flows onward, cutting through every obstacle in its path. It crackles and hums like lightning, a scorching blaze of old magic burning a glittering barrier north and south of our position.

  The rushing sound finally recedes and silence falls.

  Imatra uncurls. When she sees how close she sits to the glitter grass, she scrambles away from it, kicking her legs in panic, causing the grass to hum dangerously. She slows, her breathing erratic, carefully unfurling her right arm from around her chest and finally revealing the object she clutches in her hand.

  A glittering diamond as large as her fist catches the light of the rising moon.

  In the present, I catch my breath. She told me my heart had burned to ash.

  Inside the bulb, Imatra’s expression is dangerously dark as she peers closely at the stone, turning it to study its misshapen, jagged side, where a small chunk is missing.

  “No,” she whispers, tears of rage falling down her cheeks. “It’s broken. Useless.”

  She tips her head back, but before she can scream out her anger, my whimper sounds.

  Imatra quickly presses the diamond into the ground behind herself, burying it in the thick ash so she can focus on my younger self.

  The glow around my young body has receded, fading to nothing. I’m covered in ash. Within the image, I push up on my hands, trying to sit. My dull, white hair falls across my shoulders. My faded eyes blink slowly while I clutch my chest, the intense pain I’m feeling evident in my drawn expression.

  It hurts. I still remember how much it hurt when I woke up.

  My chest has healed, leaving only the small, crescent-shaped scar—disproportionately small compared to what was ripped out of me.