“My mom has that effect on people,” Thayen replied. “I’m sorry.”
Another option was getting the boy out of here, along with the other shards. A small team of us, aided by a Reaper—we could bounce around indefinitely until our Unending problem found its solution inside Soul’s interdimensional bubble. It was the only other avenue that made sense.
“I could take you away,” I told Thayen. “We could ask Dream to come with us. The Reapers could spare her in their defense of Tristan and Valaine. It’s not like we can move them just yet.”
“Not until Valaine wakes up, right?” Kalla said, and I nodded slowly. “Weeks must’ve gone by in there. She’s taking a while to get back to us this time.”
“Spirit did quite the number on her,” I said.
“We could definitely leave,” Thayen interjected. “Before my mother finds us.”
Kalla seemed to agree. “I can send one or two Orvisians with you for additional protection, if necessary. A small group will move much faster and with greater ease across the land. We might even try multiple decoy groups at the same time.”
“That’s actually a really good idea,” Arya interjected as she approached us.
“You’re back!” I exclaimed, giving her a warm smile. “I take it you’ve heard the news?”
“Yeah, Danika’s coming. I did a quick sweep around the city with a handful of Seniors, but there was no trace of her,” Arya said, stopping a couple feet away from me. “How are you holding up?”
I was trembling, and my pulse was still racing. The mere idea of losing Thayen to Danika was throwing all my senses for a loop, but I wasn’t ready to admit to my current state of mind. The kid needed my protection. “I’m okay.”
“Where are the others?” Arya asked, looking around. “Mira, Kemi?”
“They should be on their way. We need to discuss options, but I think the multiple decoy groups is a good idea,” I said, offering Kalla an appreciative nod. “I’ll take Thayen with me, along with a few other people and a Reaper. Everyone else can help keep the Darklings busy running around. Settling in one place for too long clearly hasn’t yielded much.”
Arya thought about it for a moment. “You’re right. We’re running out of time. Danika will be here any second.” She moved to take Thayen’s hand, but the boy pulled back, giving me a confused look.
“Let’s wait for Derek, Mira, and Kemi first,” I said to Arya.
She glanced my way. During that second, I found myself increasingly more puzzled and agitated. Something was off, but I couldn’t figure out where this additional uneasiness was coming from until I caught a glimpse of her long dark claws extending. She slashed open Kalla’s throat, and I heard myself scream.
Thayen gasped.
I jumped at Arya, my fangs already out, but she raised a scythe in my direction. Her lips moved, and a rippling pulse hit me right in the throat. My breath was knocked out of me, as if a pair of hands had suddenly tightened, slowly crushing my windpipe. My body was numb. I fell backward, landing with a dull thud. I didn’t feel anything, only the ache of helplessness as I began to quickly put two and two together.
Thayen tried to run away, but Arya smacked him with the back of her hand. The blow was strong enough to knock him unconscious. My eyes stung as I saw the life leaving Kalla’s eyes, blood pooling beneath her in the dry dirt. It broke me to lose her. She didn’t deserve this fate.
“Like I said, time is running out,” Arya said, her tone flat.
“You… a scythe…” I managed, realizing that whatever stunning spell she’d put me under had a slowing effect on my speech. I could barely string a few words together. I couldn’t move. All I could do was lie on the ground and watch the most abominable thing happen as Arya collected Thayen and threw him over her shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
“I’m the Master of Darkness. Well, the de facto Master of Darkness, anyway,” Arya said. “The first one. I surrendered my role a long time ago, but I never truly abandoned my people or my beliefs. When the decision was made to round up the Seniors and isolate them on islands, I chose to go with them. Not because I was a Senior myself, but because they needed someone to keep an eye on them. A true Darkling.”
“Oh, God…”
“Mm-hm. I know. It must be shocking. No hard feelings, Sofia. You couldn’t have seen this coming. I bided my time, played along, held on to my patience as events unfolded. I promised myself I wouldn’t intervene unless I absolutely had to. For what it’s worth, none of the surviving Seniors know my affiliation.”
“Mira… Kemi…”
I tried to move, but my muscles burned with each attempt. Every move, even the slightest, rivaled the agony of drowning in an active volcano. Whatever spell this was, it had been designed to cause great suffering, not just paralysis. What scared me the most wasn’t even the prospect of being stuck like this forever. No, it was the fact that I would never see Thayen again if Arya got away with this.
“They don’t have a clue,” Arya said. “I was the only Senior the Darklings could trust to infiltrate the island from the very beginning. Mira and Kemi weren’t present when the Spirit Bender and I made our deal on behalf of the Aeternae. I’m genuinely fond of them, but I could never trust them to understand our methods. Those were dire times, Sofia. The Black Fever was killing us in droves. Unending was going crazy beneath two seals. Something had to be done in order for our species to survive.”
“No… Thayen…” I hissed, almost feeling like I could reach out and touch him. Nothing happened. I was still stiff as a board, my body turned into my greatest enemy. My chest burned with fury. Fear ran cold in my veins. I loathed feeling this way. I hated myself and the entire universe for having allowed this to happen.
“He’s but one cog in the machine,” Arya said. “You know, at first the Spirit Bender wasn’t sure which of us would bear the incarnation of the Unending. He’d thought it would be me, but there was a minor glitch in the spell… anyway, for a long time after I had my first child, I worried she might be the Unending.”
Arya calmly knelt by my side, using her spare hand to check all my pockets. She was looking for the shards, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her.
“I named her Keryn, after the northern star our sailors follow across the oceans,” she added. “When the first signs emerged, I was devastated. It turned out the Spirit Bender’s seal had worked as he’d intended after all. Much to my dismay, I might add. The Black Fever gradually returned, and I still didn’t have the courage to do what needed to be done. I’d sworn fealty to the Darklings and our cause, yet… I couldn’t.” She choked up, swallowing back tears. “My daughter, you know? I’d thought I could make that sacrifice.”
Finally, she found Petra’s and Ramus’s shards and slipped them into her coat pocket. I prayed to all the gods and the stars themselves to bring Derek and the others here sooner. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop her, but Mira and Kemi… they knew her best. Derek had enough fire in him to take her on, to avenge Kalla’s brutal and untimely death. But I couldn’t hear or see anyone coming. Arya had certainly picked the right timing.
“In the end, the Spirit Bender returned to give us one last lesson. He reminded me of my choice, of my devotion, and… I don’t know, seeing him back sort of made something snap inside me. I can’t quite explain it, but I found what I needed. I found the strength to make the ultimate sacrifice,” Arya said. “I told the Spirit Bender that I suspected my own daughter, my beloved Keryn, of being the Unending. He turned that whole moment into a tutorial. I was shell-shocked. Frankly, even now I don’t remember my reaction to watching my daughter’s head fall. The Spirit Bender killed her, and I felt… nothing. Maybe a little sadness, but I was mostly relieved because the cycle had been restored, and my people would live to see another day.”
She got up, narrowing her eyes at me.
“See, Sofia—that’s the difference between your people and us Darklings. We recognize the value of surviving an eternity. Blood
Arena games aside, we appreciate the gift of immortality, and we will stop at nothing to keep things as they are, as they should be. We’ve worked too hard to lose it all now, especially to a bunch of washed-up versions of Aeternae like you. Thayen will be sacrificed, and the Spirit Bender will be brought back. Your ilk have done plenty of damage already. It stops here.”
I wanted to scream as I watched her walk away with Thayen on her shoulder. The boy’s lights were out cold. She had the other soul shards, too. We’d lost everything. Arya was leading us down a dark path, and I was powerless to stop her. I knew she was taking him to Danika—after all, why would Danika struggle with Roano’s defenses when she had Arya on the inside?
“No…” I heard myself whisper as Arya and Thayen vanished between the eastern ruins. Kalla’s heart had stopped beating.
There was only silence. The mute emptiness of defeat. The tortuous sensation of having had the life of a sweet child slip through my fingers. Betrayal like this was rare, but when it struck, it struck hard and deep.
I’d thought Arya was one of us. Tired of the Darklings’ reign of terror. Instead, she’d been at the helm since day one. Since before the empire… For two million years, she’d lived among the Seniors, isolated on an island, knowing the day might come when she’d have to rise again. That took a lot of dedication and patience. In a way, I admired her.
But I was also eager to rip her head off because she’d stolen Thayen. She was going to get him killed, and that… that simply couldn’t happen. Crying on the inside, I braced myself for the worst, knowing it had yet to come.
Sofia
Minutes later, Derek, Mira, and Kemi found me. I still couldn’t move, but I’d had enough time trapped in my own body and with my thoughts to quickly get over the shock and dive straight into retaliatory rage.
Kalla’s body was getting cold, and the silence of her heart tore me apart. Derek went pale when he saw me, sliding to his knees at my side. “Sofia! Are you okay? What happened? Why didn’t you call out?”
I couldn’t. Whatever stunning spell Arya had put on me, it had rendered me virtually useless, forced to observe and unable to interfere with the way the dice had fallen across the board. Derek took me in his arms, trying to hold me up in a sitting position, using his left forearm to stop my head from lolling back. I was limp, my eyes wide open as I looked at him, wishing I could say something.
Mira stopped by Kalla’s still form, gasping as she realized we’d lost her. “Oh, no…”
“What is going on here?” Kemi asked, increasingly alarmed as his gaze darted all around us. “Where’s Thayen?”
I managed to let out a low moan, but I couldn’t move. My limbs were numb, and I had no ability to speak, but I noticed my eyelids were still closing and opening. Derek was dangerously close to falling apart as he tried to figure out what had happened to me. “Honey, are you conscious? Are you in there? Can you hear me?”
A yes would’ve been a godsend, but he quickly realized he wasn’t going to get it out of me in the old-fashioned way. The clock was ticking, and every second we spent here in this infernally quiet limbo was one more second gifted to our enemies.
“Her throat was slit,” Mira said, giving Kemi and Derek a nervous frown. “Clean wound. Much like what an Aeternae’s claws might inflict.”
“Danika, maybe?” Derek replied. “We know she’s coming to Roano. What if she’s already here?” He paused, then looked at me. “Honey, I need you to blink once for yes, twice for no. Do you understand?”
I blinked once, and he exhaled sharply, relief relaxing his frame.
“Did Danika do this?” he asked. That was a hard question to answer. Technically speaking, no. They needed to know about Arya, so I blinked twice. “Okay… was it a Darkling?” I blinked once. “Do you know who they were?” Again, once.
Mira sniffed the ground around Kalla’s lifeless body. Her nostrils flared, and a glimmer of recognition lit in her light blue eyes. “Arya was here. I can smell her.”
“Did Arya do this?” Derek asked me.
“No way. She’s been with us since day one,” Kemi retorted, shaking his head. “No. She’s not one of them. She’s been stuck on that wretched island for two million years!”
“Sofia, did Arya do this?” Derek insisted, completely ignoring Kemi. I blinked once. Mira shuddered, grunting softly as she fell to her knees. This had to be devastating to both her and Kemi, and I knew it would be a difficult reality for them to accept.
“Kemi…” Mira murmured. “What… what do we do? How did this happen? Arya? Really?”
“Sofia, are you sure it was her?” Derek asked, his gaze piercing as his eyes searched my face for answers. I blinked once. “So she’s a Darkling. She’s newly turned to their side, perhaps?” I blinked twice.
“She was always a Darkling?!” Kemi croaked, and I blinked him a yes. He ran a hand through his hair, tension tightening his jaw.
“Did she take Thayen?” Derek asked. Yes, I blinked. My vision was blurry with tears. How would we get ourselves out of this mess? “And the other shards? You still have them, right?” As soon as he got my negative response, Derek sighed deeply, his shoulders dropping. He closed his eyes for a moment. Seconds passed, and I knew he was calling out to someone.
Lumi and Sidyan appeared out of thin air. “What’s going on?” the Reaper asked. Last time I’d seen him, a few hours ago, he was adding a few more death spells to the protective shield around Roano to fortify Lumi’s Word magic, just to be safe.
“Something happened,” Mira said. “Arya—she betrayed us! I don’t know how or why, but she’s a Darkling.”
“And Sofia?” Lumi replied, quickly checking my vitals. “Oh dear.”
“Death magic?” Sidyan asked quietly, and she gave him a small nod.
“Can you help her?” Derek asked. “She can’t move or speak, but she understands everything. She’s able to respond by blinking. Arya took Thayen and the other two shards. She’s been with the Darklings since day one—from my understanding of her answers, anyway.”
Mira burst into tears. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Hold on,” Sidyan said, getting closer to me. He ran his fingers through my hair, then traced the contour of my face while I lost myself in the galaxies of his eyes. I felt his energy simmering through me. Something was happening. “She’s been stunned,” he concluded, producing his scythe. He pressed the blade to my chest, his lips moving as he whispered a spell. A rush of cold air burst over me, swiftly followed by a burning sensation that shot through my entire body.
I sprang free and back to my feet, shaking. “Holy crap!”
“Sofia!” Derek pulled me into a hug. I wanted to revel in the safety of his embrace for as long as possible, but time wasn’t on our side.
“You don’t understand how bad this is,” I said, then told them everything that had happened. I relayed Arya’s every word, and they were left speechless and devastated, especially Mira and Kemi. Sidyan called out telepathically to the other Reapers while Lumi covered Kalla’s body with her velvet cloak. Sadness lingered in the air, making it harder for me to breathe. But the urgency of Thayen’s abduction didn’t allow me to indulge my misery, not even for a second. “Arya’s got Thayen and two of Spirit’s shards. She must be out of Roano by now. We have to stop her!”
“Kalla’s spirit is here,” Sidyan said, raising his scythe. “Given the urgency of the situation, I would like to reap her.”
“Do it,” I said, shaking. My heart was broken, and I couldn’t even think straight with Thayen gone. “She deserves to move on.”
“For what it’s worth, she’s at peace,” the Reaper said, then paused to listen. Her spirit was probably telling him something, but we couldn’t see or hear her. We didn’t even have time to say goodbye. “She says to hurry and get the kid back. She’s sorry she couldn’t do more to protect him.”
“It’s not her fault,” I replied, tears prickling my eyes. “None of us saw this coming…”
Sidyan moved his scythe, sending Kalla into the afterlife, then offered me a hand. “We need to go to the north tower. Now. There’s something you all need to see.”
I would’ve liked a proper moment with Kalla’s soul, but time wasn’t on our side. Without hesitation, I touched Sidyan. As soon as we were all physically linked to him, he zapped us to the very top of the northern tower. From there, we had a full view of the eastern lands and the Nightmare Forest. Rose and Caleb were already waiting, joined by Time and Dream. The others were still mobilizing.
“Mom, are you okay?” Rose asked, noticing the look on my face before she gave me a quick hug.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. Thayen… Kalla…” My voice broke, so Derek shared the horrifying news about Arya’s crimes. No one had time to process the information, however, as Sidyan immediately pointed out the window. “Look there!”
We followed his gaze, and I heard myself curse, blood running cold through my veins. We could all see them. I took one of the long-distance lenses from Rose’s bag and pointed it to the northeast. About a hundred yards from the Nightmare Forest, Arya had just finished crossing the tall grass field. Thayen was unconscious, still slung over her shoulder.
“That bitch,” I mumbled.
“Kale’s crew has just come back,” Lumi said. “Nightmare, Dream, and the Night Bringer are converging on Arya right now.”
We stood together in front of the window, tension rising as we watched the scene unfold. The Time Master rushed up to join us, equally alarmed. We saw Arya moving quickly, getting closer to the Nightmare Forest. The Reapers appeared around her. They tried to take her down, but Arya activated some kind of forcefield. It was a strange thing to witness.
“Why can’t they get through to her?” I asked, my temperature rising.
“If what Arya told you is true, and she was the first Master of Darkness, that means she possesses knowledge that we don’t,” Time replied.
A Shade of Vampire 85: A Shard of Soul Page 23