by Mary Weber
Move, I command my body and force my hand up. I twist it to pull four ice picks from the air and hurl them at Draewulf. He swipes three aside but the fourth slams into his shoulder and lands him flat on his back, impaling him to the deck.
Lady Isobel tosses the Tullan king down and lunges for me. I shove a hand toward her and immediately feel her energy flow with mine. Her face hardens as she throws her arm up to press her palm against my heart, but I dig in stronger.
She utters a cry and tries to yank away, but it’s locked on now. My vortex is attached to her power and drawing, taking it in the same way she’s taken the lives of others. For a second I swear I can feel their lives, their voices and heartbeats pulsing through her energy. She leans over.
Then there’s a glint and a flash as she slides a blade from her boot and shoves it up at me.
I’m too slow. I can’t duck away in time, and the blade rips into my arm. I brace for the pain when the vortex reacts in my chest. It lashes out and rises up through my veins, and with a single twitch of my hand, Lady Isobel’s body goes flying against the dining room wall. Her head lolls and she slumps over.
I look down at my fist.
A loud hiss is the only warning I have to move before a bolcrane claw slices down inches from my side. I jerk backward and two wraiths jump forward, followed by more clamoring over the railing straight for me.
Litches.
The next second, Rasha’s beside me, sword in hand, as is the large Bron soldier.
“You were right back at the banquet,” he mutters. “About mercy being a more honorable strength.” His gaze flashes up to where the airship’s boy captains’ quarters are. Then he’s focused back on gutting the wraith lunging for him.
And how I didn’t see it before I don’t know, because the resemblance is suddenly uncanny. Kel. Kel is his son. I’d bet my life on it.
The next moment the entire world blurs. A mirage like an invisible wave rolls through the very atmosphere around us. It slides past my body and over the ship and air and hits the whole area. Rippling through the other airships just as fast as it tears across the cliffs and Castle.
My vision wavers and suddenly half the wraiths I see, on the nearest airships and on the ground, are changed to look exactly like Draewulf.
I flip around to see Myles standing there, his hands crunched into fists at his sides, his eyes clamped shut. His powers were released too, and he’s magnified them enough to confuse the Dark Army and communicate the truth about Draewulf to the Bron airship captains and soldiers.
The wraiths pause midlurch.
The fighting slows.
I stall. In awe. In shock. In absolute admiration for the power he possesses. Why did Myles never show me this? What else could he do with such ability? He opens his eyes and looks at me, and catches me staring at him. What he has, what he is, is beyond anything I could’ve imagined.
There’s a loud cry and in my periphery I see the Bron guards on the two closest airships respond. As if they’ve only now understood who they’ve truly been aiding and are lashing back.
Myles’s mirage ripples again and then starts to recede and fade. Slipping back from every object it’s touching to collect in the visible space around his body.
I turn back to Draewulf just as the wraith closest to me blinks. The thing peers at me with glossy black eyes inside a skeletal face. It lurches its decaying body toward me. I hurl an ice blade and slice its arm clean off, but it keeps coming.
There’s something odd about it. I peer closer as it rambles forward. It’s not just a wraith with a skeletal face—it’s the visage of one of Rasha’s Cashlin guards. The one who’d been lying dead beside her maid back in Bron.
Rasha lets out a cry.
“Look to Draewulf!” the large guard yells.
I nod, but before I turn, I send a shard of ice through the wraithguard’s head, knocking it to the deck.
When I do glance at Draewulf, he’s sliding a giant wolf claw down the back of King Mael’s neck. I thrust both hands toward the beast, but the black ice spears I create go through his already-ghosting body. He’s dissolving into a wisp again, becoming a spirit and slipping into the king’s body through the bleeding, sliced-open skin.
I draw in a gust of wind and lightning to lash against the king and Draewulf’s ethereal form.
Only, something’s wrong.
My head jerks back, and my mouth opens wide as my gaze is forced toward the sky, which is dark and glistening like spider eyes. The spider within me slashes out against the melody, the harmony of earth and sky surging through my veins. My muscles are screaming, tearing apart, wrenching me toward the ground, as if the very blood in my body is at war. And the spidery fluid is attacking the Elemental song.
Oh please no.
The sky overhead erupts in a mass of darkening clouds and lightning that is chaotic and hostile. It begins exploding from the sky and shredding apart the air and earth around us. Taking down chunks of cliff and the airships as it expands.
The vortex in me responds, swirling in dark fog coils, tugging destruction toward us, as if it could drain all life and energy into itself because it cannot consume enough. It’s taking, but not with magic and melody like before at the Keep. This is different. This drawing of life is deadly. A darkness grabbing hold from within and simultaneously trying to feed and own my soul as it steals from everything.
Suddenly I am a gaping abyss pulling from this world. A heartpulse of power outside of me that was never meant to be a part of me.
And it’s exhilarating on a level I never knew possible.
This is what Draewulf is after.
My lightning lashes at the cliffs and Castle. Two more airships go down and two others are sucked up along with a hail of rocks into a spiral of wind and cloud. They’re dropped half a terrameter away onto a group of homes and wraiths.
The lightning slices down again and this time it’s joined by ice, flattening more of the Dark Army and crumbling towers and archways.
I look to Rasha. To show her I’m doing it. I’m saving the world again.
Except all I see is her face etched in horror.
CHAPTER 40
I FROWN AND LOOK DOWN FOR ONE, TWO, THREE seconds. It’s as if a veil peels back and the destruction in front of me narrows into focus.
And for one horrifying moment I can see their faces.
The men running from the hurricane. The wraiths being torn apart. The women screaming as they cover their children to protect their flailing bodies.
It’s the cry of those mothers . . .
So familiar to my own mother’s wail as she and my father were burned alive in our home.
What is happening? I pull my hand back but the lightning doesn’t stop. I look down at the people, their faces staring up at me, blaming me as the fire and black ice slash down around them.
“Nym,” Rasha yells. “You have to make it stop!”
I pull my other fist back and open both hands, pressing them against my stomach, willing this vortex to die down and the storm to subside. It doesn’t. I press harder against my rib cage, as if digging into my own bones will evict it from my body.
A wisp of black cloud shoots down in a funnel and rips through one of the Castle’s rock spires. Stone and debris go flying, taking out wraiths, Terrenes, and Bron soldiers alike.
Please, I beg it. Oh hulls—
“Nym!” Rasha screams.
“I don’t know how!” I yell, my voice shaking with hate for the fact that I can’t control it.
Tears start falling. At least I think they’re tears. They’re hot on my cheeks compared to the freezing rain, and they won’t stop as another funnel cloud hurls down, but this time as it does it sends a breeze wafting over me. And for a moment I swear it smells of sun and heat and pine trees. From somewhere . . . a thought flits through me, like the soft flutter of a bird’s wings.
“Maybe that’s the point,” it whispers.
I frown.
“Maybe the i
ssue isn’t trying harder to stop it. Maybe it’s simply about surrendering. Because you are not your abilities.”
I shiver at the familiar scent of Eogan blended with those last words—the same words of Rasha’s from a week ago. Maybe it’s not the power or ability or anything else I might believe that makes me who I am. Maybe it’s surrendering to who I really am.
Remembering who I was made to be.
An image of the Valley of Origin flashes through my head. Of Eogan and me standing on the ledge listening to that melody weave through my soul—calling to the origin of me. To the girl called Nym, born on purpose through a magic that predates any curse or power in my veins. What had Eogan told me there? Perhaps I was born to shield others.
To bring mercy.
I swear there’s a chirp inside my rib cage and something snaps in there, so hard that I hear myself cry out. I tip my head back and let it come.
Suddenly my blood is aligning, like water trickling through my veins that’s quickly turning to a rush, then a roar. As if the Elemental inside is trilling her voice, her song, because I have always been her song. And the harmony is now coming in strong, forcing out the fear and dark and expectation.
I feel it pumping from the bottom of my feet, pushing all the way up to my chest, and suddenly I’m coughing and hacking and struggling to breathe.
This thing is cutting off my air and senses, and the world falls dim as my hearing fades along with my sight.
I lash a hand out to grab the deck floor in front of me as my body pitches and fumbles. From somewhere I sense a vibration in the atmosphere. Someone’s yelling.
“Nym!” I can feel the voice in the weather. It’s forceful. What is he yelling at?
Then I’m gagging because the spider is there. She’s digging in her talons, fighting to stay. Her coarse hairs and claws grip my flesh. “Leave,” I try to tell her, but my blood just boils and shakes and I swear it’s because she’s laughing at me.
Except then I’m screaming as she’s ripped from my lungs and tearing the very flesh from my bones as she’s coming up.
I vomit her all over the metal planks.
My vision clears to see the black mass in front of me, wet and glistening.
I shuffle backward on my knees and the world returns into focus as does the noise of more wraiths climbing over the ship’s railing to engage the Bron guards.
I look over to see Draewulf frozen in place, trying to catch his breath, wearing his new weakened body that is the Tullan king.
“Take him down!” Myles is yelling.
Suddenly the black mass at my feet is moving, rising ten feet off the deck to swirl up like a mist in front of me.
I stand.
“Kill it! Stab it!” Rasha cries, and from the corner of my eye I see she’s grabbed a sword to do just that.
But my muscles are seizing and my lungs gasping for air—trying to fill the hole left in my chest from the vortex. Before I can move, Rasha spins the sword round with an expert strike at the mass. Her blade bounces off. She lunges for it, stabbing this time, but the sword springs back at the mass’s resistance and she’s thrown with it. Her head smacks the railing eight paces away.
I gag and pull in air until my body stops shaking enough to notice Draewulf staring at the swirling mist, his expression full of greed and victory.
“Like hulls.” I yank down a lightning bolt onto the wisp.
Instead of dissolving, the swirling mass absorbs it, becoming bigger.
“Don’t!” Myles yells.
“Fool!” Draewulf says. “You can’t kill it with your ability.”
I grab a blade from the ground at the same moment the large Bron soldier raises his sword.
We thrust at it and the mass curls and squeals and writhes up in the air. We hack at it again, but our sharp edges have no effect other than to knock us both flat on our backs.
I draw down another lightning strike, aiming to hit the mass, but this time I notice that using the Elemental energy takes the breath from me, weakening me. Oh litches . . . My body’s going into shock. Or exhaustion.
The only effect my strike has on the thing is to empower it again until it’s expanding. It’s growing.
My hair is in my face and my clothes are rippling around me as I’m being pulled toward it. A few loose items from the ship’s deck fly up into the maelstrom.
From the side I see the frail-looking Tullan-king-who-is-Draewulf. He steps forward and tilts back his head. His expression is giddy. His black eyes alight as he moves for the mass and opens his gaping maw.
Litches.
He’s going to absorb it.
I flick my hand and send two wobbly ice spears at him. The first misses, but the other catches his arm. He barks and jerks backward.
Suddenly Myles is there, his mouth opening wide. His face looking ecstatic.
In one swoosh, he steps into the black cyclone and inhales. I can hear his breath, hear his hunger. Suddenly the mass diminishes in a spiral until it’s disappeared down Myles’s throat. And he has absorbed the dark power.
Draewulf’s roar shakes the rocks and stone towers around us. He lashes out at Myles, but the force of energy from the dark entity has already tossed Myles back across the ship’s deck and against the door, knocking him unconscious.
Draewulf stalks toward him, but my blade takes him in the thigh.
He turns and pounces for me and grabs my arm. I send a shock of ice toward his face, making him release me and jump back. But not before I catch his look of rage contort into surprise.
He stalls and, slowly, looks from me to Myles, then to Rasha who’s getting up from where she had fallen. She blinks at us. At the Tullan-king-who-is-Draewulf. And picks up her sword.
I raise my fist. “Let’s end this now.”
There’s a writhing beneath the surface of his skin that ripples into place and takes over his face. He winces and hunches for the slightest second as if in pain.
Then he raises a brow as his shoulders begin shaking. His breath comes out in an agonized huff. “Another time perhaps, pet.”
What? I stalk toward him. The fact that he doesn’t move makes me hesitate. What is he waiting for? Why is he doing this?
I let it loose just as his shaking becomes violent and knocks him out of the way so my explosion only hits his side. The body of the Tullan king he’s wearing crackles with a brittle sound. Then the body’s ripping apart, tearing open just like Breck’s did so many weeks ago. It dissolves into wisps, melting into the atmosphere except for a small bit of clothing and skin and blood. The blood of a king.
The blood Draewulf absorbed all too quickly.
The wolfish beast stands in front of me and stretches his shoulders and neck before centering his gaze on mine.
He smirks as if I’m a foolish girl but it doesn’t hide the weakness he’s experiencing. He steps backward and grabs Rasha, feebly knocking her sword aside. She punches him in the jaw just as he leaps with her over the railing. They land on another airship that has appeared out of nowhere to bank beside ours. I rush forward with knives of ice pulled from the sky and land two in Draewulf’s chest at the same moment he glances up at my ship’s balloon and mutters a foreign curse at it. The words fly up and puncture a hole in it before he sags and stumbles.
And before the next feeble ice blade I’ve hurled has landed, the airship he’s on pulls away. I bring down three more blades anyway but they fly with little force and clatter harmlessly against the ship’s hull.
The moment slows.
My heart pulses as the cavernous sensation in my chest steadies and my head clears enough to hear the last of the fighting around me. But all I can see is what’s left of the Tullan king’s skin and blood and clothing fragments lying four paces in front of me. Already invaded, absorbed, and discarded in one bout of violence.
I bend my fingers into a fist and shove them toward the sky. But the blood in me is suddenly failing. Too feeble. As if the power spent on nearly destroying this place is almost e
mptied out and in need of refueling.
I glance up and find Rasha’s face. Her gaze is on mine.
She is on the swiftly departing airship with Draewulf.
CHAPTER 41
A HORN BLASTS AND, AS IF ON CUE, THE AIRSHIP I’m standing on pulls back from the Castle and cliffs and the host of other ships. It soars up into the sky even as air’s flapping out the balloon’s small gaping hole, taking Myles and me and Eogan’s body and the Bron soldiers with it.
Within seconds, four other airships follow suit—while the rest have either crashed or appear to be overrun with wraiths. Like the one Draewulf’s skimming away on.
“Go back! He has Rasha!” I try to summon a storm to stop his ship, but my winds are too weak to retrieve it.
“Take us higher,” the large Bron guard yells.
I flip around to face him. Who does he think he is? “Your king is dead and the Cashlin princess is about to get slaughtered. And that horde of wraiths down there will destroy what’s left of those people,” I snarl. “Take us back so we can finish it.”
“I’m sorry, miss, but there’s not enough of us. We need to regroup and make contact with the captains who are left.”
I can sense the wildness invade my gaze. I stride toward him, ready to throw myself and my blade at his face. “If you don’t want to go, fine. But you take me back.”
His expression turns doubtful as he drops his gaze to my chest.
I snort and look down to see what he’s staring at.
What in hulls? My red dress is sliced in shreds, as is my bloody skin underneath it. Clawed not by bolcrane claws, but by my own fingers and blade in my attempts to get the vortex out. To get free.
I sag, as if the loss of blood is only affecting me now that I’ve noticed the obscene amount soaked into my clothes and booties. “I don’t care. Take me back.” I hurl myself at him, yelling it, telling him to return us to save the only friend I have left in the world and destroy the monster I should’ve been able to kill numerous times over the course of today. “Please. I have to try. He has Rasha.”
