Chapter 20
Gwen stood frozen, waiting for the world to open up at her feet and swallow her whole.
No.
Sirus’s eyes widened as he kept them on her. He gasped in a harsh breath, the black fading from his irises until they returned to their icy blue. Gwen ran over and fell to her knees next to him, catching him as he slumped forward. She struggled to hold him up, but she managed to turn him onto his side as he slid to the ground. Gwen held his bloodied face in her hands as he tried to keep his eyes open and on her. “It’ll be okay,” she told him shakily. “I promise.”
He lifted his hand to her cheek only long enough to graze it before he went limp and his eyes rolled shut. Gwen let out a sob of pure terror. Sirus was still breathing. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t moving either. Desperate, she grabbed the dagger in his chest and yanked it out. He didn’t move. To her relief, it wasn’t black. Just silver. And it hadn’t struck his heart, she didn’t think.
“This has all grown rather dull,” Nestra observed with boredom as she strolled past Gwen. “Take her,” she ordered.
A large arm wrapped around Gwen’s middle, and she gasped as she was hauled up and away from Sirus. The firm grip was unyielding, and she knew immediately who it was. She would never forget him, or his sword, for as long as she lived. The man from the mirrors.
He did not hold his sword to her throat, but he held it near. A warning. She tried to fight him off, but he merely squeezed her tighter, constricting her ribs and her lungs.
“It seems I did not have to send you hunting after all, Aldor,” Nestra mused, coming closer to look at Gwen. “My destiny came to me all on its own.”
With what force she had, Gwen elbowed him in the gut. It annoyed him enough that he let her go long enough to spin her around and snatch her by the throat. Aldor’s grip tightened as he glared down at her, his mirror eyes reflecting her straining red face as she struggled to breathe. Gwen pushed his arm, but it did no good.
She’d failed. She’d done nothing. She was going to die. Sirus was going to die. The others?—
Guilt tore at her. It’d been all her fault. Everything. A few tears fell down her face, and she saw a small flare of dark blue in Aldor’s eyes as they did. His expression shifted. Softened. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but his grip loosened, and Gwen hauled in a deep, gasping breath of air.
“Bring her to me,” Nestra ordered.
Aldor dragged her closer, holding his sword against her neck this time. The dark priestess eyed her up and down before she lodged one of Sirus’s swords into the ground at her feet. “The day has finally come,” she said as she reached up to caress Gwen’s cheek with one of her ghostly fingers. She smelled like ash and rotting flesh.
Gwen squirmed under her insidious touch, but Aldor tightened his grip and pressed the sword harder against her neck. Nestra reached behind her back and pulled out a dagger. A black dagger. A jolt of fear shot through Gwen. She knew that dagger. Across its dark, shimmering surface were dull smears of dried blood. Sirus’s blood.
Gwen whimpered as Nestra brought the blade up to her cheek. “The Star will finally be mine,” the dark priestess declared, her wicked smile revealing blackening teeth.
“And you will make me whole,” Aldor added with a touch of desperation.
Nestra’s eyes shifted up to him, as if she’d nearly forgotten he was there at all and could speak. “Of course, my loyal pet,” she replied.
It was only a flicker, the tiniest twitch of her mouth. Gwen saw it out of the corner of her eye, and she sensed her opportunity. “She’s lying,” she told Aldor.
Nestra’s eyes shot to hers. “Silence,” she demanded, scraping the D?kk blade down Gwen’s cheek. She gasped in pain, and Aldor snatched his hand to her mouth to stifle her cry, his sword pressing harder against her neck until it almost cut her too.
Even though his sword was still, Gwen felt his body begin to shake as he held her flush against him.
“Pay her no mind, Aldor,” Nestra told him, her magicks clawing at the edges of Gwen’s consciousness. “The pitiful thing would say anything to live.”
Gwen would, but she wasn’t lying.
Nestra snatched her wrist and pulled it toward her. With the D?kk blade, she cut clean through her jacket and the sweater Rath had knit for her until her arm was exposed all the way to her elbow. The priestess ran her black nail over the jagged pink scar where Sirus had bit into her, and Gwen’s chest grew tight. “That vampire dog drank from her,” she told Aldor. “It’s how he survived my poison.”
Gwen desperately panted shallow breaths through her nose as Aldor’s hold tightened. She tried to think—think of anything she could do. Nestra scraped the dark blade down the length of Gwen’s arm until she reached the spot below the scar. There, Nestra pressed the tip into her flesh, and Aldor held his hand tight against her mouth as Gwen cried out in pain and writhed against him. The dark blade was searing and cold all at once as the evil woman carved into her, each cut burning like a hot iron over her skin.
She squirmed and tried to fight, to no avail, as fear and pain settled into her bones. When Nestra was done, Gwen looked down in horror to see symbols carved into her bleeding skin. Symbols she vaguely recognized. The priestess began to mumble under her breath, and Gwen’s skin sizzled as her magicks began to rise, blue light seeping from the marks in her flesh.
The language the priestess spoke was also familiar. It unsettled something deep inside Gwen. Something locked far away. She fought against it, but there was no use. Bit by bit, with each word of the priestess’s spell, the lock that protected it seemed to be undone. Gwen’s body began to burn as waves of energy spilled into her.
“Jacard thought himself clever to hide the Star inside you,” Nestra said, seemingly to herself. “A child who shared his blood. The blood of your ancestors.” She looked disgusted. “The D?kk were weak and their fall inevitable. Your pathetic, watered-down bloodline deserves to be culled from this realm, but you should be proud,” Nestra told her. “Your sacrifice will bring forth a new age of magick.”
The evil woman smiled with pure delight as she raised her hand and the knife over Gwen’s arm and drew the power toward her. It twirled up out of the symbols in her arm and braided itself around Nestra’s hand.
Gwen tried to turn to shadow. To free herself. The magick didn’t come, didn’t answer, and Aldor held her tight. Panic flooded her, pushing out the pain and the hum of magickal energy vibrating through her body. She managed to glance down at Sirus bleeding in the snow, barely alive. Her heart felt like it was being torn in two. She had to do something. Anything. She closed her eyes.
She’d felt Sirus’s shadows wrap around her countless times. The chill and comfort they brought in the darkness. In the shadows, she’d started to feel at home. In her magick, she’d started to feel connected. Gwen dug deep inside herself. To the part she’d been afraid to touch. The place where the source of her magick had been locked out of reach.
You are of flesh and power. Bone and magick.
Daughter of Darkness.
Child of Shadows.
Gwen called on the darkness inside her. It stirred, newly awoken. Her ears rang; her body felt not entirely her own. You are mine, she told it. The magick, the darkness—it was not bad or evil or wrong. It merely was. And it answered.
Everything fell away. All Gwen knew was the darkness. It stretched before her, around her, through her. It was clear to her now. The magick had always been hers. It had just been locked away. Waiting patiently. She did not need to claim it. All she had to do was let go and wield it.
“Mistress,” Aldor muttered warily. His grip loosened.
When Gwen opened her eyes, a haze of dark blue magick swirled around them, whipping the falling snow. “Let. Me. Go,” she demanded.
Nestra sneered at her. “You think yourself powerful?” she hissed, the honey in her voice turning sour. She snatched Gwen by the face, digging her nails into her cheeks. “You are nothing. Soon you will be nothing but ash and dust, like your father.”
Gwen only felt more emboldened by Nestra’s words. Her skin hummed as she summoned the shadows. They blended with her magick and swirled around them like a dark storm.
“Your tricks are of no use,” Nestra declared. “My destiny is written. It’s finally time you serve your purpose.” She snatched Gwen’s cut arm and continued the spell under her breath.
A blinding shock rioted through Gwen, stealing her senses, until everything was nothing. Flickers of memory began to flash in her mind. Small childhood joys. These past few weeks at Volkov. The last tendrils of memories she held of her mother. They all cascaded through her in an instant. Then there was Sirus. He was not any one memory. His presence and the way he made her feel. Like she’d found something she never even knew was missing. She wasn’t ready to let him go.
With a gasp, Gwen’s vision cleared. Her body felt like it was being burned from the inside out. Nestra glared down at her with triumph in her eyes. “The Star will be mine,” she declared with a black smile. She lifted the black blade in her hand, and Gwen went stiff. A sickening, wet thunk filled her ear as the dark priestess plunged the blade into Aldor’s chest behind her.
He sucked in a breath, lowering his sword from Gwen’s throat and dropping his grip. Nestra held Gwen’s arm firmly, yanking her away.
With horror, Gwen looked back at Aldor, unable to believe what had just happened. The betrayal and shock in his mirrored eyes was almost heartbreaking.
“You have served me well, half-breed son of Greystone,” Nestra told him. “But only the sacrifice of one who trusts me would bring about my destiny.”
Aldor dropped his sword and looked down at the blade lodged in him. He gasped a small sob of shock, then dropped to his knees. Anger, raw and visceral, took shape in those mirror eyes. “You promised me?—”
Nestra chuckled a cruel laugh. “Did you truly believe I was ever going to let a half-breed stand at my side when I became queen? That I would care if your soul was returned?”
Aldor’s rage became palpable. He tried to stand, but his body gave out, and he fell forward into the snow and dirt. He struggled to push himself up, fighting to the last breath. His eyes slid from Nestra to Gwen. Resignation filled his face as his body trembled. With a last sputtered gasp, his head dropped, and his body stilled.
“The blood is spilled.” Nestra spoke loudly and with pride. “The pathetic life taken. Give me what is mine.” She began to mutter more of her spell as she shoved Gwen down over Aldor’s corpse. The moment Gwen touched him, her head felt like it was going to split in half. She heard herself scream from somewhere in the distance. The magick inside her became violent as it was torn out of her. Gwen’s whole body felt like it was being ripped apart piece by piece.
There was a hiss and a burst of energy. Gwen gasped in a lungful of air and coughed as the pain subsided. She was on the ground, lying next to Aldor’s lifeless body. A flash of silver made her turn. Sirus snarled as he nearly struck Nestra, but she slid out of the way in the last moment, like a shifting shadow. The dark priestess grabbed Sirus’s sword, the one she’d abandoned, and took on his third blow. Gwen’s heart leapt. He was conscious.
She tried to stand, but her legs were like jelly. Her arm bled from the deep cuts Nestra had carved into her. She heard them fighting and tried to clear her dizzy head. She had to help Sirus.
“I should have finished you before,” Nestra seethed. Gwen managed to stand as the priestess tossed a ball of dark flame into Sirus’s stomach, and he stumbled back. She struck him with another, and he braced himself against it, his jacket and shirt catching dark fire.
“Run!” he snarled at Gwen. Her heart lurched at the rawness in his command. The fear. “Go!”
Gwen clutched her bleeding arm as he tore his burning jacket and shirt from his torso and threw them into the snow. He squared off against Nestra again, his skin steaming and bloodied.
In her dream, she’d always felt this fear. A fear for him as he prepared to take on the dark thing that lurked in the forest. But it wasn’t fear she felt as she looked at him now. Her skin sizzled with magick. He was beautiful and fearless, but he wouldn’t win against Nestra. He couldn’t. But there was a chance, a small one, that she could.
Gwen pushed through and stumbled forward. “I’m the one you want,” she reminded Nestra, her voice so dark it didn’t even sound like her own. “Leave him out of this.”
Sirus snarled, lunging forward to protect Gwen when Nestra turned her black eyes back on her. The dark priestess dropped the sword and spread her black wings, rising up into the sky and out of his reach. She landed sharply in front of Gwen and lifted her hand, summoning a wall of dark fire from the ground to block Sirus’s assault at her back. The flames spread, surrounding them in a tight circle. The priestess glared down at Gwen, her face covered in the creeping tendrils of the corrupt magick she wielded. Her skin was sallow, her bones growing more visible with each passing minute, her white hair thin and brittle. A glint of obsessed, carnal hunger fell over her face. Gwen shuddered, and Nestra flashed a blackened smile.
“You are right, child,” she agreed. “It is time to take what is mine.” Nestra flicked her wrist, and the black blade she’d plunged into Aldor’s chest appeared in her hand. She ran it across her own palm. Instead of blood, shadows crept out of the cut. “It is time I fulfill my destiny.” Nestra snatched Gwen by the front of her sweater and plunged the blade into her stomach.
The pain was distant. Somewhere at the edge of her mind. All Gwen could manage was a gasp of air as everything began to burn. The priestess pulled the blade out and ran the blood across her palm.
Gwen’s body vibrated violently. A haze of blue filled the air as she began to glow with magick. Tears fell as she watched Nestra’s palm glow the same blue. The priestess grinned with utter delight. “So much power,” she declared with greedy satisfaction. The magick ran up her arm through her veins as she continued her spell.
The ancient words tickled the edge of Gwen’s mind. It was old magick, blended with spells not from this realm, but one beyond. Gwen looked at Nestra. Her pale skin was cracking like a broken sidewalk under the weight of the magick she was stealing. Magick she thought she could control.
In the distance, beyond Nestra’s fiery wall, Gwen heard Sirus roar with fury. The sound tore at her heart. Gwen summoned all the strength she had left and took hold of Nestra’s arm. The evil woman’s black eyes widened as she clutched onto her. Within the dark wall of flames, Gwen summoned the shadows, but these were not mere shadows from beyond. They seeped out of her. A darkness born from a time before light itself existed. From a time when darkness consumed everything.
Little blue cracks began to appear over Nestra’s face. Tendrils of shadow and flame leaching out. Her expression twisted into one of fury, and she tried to pull away, but Gwen held her close, letting the full force of the magick inside her seep into the dark priestess.
“You want it?” Gwen snapped at Nestra. “Then take it.”
Nestra’s body began to shake violently under Gwen’s hold as she unleashed the magick inside her and let it flow between them. The priestess hissed with rage and fear as the cracks in her skin grew wider and began to burn with dark fire. “No!” she snarled. “What have you done?”
Gwen pushed her away as Nestra began to heave and spasm, the hum of magick nearly overwhelming as it pressed around them. The dark priestess looked down at her palms as they burst into black flames. She screamed, and the wings at her back started to wither to ash. She stumbled back, not recognizing the threat coming up behind her nor the fact that her wall of fire had dropped.
A shimmer of silver spread through Nestra’s chest as Sirus struck her from behind. The priestess shrieked, her face alight with rage as she looked down at the sword sticking out of her. Another blade joined the first as Sirus plunged his other sword through her heart. Nestra threw her head back as the shadows she’d summoned turned to flames. Sirus yanked his blades from her body, and that’s when the fire truly took hold.
Gwen stumbled back but didn’t look away. The priestess’s screams echoed across the clearing as the shadows and flames she’d been wielding moments before consumed her, burning away everything she was. She fell into the snow, her frail form thrashing. Her skin turned black, and Gwen closed her eyes, unable to watch anymore. When she opened them seconds later, there was nothing left but black ash and a silver diadem.
It seemed almost impossible, but it was done. Nestra was gone. Sirus was safe.
Gwen’s knees gave out, but Sirus was already there. He grabbed her tightly, and relief washed over her as he held her. He laid her down away from all the carnage in the snow, his black eyes surveying her body. Gwen didn’t need to see to know. She felt broken.
It didn’t hurt. She didn’t feel anything.
His blood-soaked face was tormented.
“I’m sorry,” Gwen breathed, reaching up shakily to stroke his face.
His eyes shifted from black to their frosty blue, and her heart ached. A sense of calm washed over her as she looked up into his eyes. Sirus pulled her into his lap and held her close to his chest. He cupped her cheek and gently brushed it with his thumb.
Niah appeared in the distance behind him, and Gwen stuttered a breath of relief knowing she was safe too.
“I couldn’t leave you,” she told him.
“No,” he whispered. The pain in his voice tore at her heart. He leaned in and rested his forehead against hers. “You cannot go.”
Gwen was happy she was with him. If this was how it all had to end, at least she was here. At least he was safe. All she’d ever wanted was a chance at love. He’d given her that.
Sirus brushed her lips with a kiss, and Gwen savored the warmth it spread through her. It was the last thing she felt. “I love you,” she tried to say. Then there was darkness.