A Soul Like Glass (Kingdom of Betrayal #4)

Chapter 49

Chapter 49

A sh and dust choke me.

I open my eyes to the vast plain that stretches around me, to the tornados of crimson dirt that whip at the air and monstrous beasts that crash against each other in the distance.

I can barely breathe. All I can do is take short, sharp gasps while the scent of blood and death threatens to drive every rational thought from my mind.

You don’t need to feel afraid.

The whisper reaches me across the wind, far closer to me than it was the first time I was pulled here.

A woman’s figure takes shape within the darkness, sections of dust peeling from the sides of tornados, ash rising from the ground, all of it pulling together to construct her body. Ash streams across her head and down her sides like hair.

This darkness belongs to you.

She glides toward me, her features all too clear. A mirror to my darkest fears.

She is me.

“Take control,” she whispers. “Shape the living to your needs. Command the dead to do your bidding. Fight the old?—”

“Find the new,” I say, rising to my full height. “Oh, I will.”

I will create something that has never existed before.

A keeper of all the magics.

A keeper who will wear a dark crown and live forever in a prison.

But to do it, I must first take a terrible risk.

I must lure the darkness to me. The only way to do that is by feeding it. I must trap it before it knows it’s trapped. And only at the last moment will I imprison it.

Reaching for my hammer, I slip it free in one smooth movement, taking hold of it in my left hand, right next to my medallion.

Power bursts around me, sending rays of golden light spearing through the air around me.

The shadow-woman’s smile grows broader as I raise my hammer above my head and prepare to drive it into the ground.

“Come to me!” I cry as I ram my hammer into the dust and bones in the ground.

Energy explodes out from me, rippling visibly across the crimson ash. The impact shudders through me, and my bones feel like they’ve become dust, too.

“Come to me!” I scream again, raising my hammer and hitting the ground once more.

This time, lightning streaks across the sky and thunder booms. Blood-rain splatters my hair and falls onto the shadow-woman.

Memories of all the times I ran through this rain assail me.

All the times I cut down monsters, only for more to rise.

Until the magic is cleaned from this soil and every other part of the land that’s affected, this darkness won’t end.

In the distance, the monsters have stopped fighting and now they converge on me from all directions.

All of them are enormous beasts. Many have tusks. Others have claws. Still more have teeth. They are vicious and deformed, but not by choice.

They prowl toward me, giant beasts that stop to gather in a wide circle.

“I have come to claim you,” I cry, lifting my voice above the rumbling thunder, tasting blood on my lips from the raindrops that continue to fall. “I will give you purpose and strength. I will be your Queen.”

With that, I return my hammer to the harness on my back and bend to the ash at my feet.

There are so many bones beneath this soil, all waiting to be transformed. It takes mere seconds to find a large one.

“Become an anvil,” I whisper, voicing my command, even though I don’t need to speak it aloud.

The bone reshapes itself into white rock, taking the same shape as the black rock on the cliffs beside the ocean, providing a wide, flat surface on one side with an indented section on the other.

Drops of blood-rain gather in the indent.

I press my palm to them. “Become fire.”

Black flame bursts to life, its heat rising into the air. It, too, smells like death.

While the shadow-woman glides slowly back and forth nearby, an embodiment of all my worst fears, the beasts wait quietly, and even the tornados of ash have settled, becoming calm, the wind merely plucking at the ground in places.

All of them, waiting.

I open the toolbox and carefully tip its contents onto the anvil.

Graviter warned me never to touch this dark metal again. But he didn’t say what would happen if I did.

He didn’t need to.

Whenever I picked up Malak’s hammer or wore his medallions, I lost myself to them. When Erik and I were traveling through the forest to find Milena, I conquered the power of Malak’s medallion over me, but I didn’t extinguish its malice and cruelty.

Now I will welcome them back.

Because I can’t make a dark crown with love in my heart. This crown can only contain hatred and savagery and death.

Very carefully, I separate my grandmother’s pin from the other pieces, sliding it to the side of the flat surface. I will incorporate it at the end, once the core of the crown is solid and strong.

My hands shake as I lift them over the black metal, preparing to take hold of Malak’s hammer again, to use it one last time before it, too, must be melded into the crown.

I can’t do this without my own medallion, so I leave it on my hand. Between my medallion and Malak’s hammer, I will have all the power I need.

My heart becomes cold as I banish my happiness, all my memories of Erik and my siblings and Galeia. All the warmth and love. I take a mental knife to it all and cut it apart so that none of that happiness can wrap around my thoughts and find a way into the crown.

“Find the new,” I whisper to myself.

Take control.

In those final heartbeats, I tell myself I’m limitless.

Then I take hold of Malak’s hammer and embrace its malice.