25. Cress
“Totally chic, don’t you think?” I asked Braza, eyeing the dress displayed on one of the last standing mannequins in a storefront. We were taking a quick break while Phaeron cleaned up the mess we’d made of the unnatural nests we’d stomped.
“You should try it on. Dark colors look nice on you,” she answered in my head.
“Maybe if we get a chance to shop.” I practically pouted. Maybe it was my entitlement showing, but I’d hoped the mall would’ve been relatively empty and untouched. A shopping spree in a mega mall with just my men and Braza? Yes, please.
“Are you talking to yourself again?” my handbook asked, fluttering in for a landing on top of my head.
“Quiet. There are still monsters,” hissed Jin. I hadn’t taken her on this mission on purpose, but she’d stowed away in the truck anyway while Milo and Bella remained safe with the other familiars at the hospital. I stooped to scratch her behind the ears, and she loosed a reluctant purr.
“Is the kitty mad at me?” my handbook asked in a loud whisper.
I put a finger to my lips, and again, we went “shhhh” at the same time.
Braza crackled with electric surety. “Something’s wrong.”
I lifted my weapon and spun, looking for the danger. Ben and Geo stirred nearby, alert within moments. Under the sound of my breath, I could hear the calls of unnaturals on the levels below us, plus the sound of claws on tile. “They’re all on the move,” I murmured.
Phaeron took form from shadows just as I was smothering my blade’s glow. A crazed glint flashed in his gemstone eyes, his teeth bared in a snarl. Braza reacted first, throwing out a wave of energy that suffused him within moments.
He flinched and grasped his head. With my weapon dimmed, he was nearly one with the dark mall around us. “Endaeron is almost here,” he growled.
A winged shape dive-bombed us. The creature, a former seagull with a puffed-out chest like a water balloon, released a shrill scream. It exploded with a wet sound when Geo smashed it on the flat of his shield. “Myuna is not content to wait for nightfall,” he rumbled.
“Much as I want to fuck up Garroway…we’re outnumbered,” Ben pointed out.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Rain began to aggressively patter against the ceiling.
“I moved the torchbearers we rescued to the entrance foyer,” Phaeron said. I heard the rasp of his sword leaving its sheath. “It’s too late to retreat.”
“Well, then it’s time we stood and fought.” Despite everything, Ben smiled. There was a sound like glass cracking, and then he had purple liquid on his fingertips and painted a bold eye symbol between his brows.
Geo took to the air with a heave of his obsidian body. There was an outraged series of shrieks that followed, accompanied by the sound of buckling metal. I encouraged Braza’s shadows over my face, parting the impenetrable darkness to spot what he’d done. He’d dropped his considerable weight in the middle of the closest escalator, buckling it in half and stranding the unnaturals that were halfway up its stationary length.
Dozens of hands grabbed for the gargoyle, dragging him off balance toward the seething mass of unnaturals.
“He can handle himself,” Braza reassured me. A split second later, he’d taken to the air again, shaking off a doskalo-like creature trying to cling to his ankle. It dropped for a hard landing a floor below.
Every prickling length of her shadows had gone taut with awareness, pressing into my skin with an electric sense of danger. The Hungering Darkness was somewhere close, its presence swirling over our heads in search of an opening.
“Go hide,” I whispered to Jin, who scampered away but not too far. I could still feel my connection to her, the ferocity I could borrow if I needed it.
“Geo!” I shouted. We needed him here, with us. He was in the process of destroying the other escalator, set a few yards away from the first. It wouldn’t stop the unnatural infestation below us, but they would have to find another route to the top floor.
White shadows took form right in front of me. Garroway moved like a blur, striking my sword right out of my hand with a full-strength snap of his own blade. The Lux spell sputtered out, throwing our surroundings into dim murk. The relentless gray storm overhead prevented any natural light from interfering.
Phaeron charged him with a shadowborn’s roar, shattering the air with his fury and the ring of steel on steel. Ben helped me up while I sent out a tendril of Braza’s shadows to retrieve my sword by its hilt. The mark on Ben’s forehead glowed a faint purple.
“Can you see with that?” I asked, pointing at it.
“Kind of,” he answered.
“Good enough,” I said, then leapt forward in full shadowborn form to join the duel of black and white shadows nearby.
Phaeron had been edged back from the combination of Endaeron’s power and Garroway’s vampire strength and speed. He attacked with bladed shadows as I slipped my weapon into the vampire’s guard, spraying dark blood from a slash just above his ribs.
But the rip of flesh began to knit together, healing at an impossible speed. “Cress, at last. How I’ve grown to despise you,” he chuckled in a two-toned voice. White shadow flashed in my face, forming thorny tendrils that bound my upper arms to my chest.
“The feeling’s mut—”
His magic flared, and I squeezed my eyes shut just in time, struggling out of the grasp of his magic. We’d traveled down a level, and he released me from the magic when I was a few feet above the ground. I crashed to the unforgiving tile with my arms still pinned to my side, pain flaring through my side and leg.
What felt like a hundred sets of eyes turned hot attention toward me. Unnatural creatures and torchbearers alike leapt the moment Garroway disappeared. I flared my shadows, cutting through the bindings he’d left on me and dissipating the bright shadows. As I was reaching for my sword, an obsidian figure swooped in for a landing and faltered, lost in the dimness of our surroundings.
“Light,” he ground out. I cast a quick Lux on my sword, and the monsters flinched for a moment. Geo kicked the closest ferret-like creature away before it could sink its teeth into my shadows and flesh.
I leveraged myself back to my feet, feeling a warning jolt of pain that radiated down from my thigh. “I shall repair you,” Braza said with urgency, as we both noticed the duel of black and white above us, occasionally punctuated by the flash of a silvery throwing dagger or a hint of Ben’s blood magic infusing a strike.
No one was fighting alone, at least. I helped Geo with shadows and light, shooting out darkness with many points to strike at the creatures surrounding us.
I cowed the torchbearers reaching for us by blinding them with a flare from my weapon. They babbled, begging Myuna for mercy as they clawed at their eyes.
“Your goddess says stand down,” I ordered with as much authority I could muster. A family of four—two adults and two kids of different ages—the nearest white-eyed people, dropped their hands and stayed in place, looking confused.
Geo hesitated, checking a swing of his weapon and shield to avoid harming them. He pivoted, showing no mercy for the twisted animals, but they died too easily. The blunt force of Geo’s fighting style crunched stretched bones and strained tendons. It left a graveyard around him, soon replaced by Myuna’s enslaved supernatural victims.
I didn’t want to harm them when they could still be saved. “I’m going up!” I shouted to Geo before falling into the shadows, letting Braza control the magic that turned us into particles.
In a blink, we cleared the guardrail one story up, just in time to see Garroway catch one of Ben’s daggers and reverse its course, embedding it in his chest. I heard the sucking gasp he took as he fell backward.
“Stay alive a little longer, little Benjamin. We have unfinished business,” Garroway said in a two-toned drawl.
Ben bared his teeth with another gasping breath. He probed at the wound and wrote the rune for healing on his skin with a shaking hand. I placed myself between him and the possessed vampire, sinking into a guard stance.
“As do we, blood baron,” Phaeron snarled.
He had re-engaged Garroway’s attention, the two of them fairly evenly matched with swordplay and shadows. Braza pulled at my awareness, asking for a few more moments as I tested my wounded leg. Her power had turned the lingering ache into a smaller pinch of pain.
“Ah, yes. So we do. My lady is quite displeased to have you off your leash—”
Phaeron’s attention drifted for a split second before he disengaged in a swirl of black shadows, which stirred in the wake of Geo arriving like a battering ram. He checked his momentum with stony wings and slammed shield-first into Garroway, sending him straight through a glass storefront.
I lined up just a step behind Geo as he and Phaeron faced the person-shaped hole together, forming a wall of muscle and rock. But the Hungering Darkness didn’t emerge as a corporeal vampire, instead escaping as a curl of white shadow.
“Behind you!” Ben called in a strained voice.
Garroway had appeared right behind me, his sword descending toward my neck. An identical weapon caught his, Phaeron reacting first.
I called on Jin, borrowing from the core of fury she held for the creature that’d killed her first witch. That fierce desire for revenge filled me. I moved with sinewy grace as the two men re-engaged their stalemate, dancing with them both. Phaeron pressed the attack, and so did I, wounding Garroway when he wasn’t able to hold us both off at the same time.
Our cuts were beginning to stick, his vampiric healing too overwhelmed. He seemed to be slowing, too. A flash of understanding lit his blood-colored eyes before he turned to white mist.
“Is there any way to stop him from running?” I asked Braza.
“Patience, brightest of souls. Turn off Lux a moment.”
I did as she suggested, shaking the lingering light out of my weapon. Now that I wasn’t actively fighting, Geo pushed me behind himself, shield raised for whatever came next.
“Lick your wounds, then. Coward,” Phaeron spat. He was in full shadowborn form, with spikes over his tail and a wolf-like visage over his face. It was spread in a vicious snarl as Garroway circled overhead, just beyond our reach.
“As I was saying.” Without physical lungs, the dry rasp of a voice in my head had to be the Hungering Darkness on its own. “Myuna desires your return. And she is practically salivating for the soul of the purple-haired witch.”
“She can have neither.” Phaeron bristled with power, more and more darkness answering to his will. Without the light of my weapon in the way, he beckoned a wave of shadows. A tide of darkness swarmed over the curl of white shadow and dragged it back to the ground. Upon impact, it became Garroway again, struggling against several loops of inky rope and more forcing its way into his mouth, nostrils, and eyes.
“Why must you struggle against the inevitable?” hissed the Hungering Darkness, independent of its host body’s choking and writhing. White light flared around Garroway, and Phaeron staggered, clutching his head.
Braza forced a steady stream of power into him through the invisible tether between them. Geo spread his wings to block me from going to him, rumbling dangerously when Phaeron turned. White flared over the yellow in his eyes, hunger reflecting there before Geo squared up, fully between us. “You shall not harm her,” he said.
“Just one taste.”
Phaeron whispered, “Just one taste.”
Garroway was getting to his feet, shaking off the choking shadows. White shadows made extra fangs around his victorious grin as Phaeron evaded around Geo’s wide stance, going straight for me.
I backed away, dropping my weapon. Geo grabbed Phaeron’s shoulder, stone fingers digging in hard as the dimensional struggled and snapped. “This isn’t you.” I was begging, fumbling for the mark of protection he’d left on my wrist. I touched it and breathed his name.
Phaeron froze. He drew on his shadows for a burst of strength and bared his fangs, ripping away from Geo.
I braced myself for impact, shadowy claws out. But he’d turned around and sunk his teeth deep in the white shadows over Garroway’s shoulder.
There was no mistaking how he jerked his head to the side, tearing at the Hungering Darkness like an animal. My mouth dropped open in shock. “Oh, fuck,” I whispered, fearing the worst for him.
A cloud of white curling shadows enveloped Phaeron. He was a horned shadow crouching within the heart of them, unmoving.
Garroway staggered to the side, clutching his head and his bloodstained sword. He looked around, mouth twisting into a sneer. “Well, then,” he muttered.
He turned and ran, a blur of speed.
I tore the Hungering Darkness down the middle, just like it’d done to Braza’s soul so long ago. When I’d envisioned myself destroying it so utterly, I hadn’t dreamed of using my teeth or swallowing a mouthful of the vapors that spurted from the wound like blood.
With that taste, I was damned. So many of my people had started an addiction to the rush of energy and memory within soul energy with just one bite. It became a craving that couldn’t be slaked except by death. There was no coming back from it once one of us has destroyed the soul of another.
I gave thanks that instead of drinking in the spice and sunlight of Cress’s soul, it was what remained of my brother’s spirit tearing between my teeth. His memories suffusing my mind as the white magic keeping him stitched together failed.
I would’ve expected him to taste of blood and grave dirt, as painful deaths were the only thing he’d wrought ever since the Age of Decay, but Endaeron was not an ordinary soul, not even when it was only a portion of him left behind. A smooth alcoholic taste suffused my mouth; it was Endaeron’s favorite blend, something we’d left behind on Soiluire…akin to an aged whisky.
I felt my awareness fall deeper and deeper out of my body.
A jolt passed through my mind. I opened my eyes, finding myself in a distantly familiar room with that dimly memorable taste on my tongue. And next to me, a figure I’d forgotten yet never could. Endaeron, alive, taller than me. He was ivory-white horns to feet, broad with icy wings shot through with silver blood in his veins. Gold stain limned his forward-facing horns and the angles of his face.
He was in his prime, the First Prince in his suit of white fabric, with the golden symbol of a shadowborn on the breast. Though technically, it was “lightborn” in his case, with his white shadows.
I stilled, my breath caught. “Brother,” I said, like this memory would turn to speak with me.
To my shock, he did. His face tilted down, his white-lined eyes meeting mine. “Brother,” he echoed, deep and sure. “Our time is short and your needs great, so I have selected this memory for you to witness before I fade.”
I became aware of the scene around us in a blink, dropped into it as a bystander. Endaeron stood by Myuna’s right hand, with me inserted on his other side. In this memory, she was in her form of an Iorsio tribe female, seated on a massive throne in one of her many private rooms. A Vrassorm woman knelt before her, her skin nearly as pale as the goddess from what she witnessed within a globe of black Void energy.
“Well? What does the Void whisper of my future?” Myuna asked in her awful multi-layered voice.
The woman was a Vess, with one cloudy eye and the other quivering with fear. “I need to consult with it f-further, my lady. S-Sometimes the Void can be so cryptic…”
A tight smile twisted Myuna’s mouth. “I insist. Surely you do not doubt your goddess’s ability to understand a prophecy?”
“My lady, it is unwise to probe the future out of fear,” Endaeron said.
As a dimensional, her eyes glittered like diamonds as she swung her attention toward him. I tensed, but she didn’t notice me. Of course not. This had happened on another planet, in another age where my brother still lived.
Even seated, she loomed over him. “Do I seem fearful to you?”
“Fear comes in many forms. It would be disconcerting if you were looking for any other reason,” he answered.
She propped her chin on her fist, stirring a circle of light with her other hand. “So long I have known you, and yet there is still so much for you to learn. My ascension is soon.”
He was the picture of happiness. “Yes, my lady.”
With a flick of her wrist, that circle of light spun toward him, popping against his cheek like a soap bubble. “And you shall ascend with me. To ensure our success, why not harvest the Void? Why not have its greatest wielders tell me what could go wrong?”
She laughed, a great shriek of wailing souls. The Vess flinched, as did I.
“I didn’t know what she meant, Phaeron.” My brother’s voice was in my head as the memory continued to play out.
“You were the one closest to her. You never asked for specifics?” I asked aloud. My voice echoed hollowly in the vault of his memory.
“Just watch.”
Hands curling into fists, I did. The Vess had extinguished the Void in the room and gathered her skirts to kneel before Myuna. “Please, great goddess of light, spare me in exchange for the knowledge I have found for you within the Void.”
“So there will be something to interrupt my ascension. Speak freely, my child. I will reward you for your candor.” Myuna wove light between her fingers as she spoke, easing into her throne more. It seemed to put the Vess at ease.
She closed her eyes and spoke with the echoing power of the Void behind her. “A tide of souls will wash Soiluire clean.”
Myuna’s fingers froze for a moment. Her secret was there on the tip of this female’s tongue…there for Endaeron to unravel.
So why hadn’t he?
“You shall swell with great power and hold everything you desire in your palms.”
Light pulsed under the goddess’s skin as she leaned in, a grin spanning the pit of her mouth. “Go on,” she purred.
“But this planet shall be your last.” The Void giggled around the Vess. She bowed her head nearly to the ground as the pulse of Myuna’s light heated the air. “Another shall ascend to rival you, and she will bring about your death.”
The goddess wasn’t pretending to be at ease anymore. She stared at the Vess with white-hot fury. “Who would dare?” she thundered with the voices of hundreds.
Dread tingled along my scalp as Endaeron whispered to Myuna, patting her lustrous arm. Of centuries of memories, this was what he’s chosen to show me…
“It’s okay, my lady. You were right to ask for a warning. Now we can handle it,” he soothed.
“Who?” Myuna whispered to the frightened Vess.
With a swallow, she forced out the rest quickly. “She who would mate the son of night and fight you alongside his daughter. She will defeat you before you have a chance to spread your influence on a new world.”
No. It couldn’t be, I thought. A sick feeling rose in my stomach as I eyed the patterns on Endaeron’s horns. He’d worn these marks late in his life, with his last mate…around the time Keshora and I welcomed Ravai.
Thiswas why Myuna had targeted my mate and daughters.
“And that is all the Void whispered?” Myuna asked.
“Yes, my lady.”
With one intake of breath, Myuna had the Vess’s soul in her mouth. The body slumped pitifully to the ground.
“Myuna!” Endaeron exclaimed, shocked. “She was only doing as you asked!”
The goddess’s skin shimmered from the infusion of power. “As always, you shall breathe no word of this, as you yet live,” she stated. “This Vess simply…disappeared.” She lassoed the woman’s discarded form with the rope of light she’d woven, consuming it whole to leave no evidence behind.
Endaeron stared at her in defiance. “Eating those who bring you bad news isn’t going to solve your problems, my lady,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You’re right. There is one problem I will have to preemptively consume,” she simpered.
The scene smudged into darkness. Endaeron and I hung in the Void together, surrounded by shadows. “I did not know, at first, that she thought the son of night was you. I would’ve done more, I swear,” he said.
“You could not speak of it,” I replied sharply. In a tunnel of endless black, there was nothing to look at besides him. Nowhere for my bottled-up rage to go except for straight at him. “You stood by a goddess of entropy as her champion and helped her fool our people. How do you like your ascension now?”
“I was as much a victim as you were. Maybe more, if we must measure our suffering.” He met my snarling with calm, his palms up. Though a human gesture, we observed it too.
I sensed that he was flimsy, just a memory of a memory. To scream and rail at him would be futile. He was a piece of himself, not able to do anything about Myuna now. And he had willfully armed me with a piece of knowledge I needed time to chew on.
I drew back my claws and fangs. “Say your piece, then,” I invited more quietly.
“Myuna groomed me from birth for something far worse than taking up a throne. She had two options, but she used to talk about how your darkness stung her when you were the babe she picked up first,” he said. “She never forgot that you slighted her when you were minutes old.”
My lips pulled back in a sneer.
“Your shadowborn soul was too pure for the seed she planted in mine instead. She made me…like her,” he sighed.
“That is quite apparent from what you did as the Hungering Darkness.”
“You don’t understand. I was her seedling. The only soul she would take with her once she wiped out Soiluire completely.” This vision of him was starting to fade around the edges, the sounds and colors of reality pressing in around us. He growled, baring a mouthful of teeth. “Stay with me a little longer.”
“I’m trying.” It was like straining to hold on to the edges of a dream. No matter what, my body wanted to wake up.
“As a nascent god of entropy, my remains will be built like hers. There is a hollow within my core. Search it. Maybe you can do some good with what remains.”
I swallowed past a lump in my throat, not trusting my voice. I simply nodded.
Sorrow filled his eyes, which gleamed like milky diamonds. “I’m sorry, brother. Even if I had years rather than moments to atone…”
“Endaeron, no.” I realized he was nearly gone, and my composure fell apart as I envisioned what would come next for him. What remained was too shredded and warped to find the next life, after all. This was my last chance to speak to him at all before he became dust. “I—I forgive you! I only wish you peace.”
“It would bring me great peace…to fix one thing I did wrong…” Fading in earnest, he extended to me a spark of bright white. “Take what is left, freely given.”
I let him place it in my palm and drew him into a one-armed hug. The ghost of his wings closed around me before I was suddenly in the shopping mall, surrounded by the stench of blood. I knelt on the ground, my mouth still tasting of Soiluirian whisky.
A spot of warmth was now clenched in my hand. I turned it over and gaped. It was a teeny piece of a white soul, bright with lightborn shadows. I only sensed Endaeron within it, with no lingering hint of Myuna. Grief tightened around my eyes. “Is this truly all that remains of you?” I whispered.
Freely given, I could do whatever I wanted with it. I could snuff it out, warp it so the last part of Endaeron felt pain before it faded away. It wasn’t large enough to exist on its own for long.
I waited to feel hunger, to salivate over consuming this soul energy. I’d bitten the Hungering Darkness, after all. The cravings were said to be immediate and life-altering. But there was nothing of the sort…
Only new mourning squeezing its way in with the old. That was Endaeron, and he had given me tangible hope to dance on my fingertips. A patch for the hole in my soul. A way for a small portion of him to live on in me if I chose to accept it.
I pressed that piece of him to my chest. It attached to my soul like a magnet, flowing to the spot where it was needed to make me whole again. Tension bled out of my body on a wave of sheer relief.
The ghost of the best of my brother remained, and I felt it all: a hint of his confidence and savvy. His boisterous laugh, his optimism, his love for women and drink. There was even a bit of his strength, skill with a blade, and honor in knowing when to use it.
To turn him into a monster like her, Myuna had had to crush and destroy nearly everything about him. That was the true tragedy of Endaeron et Myudair, his only other remains the white residue scattered around my knees.
I rifled through it with my hands and senses alike, scattering husk-like pieces of souls sucked clean of their energy and color. The moment my claws touched them, they disintegrated. But one piece was larger than the rest, freshly torn away from its rightful home. Young, male, a hint of carefree emotion twined with blood witch magic.
I tucked it into a ball and held it protectively. Without a vessel to hold it, I needed to get it back to Lucas right away.