Chapter Eighteen
Aelia
The moment my boots hit the scorched lawn of the Conservatory, the stench of burning stone and blood filled my lungs. Reign landed by my side a moment later, a curse slipping through his clenched teeth at the sight that greeted us.
Oh, Raysa, help us.
Luce was in ruins.
The western side of the academy, the Hall of Enlightenment, was gone, nothing but rubble and smoke.
Arcs of unearthly hellfire scorched across the lawn like lightning strikes, blasting holes into the once-pristine marble paths.
Students and instructors alike fought and fell amidst the chaos, their luminous weapons clashing against Night-forged blades that glowed like an infernal void.
A shriek pierced the air, inhuman, guttural.
I spun just in time to see one of them, my voluminous skirts twirling in the thick atmosphere.
A Night Fae rider sat atop a monstrous, four-legged beast formed entirely of smoke and bone.
Its molten eyes locked on me, mouth gaping wide to release a plume of hellfire.
I barely threw up a radiant shield over us in time, rais blazing from my palms as the flames seared across the barrier’s edge.
The shield flickered against the onslaught but ultimately held. Pain lanced up my arms, and I gritted my teeth.
“Aelia!” Reign growled, his shadows coiling around my limbs like armor. “Behind me.”
“No.” I surged forward instead, summoning cool nox to fortify the fraying shield with a blast of swirling shadows, forcing the beast back.
Another enormous shadow exploded above us, and this one I recognized.
Solanthus.
He roared from the heavens, wings spread wide and shimmering beneath the sun’s faltering rays.
A second later, Phantom tore through the smoke, Reign’s dragon trailing tendrils of shadows in her wake.
The two beasts collided midair with another Night creature, claws raking against unnatural scales.
Jaws snapped, wings battering the battlefield with hurricane winds.
The Night Fae rider shrieked as Solanthus barreled into him, flinging him from his beast and slamming him into the ground with a sound like splintering bone.
I searched the skies, the fields, the utter bedlam for any sign of the Night King, but there were too many bodies and too much chaos.
“Stay with me,” Reign called out an instant before he shot forward. His shadows were like spears, impaling two Night Fae as they surged toward a cluster of frightened students. He fought like a male possessed, fury in every savage strike.
Gods, he was beautiful.
I could do nothing but watch him for a long moment, mesmerized by his brutal force and startlingly efficient violence. Jerking free the daggers beneath my trailing skirts, I tore through the flowing material, allowing myself a freer range of movement.
Scanning the field, I found my friends, each battling their own Night Fae.
Symon appeared on the opposite ridge, raining light arrows down with terrifying precision.
Rue and Devin moved like twin flames, slicing through dark riders as one, while Ruhl took on a Night Fae swinging a battleaxe.
Gideon had appeared too, Reign’s faithful friend arcing an umbral sword at a Demon soldier bathed in pure night.
Where was Liora?
Searching the blur of light and dark for her head of blonde hair, I finally gave up. Wherever she was, I hoped she was safe. Even if I didn’t trust her, I didn’t want her to die.
It was complicated.
Reassured that at least my friends were unharmed, I focused on my powers, on the steady thrum of the trio of energies lashing at my insides. I was the storm.
Movement suddenly twitched in the piles of Night Fae bodies we’d taken down.
I blinked, breath caught in my throat, as tendrils of zar coiled through the debris, stitching together fragments of bone and skin.
Fingers, skeletal and sharp, clawed from the charred earth, dragging ruined bodies upright again.
My stomach lurched. What in all the realms?
The Night Fae soldiers we had just destroyed… rose.
Only, they weren’t the same. Their eyes were hollow now, pits of obsidian night instead of citrine or violet. They were moving closer. Their faces held no expression, no fear, no hatred. Only hunger. Their mouths hung open in silent screams, black ichor trailing from the corners of their lips.
Oh, gods.
“Reign!” I gasped, stumbling back as one lunged for me. I spun, slicing with my dagger, severing the thing’s arm, but it kept coming. It seemed heedless of pain, oblivious of anything but the drive to kill.
Reign appeared at my side a moment later.
“What is that?” I cried, my power flaring, my light trying to push them back.
His voice came steady and deadly calm despite the chaos.
“Necromancy.” His shadow blade whipped through one of the revenants, slicing it in half only for the creature to crawl forward, dragging itself across the stones with skeletal claws.
“It’s one of the Night Fae’s gifts. Zar can reanimate the dead. ”
This was necromancy? I vaguely recalled Helroth mentioning it during my captivity at Helspire, but Kaelith had never gotten around to teaching me that particular ghastly ability before Reign came for me.
My stomach hollowed, bile rising. “But they’re not the same. They’re not… alive.”
“No,” he confirmed, shadows bristling at his shoulders. “They’re cursed. Hollowed out. Just husks of what they once were.”
One of the things shrieked, lunging for a Light Fae student who screamed and froze in terror. Reign’s shadows snapped it back, tearing it apart with zar-infused nox.
“They don’t feel pain, as I’m sure you’ve noticed,” he added grimly, his eyes locked on mine. “They don’t stop. They don’t die, not unless we destroy the zar that’s animating them.”
With rais. The unspoken words were clear. I forced my powers to stabilize, but my hands trembled. My throat went dry. These weren’t Fae anymore… they were monsters. And weapons of pure destruction.
“Starlight, we don’t have time for horror,” Reign growled, dragging me back into the fight. “We kill them, now.”
Together, we surged forward again, light and shadow entwining, pushing back the literal tide of death Helroth had unleashed. But in the back of my mind, one thought kept repeating, a whisper curling colder than even the zar.
What if this is what I become?
The cuorem pulsed at my core, Reign’s presence a steady drumbeat in my mind, anchoring me even as the world fell apart.
Light and shadow spiraled from my hands in waves, colliding with our enemies, alive and undead, unraveling them into raw energy that splintered the battlefield in radiant destruction.
The ground shook. The Hall of Ether collapsed in on itself in the distance, sending up a roar of fire and glass. Students were crushed beneath the debris, and my heart along with it.
“No more,” I growled. “This ends now!”
I threw back my head and screamed, a burst of raw, divine power ripping from my chest and arcing through the air like a comet. It struck the lead Night beast dead center, searing it into ash, along with its rider.
From across the way, Reign raised his fist, and I felt it. The connection.
Power surged between us, light and shadow, rais, nox and zar braiding together in perfect harmony. My wings flared across my back, casting beams of pure gold into the smoke-cloaked sky. Our gazes collided in a perfect storm, and we ran straight into the heart of the battle.
Smoke churned in towering plumes all around us, blotting out the sunlight.
The gentle glow of the Hall of Glory’s spires was now scorched and fractured.
The dormitories. Our home. The once-pristine towers were shattered, sections of the gilded facade collapsed, and craters marred the field where students had trained only hours ago.
Pure power crackled in the air, rais and nox colliding with zar in bursts of wild energy.
Screams echoed across the night like a haunting lullaby.
Both Light and Shadow Fae students fought the invaders, umbral blades moving alongside their glittering counterparts.
I caught sight of Ruhl and Gideon, both moving like avenging shadows through the fray.
It was brutal and horrible, and yet beautiful all in the same moment.
For once, Luce and Arcanum were fighting as one. Unified against the enemy.
As I raced across the field with my daggers clenched in my fists, I once again registered the stench of scorched stone, sulfur, and blood, and my stomach turned. So much death, so much destruction.
And for what? More power?
Shadow beasts surged through the flames, massive things stitched together from smoke and skeletons. Molten fire spewed from their mouths, melting through both the umbral and luminescent weapons like they were paper.
My fingers tightened around the hilts of my daggers and brushed the shimmering crystals. They glowed beneath my touch, and a thought flickered to the surface. Infernium vein. It cut through rais and nox like magic. Would it be impervious to zar too?
I had to find out.
Another wave of Night Fae rode in, cloaked in armor etched with runes that shimmered like obsidian oil. Their eyes glowed violet, citrine and crimson in the dark, hollow and soulless. Their weapons gleamed with darkness not born of any realm I knew.
I flared my wings, blasting upward with a burst of light to scan the battlefield.
My heart twisted at the carnage. Nearly a third of Luce’s campus had collapsed, and the infirmary tower now burned in shades of sickly green.
Students, both Light and Shadow Fae, fought wherever they could, disorganized, terrified.
Too many of them were injured. Too many didn’t stand a chance.
If I could find a way to imbue my radiant shield with the power of the infernium vein and cast it around the campus, I could protect everyone.
No. Reign’s voice filtered through my thoughts.
I can do it.