Chapter 24 #2
But I understand what he means. I can sense it, too: He can carry my power. He can wield it, if only I let him have it.
Can I make that choice, to give up a piece of myself? Can I truly trust him with it?
Yes, my soul screams in return.
“Have it,” I think.
His mouth is my mouth as he breathes in the shadows. I’m intensely aware of the rub of his fingers together; it’s like a featherlight touch on my own hand. The touch of his long eyelashes on his cheek are like a kiss on my skin.
I gasp. My body is alight with heat and pleasure.
And so is his. I’m in every inch of him. His muscles tightening, the flex of his hand on his sword. The hot desire that burns so bright it’s blinding.
He’s in me, too. Sensing the way my body responds. The tempest of need that whirls through me, dangerous as an ice storm.
Our link completes, our overlap total.
Dark power erupts between us.
The power flows through me and into him and back to me.
We no longer need words to communicate—we are bound so close together that his thoughts are my thoughts, his desires my desires.
I grasp on and align my mind with his.
Together we PUSH.
The world loses all sound and color. Time suspends.
And then with a resounding roar, darkness streams out from us in all directions.
The shadows spread and then bear down, down, in crushing pressure. Every Siphon in a hundred-foot radius of us is suddenly shrieking, their bodies slammed into the dirt.
The magic rushes on, stretching farther and farther. Reaching more and more of the enemy.
The unrelenting pressure pushes in on me, and on Stark, our minds intertwined. I grit my teeth and fist my hands and push more. All around me swirl the sounds of armor cracking and skulls smashing and screams cutting short.
I scream in pleasure and pain, the power and connection overwhelming.
Stark’s voice melds with mine.
And then together as one, we let go.
The power dissipates.
Light leeches back into the world.
I flutter my eyes, sight slowly returning to normal as our minds detach and we snap back into ourselves.
Everything near us has gone quiet. Deathly still.
I keel over on Anassa’s back as the last of the power leaves me and exhaustion floods in.
“What was that?” I mind-speak to Stark, the barriers between the four of us still fuzzy. “What the ever-loving fuck was that?”
His face is confused, wondering. “I… don’t know. That connection was… I don’t know.” We stare at each other. “And then, with your power, it came through me, and together, we could control it, tame it.”
My cheeks flush at that. There’s an echo of our connection, his skin burning hot, the swipe of his tongue across his lips. I shiver.
Anassa chimes in, “I have never heard of this before. But perhaps it is knowledge lost to the Sturmfrost Queens of old and their wolves’ mates?”
I file that away to think more about later, when we aren’t in the middle of a war front.
Everything around us is calm in its horror: mangled bodies. Pools of blood and smashed heads. Metal armor split open and flattened. Broken tentpoles, ripped fabric, and scattered weapons dropped by destroyed hands.
“Guess our theory was right,” Stark observes. “Crushing their skulls completely works just as well as decapitation.”
I let out a choked laugh, the unreality of it all overwhelming.
A few survivors from a distant part of the Siphons’ camp are moving now, assembling. They’re far off, and I squint to try to make out what’s happening.
“They’re regrouping,” I tell Stark. “There’s a force off to the left that’s forming up, more organized this time—”
“I see them,” he cuts me off. “Do you think you can summon the shadows once more when they get close? Do you think we can do—that—again?”
My mind is still numb from the effort, but I set my jaw and focus inward, finding that anger at my core and pulling at the shadows again.
Everything in me strains. It’s as if they are reluctant, or maybe my call just isn’t as strong in my exhaustion.
Finally, that pool of darkness awakens. The shadows start to gather, streaming in slowly, and I grind my teeth, using everything in me to focus my control—
“Meryn,” Anassa’s voice interrupts my focus, and the shadows drop, dispersing back into the landscape around us.
“What is it?”
“They’re retreating.”
Stark and I watch in confusion as the group we spotted moves away from us.
I’m keenly glad: My body is a wrung-out rag. Calling that power again made me feel as if I would burn into ash.
It doesn’t make sense, though. Yes, we wiped out dozens of the enemy, maybe even hundreds. But the fighting force here was at least thousands strong, from what our intelligence gathered. They wouldn’t just give up, would they?
“Something isn’t right,” I tell Anassa. She agrees.
More Siphons emerge from other distant parts of the camp, but none approaches us. Instead, they move off toward the larger group, away from us.
I know better than to see weakness where there is none. It’s my trick.
There’s eerie silence. It lurks in the battle smog, heavy and intrusive. I curl my lip and stare at the retreating line, trying to make out what they’re doing, what’s happening.
Then they part, flowing like water.
And I see it flickering there, traveling down a wide row between distant camp tents.
A white flag waves against the pink-gray sunrise and the crimson-drenched encampment.
A flag of peace.
Immediately, my insides writhe and warp with anger. Cratos and Stark move closer, and I notice absently that Cratos’s fur is wet with blood. Stark is just as filthy as his wolf. There’s a spill of blood down his neck, as if he suffered a deep cut near his ear that Cratos quickly healed.
“This could be a trap. You can’t trust it,” he says sternly.
My lips twitch upward. “I know that.”
He looks surprised, then relieved, then amused. All this in subtle twitches I’m somehow able to read.
He’s right, anyway. It’s likely a trap—every bruised and wearied part of me screams it is—but we’re ready to face it together. And if this grants me crucial time to regain my energy, prepare for another blast of magic, so much the better.
The fluttering flag and its bearer move closer to us. We stand and wait, unwilling to give up our position. With everything around us flattened, we have a clear line of sight should anyone try to suddenly attack.
The sun’s early rays strike the figure’s shining armor, glinting and startlingly clean in contrast to the muck and blood on us and all around us.
A woman, I realize. Her dark hair is bound tight, bearing an ethereally beautiful face. She’s almost upon us, and I stare at her prominent cheekbones, delicate jaw, slender neck. Her rich brown skin reflects the oranges of the sunrise.
So much beauty wrapped around something so deadly.
She’s more than a mere soldier, I can tell immediately. She holds her shoulders back the same way Siegrid does, as if she owns the ground she walks upon by virtue of the touch of her foot.
This must be the Siphon general we heard about.
She comes right up to us and doesn’t flinch when Anassa snaps her teeth. She stares, then cranes her head to look up at us. She plants the white flag into the ground by her feet, and her hands fold behind her back.
That subtle motion looks like an insult on her, like she’s telling us that even if we decided to attack her now, she wouldn’t need her hands ready to destroy us.
A bead of sweat slides down my spine. Her nostrils twitch like she can smell it. But instead of baring her fangs, she dips her head. It isn’t a sign of deference.
It’s barely an acknowledgment.
“I am General Ruby Navarro, representing King Lucien Brightbane of Astreona as his ambassador,” she says in an alluringly silky voice. “You are the queen, are you not? King Lucien has a ceasefire proposal for Queen Meryn Sturmfrost.”
Shock ripples through my body, nearly knocking me off Anassa.
“You’re joking,” I blurt out, my eyes sliding over to Stark. Confusion lights in his gaze as well.
Five hundred years of war paused with its first ceasefire? When the Siphons have the ability to gain more ground in Nocturna than ever before?
I quickly recover and put some metal in my voice. “What is the meaning of this?”
Ruby arches an elegant brow. “Our battle is not with you, Your Highness, nor with your people,” she tells us plainly. “It’s time for Astreona and Nocturna to unite against our common foe.”
She tilts her head so that her eyes darken with malice.
And she hisses his name like it’s a curse. “Alistair Brightbane.”