Chapter 61 Stark
STARK
It’s with a rude, wrenching twist that I’m pulled out of sated, peaceful sleep and into a world of shadows.
Into what Meryn knows as the shadow realm.
I haven’t told her about my new access to this realm—and everything that comes with it. It’s been tearing me apart.
But there’s been no time for me to figure out what, exactly, needs to stay secret because of our family’s oaths, and what was just Siegrid being a tight-lipped, withholding narcissist. I do know she kept secrets from her wolf, Genicos.
She encouraged me to take similar care with Cratos, even before she knew of Cratos’s mate bond.
I will share what I can with Meryn, when the moment is right. And in the meanwhile, I comfort myself in knowing that my allegiance to my family’s oaths ultimately serves her.
The realm is more violent than usual. I’ve been here only a handful of times since inheriting my powers and responsibilities. It’s been a rough awakening—realizing the true extent of the bargain my family made for power all those years ago.
The dark god has never shown himself to Meryn directly, only whispering in her ear. He hasn’t even done that since Killian started tapping her powers. The bracelet allowed Killian access into this realm, so the god has kept himself hidden.
Perhaps that will change now that Killian is gone.
Perhaps Meryn, too, will soon face the nightmare god himself, the source of her cataclysmic shadow powers: her other god-ancestor, Nocturn.
As if thinking his name conjures him up, the god himself steps out of the shadows. Whether he was there all along or comes and goes, I can’t say.
His alabaster skin and black-blue hair seem to glow with blue fire. He looks more in focus tonight, somehow. Sharper-edged, almost realer than reality itself. Stronger, the buzz of his magical aura sharper than ever, setting my teeth on edge.
The change makes me uneasy.
As he draws nearer to me, I lock my muscles in place to stop myself from retreating. The feelings that twist in my gut are harsh in their unfamiliarity.
Dread. Fear.
“So even the mighty Sovereign Alpha can fear something,” comes Nocturn’s voice, the sound like snarling wolves and choking avalanches.
With effort, I keep my face placid, staring him down, even though I know it’s useless.
He can see right into my mind and take what’s hidden at will.
In the blink of an eye, Nocturn’s blue-fire shadows are at my throat, squeezing, their strength lifting me from the murky ground. My feet dangle desperately, and I gasp for breath.
Can I use my own magic here, or will it be useless since it stems from him? Would he kill me? And what would happen if I die here, in this shadow realm? Will my body remain in the real world, living on, separated from my mind?
Striking before I can think, with every ounce of strength in my body, I try to blast his shadows away.
The hurricane force of my power—power that is so strong now it could level a small fortress in the waking world—only loosens his grip for a moment, and that enrages him further.
“You dare to use my gifts against me?” slithers his voice. The sound comes from my mind as well as the world around me, compounding in my head until I feel I’m going mad.
Nocturn’s shadows engulf me, wrapping around me until my arms are locked in place by my body, then twisting until my limbs are contorted and pulled at strange angles.
Tendons scream and muscles tear.
Through my constricted throat, I give a strangled shout, but the sound is cut off by the layers of shadow around us, my voice as impotent as my magic here.
“I gave you a command, and you disobeyed me, wretch!” Nocturn is closer now, and the strange blue shadow that comes off him is almost blinding, a paradox of shadow and light. “The Tears must be put together!”
I know I have no chance of escaping his magic until he’s ready to let me go, but still my body fights the pain, the constraints—decades of training too ingrained to let me surrender.
Nocturn laughs as he watches me struggle and writhe. The sound of it is harsh and unnerving, metal screeching on metal.
“Why?” I gasp out, and Nocturn allows the shadows on my throat to ease enough for me to speak to him. “Why me, why now? Why have you not freed yourself before this, in all these millennia?”
The noose around my neck grows tight again, and tears squeeze from the corners of my eyes as I fight for breath.
Nocturn grows in front of me, doubling in size, tripling, more. He crouches down over me until I’m as small as the tiniest insect looking up at a massive giant above.
“Do you not think I’ve tried?! She had me so tightly imprisoned. It is only now, with her Tears nearly reunited, that I can come to your family like this, show myself fully, and not just issue wretched whispers in the night.”
His voice swells until my eardrums might burst. “The closer the Tears are, the closer I come to freedom. It calls to me, singing in the night. Would you deny me my freedom?!”
I know he can read my thoughts, but I’m unable to hide my immediate reaction to this:
Abso-fucking-lutely, I would stop this monster from being unleashed.
My family may be indebted to him; he may be the dark source of our power and strength. But I know with all my being there is a very good reason Nocturn has been bound away from our world, trapped all these years.
I will not be the one to unleash this madness on our world. The moment I’m away from this place, I’m going to help Meryn do what she said: separate all the tears and hide them away forever.
As soon as I think the words, I’m shoving them away, back into the furthest corner of my mind, where even I am barely aware of them.
But it isn’t fast enough. He hears my thoughts. Hears my disobedience.
And Nocturn’s rage multiplies a thousandfold.
The entire realm around us seems to shake and twist, the world tearing itself apart as if Nocturn’s moods can shred it like paper. Nocturn flickers between his massive stature and the form I’m used to and something else, something like a twisting gale of shadow, a frightening eternal void.
“If you won’t do it, I’ll do it myself!” The words come from nowhere and everywhere.
Suddenly, the binds around me fall away. The relief of being out of his painful vise lasts for only half a moment. Then the uncanny pool of dark energy pulls itself into a wave of shadow and flies straight toward me.
The shadow slams into me, through me, and I’m falling, endlessly falling through nothingness, dark power all around me and above me and below me, and—
I wake.
My eyes struggle to focus for a moment, the impossible pain of Nocturn’s torture still visited on my limbs.
I can hear Meryn slumbering beside me, sleeping peacefully for once; for tonight, the shadow world haunts me and not her.
I try to lift my hand, to reach over to caress her cheek—and find I cannot.
My body doesn’t listen to my commands.
The dark force of my magic inside me stretches and grows, and with dread, I realize it’s far more than the residual effects of the dreamworld, far more than the magic my family has been granted.
I move, watch unable to stop myself as I get out of bed, walk toward Meryn’s bags.
Nocturn himself is animating me.
I can distantly sense his presence, hear his screeching laugh as I futilely resist, trying to take back my body, my movements. To no avail.
My hands open the bag on top, the one holding the shards of the Dire Blade. Nocturn finds the hilt of the blade first, and as he pulls it out, a huge rush of energy cascades inside my body.
The pieces rise from the bag in a swirl of shadow as power courses through me and into the hilt. The shards fuse to one another, reforming and reshaping the sword. Where there are gaps—missing pieces—shadow plunges and then disappears, revealing new metal.
Shock rattles me to the core, piercing through me in a blaze of heat. The heat intensifies, until I realize it’s Nocturn’s power—burning me up, and to him, nothing at all.
The shadows fade, and in my hand is the reforged Dire Blade—shining and entirely whole.
Nocturn idly tosses the sword to the floor, reaching back toward Meryn’s bags and opening the next. Jewels glint in the firelight, and he reaches my hand in, carefully pulling each precious Tear out and placing them on the floor.
With an ease and strength I cannot comprehend, my hands easily wrench the opals from their bindings: first the Tears from the two crowns, then the necklaces, then finally the one from Killian’s ring.
Each of them sears my skin as I grasp it, but my shell of a body pays no mind, handling them as if they were nothing but rocks.
I know what’s coming as I watch myself arrange the Tears on the floor in that same star pattern we saw in Meryn’s mother’s journal: six pointing outward in a circle, and one directly in the center.
I know what I’m doing, but I’m powerless to do anything but watch.
The moment the final Tear is placed, Nocturn’s shadow drains from me, and I reach out a hand desperately to scatter the gems—
But, of course, it’s too late.
Reality seems to fracture, sliding apart for a terrifying moment, revealing layers of matter and shadow and light.
Then the world pulls back together, and all the air in our rooms turns to lightning and fire, my breath burning my throat.
There’s a massive, echoing BOOM somewhere to the west of us, and from the window I watch with dread as the sky turns colors I’ve never seen before and couldn’t name, shot through at the center with a green streak so bright it’s blinding.
Then to the east, another BOOM, earth-shattering in its impact, so loud that it feels like my ears are caving in. For a sickening moment, the earth and sky invert, before it queasily rights itself again.
I push my hands over my smarting ears, but it doesn’t block out the final enormous BOOM somewhere distant, beyond the horizon.
As my hearing and vision settle, I turn from where I’m crouched on the floor at the sound of Meryn’s voice. “Stark? What are you doing? What… what was that?”
She gets out of bed before I can stop her, gazing down curiously at the pattern the Tears form on the floor.
“I don’t understand. What’s going on?” The trust in her voice breaks my heart and steals my breath.
“Meryn—” My tongue is like ash in my mouth. “My family. There’s something I haven’t told you. I never lied. We were sworn to protect you. It was our most sacred mission. Or so I thought…”
The dawning understanding in her face is like a vision of my own doom as I push out the final, poisonous words.
“But all this time, we were just playthings of the gods. Meryn…”
The truth is like a death sentence.
“My family is not sworn to the Sturmfrosts. We are sworn—to Nocturn. The dark god has returned.”