Chapter 43
WORTHY
Seryn
Iwidened my stance on the trembling dream platform. Energy surged over my skin, through the threads that bound me across planes and time.
The roots of the banyan.
My khorda bond.
My ember.
My very fucking will to survive.
I braided them into a resolve.
She would not take me.
My power buzzed in my ears; it surged through me, searing and euphoric as it drank in the dream prisms and stars.
My spine arched. Then I lurched forward, curls flicking around me like flames.
A piece of my soul snapped into my body.
My eyes opened in Midst Fall, breath ragged, hands splayed on the wood.
Both versions of me—astral and corporeal—rose in perfect synchrony.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but you can’t have me, pet.” My words echoed in both worlds.
Melina faltered. For the first time, fear cracked plainly through her perfect composure.
Everyone paused for a split second, gasps and awe saturating the air before the clang of weapons and whirring of ember resounded once more.
Around us, the fight continued, Phobetor still suspended above. But they all fell away. It was just Gavrel, me, and the Elder who had terrorized us all these turns. Who’d brutalized so many others for nigh a century.
I lifted my right hand. My weapon shimmered. And when I flung it, both my astral and physical forms moved as one. The blade sliced through dream and reality, twin streaks of black stone and rainbow-hued tails.
Melina dove aside, snarling. My ability called to my weapon, and it raced into my hand in each plane like twin comets returning home.
My limbs moved as if pulled by a single cord; astral and corporeal matched step for step. I was both puppet and master. Every breath I took in the Somnis flowed through my lungs in Midst Fall.
The Elder huffed, black smoke coiling around her. She charged, throwing everything she had at me. Darkness, teeth, the raw cruelty she’d hoarded for so long.
She wanted me to suffer. Wanted Gavrel. She wanted to tear out the thing that bound us.
I didn’t hesitate, my blade singing through the air once more. It cleaved through the starlit aether of the Somnis, cut through Melina’s haze, and buried itself in her flank.
Her eyes went wide, not from surprise, but with pure, animalistic panic. She tugged my dagger from her, letting its blood-coated blade clunk against the planks. Her arms flung out as she stumbled. Her ember slammed into me, cinching around Gavrel and me in a choking, prickly embrace.
The burn of it lanced through my mind, and Gavrel groaned, pushing up shakily on his elbows. I freed my power in both worlds, its force crashing into hers, slurping it in. It tasted of smoke and iron and every cruelty she’d ever committed.
My eyes illuminated, cutting through her darkness and that of the Somnis.
And I took.
Let her power absorb into me. Urged my ember to take all it wanted.
Mine! it purred.
“Little Star—” Gavrel’s voice cracked somewhere between, raw with warning. Not through fear of hurting Melina, but of losing myself.
But I was more myself than I’d ever been.
Worthy.
Inevitable.
Melina’s talons dug into my shoulder, her mask of rage appearing in front of me out of our clashing ember. I welcomed the pain as it surged over my physical and astral bodies.
I tugged harder, her dark aura diminishing, her stolen ink-dark energy sifting through the boughs along my forearms. She released me, fingers tearing at the air, trying to claw her gift back, to keep the thing that had kept her beautiful and terrible.
“You can’t have it! You can’t have him,” she spat, deep wrinkles etching into her face, hair turning brittle. “Not yours. Not yours!”
Something like desperation and wrath flickered over her aging visage, ugly and human, before she shrieked. Even this close to death, she still obsessed over Gavrel.
But she couldn’t have him.
He had always been mine.
My physical body pulsed, our ember and something otherworldly vibrating under my flesh and through my bones.
I was going to split at the seams.
It is time. Morpheus’ voice broke through. Like all the other times, he’d found a way to guide me.
My muscles tensed, and I channeled my and Melina’s joined ember, offering them to the Somnis. To the Elysium Tree.
Both versions of Elder Harrow dropped to their knees, blood and pieces of crumbling flesh falling to the wooden planks. Coating my boots in the Somnis. For she was also both here and there. I’d dragged her astral form to the sparkling unknown with me.
She sneered, blackened blood spilling over her bottom lip.
I kept taking. Not because I wasn’t in control of my gift, for we were one and the same. No, I kept taking because sometimes violence was necessary.
And this was the only way she’d kneel.
The only way to stop her.
Ascension insisted on the offering, and even though she was unwilling, something in me knew the tree would accept it all the same. Because there was no other path, and …
It was time.
My arms flung upward, and I funneled what remained of her ember into the tree’s roots, somewhere far above. The Somnis hummed with approval; the liquid stars blazing bright and currents stilling for but a moment.
So it is done, a voice echoed, but I wasn’t sure from where or who it came this time.
A searing heat sliced down the base of my skull, burned over my flesh in waves, like thousands of tiny paper cuts. I gasped as my ember sank into my stinging flesh.
Melina’s body unstitched itself as she fell forward in slow motion. First the edges, then her hair, then her torso and limbs. Noxious smoke, laced with the scent of bitter almond and roses, curled and then shimmered as sparkling motes consumed her.
She did not die with a gasp or a whimper. That wouldn’t have been fitting. Her wrinkled face cracked like a sculpture, bit by bit, grain by grain. As she evaporated into ash, disbelief lined her expression. Hatred. Fear, maybe.
“Pet,” she croaked, and then nothing. The rest of her imploded, bursting into the aether as if she’d never existed at all.
I closed my fingers around the hilt of my dagger in a prayer, willing my soul to return home. My physical body lurched in Midst Fall; my knees cracking against the planks hard, and I bit down on a sharp intake of air.
Around me, our allies staggered, wounds and breath ragged.
“Hold—” Jace shouted as new runes floated around Melina’s ashes. He flicked his wrists, and they vanished, her remains drifting away on a damp breeze.
With a stifled cry, I fell onto my hands, and Gavrel crawled to me, pulling me into his lap. Slowly, golden patterns seeped over my hands and wrists along the usually hidden bough patterns.
“By the ravens, it worked,” Yaya murmured.
Gavrel kissed my temple, smoothing my damp curls from my cheeks. “You did it, my love. It is done.”
There were no signs of the Bloomless. The fighting had ceased, the cowards fleeing when I pulled Melina’s soul to the Somnis. Perhaps they weren’t so faithful after all.
The few Akridais and Draumrs who remained took a knee, bowing their heads toward me in respect.
Gideon lifted his nose, observing them and the aftermath with shrewd eyes. He put his arm around Letti, and she hugged him before rushing into Xeni’s arms.
Kaden stared numbly at the spot Melina had last been, shoulders slumping and hands running through his hair. Jace peeked at him from the corner of his eyes, lips pressing into a firm line before he went to Caelora.
I brushed my fingers over Gavrel’s cheeks; his beautiful, bruised face bathed in moonbeams. A residual tingle tickled my flesh, as if the Somnis was still fluttering along the edges of my reality, beckoning me back.
My heart stuttered, unease tapping against my nape.
I stilled.
Something in the air had shifted. I felt the tremor along my marrow, my soul, and gifts now connected to Kosmos.
As the new Elder of the Perilous Bogs.
Wait.
Why was the moon shining fully on us?
My gaze whipped up, Gavrel and I staggering to our feet. Everyone’s attention followed.
“Where is Phobetor?” I whispered.