Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Aurelia
The world was burning, and I was the spark that had ignited it.
Fire roared up the hillside in a black-gold wave, devouring frost, tents, and soldiers alike. The air was so hot it scorched the breath from my lungs. My mark blazed at my throat, furyfire pouring out of me faster than thought.
At my back, Rydian had vanished into the smoke. Gone to deliver Lesha to safety. It had been the only option, but I’d never felt more alone without him beside me in this fight.
Frostwights appeared through the haze of smoke. More than I could count. Unlike the Obsidians, who still possessed mortal fae bodies, these undead monsters were unaffected by thick plumes of smoke that left the other soldiers coughing and doubling over.
The nearest Frostwight raised a blade of blue-white ice, and the cold coming off it was so sharp it made my teeth ache. Behind its bone mask, nothing breathed. Nothing blinked. Just that hollow, waiting hunger.
Hunger. Not unlike my own.
The Frostwight lunged.
I met it head-on.
Furyfire clawed down my arms, splitting into two streams that slammed into its chest. Heat exploded across its armor. Frost shrieked as it met my fire, ice turning to steam.
The creature staggered, but didn’t fall.
I drank in what was left of its life force, draining it dry until it was only a husk of bones and ice.
My furyfire surged, stronger than ever.
Behind it, three more Frostwights advanced. Around them, Obsidian soldiers fanned out, black-eyed and eager, their blades gleaming dully in the smoke-choked dawn.
“Come on, then,” I muttered, raising Dorcha. “Let’s see what Hel’s gifts are really worth.”
I lunged.
Metal met ice. The impact jarred to my shoulder, but the blade bit into the seam between plates of bone. I twisted and felt something crack.
The Frostwight’s free hand clamped around my wrist.
Cold rushed through me like an avalanche.
For a heartbeat, the world went soundless and white. My muscles locked; my breath froze in my chest. Frost crawled up my arm in delicate patterns, burning as it went.
My mark flared.
The rune at my throat blazed so hot it hurt. Something inside me—something deeper than furyfire, older than the Fates, older than this realm—stirred and bared its teeth.
Mine, a voice whispered.
The next breath I took ripped down my throat like I’d been drowning.
Power surged up from the mark, racing down my veins, crashing into the Frostwight’s touch. For a second, the two magics tangled—Winter and Hel’s own darkness, ice and fire—and then the connection flipped.
The cold stopped pouring into me.
I started pulling it out.
The thing convulsed. Its hand spasmed around my wrist, bones creaking.
Frost smoke poured out of the seams in its armor, streaming toward me.
The world sharpened, every color too bright, every heartbeat too loud.
The roar of battle drew into piercing focus—the clash of steel, the crack of exploding tents, the distant boom of something Slade and Thorne had set off.
I drank in the Frostwight’s life force like a drowning woman gulping air.
It didn’t have a heartbeat. It didn’t have blood flowing in its veins.
Whatever magic had animated it was older and stranger than mortal flesh—a knot of foreign magic and bone-deep cold.
It slashed at me, trying to break contact, but every second our skin touched, more of its life force ripped free.
Its armor dimmed. The ice in its blade cracked. The hollow behind the mask went thinner and thinner until the thing was just a cage of bone, its movements failing.
Then it wasn’t anything at all.
I didn’t stop with just one.
With my next inhale, the rest were consumed.
Their life forces sucked down my throat and soaked into my veins.
Magic soared, my vision going white as the realm itself breathed through me for a fleeting, uncontainable moment.
In that space, I was nothing. I was everything.
I was Menryth itself. Something More than the gods had intended. A kernel of Life itself.
When I blinked, reality resumed.
The smoke, the advancing army, the burning tents.
As one, the Frostwights crumpled, collapsing into blackened ice and splintered leather at my feet. Whatever Heliconia had bound inside them came pouring out in a last rush—a torrent of icy magic that streaked for my mark like it had always belonged there.
Then, the Obsidians fell with them.
Then their horses.
The sheer volume of what I took from them nearly broke me then.
I staggered.
Heat flooded me, wild and intoxicating. The ache in my sword-hand vanished. The bruises along my ribs smoothed out, pain receding as if it had only ever been a dream. Power crawled over my skin, beneath it, through it. I felt every heartbeat in the valley as my own. Every breath. Every life.
Makarios.
I could feel the war camp like it was an extension of my own body. The paths between the tents. The river curling along its edge, thin and dark and glinting in the light of burning canvas. The line of horses tied near the outer ring, their panic thrumming against my skin.
And the lives.
So many lives.
Thousands of them, bright and hot and sharp.
Obsidian soldiers whose mortality still beat in their chests, even if their souls had been given a slow death.
Scath wolves whose magic Heliconia had twisted until they bowed to her as their master.
Frostwights stitched from stolen pieces of the dead.
A handful of Autumn fae pressed into service, hearts beating too fast.
And my own people—Withered, Midnight, Lesha.
Distantly, another explosion shook the valley. A blossom of fire flared in the center of the camp.
Slade and Thorne.
The sound of it rolled up the slope. Some of the soldiers turned back to look. Some ran toward the chaos. I reached for my fire to rip a path straight through them. But my magic moved first. It flooded my limbs, reckless and wild.
“Aurelia,” someone called.
It might have been Keres. It might have been the god who’d branded my throat.
Too late.
Fire tore out of me.
It wasn’t the controlled arc I’d been throwing. It wasn’t even the roaring wave I’d sent down the slope earlier. This was… everything. All at once. Furyfire and Makarios entwined, pouring through nerves and bones and out into the world like the cracking of a dam.
It flew down the hillside, an onyx tide edged in the white of consumed souls.
It hit the nearest line of Frostwights and pulled their life from their bones even as it cooked their armor from the inside out.
It slammed into the ranks of Obsidians behind them, ripping the magic from their veins and setting their bodies alight.
They screamed.
They fell.
The fire didn’t stop.
It rushed down into the valley, catching the first row of tents like dry kindling. Canvas bloomed into flame, ropes snapped, poles fell. The heat spiraled upward, slamming into the shield spells netted over the camp. They crackled, tried to hold, then shattered like glass.
The river steamed.
The world below became a writhing mass of shadows and fire.
“Aurelia!” Keres shouted again, closer now. A gloved hand seized my arm. “You need to pull back—”
“I’m trying,” I gasped.
I was. I tried to pull the fire back into myself, to shut it off, to dam it somehow. But the Makarios gift had tasted the army. It had tasted the sheer volume of life and death and magic packed into that valley, and it had decided it wanted more.
The more it took, the stronger I felt.
The stronger I felt, the easier it was to take more. To use more.
It became a vicious circle—fire feeding off power feeding off fire.
Below, figures ran like shadows over a burning map. Some tried to form ranks, shouting orders that vanished in the roar. Others broke and fled. Frostwights leaped through the chaos, trying to reach higher ground, only to buckle as their animating force drained into the inferno.
The life pouring into me turned everything sharp.
I barely needed the torches or the dawn. I could see in the dark through the eyes of a hundred dying soldiers. I could feel their panic. Smell their fear. Hear their pleading, whether or not they spoke it aloud.
Make it stop—
Spare me—
Forgive—
No.
My grip on my own mind slipped.
A flash of movement caught my eye—shadows straining against a wall of fire. Rydian, shoving every ounce of his power against my flames, fighting to get to me even though coming closer risked burning him alive.
“Stop,” I whispered.
My fire didn’t listen.
It surged higher, up the slope, licking at the rocks. The heat struck my face like a slap. Somewhere in that glare, I thought I saw Keres’ silhouette vanish into the blaze.
Gods.
Rydian.
I tried again. This time, I didn’t reach for the fire. I reached for the mark. For the source.
Hel’s rune seared. A sound tore from my throat, half snarl, half scream. The influx of stolen power slammed against whatever limit was left in me.
Too much.
It was all too much.
The ground shifted under my boots. The air warped, thinner, crueler.
Something deep in the mountain groaned.
“Aurelia!” Slade’s voice cut through the din from somewhere off to the right. “You’re going to bring the whole gods-damned peak down—”
I turned. Or thought I did. My vision tunneled. The world narrowed to fire and gravel and the feeling of the realm itself shuddering around me.
A fissure cracked across the slope above the cave, splitting stone like dry bark. Ice that had crept into every crevice from Heliconia’s arrival met the white-hot heat of my power. Water flashed to steam inside the rock.
The mountain exploded.
A thunderclap tore through the hillside. Boulders sheared free, tumbling down in an avalanche of stone and ice. The entrance to the cave disappeared behind a choking cloud of dust and debris.
My knees hit the ground.
The fire kept going, burning through the last of the enemy’s camp. Then, like a candle snuffed by a giant’s fingers, it went out.