Chapter Thirty #2
The dark vines snaking out from the other godling seemed to tremble in indecision. Then they twisted, flowing toward Enzi—not threatening but eager, like something within him called to the rotting heart of that darkness.
As if he’d seduced the power from the man trembling in front of him.
Enzi lifted one elegant hand. Darkness wove around it, hateful and gleeful, and Enzi locked eyes on Jinevra, who had just carried the last child free of corrupted ground.
Shadows burst out of the ground at her feet, no longer constrained by the vines. They tangled around her legs, driving a scream of pain from her that wasn’t loud enough to drown out Enzi’s delighted laughter.
This was how Sorin saw the Lover. This debauched sadist, whose only real power was what he could steal from others, and whose only pleasure was to violate.
As if he could hear Einar’s thoughts, Enzi’s head turned toward him. Dark eyes that were a painful mockery of Aleksi’s lit in joy. Power slid over Einar’s skin, a grotesque caress in a mockery of intimacy. Darkness exploded from the ground at his feet.
His world became pain.
What fascinating skin you have. The words rasped like a whisper against his ear but echoed in his head. Is it more sensitive or less? How hard is it to pierce? What color do you bleed? Shall we find out?
Even the agony of darkness melting into Einar’s legs and curling higher couldn’t distract him from the violation, as if fingers were inside his mind, inside his soul, touching everything precious.
He struggled to blank his mind, but it didn’t help.
Memory rose, a beautiful fragment—Aleksi’s strong hand on his cheek as he leaned in for a kiss.
So you belong to him. My pathetic shadow. I will peel off your skin and gift it to him.
Somewhere to Einar’s left, Brynjar bellowed in pain and rage.
Agata’s scream of agony followed. Worse were the shrill, panicked cries of children.
Enzi’s power flooded the battlefield, and somehow Einar knew he was whispering dark threats in every mind as that stolen power grew bloated on the destruction of their hope, their love, their joy . . .
Ignoring the pain, Einar took a single step. His legs trembled. Blood dripped down them, thick and blue, and it didn’t matter. He had to—
pain
He must—
agony
Inga appeared in front of him like a dream, pale face streaked with blood, eyes glowing with pink fire. She cupped both hands around his cheeks and made a soothing noise.
“No—” he grated out. She couldn’t take this. It would kill her. It would do worse than kill her. “Save . . . the children . . .”
She silenced him with a finger against his lips, and shadows licked at her skin before leaping gleefully to her hand. “As soon as you can move,” she whispered, “get Enzi away from the other man.”
The dark whispers inside him fell silent, captivated by the taste of Inga’s pure, bright magic . . . and Einar understood too late that her touch had been an irresistible trap set for a man who wanted to destroy everything beautiful.
When she stepped back, the shadows clung to her. They flooded toward her, leaping from Einar’s body so swiftly that the surcease of pain sent him to his knees. He dug his hands into the sand for balance and forced his head up.
Inga stood a few paces before him, blazing with power that sparkled a glorious, vibrant pink in the sunlight. Shadows curled around her, biting desperately into that power, seeking to conquer it, to subdue it.
She walked forward, blazing brighter.
Enzi wasn’t smiling anymore. Fury twisted his features, rage that she wouldn’t submit.
The corruption raced toward her from every direction, abandoning its attacks on the others.
Einar’s legs itched as his skin knit together—Inga, pulling his pain and injuries into her along with the corruption.
The relieved sobs around him made it clear she’d done so for everyone.
And still she blazed with light.
Enzi didn’t even notice when Einar pushed himself to his feet.
All of his attention was on Inga, shadows leaping up to carve into her skin with every step she took.
This grotesque mimicry of Aleksi knew nothing of love, or of tenderness and joy.
He wanted to dominate and to crush, to worm his way inside someone’s soul and steal anything cherished before rotting it from the inside.
Even if Sorin had done nothing else, Einar would want him dead for this insult to everything Aleksi was.
Sorin was beyond his reach at the moment, but Enzi wasn’t. As soon as Einar was close enough, he lunged, hooking one arm around Enzi’s waist and using the strength of his demigod form to fling the man across the sand.
Enzi might not have Aleksi’s grace, but he still had the strength of a god. He landed with a force that would have broken the body of a mortal man, but shook it off at once and scrambled to his feet. His gaze locked on Einar with a terrifying smile. “You. Aleksi’s tame monster.”
Of course he would see Einar that way—as a beast broken to the bit instead of a wild creature who had chosen whom he served.
“Not tame,” Einar corrected. “Loyal.”
A sneer was the only response. Enzi held up his hand, and shadows gathered there, that inky corrupting darkness. It hovered over his hand for a heartbeat.
Then it flickered. Shuddered. Vanished.
A scream of terror rose behind them. Einar spun to see Inga with her fingers locked around the throat of the corruptor, her vividly colored magic flaring in terrifying bursts as those otherworldly vines wound wildly around them.
The vast tangle of corruption flared with the color of her power. The farthest edges crumbled, exploding into harmless dust. The collapse moved faster, racing back toward its source. The darkness writhed, twisting desperately around Inga in a final, brutal attack.
Dark scars traced her pale skin. Her pupils expanded, until her eyes were unrelieved blackness. The shadows collapsed in around them, and still she tightened her grip, pulling more from him—pulling everything.
She’d taken the wounds from the villagers; she’d taken the corruption from the land. Now she took the beating power of the man who had caused it, absorbing everything he was until he crumbled to rotting ash and her fingers closed on nothing.
The battlefield seemed frozen, everyone staring in terrified awe. Even Einar could do no more than form her name in a whisper that shook. “Inga—”
She turned, a creature of corruption and death, pulsing with the pain and hurt she’d stolen. Her deathless gaze fixed on Enzi, and he trembled like a creature paralyzed by the approach of a predator.
“Sorin always underestimated Aleksi.” It felt like a whisper even as the words throbbed through the air on a wave of terrifying power.
Reality seemed to tremble around her, and then she moved, her body nothing more than a dizzying blur as she crossed the space separating her from Enzi as if there had been no space at all.
Panic filled his eyes, enough of it that Enzi finally found his voice. “Eirika!” It was a shriek of fear, a demand to be saved.
Inga’s hair still floated in the wind of her impossible passage as her hand shot out, black-tipped nails digging into Enzi’s throat.
She lifted him until his boots scrabbled above the sand, a slight figure in a torn, bloodstained nightgown staring up at a man half-again her size who dangled from her grip like a broken doll.
“Sorin underestimated me, too,” she said as the darkness wreathing her flooded down her arm and crawled across her fingers. It swarmed onto Enzi’s neck, digging deep thorns into his skin. His lips parted in another scream, guttural and wild.
It was the last sound he made before his body began to melt.