Chapter Forty-Five Aria #3
His jealousy of Abigail was so distinct that I nearly choked on it. The hatred it’d bred, the way he’d opened himself up to the greatest of evils.
Because of it, Kreed had so easily been able to use him for his endgame.
And the goals of Kreed’s endgame were right there, the monster taking human form so he could stand and rule this world.
No longer from the bowels of darkness, though there was no question that the darkness would spread to stain everything.
“It’s time to meet your end, little Valient.” Ambrose’s voice was low, thunder that rolled across the field. “Just like the rest, though you will be the last—because with you, Valeen will die, as well as every Laven in existence. There will be nothing left of your kind.”
His statement punched through me with a devastating blow. A sword driven through my soul. Puncturing and boring.
Valeen.
Ambrose laughed—a morbid sound, though his voice was more human than Kreed’s.
“Didn’t you know? Her well has run dry. Her strength depleted.
No power left because it’s been gifted to me by Kreed.
Kreed, who has drained her, feeding off the foolish love that she never stopped giving him for all this time.
And once her strength is gone? So is yours. ”
Then his voice boomed, a reverberation as Ambrose rose higher, wickedness glowing from the depthless chasm of his eyes. “And now, her power is mine.”
“Rise. Rise. Rise.”
The whispering voice fell on my ears and infiltrated my soul.
Valeen.
I wondered if the rest of them could hear it, too. If they experienced the urging that pushed at their spirits.
Because a tremble rolled through the multitude of Laven. A rippling of power.
And it hit me so hard and fast. A tsunami that nearly knocked me off my feet. A swelling of light that swept them in an undertow.
Hands were suddenly touching me everywhere. Every single Laven who could get close enough to set them on me. Those who could not, placed their hands on the Laven in front of them.
Until they were all linked.
Together.
Together.
Everyone understood it then. It was the only way Ambrose—Kreed—would meet his end.
Together.
Together.
And that power built and built. Energy crashing and surging, growing stronger and stronger as it gathered between all of us.
Amplified.
Magnified.
The compulsion to expend it became nearly unbearable, and with Pax’s hand in mine, Dani’s in the other, I stepped forward, leading the group closer to Ambrose, whose expression twisted in cynicism.
In hate and disgust.
Though it flickered with the fear I’d recognized. The desperation he’d felt when he realized I couldn’t be so easily defeated.
And I wondered if he knew that, with us together, he could not prevail.
Because I felt it.
The sheer force that begged to be released.
As if the world moaned to be freed of his chains. As if the hearts of the oppressed begged for this retribution.
We all moved as one as it gathered to a breaking point.
To one tiny pinpoint of volatility.
My insides screamed from the pressure of it.
The feeling as if I might explode. Rend apart to become one with the light.
True fear streaked across Ambrose’s features, and he suddenly shouted, “End them!”
The Ghorl thrashed, their fiery tendrils lashing out at the same second that I dropped Dani’s and Pax’s hands and released the energy.
A shock wave flashed across the area.
A sonic boom.
Seismic.
It was a collision of light and darkness.
A wall of energy that clashed and clawed to overpower the other.
I braced against it, the power pulsing and pulsing from my hands as I pushed every drop from the well inside me.
All my strength.
All my will.
The will of every single Laven who stood as a fortress around me.
It was deafening.
Blinding.
A battle of flame and light.
Our bodies bowed as we poured out every last drop from our souls.
And the light suddenly burst.
Rupturing in a violent explosion. A streaking, tangible resonance that cut down everything in its path.
The wails and snarls of the Ghorl pierced the air. An agony that tore through the realms.
But my focus was on Ambrose.
I could see the flames behind his translucent skin. As if he were burning from the inside out while rage blistered through his features. “No.” It was a snarl of the otherworldly. “You have no power. You have no power. Little Valient. You must die.”
It was a shriek that was devoured when the flames licked higher, spreading out from within to consume his body.
A blaze that grew high as he was fully set afire. He writhed and thrashed within it, his wails barely penetrating the air: “No. Slut. Whore. Bitch. You will not win. I will find a way to—”
He suddenly combusted. Splitting apart on a thunderous boom that cracked through the heavens.
Ash the only thing that remained.
Ash that was caught in a cyclone that touched down from the storm that raged above and consumed the mass of Ghorl in front of us.
Devouring the wicked.
One second later, they were all swallowed by the crater above, the chaos sucked into the nothingness before the fracture closed, the clouds that had obscured everything taken with it.
And in an instant, it was silent.
Still.
Only the ragged panting of Laven gasping for breath filled the air.
Relief and torment raked from our lungs.
I must have been in shock, because the only thing I could do was turn around to look out at the aftermath of the battle that had besieged the town.
At the carnage and ruin.
Buildings had been completely obliterated.
Everything rubble.
But it was the bodies strewn from end to end that clutched me in grief. They were littered across the park and out on the crumbling streets.
Laven wept where they stood over their Nols or begged on their knees at their bodies.
And it became a grief I could not bear when I kept moving, in slow motion, as I turned all the way around to where Pax should have stood.
But instead, he was on the ground, those pale, pale eyes wide and unseeing, a deep gouge in his chest where he’d been struck by a Ghorl.