Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
Nova
“Once again, you’ve been a tremendous help,” Lorien said.
I backed farther into the room, my muscles tensing as his gaze fell upon the orb I’d uncovered.
“Because I couldn’t have reached that without you.”
I stepped in front of it.
“And in order to finish stealing away the last of your pathetic world’s energy and directing it into the world I intend to rule over,” he said, “I needed to be able to access that last remaining reservoir.”
“You aren’t accessing any of it,” I snarled. “You’re finished. I’m here to bring the balance back, and there is no room for you in the world I’m going to be ruling over.”
He cocked his head, his lips pulling into a smirk. “A noble goal. But one that will be difficult to achieve without your sword, won’t it?”
A vicious jolt of pain accompanied his words—like he’d taken hold of my wrist and tried to snap it in half—and Grimnor was ripped from my grasp before I had time to register what was happening. As it soared precisely into his hold, I realized with horror that he’d managed to possess both my arm and my sword at the same time.
I’d had no chance to hold on to my weapon.
I was lucky he hadn’t controlled me into doing something far worse.
I stood up straighter, pushing past my fear, shoving aside all my horrible questions about just how deep his well of power went.
“I’ve gotten very good at this trick,” he said, while twisting and balancing the sword, “thanks to the possessive magic I stole from your predecessor, which was, of course, reinforced with what I stole from you . So again, allow me to extend my sincerest gratitude. Now, if we—”
He was cut off, forced to spin and meet the powerful swing of Aleks and Luminor.
The swords collided with a sound like cannon fire, sending waves of wild energy radiating through the room.
Lorien’s counter was equally wild, slicing toward Aleks with so much force I nearly cried out, anticipating an inevitable strike and a spray of blood.
Aleks brought Luminor into a guard position at the last moment, but the blow was enough to knock him back several feet. More magic erupted at the contact, and this room that had once felt massive suddenly seemed to be collapsing in on itself, sinking from the weight of too much power in too small of a space.
I darted out of the path of the most turbulent twists of energy, dodging reckless swings and trying to get into a clear space to catch my breath, to think through my own next move.
The Aetherstone continued to hum with more and more energy, coming fully to life now that both Lorien and I—along with the swords—were present. In the rapidly building mayhem around us, it seemed like a beacon, a lighthouse I kept spotting no matter how high and wild the waves of other magic roared.
Aleks moved like a man possessed, meeting Lorien step for step in an increasingly furious dance of flashing blades and crackling arcs of power. I didn’t know how long he could keep that up, but I was confident he could buy me some time, at least.
I made up my mind and ran for the center of the dais. I needed to take what I could from the Aetherstone while it was awake and practically calling for me; there was no telling how unstable it might become as our battle with Lorien raged on—or what he might do to prevent us from manipulating its energy.
I didn’t have Grimnor, but I could still guide some of that energy into my world, surely—enough to keep it going, if only until we could come up with a more permanent solution.
Pausing only a moment to steady my hand, I reached for the Stone.
Shadows bled from my palm without any real effort from me, falling onto the Stone, which crackled in response. The shadows merged with the current of steady, pale blue energy enshrouding the Stone, turning it to a deep shade of purple. Then my magic was flowing back into me as easily as it had fallen out, except it was clearly… changed.
It snaked around my arm, light and cool as a breeze but buzzing with a power that hadn’t been there before. With as much poise as I could muster among the battles raging around me, I guided that torrent of energy to the orb at the platform’s edge, watching as it settled and ignited a soft glow in its center.
Again and again, I did this, watching the glow become more and more visible. A flickering candle transforming into a glowing ember—steady with promise, even if its light was still faint.
It wasn’t as efficient as I imagined the sword would have been, but it still seemed to be working , however slowly, so I pressed on.
Until the earsplitting sound of metal scraping stone caught my attention.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lorien backing Aleks against the wall. Aleks managed to duck a second swing—leading to another cringe-induing slice of steel across the stone wall—but Lorien followed with magic, this time, launching an assault of shadowy daggers with a wide sweep of Grimnor’s blade.
Aleks fell to one knee, hastily bracing Luminor in front of him. As he was swept up in the storm of sharp shadows colliding with his shield of light, our enemy turned and moved back toward me.
Spotting the currents of magic I was attempting to channel, Lorien paused.
And he laughed.
“That won’t be enough to save your dying world, you foolish woman.”
“Then why do you look so concerned about me doing it?” I shot back.
His darkly amused tone held as he took a few more steps toward me and said, “Habit, I suppose. It’s such a pity for one of our kind to waste their energy on something so trivial; I’m only looking out for you.”
“I have plenty more energy to spare,” I lied, letting more shadows bleed from my skin to prove my point.
“And yet, I can’t help my concern for you.”
His gaze fell far too intimately on my face with the words, and I resisted the urge to recoil. He was only trying to get under my skin, I knew.
I wouldn’t let him.
He kept trying. His next words were a whisper in my thoughts, an attempt to exploit the Vaeloran link we shared, as he’d done this morning. I blocked him out well enough that I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the mumble of his words was like a physical prodding against my mind, sharp enough to be painful along with unsettling.
“Stop it,” I commanded, my shadows darkening with the words.
He gave me a crooked smile—the one I had associated with Zayn for so long.
How many had he charmed with that stolen smile?
My hatred for him only grew at the sight of it, and he must have sensed this, because his tone became mocking as he said, “The offer to rule alongside me still stands, by the way.”
“I would kill myself a thousand times over before I ruled at your side.”
He chuckled. “Once will suffice.”
I braced a hand against the Aetherstone as he stepped closer. And without really thinking, I squeezed.
The Stone reacted to my violent grip by sending an equally violent surge of magic shooting into my body. Reflexes channeled it into a javelin of shadows, which I flung from my other hand, striking Lorien in the chest and knocking him backward.
Grimnor nearly slipped from his grasp as he caught himself awkwardly against the ground. I saw my chance, but I was dizzy from the amount of power that had just rushed through me—my attempt to repossess my sword came too slowly.
He gripped it tighter and launched toward me.
Aleks cut him off once more, exploding through the lingering shadows I’d created, Luminor’s blade burning brightly as it slammed into its darker twin.
“Eyes on me, motherfucker,” he growled at Lorien, his expression bordering on feral—a look that was only heightened by the blood trickling down his face.
Lorien staggered beneath the force of the collision. He tried to rebalance Grimnor, to ready his own attack, but Aleks was relentless, forcing him to move so quickly he scarcely managed to block, much less attack.
“Didn’t you hear her earlier ? ” Another powerful swish and thwack of Luminor and its light, knocking Lorien further off balance. “We’re both finished with you.”
Lorien met the next swing more fully, letting out an annoyed roar as he began to fight back in earnest. He dove under the next swipe, and then cut upward with Grimnor, sending a current of both light and shadow flying upward.
Aleks danced back and away, narrowly avoiding another shower of shadowy daggers.
They resumed their battle on the other side of the room. Aleks seemed to be purposely leading him away from me and the Stone—but I found myself torn between continuing my work with that stone and chasing them down.
The Noctaris orb was still glowing steadily, yet faintly. A start, but only a start—it needed more.
I needed to do so much more.
But the blood on Aleksander’s face kept flashing in my mind. He’d looked prepared to fight to the death.
But I wasn’t prepared to let him.
I started toward him at the exact moment he and Lorien collided in their most violent show of magic yet.
I shielded my face from the explosion of light and dark that followed, covering my eyes as the room was engulfed in a dark cloud shot through with twisting bolts of white-hot power. The floor shook. The walls rumbled, shedding tapestries and layers of dust and bits of the ceiling, and between that rain of debris and the mass of magic, I couldn’t see more than an arm’s length in front of me.
The settling haze was so disorienting that, for a moment, I didn’t realize how perfectly silent everything was becoming.
I could hear my own heartbeat. I could hear the hum of the Aetherstone, and a crack splitting through the beams across the ceiling, and the shower of dust causing a weak cough that sounded oddly far away.
I backed away from the Aetherstone, reaching for the knife sheathed at my hip while simultaneously letting shadows rise from my skin and wrap me in a protective cage. I tried to make that cage into something formidable—only to realize, then, that I’d given too much of my power to the orb, too quickly, and now I couldn’t force my magic into something solid no matter how hard I tried.
Lorien erupted from the haze, slamming a light-wrapped hand into my shadows.
He broke through my defenses quickly, catching me by the throat and throwing me against the wall. I stayed on my feet, dazed as I was, but my vision split—three different Loriens followed up his initial attack.
I dodged the wrong one.
His hand slapped across my jaw, knocking my head sideways into the wall. Black dots swam in my vision. I slumped to the floor. I saw nothing else for a long moment—but I felt Grimnor moving toward me.
At the last instant, I managed to reach out, to possess my sword for a heartbeat, making it veer aside and miss my chest—barely.
Lorien was thrown off balance for a few steps. I was too stunned to make much use of it. I was able to scramble to my feet and put a bit of distance between us, nothing more, before he was upon me again, scourges of his light reaching out and snapping at my legs like the teeth of hellish hounds.
My head throbbed and my limbs ached, but I twisted around and somehow brought forth precise strikes of my own, whipping my shadows around his magic and jerking until the light waned and scattered.
Looking back to the path ahead, I realized I was out of space to move. The walls rose up before me. The haze lingered behind. I couldn’t see Aleks. I couldn’t see the Stone or the platform it stood upon—I could barely see Lorien, even though the sound of his breathing told me he was still close.
He’d slowed, moving with more deliberate steps—a panther stalking its prey. As our gazes met through the fog, he tossed my sword aside and focused on gathering magic into his hands. He drew from the mass of it already hovering all around us, whipping all the lingering energies into a renewed frenzy before taking a more exact hold on the jagged lines of heat flickering through it all.
He summoned more, and those lines became like the solid cage I’d been trying to make with my own shadows—bolt after bolt wrapping me up in a burning embrace that sank into my skin, paralyzing my muscles, numbing me to the point that I didn’t realize, at first, that I was being lifted several feet off the ground.
Then I was flying, careening across the room.
I hit the door hard enough—wrapped in enough of Lorien’s violent magic—that the ancient wood cracked as I collided with it. An entire section of it splintered away, falling with me to the hard stone floor.