Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
Nova
At first, all I felt was power.
It was awakening inside of me, unraveling the shadows coiled around the knife, drawing them deep into my chest.
And it was gathering outside of me, too, darkness rising all over the gravesite, as if whatever remained of Calista had stirred at my sacrifice, and now she was reaching up through the soil, grasping for my shivering body.
Everything converged toward the blade buried in my chest. Toward the shard it had pierced—a fragment that had been hidden there for twenty-five years. As the shadows sank in, that pierced fragment began to beat like a second heart.
Then it was moving, twisting and turning, trying to break free.
I sank into the ocean of ancient power surrounding me, trusting the shadows to guide the fragment out.
Seconds later, they managed it.
My vision flickered as I watched its extraction. Pain quickly followed, white-hot and all-consuming. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Blood filled my mouth, warm and coppery; I’d convulsed, I thought, and bitten my tongue. I dug my fingers into the cold dirt, trying to keep still.
Tremors continued to shake my body, but eventually, I managed to lift my head and see what was happening.
Aleks had gotten to his feet and taken several steps back. No longer attacking. Just watching me with a mixture of horror and confusion.
The shard floated in the air between us.
It took excruciating effort, but I fought my way up into a kneeling position, preparing to reach for it, to hand it over to Lorien as we’d agreed.
But something was wrong.
It didn’t look like it should have.
The shape was different—like an actual human heart, grotesque and beautiful, and somehow still beating. And its light…it wasn’t glowing with pure, radiant white like the other shards.
It was black.
As black as the shadows I commanded.
As the seconds ticked by without it inside of me, waves of weakness began to overtake my body, building and building until my balance swayed.
I knew the knife had only pierced a small portion of my flesh, but it felt like my entire chest had been splayed open.
Like every part of me was in danger of tumbling out, leaving me entirely hollow and empty.
I’d only thought about getting rid of the fragment of my old enemy; I hadn’t thought about the space it would leave behind.
Clearly, it had tangled more completely with my own life-force than I’d realized.
And without it, I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
The world tilted sideways.
Lorien caught me as I fell, his grip more ruthless than supportive, forcing me to keep staring at the floating fragment—as if he was waiting for me to explain, to tell him the next part of my plan.
But I didn’t have anything left to tell him.
Nothing left to give.
I only knew that my goals hadn’t changed: I wanted to save my world. My magic. And, more than anything else in that moment, I wanted to save the man standing before me, to somehow heal his scars.
I would give anything to keep you safe.
His words, first. But now, they were mine as well. A shared vow. The only thing tethering me to reality. I had to keep fighting. To keep breathing.
I inhaled as deeply as I could, blinking hard, trying to focus.
As I did, a fracture formed in the center of the heart.
And then it broke, splitting in two with a sound that echoed like a crack of thunder.
One of the pieces flew outward, slamming into Aleks. He staggered back as it sank into his chest, a strangled sound tearing from his throat. His eyes went wide. The runes on his body flared…but then began to dim.
The second piece of the heart fell toward me, hovering just out of my reach, pulsing with a soft, steady darkness. It was hard to focus on.
Everything was getting harder and harder to focus on.
Lorien’s grip tightened on my shoulders, holding me upright.
I knew the bargain we’d made. Knew I couldn’t go back on it now—if only because I was too weak to stop him from taking what was promised. The very thought of trying to fight him off was agonizing.
Just take it, I thought, my vision darkening at the edges. Please. End this.
A moment later, my back hit the ground. Lorien had released me. Let me fall. He was reaching for the remaining half of the fragment—his outstretched hand was the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion claim me.
I drifted in and out of awareness for some time.
The crooked black trees wheeled above me every time I opened my eyes.
Closer. They seemed to be leaning closer with each blink.
I started to see their long branches as fingers, as if the dark hands of Death itself were reaching down to claim me. I welcomed it in like an old friend.
Then came pressure against my chest, firm and deliberate.
I heard myself gasping. Choking. I didn’t actually feel these things, though, because I was detached from my body, floating somewhere up above…
Until a massive weight settled into the hollow place where the fragment had been. It sank deeper, expanding into the cracks of my broken body until all of the emptiness was gone.
A rush of power overcame me, and I realized what had happened.
The broken heart piece…
Lorien had given it back to me.
The pain of it sinking in proved worse than the knife, worse than the heart’s extraction. It felt like it was twisting into my actual heart, knitting itself more tightly into the very fabric of my existence, and it was all so much heavier than before.
But despite the weight, I could breathe again.
And I could move. I reached a hand up, feeling across my chest. Blood soon covered my fingers, but beneath them, my sewn-together heart was beating steadily.
Powerful, insistent beats that thundered with the force of everything I’d endured.
Everything I’d survived. A heavy but beautiful burden.
I felt someone lifting me up off the cold ground, and I opened my eyes, expecting to see Lorien or my brother.
Instead, Aleks was there, watching me with an odd look on his face—a soft, wondering look. Like he’d just woken up, and he was trying to decide if he was still dreaming. His hand found mine, interlacing our fingers as he cradled me against him.
I squeezed his hand until I was certain of it: The recognition taking hold in his gaze. Proof of something that ran deeper than the darkest magic, that burned brighter than any curse they could carve into his skin.
“You…you see me.” The words scraped through my cracked, dry lips.
He exhaled a shaky breath. Nodded. “I see you.”
The world went still. Like a gasp held between life and death, with everything waiting to see whether or not we would manage to keep breathing.
That stillness shattered with the violent sound of clashing steel.
Aleks pulled me closer, curving his body protectively around mine as we tried to see what was happening. A wall of shadows had been surrounding us, but now it was beginning to fade, revealing the full extent of the chaos still unfolding in the clearing.
Reinforcements, led by Captain Voss, were emerging from every direction.
The Order members were scattering, some engaging with my soldiers, but most of them converging toward a rippling point at the edge of the gravesite; a portal that hadn’t been there moments before. Rune marks glowed in the air and on the ground around its edges, violet and pulsing.
Aleks stared at that rippling gateway for far too long.
I grabbed his arm, trying to force his attention back to me. But Severin appeared beside the portal in the same moment, his expression triumphant, despite the chaos, and Aleks didn’t seem able to look away from him.
“This won’t be the end of their plans,” Aleks said quietly.
He rose to his feet, pulling me up with him. As we helped one another balance, I noticed a mark on his bicep—a scar that hadn’t been there before, I was certain. Upon it glowed an obvious shape, a spiraling sigil hovering just above the skin.
The other runes were barely glowing, even as Severin’s gaze fixed in our direction. But they were clearly still there. Like embers buried in ash, waiting for their moment to burn, to consume.
“…I still feel their pull.” He pressed a hand to his temple, as if struck by a sudden headache. His eyes closed as he tried to steady himself through it. I would have sworn his body swayed toward the portal, like a compass needle drawn to magnetic north.
I held my breath, terror clawing through me.
Then his hand moved down to his chest, right over the spot where the broken shard had sunken in.
His eyes flew open. He managed to turn away from Severin, though he still didn’t look at me as he said, “I’m going to keep fighting them.”
The declaration should have brought relief.
It didn’t. There was something in the way his fist clenched as he said it, as if he were trying to hold onto sand slipping through his fingers.
Something that told me I knew what he was going to say next, that shattered me before the words had even left his mouth—
“But I can’t do it here…beside you,” he finished quietly.
The portal shimmered, too bright to ignore, no matter how desperately I wanted to.
“You can’t follow me this time,” he said, taking my hand and finally meeting my gaze again. “You understand that, right?”
I shook my head, but he kept talking anyway.
“Promise me, Nova. Promise me you won’t do anything foolish. Trust that I’ll find you again, when I can.”
The words lodged in my throat.
There was no time to get them out.
A pained cry rang out across the clearing, distracting me. As soon as I looked away from him, Aleks was pulling his hand from mine, striding quickly toward the portal without looking back.
Severin watched him approaching, a slow smile spreading across his face.
I picked up Grimnor and ran after him.
An Order member cut me off, tossing a sphere of something that exploded into chokingly thick smoke. I coughed and stumbled forward, trying to wave it away.
By the time I made it to clearer air, it was too late.
Aleks had reached the threshold of the portal.
“NO!” The scream tore from my throat, raw and desperate.
He paused to look back at me, one last time—
Then he stepped through, Severin following with a slow, deliberate bow in my direction, just before the portal collapsed.