Chapter 64
VARIDIAN
The ring fought like a sentient person, darkness snapping out to clash with every strike of lightning I charged through the dark river.
I could barely see between strikes of power, the water so black it devoured all sight of the river floor I felt beneath my feet. But I felt the evil presence of the ring even when my visibility dropped.
I lost track of how long I’d been down here, but I knew I should have drowned by now.
Whatever fell magic bled from the ring into the river kept me alive.
Because it was trying to turn me, to twist me into a Zalaam soldier the way it had done everyone else who walked into the river.
There had been twenty of them since I located the ring; my magic speared through the water and killed them before the corruption could take them.
Guilt pierced my chest as they died, but I would do it again if it stopped the dark army growing, if it meant Ameirah and Nabil had less threats to defend themselves against.
Hit it again, the lightning soul urged. You’ve opened a crack.
Another crack, I griped.
I’d directly hit the ring made of carved black stone three times, and each had opened a fracture, but nothing stopped the darkness spilling like blood into the water.
This ring had made that entire army, had turned the Kaldic people marched into the river into Zalaam warriors, and I had to wonder if this was how the araethawn had been twisted all those centuries ago.
All our suffering caused by a queen, a crown, and a ring.
I clenched my teeth, grounding my feet on the river bed and called another spear of white-hot light through the water.
The ground rumbled at the force as I let out another sliver of the magic that had formed in my chest for hours.
Only the lightning soul’s guidance kept me from ripping off the leash and letting every last crackle of magic blast the ring to smithereens.
It wouldn’t work, she said tightly. The same words she’d said half a dozen times since I dove into the water. Was Ameirah unhurt? I kept reaching for her over and over but the bond was a blur. If she was in pain, I couldn’t feel it. But she was alive; I’d know if I’d lost her.
The thought made fear merge with rage, and I tore another bolt of lightning from my core, guiding it with near-impossible precision to hit the ring.
I wavered back a step at the strain it took, panting even though it ought to fill my lungs with water, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass.
The lightning soul didn’t tell me I was using too much, too fast so I reached for another blade of lightning, and another, and another.
It felt like I’d been in the river for hours, and I had nothing to show for it except ripples through the black water and five cracks in the ring. Five now, but it showed no signs of sundering completely, and the corrupt magic pouring from it never slowed.
If I pick it up, I began.
No! She yelled, so loud I staggered, grabbing my head at the spike of pain. My knees buckled and I hissed as I fell, the hard ground sending impact up my thighs, jostling wounds that had barely healed since the battle in the sky.
Alright, fuck, I snapped, lightning skittering from my hands as I dropped them, snaking across the river bed and over the ring. I’d fallen uncomfortably close to the dark plume that spilled from the stone ring, and I shuddered at the silken brush of it over my skin.
Varidian! The lightning soul screamed, her voice shrill and rife with more fear than I’d ever heard from her, so much that I felt it like a crack of a whip inside me, like the buzz of a storm.
I hissed out a breath when I found my hand hovering over that dark circle of stone.
So close I could slip the damn thing on my finger.
What would it do to a lightning soul, a being of pure light, to put that evil thing on my finger.
What kind of monster, what kind of villain, would I become with the twisted greed of Zalaam magic and all the power of the lightning soul?
I was horrified by how close I’d come, how close that dark plume had sucked me in.
Magic responded to the zip of pain and it wasn’t a skitter of lightning that burst from me this time. The river lit up around me as a storm ripped free, and I could see every mark in the river bed, every rock, every plant, and every mark that had been carved into the ring.
The light allowed me to see my magic strike that ring, surging into the writing carved around it.
Now, the lightning soul shouted, and I ripped off the last tether holding back the force of lightning I’d gathered all day.
Light surged into every available space, charged the water until I couldn’t see anything except bright white, and then as my strength made me waver on my knees, speckles of black moved into my vision.
Water rushed around me as I fought to hold onto the deluge of magic.
This was what the lightning soul was at her core—unbridled magic, hot enough to melt everything in the world, to blacken every last bit of life in the world.
But I didn’t need it to wipe out all life; I needed it to shatter this ring, to rip its power away, to untether it from the queen far above the water.
Destroy it, I screamed, my hands shaking with the force of lightning charging through me and erupting through the river. Destroy it now!
The lightning soul’s response was a fierce scream of violence and rage, and I nearly blacked out as the magic flared hotter, sharper, cutting like the keen edge of a dagger.
Every spark of lightning, every crackle of power, every drone of magic I’d harboured since that three-day storm tore out of me, and I bowed over my knees, teeth clenched against a howl of pain.
I should have expected it to hurt. I should have known pain was the cost of summoning this much magic.
It had hurt each time the lightning wrote itself across my body, but it was worth it to keep my family alive, to protect my legion, to fight for my wife up on the riverbank facing a monster from her past. If Ameirah was brave enough to stand face to face with the woman who made her childhood a thing of dread and loneliness and pain, I would endure this.
But as I knelt there, my head bowed, lightning a living thing in the water around me, it felt like I was torn apart, like I was ripped down the middle. For a long time, there was only light, and pain, and screaming. And then quiet—so much quiet. In my head, in my chest, and in the river around me.
I got my blurry eyes to focus on the river long enough to see that the stone ring had shattered into a hundred shards, before lightning blasted it apart into dust, until nothing remained. And then unconsciousness dragged me under.