Chapter Sixty #3
He slams a wall of darkness into place and absorbs the blows, the impact rattling the ground. Shards of obsidian magic split from the wall like fractured glass—a clinking noise filling the air as they detach—and the pieces soar toward Casimir’s chest.
Casimir merely side steps the attack. “Really,” he says as if disappointed. “Is this truly the best the continent has to offer these days?” He walks forward, as if Draven is no threat to him whatsoever.
Draven watches as Casimir’s eyes then shift to Lyra, where his gaze sharpens.
And something inside Draven snaps.
The final bits of magic he’s kept restrained—the part he always keeps caged, terrified of its true prowess—bursts free.
The air around him warps as darkness spills from his pores, surging into the air. It envelopes him, swallowing his form, consuming him whole. His body is nothing but a silhouette against the void—a living nightmare, a god of darkness given form .
“There’s a reason it’s called dark magic, you know.” Draven’s voice is different now—thick with something no human voice should carry. “And I spent a long time wondering why having it made me the most feared wielder in Solaya. Why men cowered in front of me when I was no more than a child.”
Casimir watches Draven with interest. “Oh?”
Draven keeps his anger on a leash a moment longer. “I figured out the answer eventually.”
“Please, do share.”
Draven feels the magic bubbling into his throat. “It’s because, as long as I can drain it of light, nothing is beyond my magic’s reach. I can inject darkness anywhere, in anything. And all those shadows you see without realizing? Every cover of black or patch of night? It all answers to me.”
The sky splinters with black streaks of lightning. Ebony flames ignite along Draven’s arms, coiling around his skin, as the remaining bit of light vanishes from his eyes, leaving nothing but a pit of darkness in their wake.
His fingers twitch. Darkness obeys.
An army of shadow panthers rise from the ground, their eyes burning with violet fire.
Casimir simply watches. “Oh, to think what you could become,” he muses quietly. Then he exposes his palms—facing them skyward—and the air sharpens as a surge of magic awakens, collecting in his hands in a warping ball of amber light.
And Draven is prepared to die—to set this whole world on fire to keep this creature of a man from taking Lyra.
But then the last person Draven ever expected to see strides between them, hands clasped behind his back. And yet, Draven also should have expected nothing less.
Tynan Dalmar appears through the haze of dust. “That is enough.”
Draven’s magic flickers.
Fuck—why him.
His father glares at him. “You will let him take her.”
“I will do no such thing,” Draven bites out .
“Then you’re a selfish, foolish child who should have never been given a rank. Look around you.” Tynan sweeps his arms across the crumbling arena. When Draven doesn’t move, Tynan shouts, “ Look !”
The shadow forms evaporate in the air like mist, and Draven can feel the flames dying along his skin. Draven does as his father commands and looks at the broken scraps of what remains. Who remains.
They all glance between Draven and Casimir with terror in their eyes. Even Arden and Nuha look at him as though they have never seen him before.
Everyone cowers.
Everyone except his brothers, Gray Nightenjoy, and Marcella Lynderby.
Tynan does not relent. “You would have them all die for her? For a crumbling body that is probably lost to this world already? Haven’t we lost enough ?”
Gods-damn him. Despite his rage, hearing him speak of Lyra’s critical condition guts him.
She can’t be gone. She can’t be.
Draven wouldn’t survive it. Wouldn’t want to survive it.
“Yes. I would.” Draven spits the truth in Tynan Dalmar’s face, dragging his steel-lined gaze to the man who was never worthy of the title father . “I would burn them all myself if it meant she survived.”
The resulting murmurs do not go unnoticed by him.
Fury twists Tynan’s features, but he quickly resets. “Well then, allow me to give you perspective. There is another I don’t think you’d be so quick to throw in the flames. Isn’t that right, Draven?”
Fuck him. Fuck him .
Draven clenches his hands and inhales a breath that feels like shards of glass in his lungs. He glances over his shoulder at Lyra’s brutally deformed body, and something that feels a hell of a lot like a sob pounds in his chest.
This— this is what Draven has always feared. Why he has always remained so guarded and distant from the world. So careful with his every action .
But he never stood a chance with her. He was doomed the moment he saw Lyra, with those defiant eyes and that fighter’s heart.
And after the night of his mother’s birthday, when he sat drunk on the edge of a rooftop, his demons clawing free—when she simply sat beside him and let him remember, unaware of how badly he longed to feel warmth—only then did he realize.
He had already fallen.
Gods help him, he is so lost on what to do. How he can possibly protect them both now.
“If you do not let him take her,” Tynan continues, his voice as cold as the ice creeping into Draven’s heart.
“Then I will see to it personally that the… other one …is met with as violent an end as you’ll be giving everyone here.
” He pauses, letting his words settle. “And you and I both know how creative I can be.”
A silent scream tears through Draven’s whole body, raging in his head. Blurry images of red-stained memories ravage him, and he runs his hands through his hair repeatedly.
Draven shakes his head, fear and panic seizing in his chest. “No. No. I won’t let her go.”
It feels like all he can say.
There has to be a way—he just needs to think. He can come up with a way out of this.
“It’s your choice,” Tynan says.
Draven’s eyes slide to Casimir, who has been standing quietly, watching the exchange with interest. A fist squeezes around his heart, and his lungs feel suffocated—deprived of oxygen.
He can’t…there isn’t…
No.
He will—
A sharp crack against his skull sends pain rippling through him. His vision flickers with crimson snowflakes before the world tilts.
Everything goes black.