Chapter 46 #3
Light or Shadow. Sacred or forbidden. Right or wrong. I would have poured every piece of myself into the hole in Vareena’s body if it meant she took one more breath.
There are doors even you should not force open.
“Then help me.” My hands shook harder. “Please.”
The Codex did not answer.
“Lyra.” Arms came around me again, and this time I knew them before I looked.
Kieran. “It’s okay, Menace.”
“No.” He tried to lift me, and I thrashed so violently one of his hands slipped. “Let go of me.”
“Lyra.”
“I said let go!”
I ripped myself out of his hold and fell forward again, my knee striking stone hard enough that pain shot up my leg. I barely felt it. I shoved my hands back against Vareena’s wound.
“No, it’s okay.” I was crying so hard now I could barely speak. “I’m a healer. I can help her.”
Kieran crouched beside me, and his face broke.
That terrified me more than the blood.
“No.” I shook my head immediately. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Menace—”
“Before all of this, before the magic, before any of it, I was the healer’s daughter.” The words tore out of me. “That was all I had. That was all I knew how to be. I knew how to help people.” Kieran reached for me, and I shoved his hand away.
“So why can’t I help her? Why can’t I stop it?
” My palms slid against the blood, and I pressed harder.
“Why can’t I heal her?” There had to be another way.
A vessel Calis hadn’t reached. A place beneath my hands where the bleeding could still be stopped.
A power hidden deeper in the Starlight, or an answer waiting inside the Shadow that no healer had ever dared to use.
There had to be.
Because the alternative was Vareena lying beneath me with her ribbon soaked red and tomorrow waiting for someone who would never arrive. “Please,” I begged, though I didn’t know who I was begging anymore. “Please. I’ll do anything.”
Kieran’s hand settled against the back of my neck. This time I didn’t have enough strength to throw him off. “She’s gone, Menace.”
“No.” The word came automatically.
“Lyra.” Someone else this time. Lidia. I couldn’t look away from Vareena.
“Lyra.” Closer now. Gentler.
I shook my head. “No.”
My hands were still pressing against the wound when Lidia touched my wrist.
“Lyra, she is dead.”
Everything stopped. The screaming around us, the Fire, stone breaking, Raiden crying beside me, Kieran’s hand against my neck—all of it vanished beneath three words I could not make sense of.
She is dead.
I looked at Vareena. At the pale gold ribbon tangled through her dark hair. At the blood drying at the corner of her mouth. At the face that should have changed when I said her name.
Vareena was dead.
And I broke.
The scream tore out of me so hard it hurt. I doubled over her, fingers still tangled in the ribbon, and screamed until my throat burned and the sound stopped resembling anything human.
Starborn. You will become everything they spoke about.
Light answered first.
It didn’t gather. It detonated.
Silver-gold Starlight exploded out of me with enough force to throw Damon backward and force Calis over Vareena’s body. The floor beneath my knees cracked, and every surviving lantern in the hall flared white at once before bursting, glass raining from the ceiling in burning fragments.
Starborn, listen to me. Do not let yourself go by grief.
I couldn’t. The Light kept coming, pouring out of my hands and chest, boiling beneath my skin until the rune under my ribs felt as though it had split open.
Silver became gold, gold became white, and every Shadowkin close enough to touch the wave shrieked as Starlight burned through it.
One creature near the western breach caught fire without flame, its black skin turning translucent before Light tore outward through its chest, splitting ribs and spraying dark blood across the wall.
Another tried to retreat through the broken ward, but Starlight caught it around the middle and ripped it in half.
You are losing the boundary.
Good.
Let it go.
Let all of it go.
Vareena was dead. Nothing would ever be enough. Pain tore through my left hip, sharp enough to fold me around it.
The Codex’s voice changed.
No.
Kieran shouted my name again. I reached desperately for every lesson he had given me in the old southern ring.
Breathe. Center. Find the edge before it finds you.
There was no edge.
Grief had eaten it.
Starborn—
Shadow erupted.
Not a thin tendril hidden beneath a table. Not a frightened curl tucked behind my body. Not anything I could pretend had been accidental.
Darkness detonated out of me and struck the Starlight.
The entire hall shook. A crack like thunder split through the mountain as silver-gold Light and black-violet Shadow climbed around one another in enormous twisting currents.
They collided above me hard enough to shear stone from the nearest column.
My dress tore at the left hip, cold air striking exposed skin as the Shadow rune blazed against my flesh.
Too much.
Someone gasped, then another.
Pull it back. You will become what they fear.
I didn’t pull anything back. The battle hadn’t stopped. Shadowkin still moved through the breaches. Fire still roared. Stone still cracked. People were still crying and dying.
But everyone was looking at me.
Candidates. Instructors. Council representatives.
Mistress Calis stared from beside Vareena, her blood-covered hands frozen in her lap.
Master Kaiz had gone still with Fire burning around both fists, while Master Rhovan stood behind a half-raised wall of Earth.
Damon stared at the darkness wrapped around my left hand.
Magister Halos stood beneath the northern arch, his face emptied of anything I could read.
Lidia looked at me through tears. Dax had forgotten to breathe.
Emrin’s mouth had fallen open. Raiden didn’t look at all; he was still holding Vareena.
Eiryx stood inside a pool of Shadow that was no longer answering only him.
And Neseryn—
Neseryn looked at me as though she had been waiting for this moment her entire life. There was no surprise on her face. No horror.
Only recognition.
It lasted less than a second before it disappeared, and Kieran was already moving toward me. “Lyra.”
I backed away, and Shadow moved with me. A dozen people flinched. “No.”
“Look at me.”
The words hit like a slap. The same words I had said to Vareena while she died.
“Don’t.”
“Lyra.”
“DON’T!”
Shadow burst outward. Kieran braced as the force struck him, boots grinding across the fractured stone as it drove him back.
His own darkness surged on instinct, meeting mine in the space between us.
For one terrible heartbeat, the two Shadows tangled together, mine twisting through his with the familiarity of a touch it remembered even while I wanted nothing from him.
Then mine tore free and swept beyond him
Someone behind him screamed, “She’s Shadow!”
Another voice answered, “She’s Light!”
“That’s impossible—”
“No one can—”
“Starborn.”
The word cut through the hall. That fucking word. The Codex recoiled inside my mind, its presence drawing tight until I could feel the weight of its attention fixed entirely on what had just been spoken. When it finally answered, its voice was quieter than I had ever heard it.
Now they have seen you.
Starlight surged, and Shadow followed. The two powers collided above me and blew every remaining lantern apart.
Darkness swallowed the ceiling while silver-gold Light burned through it in enormous veins.
Candidates dropped to the floor. Halos threw a shield over the nearest group while Calis spread another over Vareena and Raiden.
Rhovan raised stone around the wounded, and Kaiz dragged two candidates clear of a falling fixture. My magic hit the Shadowkin.
They came apart.
One was caught between Light and Shadow near the western arch, Starlight burning through its torso while darkness seized its limbs and pulled in four directions. Joints tore free. Black blood sprayed the wall, and pale, pulsing flesh spilled from the split body and slapped wetly against the floor.
Another tried to crawl into a corpse, but my Shadow reached it first. And I felt the creature. Not its body. Inside it. An emptiness stuffed with stolen pieces of other people—faces, voices, fear.
I hated it.
The Shadow tightened, collapsing the creature inward until bone punched through black flesh. Starlight struck what remained and turned it to ash.
I should have been horrified.
I wasn’t.