92
I crashed loudly on the paved ground, hitting my jaw and biting my tongue. I waited a few seconds, convinced I would slip into darkness. But when I realized I was still oddly alert, I pushed myself up on my palms with a groan and then vomited a red spurt.
I watched my blood on the snow.
There should be so much more. I should be lying in a vermilion pool, in the absolute silence of death. Instead, the sound of my own breathing rang in my ears.
Terrified, I pressed one hand against my belly. I felt a slimy coating on the leather robe beneath the armor and the cut in the thick fabric from the blade.
But there was no open wound.
It . . . it wasn’t possible. Neither elven nor witch magic could heal a fatal injury. Only one person, throughout the ages of this world, had been blessed with that gift.
My grandmother.
“Ah, Nauriel, Nauriel . . .” Mornon sighed mockingly, appearing at the edge of my visual field.
I watched him carefully as he moved calmly in front of me, peering down at me with endless superiority. The small, cocky smile on his lips confirmed what we had always feared after he took the Crystal from its former keeper.
“No . . .” I said in a breathless rage.
Mornon slightly canted his head to the side in an even more derisive manner. “Did you really think that the entire time the Crystal had been in my hands, I hadn’t been able to eradicate even a shred of Calien’s power?”
He rotated his right wrist as he lifted his hand, and I widened my eyes at the sight of the filaments of light swirling around his fingers along with his serpentine shadows.
“You have Calien’s healing power,” I gasped in horror.
“The power to snatch back the soul of any living being from death,” he replied, contemplating the black and white spirals that intertwined like two lovers.
My brow pulled. “So why do you still want the Crystal?” I asked, confused. I paused to think. “Is it her power of foresight that you crave?”
“I don’t need it,” he answered flatly, his gaze captivated by the bicolor spirals.
“Then what?” I snapped through gritted teeth, grimacing at the pain in my stomach, where I still felt like the blade was lodged.
Mornon extinguished the ribbons of light and shadow and focused on me, his expression so solemn it made me feel worthless before him. “I want her power to create life,” he said.
“She didn’t create life.” Keeping my palm pressed on my stomach, I rose to my feet. “She brought living creatures back to life.”
A predatory gleam flashed across his face. “One limit of hers, which I won’t have.”
“But you are already able to do that,” I replied tartly. I glanced sideways at the disgusting beasts observing us from every roof and window as spectators. “You created these monsters.”
“They are not alive.” Mornon gazed at me, his eyes so piercing that it upset me. It reminded me how strongly he flowed through me. “They came from darkness.”
The beasts cheered with loud, varied calls, producing a single, terrifying roar that shook the stone blocks under my feet.
I clenched my fists to hold back the urge to unleash a shower of glass to impale them, then fixed their lord in my grim stare. “Why are you doing all this? What is it that you really want?”
He straightened up, almost as if he had been waiting for that question for a long time.
“I want to create a new race. Stronger and faster than elves, without their soul filled with light or the annoying weakness of being inextricably linked to someone else. With magic more powerful than witches’, without their uncontrollable impulses or their wild nature.
A race that will recognize me as their god and revere me and grant me obedience and absolute loyalty.
A perfect race for a perfect army, with which to conquer not only this world, Nauriel,” he added, growing more fervent, “but also all those that darkness has shown me.”
The crazy ambition shining in his eyes made my stomach churn. “And what will become of my people? Of all the people you want to rule?”
His face grew stern. “Every empire needs slaves. But you elves . . .” He regarded me as if dissecting me mentally. “You will serve as rats in my experiments.”
I was horrified, involuntarily imagining dozens of my people’s corpses open from throat to genitals on onyx altars within his fortress.
Imagining myself screaming at the top of my lungs as he violated my mind and body to find a way to unbind me from the Crystal.
“Why do you hate us so much?” I asked him, my voice trembling with anger and pain. “We welcomed you despite you being the result of a forbidden union!”
“You tolerated me,” he hissed.
I frowned, thrown off by his reply. What was he talking about?
Mornon narrowed his eyes, watching me closely and cautiously. “But, judging by your expression, I’d say your father decided to pass down his version of my story.”
I held my tongue, restraining myself from hammering him with the questions that immediately flooded my mind.
I shouldn’t care that everything we knew about Mornon the Abomination might be a lie.
I shouldn’t, damn it. I shouldn’t doubt my father, since the enemy was probably trying to manipulate me just as he had been doing from the beginning.
“Whatever the truth is,” I said harshly, “it does not justify all the evil you have done nor what you intend to do.”
His face was a mask of coldness. “A matter of perspective.” He lifted one hand, and a globe of black fire appeared on his upturned palm. “And it’s really a shame that yours is different from mine.”
My entire body tensed, ready to pick up the fight again with even more ferocity. I shifted one foot slightly back, preparing to sprint as I mirrored his attack . . .
“Nauriel!" my brother’s voice suddenly rang out.
It happened in a moment.
A flash of pure wickedness danced in Mornon’s gaze, and I knew who the target of his dark sphere was even before it darted from his hand.
“ No!” I yelled with all my breath, turning around with my arm outstretched.
A glass wall materialized in front of my father and Araton—who had just appeared at the entrance to the main city road—a second before the fiery ball struck them.
And it didn’t stop there.
The glass spread around the square’s edge and climbed upward until it enclosed Mornon and me within a huge dome.
Panting, I didn’t dare lower my arm and clenched my teeth as magic drew on my life energy to keep that sort of cage steady.
I met my father and brother’s shocked and terrified stares.
The latter punched the dome, causing a deep, booming sound inside it.
He shouted my name again, but his voice reached me muffled and so distant it crushed my heart.
Suddenly, I sensed Mornon’s scorching presence behind me. I stood still, holding my breath. But when he moved my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear, I broke down with a single tear streaking down my scraped cheekbone.
“You know that, as soon as I attack you again, you’ll have to release that barrier,” he said in the same intimate tone he’d used just a few hours earlier, in my bed, as he possessed me with such intensity that I wanted to die and be reborn within him.
To live within him.
He grabbed my bloodied chin with two fingers to force me to turn to him, but I lacked the courage to look into his eyes.
“And the moment you do . . .” he continued, brushing his nose against my temple as his breath warmed my cheek. “The moment you get distracted while trying to protect yourself, I will kill them.”
I jerked free from his grasp with a furious expression, torn apart by the tremendous truth in his words.
I sensed his cruel smile as he straightened to his full majestic height, towering over me like the most unstoppable of disasters. “You can’t win against me, Elf. You never will.”
He was right. Even when combining the powers of the Spirits and Lady Calien with my fighting skills, I still couldn’t match Mornon the Abomination.
I had been so arrogant, thinking I could do it. Thinking I was destined to defeat the greatest evil our world had ever known.
I had let down my family, my people. There was nothing more I could do.
I had failed.
Nauriel, my grandmother’s voice suddenly echoed in my mind.