Chapter 57 #2
In the chaos, I caught sight of Rìan. He was dragging himself toward me on hands and knees, every movement a brutal struggle, his face moon-white beneath the blood smeared across it, contorted with equal parts rage and pain and determination.
Thalassis stepped into his path. With almost casual ease, he drove the sole of his boot into Rìan's chest. The impact threw him backward.
Rìan hit the sand hard, the breath bursting from his lungs in a wet gasp before he rolled onto his side, clutching the wound in his shoulder as fresh blood soaked the beach beneath him.
Thalassis looked down at him without an ounce of pity before lowering himself into a crouch. Unhurriedly, he rolled back one sleeve, then the other.
"I've been waiting a very long time for this moment, Prince.
" He licked his lips, his expression one of almost obscene anticipation.
"At last, I'll watch the nightmare of Elantis draw his final breath.
No legend. No savior. Just a corpse bleeding into the sand...
exactly as you should have been three hundred years ago. "
He reached forward with deliberate slowness and drove two fingers into the wound in Rìan's shoulder. Rìan's body bucked violently, his jaw locking so tightly I thought his teeth might crack, but no scream came. He would not give Thalassis that satisfaction.
I thrashed harder, but beneath the net my strength was ebbing away.
No.
I had to do something.
I had to get out.
My hand found the bone knife at my hip.
I fumbled for the hilt, gritting my teeth as the iron webbing bit into my skin, each touch sending my magic deeper inside me.
"I want you to die knowing this." Thalassis's words rang with terrible finality. "Noctharis will perish because of you. Every male. Every female. Every child.”
My fingers closed around the knife.
"You thought Aedric's little display of temper was cruelty?
" He sank his fingers deeper into Rìan's wound, and Rìan's spine arched off the ground.
"The Full Circle will show your people what justice truly looks like.
They'll scream until their voices fail them.
They'll pray for death long before we grant it.
What Aedric did to your Court will seem like kindness by the time we're through.
Burning a library..." He scoffed. "Taking a handful of tongues... "
Something inside me ruptured. Tongues?
"Those were acts of mercy." He leaned closer still. “The Dusklands will drown in the blood of your people. And it will all begin… with Dannis."
Tongues.
My mind leaped back to the servants. To Nadja. To the empty mouths where their tongues should have been, nothing remaining but wriggling stumps of scar tissue.
I'd asked her what had happened. She'd pointed to her head before making those strange fluttering motions with her fingers.
I'd taken it to mean Rìan. His power to invade minds. The movement of her hands, I thought, had been her way of describing the Veil.
But that wasn't what she'd been trying to tell me at all.
Every gesture rearranged itself now into a new, horrifying truth.
She’d tapped the side of her head. Not to indicate Rìan’s power, but something else entirely. The color of her hair. She was blonde.
And the movement of her fingers… Not magic.
Flames.
She hadn't been trying to describe the Dark Prince.
She'd been trying to tell me it was Aedric.
Something ignited deep in my belly, erupting through me with such violence it felt as though my chest had split wide open, white-hot fury coursing beneath my skin.
With every ounce of strength I had left, I wrenched my arm upward.
The bone knife sliced through the iron mesh as though it were nothing more than silk, the strands hissing as they parted and slithered from my shoulders.
I tore myself free, pushing up from the sand in one fluid movement, oblivious to the guards shouting all around me.
The servants.
Nadja.
My magic ripped forward at once, racing toward the blaze of my wrath with greedy, ravenous hunger, and I opened myself to it completely, surrendering every ounce of that terrible rage.
I felt it latch on. Felt it sink its teeth into the beast inside me and feast, devouring the immensity of my anger and hurt until it burned brighter and brighter beneath my skin, stripping away the last remnants of my humanity as effortlessly as fire racing through dry grass.
Still it hungered. It burrowed deeper, consuming every tangled layer of emotion in turn—fear, grief, horror, mercy—until the tempest within me dissolved into a clear, perfect stillness.
Tentatively, I ran a mental hand down its spine, just as Levinica had done countless times with Titter Mouse curled in her lap.
The Eidra arched into the touch.
The world sharpened. Every heartbeat echoed through the beach like a drum beneath my feet.
Every frightened breath of the guards surrounding me, every invisible current of magic weaving through the air, every grain of sand shifting beneath the tide became impossibly clear, each one laid bare before me with crystalline precision.
Across the beach, Thalassis's smile faltered.
His eyes followed the silver radiance spreading beneath my skin, racing through my veins and lighting my flesh from within, my entire body a vessel for something far older than the bones that contained it.
I watched, unmoved, as the victorious gleam drained from his face, replaced by naked horror.
"No..." The word escaped him as little more than a breath.
His terror smelled sweet in the air.
Rìan's head turned toward me in the sand. He stared up at me, and in his eyes I saw neither fear nor surprise, only a sorrow so profound it reached somewhere beyond my grasp, into the place where my heart had been before the Eidra had fed.
"Shield!" Thalassis roared, panic shattering the command. "SHIELD!"
The sea answered. A monstrous wave poured onto the beach, engulfing him in a wall of water. Blue light flared beneath the surface as he skelded into the depths, and then he was gone.
The guards fumbled, dropping their iron weapons as they scrambled to weave protective wards around themselves.
Too late.
I closed my eyes and lifted my arms—not in anger, nor vengeance, but with the calm inevitability of nature itself—and released the power straining beneath my skin.
A concussive wave exploded from my body, slamming outward with the violence of a collapsing mountain. And then—nothing.
I breathed in the sudden silence. Warmth drifted across my face in tiny droplets, featherlight against my skin. They gathered upon my lashes, kissed the corners of my mouth, alighted upon my face and chest so gently I scarcely felt them. I stood without moving, savoring their delicate touch.
I opened my eyes.
Where the guards had stood only a heartbeat before, a fine crimson cloud hung suspended in the sea air, slowly unfurling across the beach before settling gently over the rocks, the scrub grass, and the waiting tide.
Not a body remained.
Not a bone.
Not even a scrap of cloth.
Only a bloody mist.