Chapter 45
VALANCE
No.
No.
No.
This was not happening. The sword inside Kormac wasn’t real—not the first or the second time.
He hadn’t come back to me to die. And he wouldn’t die.
The soul bond lived between us once again.
He would have his undying power back, everything returned to before my dark caress.
I hadn’t thought of it before, but it had to be true.
Didn’t it?
Something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. The soul bond snapped, stinging my heart. My head spun, bile burning the bottom of my throat. I only just deflected a jab of Eoghan’s sword in time.
No.
No.
No.
How could this be happening?
The army gave a round of applause to the queen.
“One down!” she cried.
Fury, once again, sunk its claws into me. I began to sink into a terrible berserker rage, losing myself to horror. I tried to resist, desperate to hang onto my mind because it would end me. My grandmother wouldn’t allow me to kill her army. She’d put me down the moment I surged toward her dark fae.
Kormac is dead.
No. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. Any moment now, he’d get up and fight back, get the better of Orla.
He had to be okay
He had to—
My grandmother screamed. Eoghan paused, turning his head to witness the commotion. I drove my sword through the back of his neck, then cut to the side. His head rolled, half hanging off his neck by the remaining flesh. He fell to the sand.
Immediately, I rushed Orla, also distracted by the queen’s screaming.
Leaping through the air, releasing a scream of my own, I brought my sword down on the former queen’s head, steel cleaving through her face down to her neck. Bloody spurted as I yanked my blade free, and she went down into the sand like the former king.
Loyal before my grandmother’s enchantments or not, I didn’t care. She hurt Kormac, and Eoghan tried to hurt me. That meant death for them.
I dropped to be beside my… my love. He lay in a pool of blood, eyes wide and staring at the Winter sky.
“Kormac?” I touched his cold face. “Wake up, Kormac.”
My grandmother continued to scream.
I glanced her way, saw her body lifting in the sky. Silver magic crackled around her, a vicious aura of lightning clawing at the air.
A new twist I didn’t care about. All I wanted was to see this man blink, for him to tell me he was fine.
“Come on, Kormac,” I whispered, blocking out the growing chaos behind me. “You can’t die. Show me your undying power.”
But there was nothing but death in those lovely eyes.
My tears splashed his cheeks as reality sunk deep into my bones.
“I won’t accept this,” I said. “I won’t have you die on me, Kormac. Please. Please. Please. Please—”
A presence above me.
I looked up to see Brigid with something familiar in her mouth—another of those silver shards used to kill Kormac the first time.
She lowered, letting the shard fall from her mouth to land beside me.
“Hurry, Valance,” she said. “Take the shard, take back your power. This is your only chance before she destroys everything.”
I looked away from the shard, back into the dead eyes of my love. And I did love him, which was as strange as it was true. These feelings were unlike any I’d ever experienced before. Too beautiful to lose now.
“Wake up,” I begged him.
“Please, Valance,” Brigid tried. “Dovelar cannot handle the dark caress. It wasn’t meant for her. The magic is out of control. You have to stop her.”
“Kormac…” I stroked his face.
“Valance! Please!”
She could scream and rage and plead all she wanted. I wasn’t moving from his side. Not now. Not after everything.
“Valance!”
“It’s over,” I said.
“Valance! She’s—”
A crack of thunder silenced her. I looked back as silver lightning tore through the army of dark fae, searing through their bodies. Ripping them in half, burning them to ash, their heads exploding—all manner of violent death from equally violent magic.
With every burst of lightning, more died, or the ground split open. She really would destroy the world, or at least this beach.
Hadn’t I considered doing the same thing myself?
“This is how it has to be,” I added.
“Don’t say that! Fight! Please, Valance! Fight!”
There was no fight left in me. I wanted Kormac. If I couldn’t have him, what care did I have for Faerie? I was exhausted, done with everything.
“You can’t do this,” Brigid said, so close to my ear. “I didn’t go through all this for you to fail.”
“And I didn’t go through all this to end up with nothing.”
“If you don’t stop her, there will be so much nothing.”
My grandmother’s body erupted in silver light, a radiant sphere expanding outward.
“She will kill us all!” Brigid screamed.
“Then so be it. I’m ready.”
“I’m not! Think of me. Think of the promises you made.”
“Consider them broken,” I replied.
“You spoiled little shit!” she spat. “Why you were ever considered worthy of the dark caress is beyond me. A rotten, pampered bastard who deserved death many times over.” She literally spat, a globule of phlegm hitting the side of my face.
I wiped it away before it could drip onto Kormac’s face.
She may have done so much to give me my power, to save my life, but I had no care. All I cared about was lying dead before me, my hands on his cold skin. There was nothing left to fight for. If it wasn’t my grandmother doing this, I’d be doing it myself.
“I’m sorry, Brigid,” I said as the ground shook.
Lord Cullen appeared above us, throwing himself down into a protective ball.
An explosion.
Silver light ripped across the sky, unleashing relentless bolts of lightning. Over and over, they struck land and sea, a million claws to bring the end.
I spread myself across Kormac, my cheek on his. Held him close as I prepared to meet my death.