33. Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
Nova’s head swam, the contents of her stomach sloshing like water in a bucket. Braced on her hands and knees, she inhaled a shuddering breath, battling the urge to heave up her guts on the stone floor. She blinked rapidly as her senses returned to her, eyes flitting about the darkened room.
The Shadow Estate was more cave than castle, the walls of the throne room rough-hewn and pitted, as if the solid rock had been hollowed out by the claws of some terrible beast. A faint, almost imperceptible energy vibrated within the stone beneath her palms—a similar power to the one she’d felt emanating from the white stone at the Temple of Illora.
A dissonant chorus of low, croaking calls rang out above her, and Nova craned her neck to the ceiling. Hundreds of ravens roosted in the rafters, the birds shifting from foot to foot and ruffling their feathers, heads cocked to the side with shiny black eyes trained on her.
A rush of awareness rippled through her like an icy fingertip tracing the length of her spine beneath Kinslayer strapped to her back.
Nova spun but remained on her knees, still too dizzy to stand.
Her hand rested a breath away from the hilt of the cursed sword, the familiar burning sensation igniting in her palm.
“At last,” a low voice rumbled from the shadows. “You’ve come to see your father.”
Rising on shaky legs, Nova squinted, her eyes adjusting to the low light.
Heavy curtains shuttered the windows, thin strips of sunlight piercing through the narrow gaps in between.
Empty tables sat scattered about the Great Hall, surfaces littered with moldy scraps of food and mugs of rancid ale.
A massive throne sat upon a dais on the far wall.
Her footsteps echoed as she stepped forward tentatively.
A flicker of movement and she registered him there, seated upon the throne.
Hidden in the shadows he so easily bent to his will.
He made no move to stand, to attack. Though she wasn’t foolish enough to lower her guard, Nova dropped her hand from Kinslayer’s hilt and took another step toward him, eager to assess her opponent.
To look upon the face of the male who’d sired her.
Omen straightened in his seat, and his breath hitched, as if the movement pained him.
The burning sensation in Nova’s palm bloomed to her wrist as she neared her father, Kinslayer desperate for her to wield it.
Or, perhaps, for Omen to wield it. Nova imagined the cursed blade cared little who delivered the death blow, so long as one was dealt.
Her scalp prickled as if someone had stroked her hair, and she halted her steps, near enough to see her father clearly.
He was larger than the likenesses she’d seen of him.
Broad chested as his father had been, long legs stretched out in front of the throne of obsidian.
He leaned forward, his face falling into relief in a shaft of sunlight.
Though she surmised he was the same age as her mother, the Shadowbringer’s skin was a weathered, ashy gray marred by deep grooves between his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth.
A permanent sneer etched upon his features.
To her surprise, a laugh rolled forth from his chest, deep and rasping. A blade on a grinding wheel.
“To think—” His voice dissolved into a wheeze, and, for a brief moment, he struggled to catch his breath.
“All the years I spent fearing you. Fearing a female.” He laughed again, the sound raising the hairs on the back of her neck.
“I could never see you. Even now, as you stand before me, your mind—it’s a mystery to me.
” Curiosity flickered across his aged face before his lip curled back disdainfully.
“I knew Nox was too soft to offer up my heir as a sacrifice.”
“Nox is good. The same will never be said of you. There’s a great deal of strength in softness.” Nova clenched her fist at her side, fighting against the pain. Against the voice whispering in her ear, promising her suffering would end if she only took up her father’s sword.
Omen gripped the arms of the throne. “I became who I am so Nox could become who he is. He has had every choice, while I had none.” His shout filled the empty room before trailing off in a dry cough.
“Are you ill?” Feigning interest, Nova took a tentative step forward. To use the Light, she needed to be closer to him.
“All magic has a price.” A drop of liquid, thick and black, dribbled out the corner of his mouth, and he smeared it with the back of his hand. “I wield it, but it feeds on me in turn.”
Nova planted her feet wide, hands hanging at her sides, mere strides from someone who’d wished her dead for as long as she’d been alive.
She searched his face for a trace of the young male she’d seen in the portrait at the Silvergard Estate.
The one Nox had shown her in a dream. But that Omen was a ghost, swallowed whole by the one who sat seething before her.
Pressing her eyes shut, Nova called on Illora’s light, the white mist quickly gathering in the darkness behind her eyelids.
Her head snapped back as the magic ripped through her, a burst of bright light exploding in the darkened room.
As with the other times she’d used the Light, Nova briefly lost her sight and hearing, though, somehow, she remained on her feet. Omen’s laughter sliced through her awareness, enveloping her, when the high-pitched hum faded. A deep, vile rumble echoing in the Great Hall.
“You poor fool,” he said, his words dripping with mock sincerity.
He shook his head derisively, silver eyes boring into hers.
“The darkness claimed me long before I murdered my father and brother. The Council had their chance to halt its spread, but they refused. When I met Elena, I thought perhaps there was some hope for me.”
Her father’s face softened for an instant—a flicker of tenderness before he donned a hateful sneer once again.
“But it was too late. She saw that. Saw me for what I truly am. What I’ve always been.”
He stood from his throne, and though the movement was labored, it startled Nova all the same.
She stumbled back, her hand flying instinctively to the sword at her back, as he descended from the platform.
When her father curled his fingers around the handle of a battle axe leaned against the dais and dragged it across the stone floor, she gripped the hilt and ripped the weapon free of its sheath.
Planting her feet wide and bending her knees, she readied herself for an attack, holding Kinslayer with a two-handed grip in the space between them.
Omen flinched upon seeing his sword, halting his advance for a beat as a glimmer of sunlight flickered along the length of the darkblade. Recovering quickly, he hauled the great axe into his hands and hefted it over his right shoulder.
“You can’t kill me with that axe,” Nova spat, summoning every drop of courage within her.
“I don’t have to kill you with it.” A wicked grin crept across his rugged face. “I need only sever your sword arm and reclaim my blade.”
Revulsion radiated off of him. Nova blew out a breath and tightened her grip on the hilt, strengthening her resolve.
“I’m in your debt for going to the trouble of reforging the sword and delivering it to my doorstep,” Omen said, the mock sincerity returning to his voice. “It’s been ages since I’ve been able to leave my Estate.”
With that, her father lunged.
He moved with a speed that ran counter to both his size and his haggard appearance.
Nova leapt back out of the path of the axe as he swung.
The weight of the weapon nearly spun him around, but what he lacked in agility, he made up for in brute strength.
Nova had no doubt that one good hit—one well-aimed strike—was all he needed to incapacitate her.
To reclaim his blade and end her life as had been his aim since he first learned of her existence.
Omen brought the axe back in a slow but brutal arc, and Nova dodged it once again.
“You’re fast. I’ll give you that,” he rasped, charging her and pushing her toward the center of the room.
Spinning out of his reach, she sidestepped him, stopping behind his back and bringing Kinslayer down over the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Omen twisted and raised his weapon with both hands, blocking her strike with the axe handle and shoving her away.
Nova rushed to his opposite side, catching him off guard and slashing at him before he could turn to face her.
Her blade met his abdomen, splitting the fabric of his tunic.
The same black liquid oozed out of the superficial wound.
Omen whirled on her, hissing a breath between his teeth.
Disbelief flashed across his features, wide eyes flicking from Nova to the wound and back again.
Straightening his spine, he rose to his full height, towering over her. Nova shrank back instinctively, readying herself for another attack. Sweat beaded on her brow, streaking down and gathering on her lashes. She tossed her head and blinked hard against the sting.
Omen made no move to strike. Only pressed his lips together, nostrils flaring with labored breaths as his eyelids fluttered, silvery eyes rolling back in his head until she could only see the whites.
A rattle of croaking calls tore her gaze from the eerie sight, and the ravens roosting above dove from their perch.
The birds swarmed her, and she threw her arm across her face, the beating of hundreds of wings thundering in her ears.
Nova spun and slashed blindly with her weapon as the creatures pecked at every bit of exposed flesh.