Chapter 42
42
ELENA
T he voices murmured, troubled. The Darkness called. But as Sammael’s power slid over her skin and moved deep within her, Elena couldn’t bring herself to care. Dimly she knew something terrible had happened, was happening still—but the more she tried to grasp the knowledge, the more it receded, a tide drawn back to the sea.
I would be human for you if I could. His voice shivered over her body, and she shivered with it. Alas, I cannot. But I can give you this.
The darkness unleashed by her rage circled inside her, seeking to fulfill Katerina’s curse. Sammael’s power entwined with it, ink-black and silver-blue, twisting tighter and tighter. They fused, detonating outward in a spray of lightning that forked through Elena’s veins, spreading through every inch of her body, into the air, the sky, the earth.
Elena shook, and the earth shook with her. Behind her, within her, Sammael cried out, a sound she heard with her ears and her mind, with the power that was remaking her into something new. She shattered, and was reborn.
Into the trembling silence came a voice. It was everyone’s, and no one’s at all.
“Hail, Elena-of-the-Void,” it said.