Bonus Chapter
Malorg/Mel
Malorg ran his hands down Sarilian’s back, reveling in the warmth that the Celestial’s golden skin imbued into his icy fingertips. Pillows shifted beneath him as Sarilian ground his hips, his warm mouth a scalding brand against Malorg’s neck.
Malorg let out a low moan. “Shadow and shade, Sal, yes, just like that.”
Sarilian’s throaty chuckle gusted against Malorg’s skin. “You think I don’t know what buttons to press with you after all these years living together, Mal?”
All these years? A dissonant chime rang in the back of Malorg’s head, but he let it go, lost in the passion and heat of Sarilian’s embrace. Twisting, he briefly melted into shadow and reformed directly atop Sarilian, his arms already laced behind the Celestial’s back.
“Of course you do,” he murmured, leaning down for another kiss.
But before their lips could connect, a dark voice from behind them growled, “Disgusting.”
The muscles along Malorg’s back went rigid. Turning his head, he found Pelorak standing before the closed door of his apartment much the same way he so often had when he’d come to visit Malorg.
Gone, however, was the Aspect of Ambition’s usual pristine polish.
His frazzled hair looked like he’d been running frantic hands through it, and his tailored suit hung askew.
Here in the Immortal Realm where clothes were little more than a conjured manifestation, Pelorak’s disordered appearance spoke volumes about his current mental state.
Malorg felt Sarilian tense beneath him and instinctively shifted his body to shield Sarilian from view, even though there was no way Pelorak couldn’t have already seen far more of him than Malorg would have liked.
“What the Dark are you doing here?” Malorg snarled. “Get out of my apartment!”
Pelorak snorted. “Your apartment? You have no Dark-cursed idea where you really are, do you?”
Malorg blinked, confusion contorting his brow. “What are you talking about? Is this some sort of new twisted game?”
“Eternal Dark, you don’t even remember who you are.” Pelorak shook his head. “I can’t believe that out of all the enemies I’ve faced over the centuries, it was you who undid me.” His eyes flicked past Malorg to Sarilian. His lips curled. “You and that Celestial mongrel.”
Icy tendrils of rage clenched Malorg’s chest. “Don’t you dare talk about him like that! Don’t even look at him! You have no right to be here.”
“And you think you do?” Pelorak barked a laugh. “You gave up any claim to this place when you forsook your vows. Forsook your people.”
Malorg tensed, readying himself as Pelorak slunk forward. The Aspect looked calm and relaxed, but Malorg wasn’t fooled. It was the easy gait of a predator, hoping to lure Malorg into letting down his guard.
It wouldn’t work.
Pelorak paused to sweep his gaze once more around the apartment and issued another of those humorless laughs. Malorg found something deeply unsettling about seeing his former friend stripped of his usual control. It made him seem unhinged. Unpredictable.
“Not that we’re actually here, of course,” Pelorak practically giggled.
That faint bell of wrongness rang in the back of Malorg’s head again. He winced at a brief lance of pain behind his eyes and raised a hand to rub at his temple.
“What are you talking about? Of course we’re here.”
Pelorak’s sneer twisted into a manic grin. “Whatever you say, old friend. It doesn’t matter. I’m not here to disabuse you of your illusions.”
Whatever game Pelorak was playing, Malorg was growing weary of it. “Then, why are you here?”
Pelorak’s smile broadened even as his cold eyes glinted with danger. “Why else? Revenge.”
Dissipating into shadow, Pelorak streaked across the floor in a blur almost too quick for Malorg to track. Malorg, though, had centuries of combat training of his own, and as powerful as a Dusk Aspect was, it had been at least that long since Pelorak had fought on a real battlefield.
Malorg sank into his own pool of shadow and easily intercepted Pelorak’s duskflame blade before he could deliver the intended blow.
A dagger appeared in Malorg’s grip, and he swiped at Pelorak, but the Aspect was already moving, not dissolving fully into shadow this time but turning his side ethereal so that the dagger passed harmlessly through his flesh.
As Pelorak dodged, a shadowy tendril lashed out from him. Malorg tried to use the same trick as Pelorak to evade, but Pelorak had put too much power behind the blow for Malorg to fully absorb it. He gritted his teeth as jagged pain lashed his chest.
“Mal!” Sarilian shouted from behind him, his voice wild with concern.
Bright light blazed, and Pelorak winced, taking a step back from Malorg and raising his hands to shield his eyes rather than going for a follow-up strike. Sarilian stepped up beside Malorg. A golden spear forged of dawnflame rested in his grip, and radiant armor encased him.
“Go,” Sarilian said, leveling the lance of light toward Pelorak. “This is your only warning.”
A fury like Malorg had never seen slowly grew on Pelorak’s face. His brow knit with pure rage. “You dare command me, Celestial? Malorg might be a traitor, but to me, you are nothing. No one.”
Pelorak feinted forward. Sarilian drove the lance toward him in a blaze of fiery radiance, but Pelorak was already shifting into darkness and slinking to the side.
Malorg spun, tracking his movements. Dagger after dagger he hurled after Pelorak.
The Aspect absorbed each one without suffering so much as a scratch.
Still, Malorg could sense each strike draining more and more of Pelorak’s reserve. Even a Dusk Aspect could draw on only so much duskflame at once before needing to recharge. If they could keep up the attack, keep Pelorak on the defensive, then they could eventually overwhelm him.
Malorg’s entire body suddenly froze as Pelorak reformed with one hand outstretched, his fingers slowly clenching together. Growing pressure enveloped Malorg. It felt like thousands of needles were pricking his flesh. His limbs trembled with effort as he tried in vain to move.
It was no use. Pelorak had him in his grip. It was just like that moment outside the Dusk Citadel when he and Sarilian had been trying to escape so that they could—
Another faint chime, another bolt of agony behind his eyes. So that they could what, exactly? He couldn’t quite remember.
In fact, now that he stopped to think about it, how had they ended up here in his apartment? The last he remembered, they’d been fleeing the Dusklands as wanted fugitives. But everything after that was an indistinct blur. Had they somehow been pardoned?
There was no time to dwell on it.
“Mal,” Sarilian ground out.
Malorg managed to turn his eyes enough to spy Sarilian equally frozen beside him. The tip of his dawnflame lance trembled furiously as he struggled to finish bringing it around toward Pelorak.
Pelorak scowled. “No matter what those fools on the Dusk Council proclaim, they’ll find it’s not so easy to strip me of my power, and I’m still clearly more than a match for you.
I’d hoped to have some fun with you before the end.
” His gaze flicked toward the closed door to the apartment.
A trace of fear trembled across his features before he spun back to them, his smile frayed around the edges.
“But it seems I’m running low on time, so how about we finish this the way I was supposed to before? ”
A twitch of Pelorak’s fingers sent Sarilian jerking like a puppet on strings as he swung his spear around and leveled it at Malorg’s chest. In a flash of memory, Malorg recalled a similar tableau on the steps outside the Dusk Citadel.
They’d managed to escape Pelorak’s clutches then by distracting him, but there could be no such distraction now, not when they were both already ensnared and Pelorak’s fervent will that held them in place bordered on madness.
Darkness and Light, right?
Malorg trembled at the forgotten words that stirred in the depths of his memory.
Though he couldn’t recall exactly when Sarilian had spoken them, they resonated with truth all the same.
He and Sarilian had always been stronger together than they were apart.
Even if the other Infernals and Celestials refused to accept that.
Instead of focusing on breaking free of Pelorak’s control, Malorg sent his will outward in a surge of duskflame.
The dark power sank into Sarilian, mixing and fusing with his own dawnflame.
Rather than canceling each other out, the competing magics wove together into something stronger. Something new.
Black-tinged wisps of golden fire erupted over Sarilian’s bronzed skin. Pelorak cried out in disbelief as Sarilian wrenched his spear back around and pressed the gleaming tip right above Pelorak’s heart.
“Surrender,” Sarilian said with quiet authority.
Pelorak shuddered. “No! I will not be bested by you again!”
Raw, unshaped duskflame erupted from him. The blast hurled Malorg aside like a doll, smashing him into the pile of pillows where he and Sarilian had so recently lain.
Even with the combined strength of the duskflame and dawnflame infusing him, Sarilian skidded back along the floor until he smashed into the far wall. Knick-knacks from Malorg’s collection went flying about the room.
Pelorak was pushing himself too far. Malorg recognized the signs. He’d seen far too many Infernal soldiers who burnt themselves out attempting to win a desperate fight. Pelorak wasn’t controlling his duskflame anymore but allowing it to control him as it engulfed him in a furious black penumbra.
“I,” Pelorak screamed.
“Will.”
Rage infused Pelorak’s voice, and in between each word, a fresh pulse of duskflame drove Malorg and Sarilian back, scouring their flesh.
“Not.”
Pelorak took another step forward. His face was a mask of shadow, his eyes burning black pits of hate.
“Lose!”