Chapter 8 #2
She disappears into the closet, and when she returns less than two minutes later, she’s dressed for battle. Black tactical pants, a fitted top, boots made for movement. Her blades are strapped across her back.
“Let’s go save my city.”
I should stop her. Lock her here where it is safe.
But there is no time. And something in her expression tells me she’d find a way to follow, anyway.
“Stay close,” I say. “Don not engage unless absolutely necessary. If I tell you to run?—”
“I won’t.”
“Morgana—”
“We’re wasting time.”
She steps beside me and holds out her hand. “Come on, Your Majesty. Show me what a real battle looks like.”
I take her hand. The binding hums between us, different now after what we shared. Deeper. More aware.
The shadows swallow us whole.
Times Square is hell on Earth.
We emerge three blocks out, close enough to assess without dropping directly into combat. Chaos unfolds in every direction.
Billboards still flash above, perfume ads and Broadway marquees flickering over streets slick with blood and broken glass. Half the city is screaming. The other half is filming what their minds will not survive believing.
Rifts tear across the sky like open wounds, violet energy crackling and spreading. Shadow creatures pour through in waves, the same twisted things from Prague but worse now. Larger. Faster. Organized.
They are hunting.
People scatter, screaming, pushing through the streets in every direction. Those too slow disappear inside the chaos.
I force myself not to look.
“Oh god.” Morgana’s hand tightens around mine. “There’s so many.”
“NYPD is trying to contain them.” I point toward hastily formed barricades. Useless against creatures that move through shadow. “They cannot. Not without magic.”
Kieran appears beside us, blood smeared across his face. “My lord. Thirty warriors deployed. It is not enough.”
“Where is the worst concentration?”
“Broadway and 47th. Theatre district. Hundreds trapped inside buildings.” His jaw tightens. “We’re evacuating, but the creatures keep coming.”
I am already moving. Morgana keeps pace beside me.
“What do I do?” she asks.
“Civilians.” I point toward a group pinned against a storefront. Three creatures circling them. “Get them out. Use your shadows to shield them.”
“I don’t know if I can?—”
“You can.” I meet her eyes. “Trust what I taught you.”
She nods once and breaks away toward them.
I enter the fight.
The creatures are stronger than Prague. More coordinated. Someone is controlling them, directing the assault. This is not random. There is intelligence behind it now. Which means the breach did not simply open. Something on the other side has started learning.
My shadows tear through the first wave. Clean. Efficient. No room for hesitation.
A scream cuts through the noise. Human. Close.
I turn.
A woman and a child are trapped against a storefront. Two creatures closing in, claws raised.
No.
My power strikes first. The creatures dissolve mid-lunge, breaking apart into drifting shadow before they can reach them.
“Run!” I shout at the woman, and she jerks into motion, grabbing her child and fleeing without hesitation.
It happens again and again. Seventeen more times in as many minutes. Faces I do not have time to remember. Lives I barely have time to save. Too many civilians spilling into the streets. Too many creatures tearing through the city. Not enough of us to cover everything.
I am starting to understand how wars are lost.
Then I see her.
Morgana.
She is surrounded by civilians, standing between them and the chaos like she was born into this moment. A barrier of shadows wraps around them in a loose cocoon, shifting and imperfect, but holding. It is crude magic, still unstable, still learning its own shape, yet it holds.
A creature lunges at the barrier.
Her shadows snap into place and catch it mid-charge, pinning it in the air. She moves without hesitation, drawing one of her blades and striking through its neck in a clean arc. The creature dissolves before it even hits the ground.
She is fighting. Actually fighting. Protecting people with the magic she learned three days ago.
Pride swells in my chest so sharply it almost hurts.
Another creature breaks through the smoke. She meets it immediately, shadows twisting to slow it, steel finishing what restraint begins. Behind her, the civilians are still untouched. Still alive. Still hers to protect.
She could have stayed behind me. She could have hidden behind the binding and called herself untrained. Instead, she chose the people most likely to die first.
This is what I needed her for. Not just her life force. Not just her compatibility with ancient magic. This.
Her courage.
Her refusal to back down even when everything is burning.
The battle does not ease. It stretches on, relentless; the city screaming under it.
Two hours pass before the last rift finally seals and the final creature falls.
By then, I am covered in blood that is not all mine. Exhaustion sits heavy in my bones. The corruption in my magic stirs again, restless, agitated from overuse, from too much forced control, from too much chaos pressed against it at once.
I find Morgana slumped against the side of a building.
Blood streaks her face. Her clothes are torn. Her breathing is uneven.
But she is alive.
She looks up when I approach. “Is it over?”
“For now,” I say, and lower myself beside her. I am too tired to pretend at posture or distance. “You did well.”
“I killed four of them.” Her voice is hollow, like she is counting something she cannot undo. “And saved maybe twenty people. It’s not enough.”
“It is everything,” I say, turning to her. “Those twenty people are alive because of you.”
She is silent for a long moment. Her gaze drifts over the square where emergency vehicles flood in, where human authorities try to make sense of a reality they were never meant to understand.
“This is what you’ve been preventing,” she says finally. “This chaos. This death.”
“For years,” I answer quietly. “Every artifact you stole was keeping rifts like this from opening. Until the final seal broke.”
“Because I was careless,” she whispers. Her voice cracks. “All these people, they are hurt or dead or traumatized because I needed a thrill.”
“You did not know—” I start.
“I should have been more careful.” She looks at me now, and there are tears cutting through the blood on her cheeks. “You’re right. This is my fault. All of it.”
I reach out without thinking and wipe one tear away with my thumb.
I could absolve her. It would be easier. It would also be a lie.
“Yes,” I say. Then softer, steadier, “and now you are fixing it.”
We sit there in silence while the world keeps burning around us.
Eventually, Kieran finds us.
“We should return to the penthouse,” he says. “Human authorities will have questions we cannot answer.”
Right. Move.
I push myself up first and pull Morgana to her feet. She sways immediately. I steady her without comment.
“Can you shadow-walk?” I ask.
“I think so,” she says.
It takes three jumps to get back. Each one is heavier than the last. Exhaustion drags at the magic, makes every transition sluggish, unstable, like the world resists letting us leave.
When we finally arrive, the penthouse is exactly as we left it. My shirt still lies on the floor. Her gloves are discarded where she dropped them earlier. Proof of everything that existed before the world tore itself open and interrupted us.
She does not speak. She just walks straight into the shower.
Water starts running a moment later.
I do not follow, even though everything in me wants to.
Twenty minutes pass.
She finds me on the balcony.
She is clean now with changed clothes and wet hair. Her face scrubbed free of blood but not of everything it carried.
I am staring at the smoke rising from the city, two miles south, where Times Square still burns like it cannot decide whether it wants to survive the night.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “For breaking the mirror. For not understanding what you were trying to prevent.”
“You could not have known,” I reply automatically.
The words are true. They are also not enough.
She steps closer, stopping beside me. Our shoulders are almost touching.
“Teach me,” she says. “Really teach me. Not because the binding forces me. Because I want to help stop this.”
I turn to look at her.
This impossible woman who cursed my name not long ago and now stands beside me after surviving the end of the world like it was only the beginning of something worse.
“That is the first time you have asked instead of fought,” I say.
“Maybe I’m done fighting you,” she replies as she steps closer.
The binding between us pulses, like it recognizes the shift before we do. Recognition of everything we almost crossed earlier. Everything we are still standing too close to ignore.
The air tightens with it, like the world is holding its breath.
“Maybe I want something else now,” she says.
I should step back. Maintain distance. We’ve already crossed too many lines tonight.
Instead, I lift my hand and cup her face.
We have just survived a battlefield, and somehow this feels like a greater risk.
“This is dangerous,” I say.
“I know,” she answers, and her hand covers mine. “I don’t care.”
Neither do I.
That’s the problem.