62. Elorie
Elorie
“Something’s wrong,” I say through the thread, and there’s a hollowness to it that wasn’t there before.
“We always suspected it was a trap.” Wilder’s attempt to be comforting falls flat.
“Not like this.”
He brought me here to lure me out. To convince me to offer my magic to his cause. But Esen? He couldn’t have expected her. So why does his grin grow even further?
Blue returns to his eyes. The gold that once stained one drips from his lashes like liquid. The shimmer of light I remember from when I first stepped into his presence coats his skin. A warm sheen casts light on a dark beach.
Overhead, the moon hangs even lower, taunting me.
What have I done?
“You found her.” Malachi smiles at Esen.
She wiggles her fingers, but the orb is no longer pulsing. There is nothing else to mute. Atlas is the one to reach for her, pulling her away from Malachi before he can attack. Esen’s wide eyes dart between the king and his sister.
“I told you that you brought me what I needed, Elorie. Although, I have to admit, I did not expect a human girl. I did not realize the void could be contained in another form of flesh and bone. Not when my sister barely wrangles the rest of her soul.”
The rest of her soul?
My eyebrows pinch, my gaze darting between Hazel and Esen. One drinks magic, the other pacifies it. Two sides of a similar coin. But while the liquid darkness climbing Hazel’s arms is thick and moving, the black webs on half of Esen’s face reflect no light.
“My father told me a secret before I slit his throat.” Malachi’s eyes burn as he glances at his sister. “He told me of our mother’s true powers, and with that, I realized what a gift she held, even though he’d executed her like it was a curse.”
Hazel’s eyes are nearly pitch black as she watches her brother turn to the rest of the group.
“Maybe you didn’t know that my dear Hazel was a twin.
Hemlin died in childbirth, as many twins do, and that was the last my father allowed the kingdom to speak of him.
When Hemlin died, my mother drowned in his loss.
It overwhelmed her to the point that she rested her hands over his chest, and she raised him from the dead. ”
“She was a necromancer?”
“Yes.” Malachi’s gaze shifts to me. “There is a reason necromancy is forbidden. Mostly because it animates without life or thought, but there are other risks, ones that taint us now. You see, when my mother tried to bring Hemlin back, his soul was already tangled with death. It could not come back to him from where it was in Sarrow. So in his resurrection, she gave him life, but it was not his own. It was stolen from a part of my sister.”
“Malachi…” Hazel’s eyes widen.
He turns to her, and it’s clear she has never been told this story. “Father said Hazel’s magic was light when she was born. She shone brighter than any sun. Brighter than me. But to steal something so vital from her—a piece of her soul—left only darkness once my mother was done.”
Hazel’s cheeks dull. Although she’s perfectly still, I sense something inside her fracturing.
“As for Hemlin… his skin crawled with what was stolen. Magic that was not his. Magic that had been split between life and death. Magic that was no longer whole, but twins in the darkness.” Malachi eyes his sister.
“When Hazel’s soul was split, half of her magic remained within her, but it was not whole, so it changed—darkened.
It turned to shadows so hungry they drank all magic they touched, seeking out something to cure the emptiness.
While the other half—the half in Hemlin—could not drink at all.
It was magic in a body that was meant to be dead, and because of that, it turned into nothing.
It became silence. To life, to magic. It became the undoing of what we are. ”
“It became the void,” I whisper.
Malachi nods. “My father ended Hemlin’s life to stop the void from spreading through our realm.
A dead being cannot contain such a thing, and it would have destroyed us.
But when Father did that, he was also killing a piece of Hazel’s soul.
It was thought the void was freed then, dropped into another realm—another object.
A problem for another place. But to see it thriving in a human can only mean one thing: the void never left my sister’s soul at all, it seems. It clung to her until it found its way back through the fates and into another body. ”
My gaze whips to Esen, who sticks to Atlas’s side. If what Malachi is saying is true, then Esen and Hazel share a soul. One bound to shadow magic, and the other, the void.
What have I done? I brought Esen here. What have I led her into?
“Pay attention, Elorie,” Malachi snaps, pulling my gaze back to him. “There is much you do not understand, but you will soon. I will show you. What is broken can be whole once again. There is a lesson to be learned here.”
Malachi moves in a blink. One moment, he’s standing alone, the next, he has Esen by the throat. Atlas and Greer are shoved back with a burst of light.
“Don’t.” I take a step forward, but Wilder stops me.
“I must,” Malachi says, his tone cold.
“Please, you don’t have to. What’s done is done. The orb is broken. Let her go, and we’ll leave.” A tear slips down my cheek as I beg, but Malachi chuckles.
“We both know that is not how this ends.”
I take another step, and Malachi clicks his tongue.
“Don’t, Elorie.” Esen’s gaze meets mine, and I feel her reach out, somehow weaving into my mind. “You have too much to live for; this is where it ends for me.”
“It can’t,” I beg.
“It must. You have people to live for. Friends. A family.”
“You could have that too.”
“I see that now. You gave that to me. You showed me what it means to fight for others, and that’s what I want to do.
Thank you for helping me see there was something worth holding on to.
Something worth fighting for. Thank you for giving me my power back.
For trusting me to make the right choice this time. ”
“Esen.” Her name is a cry, no longer in my mind.
A black tear slips down her cheek. “Thank you for being my friend.”
In a swift twist, Malachi cracks Esen’s neck. Bone splinters, echoing as my knees give out.
Wilder barely has time to catch me. I collapse in his arms as Esen’s lifeless body slumps to the ground. Her empty eyes are on me, but she’s no longer there. Tears pour down my cheeks, and a sob rips free. But I can’t take my eyes off Esen. She deserved more than this.
Freedom.
A life.
She was born a sacrifice, then rejected by those she loved. Used by the overlord. Brought here to then be used by us to destroy the orb. She deserved real friendship. Real love. She should have walked out of this with us.
I brought her into this.
I killed her.
A sob racks my chest. I can hardly breathe. Wilder holds me up, and I’ve never felt so heavy—so empty.
“How could you?” I try to throw myself at Malachi, but Wilder holds me back.
Callum shifts, putting himself between us. I know they do it to protect me, but I don’t care anymore. He deserves to pay for what he’s done. For Esen. For Selia. For his people he sacrifices in the name of power.
Malachi grins as if he can read my thoughts. He glances down, and I follow his gaze, freezing when I see what caught his attention.
The webs on Esen’s cheek slither and move. The edges become points that dig into her skin like a claw. Esen’s chest lifts with a breath, and for a second, I think she’s alive.
But she isn’t.
Her body collapses a second time, and Hazel stumbles back, gripping her stomach.
Her black eyes meet her brother. “What have you done?”
“Put you back together.” Malachi grins.
She holds out her hand, watching as something climbs the shadows that are a constant black glove on her fingers. This darkness is different. It’s liquid. It’s endless and ancient and empty.
The void twines with Hazel’s shadows as if her soul stitched itself back together. But it does not form the light like Malachi said she once was. It becomes so dark that there is purple in the depths. The void and shadow bind, and to simply look at Hazel is to stare into the deepest parts of night.
Hazel stumbles back, clutching her stomach.
Malachi grins. “I have given you back what our mother took. The piece of you she stole for our brother.”
“And the void?”
“It cannot be unbound from a soul. Not when it likes where it is.”
Fear floods her eyes.
“He talks about the void like it’s still sentient.”
“It might be,” Wilder whispers. “Then again, so are shadows, I’ve heard.”
“So what does that mean that both are comfortable with Hazel?”
“Nothing good.”
“Whispers, whispers, whispers.” Malachi turns his attention to us. “I feel you thinking. Wondering how you can defeat me when I hold all the power.”
“Do you?” My eyes narrow. “It seems to me Hazel is a greater threat than you are right now. So much for being a god.”
It might be foolish to mock him when he’s clearly unhinged, but Esen lies lifeless at Atlas’s feet, and I’m the one who did this. Who promised her something better than death on a bloody beach.
I refuse to sit and bow down to Malachi’s rants. I’d rather die fighting.
“You are not the most powerful one here anymore,” I taunt him.
“Oh, but I am.” He grins, lifting the orb. There is no heartbeat. No swirl of color or flicker of light. There is nothing. He waits for something, like the emptiness will ignite. It’s a long moment before his expression falls.
“You promised,” he whispers, but I don’t know who he’s talking to because it’s clearly not anyone on the beach. “To break the seal on the orb is to unlock the gods. Spill blood to summon blood. You promised me.”
Beneath my feet, the realm quakes. A shiver runs the length of the beach. An answer to Malachi’s question. His face falls when what he expected doesn’t happen. The orb hangs from his fingers, swaying in the breeze.
“Open.” Malachi grits his teeth, his voice growing louder as something shudders on the horizon. “Open!”
“It seems like we weren’t the only ones lied to.” Wilder’s voice is deathly calm.
But I know my mate well, and I hear the undercurrent of his tone. The boil of every emotion he’s failed to put words to since the Ley Court fell. His magic might be burned to nothing inside him, but his rage is endless.
A hot spark that stirs the sea.
When Wilder moves, he is as furious as a bolt of aether in the night. One blink, he’s beside me. The next, his sword drives through Malachi’s heart.
His teeth grit, nose to nose with his enemy. “For my sister.”
Malachi’s eyes pinch as he processes the strike; blood drips down his chest, painting the orb red. His mouth opens, but he doesn’t get the chance to speak again. Greer steps forward, and with an arc of her blade, she slices it through Malachi’s neck.
“For them all,” she sneers.
Malachi’s head lands in a thump at his feet before his body falls. It rolls toward Hazel, and her scream swallows all light from the realm.