Chapter 67 Defend What’s Yours
(Better Known as “Oops”)
Arabella
The tears wouldn’t stop coming.
I knelt in the blood-soaked earth, cradling Kazimir’s head in my lap once again as relief loosened all the tension in my body.
He was back. The darkness that had consumed him, that ancient thing wearing his face—it was gone.
I could feel him again through our bond, not the Shadow King’s cold hunger but Kazimir’s familiar presence, sharp and warm and mine.
“You absolute bastard,” I whispered, running my fingers through his hair. “You scared me.”
His lips twitched, trying for his trademark smirk but not quite managing it. His body was still recovering from whatever internal battle he’d fought. I kept one hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady under my palm.
The Bone Behemoth swayed above us, awaiting new commands. Around us, the battlefield had gone eerily quiet. Solandrian forces were scattered or dead. Our own soldiers held their positions, uncertain what to do now that their Dark Lord lay unconscious.
“Can you stand?” I asked, already knowing the answer from the way his muscles trembled with each breath.
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Give me… a moment.”
“Take all the time you need.” I shifted so his head rested more comfortably against my thigh. “I’ve got things handled.”
And I did. The Heirloom thrummed with power on my brow, connecting me to every shadow warrior on the field. The Bone Behemoth responded to my will as easily as my own limbs. Even Nyx circled overhead in perfect synchronization with my commands.
For the first time in my life, I felt truly powerful. Not just magically gifted or tactically clever, but powerful in the way Kazimir had always been. The kind of power that reshaped battlefields and—
Movement at the edge of my vision.
I turned, expecting another wave of soldiers or perhaps one of our generals approaching for orders. Instead, I saw two figures stumbling across the corpse-strewn ground.
Auremar.
The golden king looked like death walking. His robes were bloodied and torn, his crown askew, dark veins spreading across his skin. But he was alive, and the chains of light and shadow I’d wrapped around him were gone.
Behind him, barely visible in the smoke, a familiar figure in gray and red robes disappeared through a portal.
Amaryska.
That bitch had freed him but was now running.
“Kazimir Blackrose!” Auremar’s voice cracked as he stumbled closer, mad eyes fixed on my husband’s prone form. He raised his hands, corrupt magic gathering between his fingers—the Shadow King’s power in a vessel that couldn’t properly contain it.
Time slowed.
I saw Auremar’s intent written in every line of his body. He wasn’t trying to reclaim his kingdom or salvage his ritual. He just wanted Kazimir dead. A rival eliminated while vulnerable.
My hands moved without conscious thought.
The throwing knives Vex had given me for my birthday were perfectly balanced, their weight familiar from practice in the armory. I’d gotten quite good, actually. Good enough that I didn’t need to aim, didn’t need to think.
I just threw.
The first knife took Auremar through his left eye, punching through with enough force to crack the orbital bone.
The second found his throat, severing his windpipe with a wet sound.
He dropped to his knees, hands clutching at the blade in his neck.
Blood poured between his fingers, mixing with the corruption already eating at his flesh.
“What’s mine stays mine,” I said.
Auremar’s remaining eye found mine. I saw confusion there, maybe even betrayal. Had he really thought I’d let him hurt Kazimir? That I’d hesitate?
The king toppled sideways, convulsing once before going still.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then I felt a vibration through the ley lines, like a too-tight string suddenly released. Auremar had been connected to the Shadow King’s prison, I realized with dawning horror. Not just siphoning power from the cocoon but tapping directly into it, a parasitic strand feeding on the web itself.
And when he died, that strand didn’t dissolve.
It snapped back.
The recoil blasted me off my feet. Through the Heirloom, I felt the ley lines beneath Solandris shudder as Auremar’s connection whipped back toward its source.
Except he had no source—he’d had no First People heritage, no natural resonance with the ancient magic.
He’d forced his way in through blood and sacrifice and stolen power.
When the strand snapped back, it had nowhere to go.
Except I was standing right there. Connected to the ley lines through my magic, wearing the Heirloom, my hybrid power still singing in the air from trying to save Kazimir.
The Heirloom blazed on my brow.
Not the golden warmth it usually produced but a terrifying cold fire of recognition. The artifact was made from the same essence as the web itself, First People magic wound around Shadow King power. It knew what was coming through the ley lines. It knew what was flowing toward us.
And it opened.
I tried to sever my connection, but it wouldn’t close. The Lifeweave Ritual had bound it to me, and now that binding became a trap. The artifact held me in place as it transformed from crown to gateway, creating a doorway between the metaphysical plane of the ley lines and my physical body.
There you are, a voice whispered through the opening. Not spoken aloud but felt through every nerve. I’ve been watching you, little hero.
The Shadow King didn’t crash into me. He flowed, deliberate and controlled, moving through the ley line network with the patience of something that had waited centuries for an opportunity.
I could feel him in the web—not imprisoned anymore but distributed throughout it, his consciousness spread across the magical infrastructure of the world.
And now he was coming here. Into me.
Distantly, I registered Nyx’s roar split the air as she desperately dove toward me.
“Arabella?”
Kazimir’s voice, weak but urgent. He’d felt the change, was trying to sit up despite his body’s protests.
I wanted to answer him. Wanted to tell him to run, to get away, to—
My vision fractured. I saw the battlefield as it was—corpses and mud and dying light. But I also saw it as it could be, would be, should be under his dominion. A kingdom of shadow where the sun never rose, where the very air obeyed his will, where—
Perfect, the voice purred as his consciousness flooded into every corner of my mind.
Strong enough to hold me. Clever enough to be useful.
Bound to my fragment through that delicious little marriage bond.
And the artifact remembers who it was made from.
You’re everything I needed, Arabella Blackrose.
I distantly registered what was happening even as more images were forced into my mind. Of course. The Heirloom of Dominion had been forged from the Shadow King’s own essence, bound by Soriven’s magic. And now it was connecting with its source, opening pathways that should never have existed.
I felt myself changing. Not physically—not yet—but metaphysically. The Heirloom wasn’t just channeling the Shadow King’s power into me. It was transforming me into something new. An anchor point, like the Golden Roses had been, but mobile. Alive.
A doorway that walked and breathed and could act in the physical world while remaining connected to the ley lines.
The failing anchors beneath the blackened Golden Rose Fields shuddered as the magical balance shifted.
I could sense them through the web—seven ancient points of power, weakened by centuries of misuse.
They’d been designed to hold the Shadow King’s prison stable, to keep the cocoon of ley lines tight around his essence.
But I was something different. Something he’d never had before.
A way to be in both places at once.
His consciousness settled into my body like a hand sliding into a glove.
Not fighting my defenses but flowing through them, around them, becoming them.
The Shadow King had been scattered for so long—main essence in the cocoon prison and then the ley lines, and what I saw as fragments lost across the centuries.
Now he was consolidating, pulling himself together.
And I was the missing piece that made it all work.
My body stood without my permission. My hand released Kazimir’s head, letting it fall back to the blood-soaked ground. When I looked down at him, I knew my eyes were no longer my own.
“Hello again, old friend,” my voice said, though the words weren’t mine. “Did you miss me?”
I tried to fight, to push back against the consciousness drowning mine, but the Shadow King had been planning this, watching me for weeks through the ley lines. He’d been waiting for his opportunity. Auremar’s death had given it to him.
And then when the opening came, the Shadow King seized it.
My will shattered against his. Every mental barrier I threw up crumbled to dust.
Don’t fight, he whispered inside my skull. You’re not being destroyed, little hero. You’re being elevated. Together, we’ll reshape this world into something glorious.
The last thing I saw before the Shadow King’s will enveloped mine was Kazimir’s face—the moment of recognition, of horror, of understanding that in trying to save him, I’d doomed myself.
Then the ancient consciousness wrapped around mine like chains, and the woman called Arabella Blackrose drowned in shadow.