Chapter Twenty-One
ELYSSARA
Hope flares in my chest—I feel him. His presence. His urgency. His fury.
But somehow, he feels different. Still him, but changed.
I feel his frantic heartbeat, his lethal violence unfurling. I feel him close.
I no longer question the voice down the tether.
He came for me.
So, I fight.
Maldrak looms over me, cruel and entitled.
Like I am his to claim, brand, command, and rule.
But he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know how long vengeance has been my lifeblood.
He doesn’t know that I belong only to Dravara.
That I am a daughter of my nation—a queen in the making.
A prophet of the gods. And I bow to no one.
Kael’s voice ripples down the tether, frantic and breathless: I’m coming for you, Elyssara. Don’t stop fighting.
Words evade me, but retribution doesn’t.
“Duskae, grant me your power,” I command, unyielding and vicious.
Duskae’s magic roars to life in my veins, mingling with the Lightborne magic that craves carnage. They meld together—Stars and forgotten deities alive in my very blood, and it feels holy to be this powerful. It feels godly.
Maldrak moves to touch me—to unleash his wicked runes, but I am no longer chained.
I spear my magic at his hand, singeing his tool of tyranny.
“You will not touch me again!” I growl, savage and bloodthirsty. He howls, clutching the ruin of his hand as it smokes and blisters beneath the wildfire of my power.
But mercy holds no sway here. I stand, and Maldrak stumbles back, agape at the sudden shift of power.
“You will not look upon me with your wicked gaze,” I snarl, stalking towards him, hand raised. I spear my magic toward his left eye, and hit my target with the precision of a woman with decades of pain cradled in her heart, poised at her fingertips.
Maldrak claps his good hand over his eye with a blood-curdling scream. “You bitch!”
But I’m not done. Not until I’ve cut a thousand scars into his flesh and broken his spirit will I be done.
You can’t kill him, Duskae. Kael’s voice crawls down the tether, labored and strangled.
Maldrak’s taunts scrape through me—whispers that Kael chose him, not me.
WHAT? I shoot back.
Panic seizes my lungs—is Kael really loyal to Maldrak? Why does he want him to live? After all of this, Kael still fights for him?
We can’t break the spell if he dies first, El. Kael explains, voice ragged. He’s fighting. I know he’s fighting by the frenetic energy shooting down the tether, but I don’t care.
I don’t care! I spit back, vengeance my only commander, and I raise my hands again to claim my kill.
I know you do, my love. You are too good. Too pure not to care. We will free these people, come back for him. But for now, I just need you. His tone is sincere, but I can’t trust sincerity. Trust shattered with every cut of the blade of nightmares.
No! I scream to Kael, and I pool my magic at my fingertips, ready to become death made flesh.
Do not let him win, Duskae. Come back to me. I love you, he says, and my fury falters.
I hate myself for wanting to hear it. But I do.
The words stop me. Pulling me back to memories of his arms, his bed, his heart. My vengeance shatters—annihilated in an instant.
A frustrated, wrangled scream tears from my throat, and I gather my magic back within the confines of my chest. I storm towards Maldrak, still clutching his eye and charred hand, and writhing on the floor.
I unsheathe the dagger at his hip, and drag the tip of the blade along his cheek, my mouth twisted in a vicious snarl.
He screams an ungodly sound, but I relish it. I drink in the sight of spilling his blood, feeding off it. “So you never forget that it is you who bows to me,” I spit.
Then I plunge the blade into the flesh of his thigh so he can’t follow.
I run for the door, leaving Maldrak injured but alive. A mercy I’m sure to regret.
I burst through the doors into the hallways of Kryntar Castle. They’re empty. The silence isn’t relief—it’s a trap laid bare. Too still. Too quiet. And I know what it means—there’s a bigger fight that I need to find.
I don’t know my way around the castle. I’ve known only the dungeons and the dining hall, but regardless, I run. With only Maldrak’s small dagger in my hand, I run through corridors I don’t know—dungeons, halls, stairwells—all empty save for servants trembling in alcoves.
Then, I hear it—
The clang of steel, the clash of bodies, the clatter of armor.
Head for the causeway, Kael urges down the tether, and I run, wild and breathless. Broken and unyielding, both.
But I don’t head for the causeway. I follow what calls to me—battle.
I burst through the castle’s doors, stumbling into the crisp, cutting air of the night.
I suck in long, rasping breaths, and for a heartbeat, I tilt my head up to the starless night sky that peeks through the rip in The Decay.
I never thought I’d see it again. I never thought I’d feel the wind lay kisses across my face.
I let the moon bathe me in her light, just for a heartbeat. I open my eyes, taking in my surroundings, and that’s when I see it—
The maids. My maids.
Fern. Tura. Hilda.
Their severed heads stare from the iron spikes along the causeway—eyes wide, mouths parted mid-plea.
My stomach lurches. I retch a dry, heaving sound.
But nothing spills. I did this. I led them to their deaths.
And I know who put them there—Vessira. I saw the way she looked at me when I emerged from the dressing chamber.
There was fear, but there was also disgust. A wrath she’s satisfied with the deaths of innocents.
But I have no time to mourn. Only time to relieve Vessira of her head.
Fury flares again, and the clang of steel calls me like a war drum.
I palm Maldrak’s dagger, ready for violence. I crouch low, following the sound of battle, and as I round the corner, an army of Marked soldiers advance on my friends.
One hundred. Maybe two.
Ronyn. Seren. Merrik. Jax. Daelen. Rubi. Therion. And Kael. My Starbound. My salvation. My destroyer. My ruin.
I want to run to him. To fall into his arms like none of this happened. Like he can be mine and I can be his. But his cruelties had other plans, and the wounds of betrayal cut deep.
And then I notice another figure. Fighting with my friends, keeping the Marked at bay with choking shadows of destruction. A Shadowweave?
It takes me a moment, but I know I’ve seen him before. In the visions granted to me by the Obsidian Crown. Morrathys. This is Death himself. They awakened him.
I run, kicking off the impractical shoes from dinner, and hitch up the dress so my legs can stride freely.
Ronyn’s eyes meet mine, his face serious and unflinching, as if hardened by whatever has happened since I was taken. “We have her! Retreat!” he shouts, and my friends respond with swift nods of acknowledgment.
Kael’s surrounded, Marked soldiers raining down blows he can barely block for sheer volume.
Why isn’t he using his magic?
Even outnumbered, he’s beautiful.
I hate him.
Twin swords of dark metal flash and flare, breathtaking and terrifying in the same way a duskprowler is—they’d just as quickly rip out your throat.
I join the fray, dagger in one hand, magic blazing to life in the other.
I drive my blade into a weak spot between the armor of a soldier, my point finding its way into the soft space between his ribs. He crumbles to the ground with a bone-crunching thud. Small pleasure ignites in my chest—some sick joy from using Maldrak’s blade to cut down his men.
Leave, Duskae. Mavyrn awaits us at the gates. Kael’s voice commands across the tether.
Not until I kill Vessira, I shoot back, unflinching.
I feel his irritation travel down the tether, but I don’t back down. I won’t. And he knows it, because I feel his understanding, too. He knows I need to do this.
My blade is yours to command. Let me cut you a path to her. Make it hurt—no mercy.
Kael’s blades find their mark, slicing through flesh in the same way his betrayal sliced through my heart—precise, final.
And then, he tosses me one of his swords.
“Cut her down and leave her corpse at your feet, my love.”