Chapter 55 #2
Never releasing Shadow, his grip on Maeve’s waist lifted, drawing her up on her toes as his head tilted and he stole her mouth in a slam of fervor with parted lips.
It wasn’t gentle. It was fueled by the Magic soaring through him.
It was the breaking of the horrors he’d endured for months beneath a monster.
He didn’t care that she'd chosen Reeve. He had no concern for the reality he faced.
She would always be his, to him.
And if this was the end of them, he’d finish it his way. No denial. No pretending he was someone he wasn’t. Just her warm mouth after being deprived, denied, and starved of her.
As he stood tall and she lowered from him, her eyes fluttered open as a steady breath rolled through her.
“Take your Dread Magic from me,” he said smoothly.
She obeyed.
The Dread Magic undulating through him swelled with approval at her immediate trust. Shadow began to thrash in his grip.
She moved in vain, her efforts ineffective against his hold.
Maeve’s palms spread against Mal’s torso, and with a lengthy inhale and the hum of an exhale, she got to work, gently pulling her Dread Magic back into her veins.
It slid from Mal with ease, bringing a sour smile of satisfaction to his lips, especially as Shadow’s attempts to escape him became desperately violent. Maeve’s shoulders rolled back as she stood tall, no longer leaning against him.
She placed a single finger at the center of his chest. Then three more. He felt a shift surge through him, lighter than her own Magic or Maxius’.
It was his.
His eyes shot down to her delicate fingers pressed against him. To the Dread Ring. The black, inky-like veins that ran across her skin writhed. She groaned beneath the strain of her gift as she siphoned his Dread Magic from the ring.
Like a tidal wave, it hit him. Not just his Dread Magic.
All the Dread Magic the ring harbored. His ancestors Vexkari.
It merged with him at once, blossoming beneath his skin. He tasted it on his tongue, metallic and cool. It wound through him in slick and easy paths, coiling like a serpent.
But his Dread Viper, his Little Viper, did not stop there.
He watched as her veins danced with Magic of their own. First flowing down her neck, draining of their darkened color, and down her arms, it emptied into him.
The Magic he’d accidentally scared her with. The Magic that bonded them.
She withdrew it from herself until the black lines running her skin looked like healed scars, pale and flesh colored. Until it was his once more.
“I wanted to give you more, Mal,” she said, her eyes on her own pale fingers. “But your Magic, the Magic she stole, she. . .crushed it completely.”
He already knew that.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “I have what is needed to win. All I ask is that you indulge me and fight alongside me one last time.”
Her chest rose and fell in response, and she nodded in earnest.
With a small returned nod, Mal’s hand slipped from her waist. She stepped away from him, crossing the frozen ground to her sword, as he looked back down at his trapped prey.
At the vile creature clawing at his restored hands.
He raised a single finger, gathering his first strike in a swirling mass of Magic. The barrier of Aterna Magic that circled them collapsed as Maeve bled the weapon dry, seizing all the holy Magic she’d placed in it.
When she returned to Mal’s side, they shared a single, silent glance and began their dance.
Mal was careful not to pour all his energy, all his fury, and ancient power into a single fatal blow, though he was certain that would come soon enough.
He’d forgotten how seamlessly they moved as one.
How Maeve anticipated his every move, how she Obscured just where he wanted her to, slamming Shadow with harrowing electric Magic as he blasted her from the other side.
The air was alive with their joined power as they moved across the slowly melting ice beneath their feet, cracking and oppressive. The ground shifted, plates of power scattering beneath each step they took as one force.
Again.
And again and again, Shadow buckled beneath their combined Magic.
Each time he glanced at his Viper’s face of stone, he surged with more determination.
She channeled the lightning of the Dread Stone with such ease, bending it to her intentions.
He allowed himself a moment to admire her, the true-born fighter she was.
How she’d grown from that girl he tutored at Vaukore, afraid to cast even a simple shield, to the woman before him.
Who faced a threat as lethal as Shadow without a single accelerated pulse.
At last, when the Dread King and his Dread Viper had sufficiently wounded their quarry, Shadow kneeled before Mal.
Her head hung low, and her previously luscious hair was now stringy and faded. Her bony fingers pressed into the ground, skin barely clinging to them. She appeared shrunken in size.
Maeve stood at his right. Where she had sworn to be. Where he wanted her to be until his last breath.
“That little drop of my Magic that remains mine,” uttered Mal, his gaze cast down at Shadow, “the bit you cannot take because you were foolish enough to agree not to kill me when I alone was prophesied to kill you. . . that drop was still enough to join with my son’s. It is still enough to destroy you.”
And so he did.
With a twist of his fingers, she rose, levitating. He lifted her until her gaunt-once-more face was level with his. He touched the filth that had ripped his world from him one last time, trapping one hand at the back of her head, and placed a single finger on her forehead.
Then he let the Magic of his blood, his family before him, guide his path to her termination.
It sang through him in victory, eager to break its target.
Despite being pumped full of stolen Magic she lacked the understanding to use, and being weakened from their attack, she remained a deadly force.
It would take an equally deadly force to end her.
He called upon the Magic granted to him, and it answered, as it always did. Ready and pliant, though demanding of its own desires. The cost didn’t matter to him. He’d pay it.
The air turned thick and oppressive, pressing down on them as his Magic charged the atmosphere.
Shadow’s form continued to decay as Mal overtook her fully.
The exchange was swift as his power began depleting, shattering, vanishing rapidly as it did the same to Shadow.
He was using all of himself against her, reckless and without restraint.
He had to use all of himself against her. Maeve may have been superior in her ability to understand Magic, but Mal could see what was required of him to make Shadow’s death stick.
He’d suspected it for some time.
And as Maeve spoke, he knew she was realizing it too.
“Mal, stop.”
But he couldn’t stop. Not until Shadow was gone.
Not until this magic-thirsty blight was vanquished from the world his son occupied.
He pressed harder, more, sharp cracks slicing across his front, manifesting in physical wounds.
His teeth slid together, grinding in defiance as his senses told him to let go.
“Mal.”
Her beautiful, panicked voice was closer now. Her hands moved over his wounds. Her sweet fingers pressed all of the Magic she’d Inherited from Reeve into the sliced skin.
“Mal, stop, now,” she snapped. “I can’t heal you at the rate you are going.”
It wasn’t going to heal even if he stopped.
Dread Magic came at a cost. There was always an exchange.
The exchange for Shadow’s life was his life.
The swell of Magic around them grew impossibly still, breathing as one with Mal.
He pressed his limitations further, allowing himself to become fully washed with the darkness that thrummed through him with natural course. It tasted delicious, he had to admit, being a vessel for power beyond any of their comprehension.
It slid across his skin, burrowing into his bones, aiding his will to see Shadow’s existence shatter.
The next blow cleaved across his face, icy and wet, but he endured.
Maeve’s fingers dug deep against him, urging him to stop. He wanted to tell her it was for her that he persisted. That it was for their son, the perfect baby boy she’d given him, that he pushed himself to the edge willingly as the creature in his grip deteriorated further.
Not to the edge, he corrected himself as a warm dizziness settled over him. Over the edge. Another wave pressed down on him, cracking his insides, fracturing his bones, bursting his organs.
He tensed, his memory flooding and delivering him the feeling of snapping Maeve’s arm clean in two. A stomach-churning sickness raced down his spine, further fueling his ripping, shredding, and complete destruction of Shadow.
With a zap of victorious energy that must have traveled for miles in all directions, Mal’s fingers relaxed. And in that same instance, Shadow’s life-force, though her body slid to the earth in a skeletal mass one would presume dead, snapped out of being.
She drew no breath; she sang no Magic.
The Magic propelling the Dreaded Dead across the realm shattered with her.
Mal’s hands hovered where he’d previously held her.
He couldn’t help but feel disappointment at the sight of them.
Ripped flesh clung to his exposed bones.
His arms dropped, and only then did he realize Maeve was holding him up, with both her arms snugly around him.
A shake began at his core, slowly taking over his body.
His legs gave way, but Maeve was quicker.
She lowered him to the thawing ground with the ease of lowering a feather, cradling his shoulders in one arm with her focus on the lacerations he’d willingly taken. His head rolled against her warm body.
Finally, some mercy for him at last. It was she who would usher him from this life.
“Just hold on, I can heal you.”
Slowly, too slowly, beneath her hands, his chest sewed shut and his blood regenerated. He placed his hand over hers as the wounds unsealed themselves—his debt of blood was still being collected by the Magic he’d used moments ago.
Her brows pulled together. “Stop,” she commanded the blood, desperately trying to cover all the holes, the slices, the stabs of Magic.
“Eyes on me, Maeve,” he muttered.
Her pale-blue eyes latched onto his at once. Her jaw shook.
“You keep those pretty eyes on course,” he said, a strained gasp slipping from his throat. “You give Maxius the life he deserves.”
She shook her head. In her determined silence, she continued to pour her Aterna Magic into him, but he knew. . .
It wasn’t enough.
The ancient and holy Dread Magic he’d bartered with would not bend to such purity. Like the sting of the Dread Dagger, such wounds would have to heal naturally. But such fatal wounds would not.
Tension coiled through his body. He was fading quickly. These were his final moments, and he wouldn’t spend them watching her futile attempts to bring him back to life.
“I told you I would die for you.” He smiled weakly. His hand beneath hers slipped free, reaching, shaking, towards her face, desperate to feel her one last time. Warm blood slid between their skin. “And I will.”
Tears fell, violently from her eyes, pouring across her face, dripping into his open wounds.
“I didn’t want to fail you this time,” she cried. “I promised I wouldn’t this time.”
“You didn’t fail, Little Viper. You set me free. This was always my destiny. Written in Magic, remember?” His thumb brushed over her bottom lip.
“It isn’t fair,” she said, her bloodied and shaking hands moving to his face, abandoning her healing. Her thumbs moved over his cheeks, surging him with one final feeling of euphoria.
“What a beautiful last moment together,” he said, his voice low and assuring. “To fight next to you with my final breaths to save our son. To see you, in all your glory, fight for me and Maxius. If I must go, I am happy it is next to you.”
The assurance and acceptance in his voice shattered Magic between them. Something old and promised had come to completion: he would die before she did.
“Tell him the truth,” said Mal, as the feeling of his lips and tongue drained. “Tell him what I did. Make sure he knows every detail. It is the only gift I can bestow in hopes that my mistakes are not repeated.”
“Our son will know that his father gave his life for him. For me. And for all Magicals.”
Mal’s other hand joined at her face, trembling and cold knuckles brushed against her bruised and blood-smeared skin. “I love you, Little Viper. In another world, perhaps I will again.”
A wailing cry barreled up her throat and ricocheted off the mountains. A divine final sound to his ears: his greatest love mourning him already.