Chapter 33 #2
My father stood atop the rise now, deliberately drawing more and more monstra uphill, at a point overlooking his kingdom.
His armor was scorched, cracked, but he stood tall, defiant as the sun at dusk.
The beasts had stopped attacking him, at least. They knew they could kill him at any moment and were content to watch him and discover what he planned.
“Ahav!” I shouted, wrenching free and running for him. “Dad.”
His gaze found me, and something in his expression—peace, apology, love—split me straight down the center. “My Moriah,” he called. He slammed a fist above his breastplate. A salute from one soldier to another. “I love you, my brave girl. Never forget that.”
Blood soaked through his armor, one hand pressed uselessly to his side. He looked smaller like that, bowed, mortal in a way he had never been in my mind.
My vision tunneled, the world blurring at the edges, as if reality itself were fraying. A tug in my chest, like a cord being ripped free, a tide yanked out at sea without warning. My breath hitched, stalled, and refused to return. Not again, not him, not now. “I will be the sacrifice. Me!”
Give me everything, and I’ll give it back.
Jasher caught me by the waist, yanking me back just before I breached the masses. Wings swiping this direction and that, he blocked any fire thrown our way.
Ahav sank to his knees.
“No,” I shouted, throat scraped raw. “No. You don’t get to do this. Not after her.”
But he did.
The monstra unleashed, and I couldn’t stop it. Flames swallowed him in a blink. Ahav threw back his head and spread his arms. In those molten flames, he burned, his body ashing before my eyes.
Something inside me snapped, clean and final. A dam gave way. The Ember wanted my life? My will? Expected me to yield now, before I understood? Give everything?
You want a broken heart shredded beyond repair? It’s yours, I said, making the Ember’s will my own.
And like that, it detonated. Heat ripped through my veins, incandescent and merciless. I’d only had glimpses before. I realized that now. Too hot, so hot. Blazing. Blistering.
The Ember surged until my skin seemed to melt. It didn’t drink up my water but used it as fuel. Filling me. Still heating. Filling me further. Soon I would burst. Too much! Heating until the air around me screamed.
A scream tore free from me. Raw, feral, unrecognizable. The sound split the sky.
Golden armor materialized over me, made of water and words and love and spirit. Or so it seemed. My hands went steady in an instant, the rest of me terrifyingly calm.
I rose, fire coiling around me, grief forged into something sharp and lethal. They hadn’t crystallized. I didn’t know why. Yet. No matter.
They had taken my sister. They had taken my father. And now, finally, I would take their everything. Whatever the cost.
There was no easing into what happened next.
Power detonated inside me. As much as I could handle.
More than I could handle, even with all my new inner nooks and crannies.
Water wings didn’t just bloom from my back.
They erupted, tearing free in a violent spray of pain and ecstasy colliding as a single furious beat of air that launched me skyward.
The monstra noticed. They rushed to surround me, snarling and confident they could end me too. Jasher flew among them, as if tugged by an invisible force, just as I’d foreseen. Muscles strained as he fought to… break from their ranks?
Perhaps. But would he? I knew what was coming next.
My grief iced over, and I smiled at my audience. “Come,” I whispered, crooking my finger. “Try to kill me.”
They did. With fire, tooth, and claw. Child’s play. Golden armor flashed over me as I cut through the masses. The ease of my triumph surprised me. I glided through pockets of air, yanking out the water from in their blood. Bodies crystallizing as they dropped by the dozens.
I lost sight of the monstra as individuals. I simply saw tangled coils of light and shadow. But there was one coil—familiar—that avoided me. When I got close, it—he—backed off, never attacking. In fact, he seemed to toss the others my way, in offering.
Wait. Down there. What was that? My gaze zeroed on another coil, bigger than the others.
Ian? He stood on trembling ground. Ground growing and growing, rising into a hill.
A mountain. Oh, yes. Ian. Even through the haze, I knew him.
That face. Jasher’s face, worn by something that had never been Jasher at all.
The one who had unmade me, loop after loop.
Who had turned the man I loved into a weapon and pointed him at my throat. Ian. Finally. Finally.
“Come,” he said in a mimicry of me, motioning me over. “Try to kill me.”
Oh yes. Ian. He ripped off his shirt to prove it.
I flew over him and verified the emerald tattoo. Real. This was real.
He grinned, and I moved. We clashed. He fought. Of course he did. His hands found my armor, my wings, anything to grip to try and slow me. I sensed the desperation in his strikes, the first honest thing I’d ever felt from him. He just wasn’t strong enough.
In the end, I cleaved his head from his body. The sound it made was not the thunderclap I’d imagined across hundreds of deaths. It was quiet. Final. Like a door closing. But that door didn’t latch. And I just felt…empty.
That made no sense. I’d done it. I’d killed Ian. So why wasn’t I bubbling over with my victory?
The quiet stretched. I hovered there, above what remained of him, waiting to feel something enormous. Triumph. Release. The lifting of a yoke I’d worn for longer than I could name.
What came instead was simpler. A small whisper. You’re not done yet.
I didn’t understand. As my wings faded, I slowly lowered to the ground. And there was Jasher. He landed beside me, unharmed.
“You didn’t kill me with the others,” he said, as stunned as I was.
“This makes no sense,” I muttered. “Ian is dead, the tie broken. But you’re alive.”
“Maybe the tie…isn’t broken? I still feel him.” He rubbed his chest and frowned. “I still feel others, too.”
I gnashed my molars. Had I killed another decoy? Just a better one?
The royal chickens pecked at the remains, with my Cluck Cluck among them. I’d deal with the Ian and Jasher surprises later. Now, I headed for the spot my father had fallen.
Cluck Cluck might have smiled as I passed her. “Bwok, bwok.”
I thought I translated it: Soon, soon.
There was more to her than I’d realized. Definitely. Another puzzle for later.
A jewel gleamed from Ahav’s ashes. Heart thudding, I bent down to discover what it was. My mother’s ring. The one I’d worn on my inaugural journey.
Tears wanted to well, but they never formed. Maybe they couldn’t. I closed my fingers around the jewelry. “Just one more thing I don’t understand,” I croaked to Ahav, though he couldn’t hear me. Not anymore.
Jasher approached my side, regret etched into every line of his face. “Ahav wanted you to know,” he began softly. “The ring is his emblem, and with it, you will never be without his protection.”
Not good enough. “I was supposed to save him.” My hands trembled as I slid the ring over my finger. “I failed.” Failed him, failed the kingdom itself. Failed my mother. My sister. Everyone.
“You didn’t. You gave him what he’s wanted for you all along. A future without the monstra,” he said fiercely. “I will help give that to you, Moriah.”
“We’ll see,” I said. Though I admit, I was glad I hadn’t harmed him, even in my rage. But trust him? No.
A little prickle against my nape. Hmm. What was that?
The prickle continued, growing stronger. I frowned and straightened. Jasher must have sensed it, too. He reacted in the same manner. We looked around and pressed back to back, preparing for another fight.
No monstra in sight. No Malkom or Sin, either. Hmm. What—
The air split, a shaft of inky darkness cleaving the battlefield in two. A jagged seam ripped open reality itself, a massive shadow hand reaching through to snatch Jasher.
He flew backward.
“No!” I reached for him as a second shadowy hand shot out, grabbing me. The world folded inward, color draining until darkness swallowed me whole…
A shrill alarm dragged me screaming back into existence. My eyes flew open, and I frowned. White. Too white.
The ceiling glared down at me, lights buzzing, flickering, stuttering. The air reeked of antiseptic and metal, sharp enough to burn my lungs. A monitor beeped beside me—fast, frantic, wrong.
I tried to move, but leather bit into my wrists.
Shackles and a wrist tag with the number 1000 stitched in green thread.
Panic detonated in my chest, and I thrashed.
The weight of my water wings, the echo of power along my spine—gone.
I wore only a paper gown, thin as a lie, my skin exposed, stripped, and cold.
“Jasher?” My voice cracked, echoing off sterile walls. “Jasher!”
No answer, only the alarm. The hiss of oxygen. The click of machinery waking up.
Through a narrow window in the door, shadowed faces observed. One scribbled notes. Another tilted his head, curious rather than concerned, as if I were a puzzle instead of a person.
A button was pressed, and a voice spilled from a hidden speaker, flat and detached.
“Spark 1000 is conscious. Begin containment protocol.”
My body seized. Where was I? What was this place? “Jasher?” I must go back.
The restraints tightened. Red lights flooded the room, pulsing like a warning heartbeat. Somewhere deep in the facility, metal doors slammed shut one after another, sealing me in.
I struggled, tears burning hot and useless. “Please,” I begged anyone, everyone. “I was almost—”
A hiss. Cold slid into my veins. My vision blurred, edges darkening, the world fading like a painted backdrop being yanked away.
A whisper brushed my ear. Soft. Familiar. Impossible. “Moriah.”
Jasher’s voice. Not panicked or distant, but certain. Like a promise.
Then the curtain fell. And the world went dark again.
Look for the conclusion of the No Monsters Like Hers series in 2027!
And coming November 2026: Kingdom of Yesterday, a Book of Arden novel.
In a fractured world where night turns people into monsters, a girl discovers a book about her own life—and gets pulled into a royal academy, a secret society, and a dangerous romance with a prince who may be the greatest threat of all.