Chapter 22
?──── Serenya ? ────?
Tearing my gaze away from Koen, I lift my hands and the shadows obey, but something is different. They respond faster and swifter than they have in years. They shimmer faintly around my wrists, almost gleeful. Like they recognize something. Like they got something back they had missed .
A snarl fills the air as another hound lunges. I jump to the left and sweep my arm low, and the shadows respond like waves, smashing into the beast’s side and flinging it into a rotted tree with a crunch. I blink. That should have only slowed it, but the shadows had cracked its ribs.
What is happening?
A deep growl comes from behind me.
I spin and throw up a wall of black mist just in time to stop another hound’s snapping jaws. My shadows curl tighter around me in a need to protect me.
“Serenya, get down!” Koen calls out from behind me.
Without hesitation, I drop low just as his sword swings right above my head, clean through the neck of another hound. Hot steaming blood splashes across my shoulder.
We fight back-to-back, with Dimitri dancing in and out like smoke, his blades flashing and his blond hair stained red. "I thought you said this route was clear , " he calls.
"It was," I snap back. “They weren’t here when my shadows passed before.”
The hounds keep coming from the trees, the fog, and the water.
My shadows grow wilder. I can feel them reaching farther, pulling from the corners of the marsh, weaving traps I didn’t cast. I’m not sure if that should terrify me or not.
Koen grunts beside me, sweat slicking his brow as he drives his blade into a beast’s heart. His magic flickers again, a faint glimmer lighting under his skin, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
…Or maybe he is trying not to.
I watch him for a heartbeat longer than I should. He moves like a warrior—not refined, but instinctive and reckless and fierce.
The biggest of the hounds, a brute with bone spines jutting from its back, charges straight through Dimitri's dagger like it’s nothing. Dimitri disappears before it reaches him, reappearing near me. “They’re getting stronger.”
I fling my shadows at an advancing hound. My breath comes in sharp gasps, my limbs ache, my magic thins, but the beasts just keep coming.
“This doesn’t end until we find the summoner,” Dimitri snarls from somewhere to my left, driving his dagger into a hound’s throat before vanishing again into mist.
He’s right. There are too many of them, too coordinated, too relentless. Hellhounds don’t behave like this without someone feeding them commands.
I reach with my shadows, trying to trace the thread of dark magic back to its source, and I hit a wall of something old and twisted, cloaked in layers of wards.
“Do you feel that?” I shout toward Koen, but he doesn’t answer.
I glance over my shoulder at him. He’s…glowing.
Well, not entirely. It flickers, pulsing from beneath his skin like his very blood is fighting to contain it. Golden cracks run down his arms like streaks of lightning. His sword shakes in his grip, and his breath hitches like he is choking on power he doesn’t understand.
All of a sudden, the light blinks out. Like a candle snuffed.
A hound leaps at him, and he barely blocks in time. He staggers back, sweat pouring down his neck, and I see something raw in his eyes.
Fear. But not of the hounds.
Of himself.
My shadows lash out and yank the beast away before it can strike again. I dart to his side. “Are you alright?”
He nods too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I said I’m fine, ” he snaps with a shaky voice, but he won’t meet my gaze.
I stare at him a second longer, but there isn't time for arguments. The forest is full of snarls and rotting breath. Another dozen hounds stalk the edges of the trees, glowing eyes flashing like torches in the dark.
I turn my focus inward, calling the shadows deeper.
Where are you hiding…?
Something shimmers farther west. A bend in the air.
I follow it, weaving through the fog-covered trees. Dimitri reappears beside me. “You feel it too?”
I nod. “Northwest. Maybe a hundred paces.”
“Go,” Koen calls. “I’ll hold them here.”
I almost argue. Almost. But one look at his drawn blade and clenched jaw says he means it.
Don’t die, I think. But I don’t say it.
We run over the thick forest roots. The air grows colder. Heavier. My shadows scream in warning.
A tall, skeletal figure stands between two dead trees, wrapped in decaying robes. He’s holding a long, cane-like wand in one bony hand, and at its tip swirls a small orb that’s clouded green and black and pulsing with unholy light.
A nemorak.
My shadows recoil as they near him.
“Found you,” Dimitri whispers.
The skeletal figure stands motionless, his wand digging slightly into the moss beneath his feet. The swirling green-and-black orb at its tip crackles once, resembling lightning caught inside clouds.
My shadows coil tightly around my limbs, ready to strike.
Dimitri stops at my side, but slightly ahead, protectively, whether he means to or not. His blades gleam in both hands, reflecting the strange green glow that pulses from the figure’s empty eye sockets.
The nemorak tilts his head.
“Well, well,” he says in a voice that's like a brittle echo. “A dark fae cloaked in shadows that don’t belong to her. A vampire reeking of old blood. And a human touched by a magic that shouldn’t exist in this realm.”
I stiffen.
The bone mage makes a low and raspy sound. A laugh, maybe.
He taps his wand once against the earth, and the ground beneath him blackens in a perfect circle. “I have seen you. Heard of you. Felt the tremors of your steps. You being here will stir things in the underworld of Varkahen that are better left sleeping.”
My hands tighten. “You summoned the hounds,” I say, ignoring his words. “Why?”
His head cocks the other way, like a curious bird.
“Because I was bored . I’ve been trapped here for far too long.
” I can hear the smile in his voice, though his face holds no skin to shape it.
“But now… Now, I have a fae , a vampire, and a human to play with. A rare hand of pieces. The others will be quite jealous . ”
Others . What others?
I don’t have time to ask because the nemorak raises his wand, and the orb at the top flares bright green. A ripple of force explodes from him, knocking us back.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling through damp moss and tangled roots. Dimitri is already back on his feet, vanishing and reappearing behind the nemorak to strike, but the wand flicks, and a wall of bone bursts from the ground, blocking the blow.
I lunge and send shadows from my hands. They meet the nemorak’s magic mid-air with a burst of color, black against green, shadow against rot.
He holds his ground. Unflinching.
Dimitri’s blade finds an opening and slices through the tattered robes, but instead of being weakened, the nemorak laughs.
“You think these bones are all I am?” he hisses.
The forest shifts and the roots tremble.
Hands begin to claw up from the ground around us, skeletal, gnarled, and draped in remnants of armor or robes.
Bile rises in my throat. “Graveborn,” I whisper. “Of course.”
I fling my hand outward, and a wave of darkness slams into the rising undead, shattering some and staggering others. But for every one that falls, more claw free from the earth.
The nemorak turns slowly toward me again. “Your shadows hunger, little fae . They remember that the human once fed them.”
I freeze. The human? He couldn’t mean—
A beam of gold light explodes through the trees. Searing, beautiful, blinding. It slams into the nemorak’s side, sending him flying into a half-collapsed tree.
I spin to see Koen standing there, panting, his arms extended, his palms smoking. The light vanishes as quickly as it came, leaving a look of horror on his face, like he didn’t even know how he’d done it.
The nemorak rises from the rubble, laughing again, but slower this time. “Oh, yes,” he rasps, “the human is interesting. ”
The skeletal creatures surge toward Koen, Dimitri vanishes into the fray, and I leap forward with my shadows roaring.
I dodge an uneven blast of green fire, body aching and breathing ragged.
Shadows lash from my hands and dance across the battlefield, slicing into skeletal limbs to make the space Dimitri needs to cut down another wave of the undead. But there are too many.
A grip like frozen iron closes around my upper arm, the nemorak suddenly right in front of me. Closer than he should be. Faster than he has any right to be. His bony hand crushes my arm. I scream as rot flares through my veins.
“No—” I gasp.
My shadows fight to free me, but his magic swallows mine whole. It sinks into my bones, heavy and cold. My knees give out, but the nemorak yanks me upright.
“Such power,” he croons. “Wasted on a weak girl who doesn’t understand it.”
A roar rips through the air. The world flashes gold. White. Gold again.
Light. Blinding and endless.
The nemorak screams as his left side erupts in white flame.
I drop to the ground, choking. My shaking hands claw at my throat as I gasp for air, my vision spinning.
Koen stands over him. His eyes—wild and far-off—glow faintly.
Gold light spits and snaps across his skin as his hand stays outstretched.
He’s not just flaring magic. He is the magic now. A storm made flesh.
“By every god that hears me,” Koen growls, “I will unmake you for touching her.”
His words hit the air like blades—measured, sharp, and unrelenting. The nemorak stumbles back, bones scraping stone. Koen doesn’t move like a man. He stalks forward, slow and deadly. Magic coils from his fingers, setting the air on fire.
A beam of light erupts from him, searing across the nemorak’s chest. Bones crack, joints twist unnaturally, and the skeletal figure screeches—a sound that is more of a hollow echo than a cry.
White flames spread over him, crawling down his limbs and torso, reducing what little semblance of form he had to ash.
All the undead stop moving, dropping into piles of bones in the water.
Koen doesn’t breathe, or even blink. His jaw is set, his eyes fixed on the collapsing skeleton, and even as the last fragments crumble, his hand remains raised—a faint aura of light still shining over his skin.
I watch with wide eyes as silence falls, punctuated only by the faint hiss of dissipating energy.
The pungent scent of burned shadow and bone fills the air.
I almost don’t recognize Koen. It’s like he’s not the man I’ve come to know, but something older.
Something terrifying that protects at any cost.
His magic spreads across the water and pools in the clearing before it lashes upward again without warning—tall, terrible, and wild.
Koen stands in the center of it. His shoulders hunched, his breathing heavy, and his eyes glassy.
Distant. Empty. His mind has gone somewhere far away from us, even while his body remains here.
The light around him surges again, brighter and hotter than before.
Dimitri steps forward, shielding his eyes. “He’s going to burn himself out!”
“I know,” I say, my voice barely carrying over the roar of magic.
I stumble toward Koen on weak legs. My skin is still blistering from the poison in the nemorak’s magic that is continuing to spread through my veins. But I don’t stop.
“Koen!” I shout. “ You have to stop! ”
Nothing. He doesn’t even blink.
I try to reach out, but the magic flares near my hand, nearly scorching my fingertips, and I recoil instinctively.
Too close. Too wild. He isn’t in control. His magic has consumed him, swallowed him whole. He looks less like a man and more like a vessel for the sun, pulsing with light and heat and some divine rhythm I cannot understand.
My shadows stir, curling and writhing—understanding the danger. I try to pull them back, to shield them from his fire, but they refuse. They surge outward, straining toward him, tugging at my very fingers, desperate to touch, to reach, to bind.
No, stay back! I will them, trying to command them into myself, but they rebel, splintering and stretching like liquid ink toward him. My chest tightens in panic, fear clawing at me. I cannot let them get burned, but I cannot let him fall either.
I close my eyes, teeth gritted, hands trembling. My shadows fight and twist, desperate and unrelenting, and I let them. Go. Touch him. Protect him.
“This is my fault,” I whisper. Dimitri comes up behind me. He doesn’t speak, but I feel his attention on me.
“If I had been faster, if I had been better, the nemorak wouldn’t have grabbed me. Koen wouldn’t have had to burn himself out trying to save me.”
My fingers curl into fists. “I won’t let someone else die.”
Not because of me. Not again .
I still don’t understand what I feel for him, this stubborn, reckless human who is always getting under my skin in ways I never expected. But I know I feel something. And that’s enough. More than enough.
I take a step forward, and the light crackles toward me, making Dimitri lunge to stop me. “Serenya, don’t! ”
I don't listen. Instead, I take another step. Then another.
The heat strikes me like open flames, searing my clothes and biting my skin.
I clench my jaw and keep going, pushing through the pain.
“He was protecting me ,” I say, louder now, over the roar of magic. “ I won’t let him die for it. ”
My shoes become scorched, and my sleeves begin to smoke. My skin continues to blister beneath my clothes as the shirt he gave me burns until it’s nothing but ash.
Still, I don’t stop.
I reach out—hand trembling but determined—toward him.
My shadows lash and curl around the flames, wrapping around my head, forming a helmet of sorts to provide even the smallest amount of protection, while their tips strain toward him, tangling with his light.
The fire screams, searing and brilliant, but I keep stepping forward anyway, letting myself, my shadows, and my will collide with Koen’s storm.