CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #4
In that instant, the rest of the battlefield faded, becoming nothing more than a distant ringing and moving, blurred shapes.
The blazing pain in my sides eased. There was only me and him.
I looked back at the Dark Prince and there was no love left in my heart, even now.
All I felt was certainty. He thought he’d won.
But not only did I have the power of an original angel running through my veins …
I was a Nightmare. Magic was all about intent, and I already knew of one person who had used this magic to manipulate the fabric between worlds, without sacrificing any lives.
Nym himself had confirmed it, and Lucifer’s own words echoed back to me.
He saw how powerful one of her descendants would become. A power that could undo entire worlds.
As I scraped my strength together, the devil’s voice whispered through my head again, trying to plant a seed of doubt. She didn’t know how much energy it would take. The price such powerful magic would extract.
Resolve hardened my heart to stone. It was time to finish this. I was going to close that Gate, and I wanted Lucifer to watch. I knew what it might cost me, and I was willing to pay the price.
This time, I didn’t ask myself how to do it, or question whether I could.
Maybe some part of me had known how all along.
Following a quiet instinct, I dragged one of my knees out from beneath me and knelt just like Savannah had.
I kept hold of a dagger in case something nasty tried to attack, but my other hand curled in the earth.
After a few moments, I sensed other fighters forming a protective barrier, fending off the onslaught while I focused on the Gate.
Hard dirt lodged beneath my nails, and I replaced the mental image of Lucifer’s face with one that was far better.
I remembered what Laurie had said to me the night I’d become queen. I could still picture that exact moment—how the light from a nearby flame flickered in his silver eyes.
Don’t you know what strengthens a Nightmare’s power? Unleashed fury. Pain. The things bad dreams are made of.
I took a deep breath, and then another. My fingers drove even deeper into the ground. I could feel every muscle in my body tensing as I began to amass the magic I’d need. What if I took too much? What if I killed everyone, just like Olorel had? Fear began to creep back.
Another memory whispered through my mind. Laurie’s silver eyes became hazel, and his features melted into a face that was just as familiar. Collith’s voice felt cool and calming in the heat of my hovering panic. Fear is a seed. It can grow from pain or anger … or it can grow from something else.
I let out one final breath. The air left my lungs slowly, and my shoulders lowered.
I was ready.
I didn’t close my eyes, or fix my attention to the ground. Instead, I looked across the hilltop at Lucifer again. His voice was the last one I heard as the air prickled around me, practically thrumming with magic now.
Become what you were meant to be.
My gaze left Lucifer, and I all but forgot about him as I redirected all my focus toward the sky.
The Gate loomed, bigger than ever. Demons were still pouring out of it like beetles from a broken, rotted log.
I could make out more details now, like how some of those things had horns on their skulls or talons at the ends of their wings.
Morning was coming. It was still a way off, but it was coming.
Thankfully, I didn’t need the blanket of night to accomplish this, or to be asleep.
Those were just limitations I’d given myself.
Desperate ways to keep the full extent of my abilities at bay.
The power I’d gathered began to build inside me, and for the first time in my entire life, I didn’t try to quell it. I didn’t search for ways to stop it. Instead, I strengthened it. I used my belief in the dreamscape. I used the power of my desire. I used the terror of failure.
The force rose like a dark, writhing maelstrom.
Images seared through my mind—a dripping knife in my hand as I stood in Belanor’s small, damp cell, a grassy clearing full of dead bodies, Collith’s wide eyes going dim as the life slipped out of him—but I didn’t flinch.
Power was balance, I knew that now. The light and the dark.
And the light was incandescent.
A smile curved my lips when I thought of all the people I loved.
The memories stayed close to me as magic filled every corner of my being.
Blood streamed from both of my nostrils and trickled over my lips.
I barely noticed—the whole of my being was focused on the Gate.
I could sense its magic now, writhing against mine, and it was repulsive.
Unnatural. But feeling the Gate’s power lent me a small understanding of it.
This thing was made of dark energy, and creating it had caused an imbalance, just as Michael warned Olorel it would.
To right the wrong, closing the Gate would require even more energy.
I’d trapped the magic inside me as if my body were a cage. Knowing what came next, I braced myself. The bonds to my Court brightened as I sent out one final, fleeting message, imbuing it with all the love they had given me. Goodbye.
Then I opened the cage.
Power streamed past me, through me, and the opening to Hell crackled.
My braids whipped chaotically in the howling wind and someone shouted my name.
But closing the Gate required everything, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away, not even for a second.
It felt like I was breaking something all around me and creating something else out of the pieces.
Some vast, alien thing that I didn’t fully understand.
The Gate continued to roar and flash with streaks of light, as if it were sentient, as if it didn’t want to close.
Well, I thought with gritted teeth. That’s too fucking bad.
I sent every drop of power I had into the tear.
When there was none left, I just kept giving, kept pouring, refusing to relent until lightning lit up the entire sky and the gaping hole began to shrink.
The lower half of my face was caked in blood and my body ached as if I’d been beaten.
But even that wasn’t enough. The Gate needed more energy. It was still hungry.
And suddenly, I knew exactly what I could give it.
Following some dim, deep instinct, I imagined flinging myself inside that massive dark mouth trying to eat the world. Colors and sounds rushed past, everything blurring, as if I’d leaped through time.
“Close!” I screamed as I tumbled toward a terrifying, vast darkness.
Then … I was floating.
I felt the briefest flare of panic, which dimmed when I drifted a little further into the emptiness.
Facts and names and details began to fade away like the darkness was swallowing them as they scattered behind me.
All I knew was that I had to keep going.
But at the very back of my mind, from some vaguely familiar place that I’d left far, far behind, I heard desperate cries.
Voices, urging me to take power from them.
To use them. There were so many. Infinitely more than Olorel had had on the dark day he’d hidden the Door, taking all those lives to do it.
It was the thought of Olorel that made me pause. Who was he again? Why did that name make me want to turn back?
When I focused on those faint, distant lights, they got brighter and clearer. They became images and thoughts. Within seconds, I could feel their fear, and everything else they felt.
And suddenly I could see their faces, too.
Love; this feeling came from a pale-skinned figure with dark hair, who swung his sword with desperate precision, trying to reach a distant female kneeling in the grass—me.
I caught a glimpse of my own face in the faerie’s mind as he fought.
His name floated to me on a whisper of memory, some clinging shred of reason and the person I’d been before I stepped into the void. Collith.
Rage; the heat came from a silver-haired warrior who shouted my name while his drifted past me like a whisper. Laurie.
It was for them that I was doing this, I realized. They were the reason it was so important to keep going.
So I took some of their light and pushed harder.
I plunged deeper into the darkness, and then there was nothing except my will and the power I’d brought with me.
After a while, or maybe it was only a second, my body and the battle were completely gone.
It felt like I was wandering through outer space.
No tether to pull me back, no person to hear if I screamed …
but I wasn’t screaming. I just drifted, gazing into the expanse of eternal stars.
I struggled to hold onto the reason I’d come here.
Close, I thought in a whisper, my eyes fluttering shut. Close.
Another second passed. Then I heard an agonizing noise, and another reality overlapped with this one.
For several awful, shrieking seconds, I flickered between worlds, and my ears exploded with pain.
I saw a flash of a torch. Stars. A stream of crackling light.
Heavenly fire, I thought dazedly. Stars.
The glint of a sword and a blurred figure. Stars again.
When I opened my eyes, I was back on the battlefield.
Or part of me was, at least. That other reality still clung to my mind, so I saw both the chaos of the fighting and the pure, absolute stillness of those planets and pockets of darkness.
I tipped my head back, too weak to stand. Did it work? Was it done?
The Gate had disappeared.
The sky overhead was just a sky now, smeared with clouds and snow. The demons pouring through had stopped, firmly trapped in their world.
A moment after I’d had the thought—and the bright, singing realization that my family was safe, along with everyone else—I noticed a tang of salt on my tongue.
It wasn’t fear, I thought faintly. Tears.
I was tasting my own tears. I’d done it.
I had actually done it. I swayed there on my knees, smiling. The stars kept twinkling around me.
“You bitch,” a voice snarled, echoing through space.
I remembered that voice. I frowned, and the worlds overlapped again. I saw a bright, furious face and heard a name. Lucifer.
No fear stirred in my heart. He didn’t matter. I’d left him alive, but the others would end him. They had the demon glass, and each other. That was all they needed.
I tried to find those familiar faces, hoping for one last look, one final memory, but my vision had begun to dim.
All the fighting around me was just shadows and blurred shapes now.
The red-orange glow of a torch moved closer, and I fixed my attention on that spot of brightness, hoping to anchor myself.
It didn’t work.
Someone shouted my name as air whistled past my ears. I felt a hard thud, and then I was lying on my side, unable to move. A rivulet of blood escaped my mouth and pooled on the grass in front of me. I heard my name again.
But I had died before; I knew what it felt like. My eyes drifted shut. I’m sorry, I thought to whoever was calling to me.
At long last, I surrendered to the dark.