Chapter Forty-two
THEA
S omeone was screaming. A loud and piercing wail shredding through the night.
Thea realised the sound was coming from her.
And that she was running, her boots pounding against the earth, her breaths short and shallow.
Dropping the spyglass, Thea ran into the dark, brief flashes from the storm revealing what she already knew…
She was too far away. Wren was already gone.
But she sprinted for the sea, for the Veil anyway, refusing to recognise the fist of panic clenching around her heart, and the sickening weight of dread.
The world blurred. At first she thought she was running so fast that her eyes were streaming with tears, the wind whipping around her, stinging her cheeks, but…
No. Those were shadows swirling around her.
Tendrils of dark power cloaked her, tugged her through wisps of obsidian and a pulsing nest of chaotic magic. She tried to scream, realising that she was falling, travelling through space and distance, that the earth was no longer solid beneath her feet.
She clutched Wilder’s sword and Malik’s dagger, slicing at the ribbons of darkness to no avail.
These shadows were whispers, barely tangible.
Heart hammering, she swore to herself that when she hit the ground, she would slay every last fucking monster – she’d tear out their hearts with her fucking teeth if she had to.
The fall took both all the time in the world and no time at all, toying with Thea’s grasp on reality. When at last she collapsed on solid ground, she didn’t know how many hours or minutes had passed.
She expected to breathe in the acrid scent of burnt hair, to feel the lash of onyx whips of power against her skin. But instead, she smelt pine. Gasping for breath, she staggered to her feet, looking around wildly.
For a moment, Thea’s attention snagged on a familiar hawk perched on the bough of a tree. What the fuck is Terrence doing here? He’s supposed to be an ally…
She couldn’t dwell on that now. Her fingers flexed around her blades. What the fuck happened? Where am I —
She was in a clearing in the woods, but there was no telling how far from the battlefield she was. The shadows had swept her up mid-sprint and brought her here, wherever here was.
And suddenly where here was stopped mattering.
A torch protruded from the ground, illuminating three figures standing at the treeline, watching her.
Anya. The girl – woman she’d seen in her vision: the Daughter of Darkness, her wings tucked behind her back. A winged general standing at her side. And Wren, held in place between them by bonds of shadow magic.
Darkness leaked from Anya, and Wren’s magic crackled weakly, a feeble attempt to fight it off. Her eyes were full of apology, and they implored Thea to run.
Instead, she sized up the Daughter of Darkness.
The woman was even more fierce in the flesh, perhaps a few years older than Thea.
Her shaved head made the angles of her face that much sharper, made the ragged scar that ran through her right eye all the more stark against her skin.
Blood dripped from her armour and spattered the wings at her back.
Her weapons were sheathed at her sides, but with all that power at her fingertips, it didn’t look as though she needed them.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Anya said, her rough voice sounding strangely familiar. ‘Come and claim her.’
Thea’s heart stuttered at the challenge. The thought of Wren caught in the middle of this made her sick, but she raised her sword and took a step towards the enemy. It had to be a trap. Why else would they take Wren and lure her out here?
Trap or not, they were all here now, and she would end it one way or another. She flipped her blade menacingly.
The woman gave a huff of amusement. ‘Oh, no, not with that.’ With a flick of her wrist, darkness lashed for Thea, stronger than any reaper’s power, stronger than anything she had ever felt before.
The whip of onyx magic disarmed her, sending both her sword and her dagger flying out of reach. They hit the forest floor with a thud.
‘You have a far greater weapon at your disposal, don’t you, Althea?’ the woman said, waiting.
Thea swallowed. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m surprised your Warsword didn’t tell you,’ the Daughter of Darkness answered.
In that comment alone, the woman told her she knew more than Thea could possibly imagine. Your Warsword.
‘I have been seeking you and your sister for months,’ the woman continued. ‘I made no secret of it.’
Thea let those words sink in, trying not to buckle under the weight of a secret withheld, trying not to let her shock show.
‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time.’ As she spoke those final words, the darkness around her intensified, seeming to gather its strength, rallying around Wren.
A soft cry of terror broke from Wren’s lips, and it was all Thea needed to hear.
She wrenched her alchemy-treated fate stone from her neck, tossing it aside into the dirt.
Her magic barrelled into her like a tidal wave, threatening to drown her. It flooded her whole body, brutal and overwhelming, to the point where she staggered beneath its weight.
Am I more powerful than before? she wondered abstractly as the lightning filled her veins and crackled at her fingertips.
She didn’t know what she looked like to the enemy, but Wren’s awed expression told her enough. They could feel the current of her magic from where they stood. They could feel the surge of an incoming storm.
Thea looked at the forks of lightning dancing between her fingers, then to the Daughter of Darkness, who stood with her ribbons of shadow, smiling.
Thea launched her lightning at Anya, sending a bolt straight for the bitch’s chest.
The brilliant white light was swallowed by darkness.
But that didn’t stop Thea. She threw bolt after bolt at both the woman and her general – a distraction, while she sank deep into herself, rallying that kernel within. She found a thread of that power, the very one that called to the skies above, not just to the magic she already possessed.
She may not have been trained, she might only hold power in its rawest form, but it didn’t have to be perfect. Rage had guided it before. And it would do so again. She just had to free Wren from those bonds.
Wind whipped around Thea, and above, thunder cracked, the forest floor rumbling beneath them in answer. It vibrated in Thea’s chest, coaxing more magic from her being, one form of chaos recognising another.
It empowered her, liberated her, brought that final piece of herself to the surface, the piece she’d been hiding for nearly twenty-five years.
The skies opened up and rain lashed down upon them all, and Thea’s lightning carved through the air, striking those ribbons of obsidian. She didn’t hold back.
The enemy already knew who she was, who Wren was. But it didn’t matter. Not now. What mattered was the power surging from Thea, and that it stood between the Daughter of Darkness and her sister. Thea would not let them take her.
She delivered a world-shattering strike of lightning.
But there was no fear on Anya’s face – only triumph as the storm raged around her.
‘Now we know for certain,’ she said.
‘Know what?’ Thea snarled, sending another bolt of power straight for the woman’s face.
Darkness surged into the shape of a shield and took the brunt of the blow.
‘That the storm magic runs deep through the Delmirian line,’ Anya replied, with a knowing look to her general. ‘It is just as powerful in each of us.’
Us. The word hit Thea in the chest like a blow.
Anya’s general gave a nod, reaching for Wren —
A flaming arrow soared through the air.
A surprised cry of pain escaped the half-wraith’s lips and he looked down, gazing at the arrow protruding from his chest.
Thea whirled around, expecting to see Wilder charging towards them, but it was Cal, another arrow already nocked to his bow.
The general swayed on his feet, his hands reaching for the shaft of the arrow.
‘Leave it, you fool,’ the Daughter of Darkness cursed, shoving Wren aside to get to him. The binds around Wren dissipated, fading into the night like ash in a breeze. Wren scrambled for Thea – no; for her weapons.
Lightning still snapped at Thea’s fingers and she aimed another bolt at the woman, to end her once and for all.
But Anya seemed to sense her intentions.
She looked up, the half-wraith’s arm hauled around her neck, her good eye piercing Thea’s gaze. There was something about that eye, something that made the hair on Thea’s nap stand on edge —
Another flaming arrow shot towards her, but this one was swallowed by a cloud of darkness gathering around the two half-wraiths. As the power thrummed around their bodies, Anya still held Thea’s stare.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ she asked, reaching for something Thea hadn’t noticed hanging around her neck.
A flower necklace.
Her hand brushed the petals there, before intricate bolts of lightning danced at her fingertips.
Thea loosed a breath, not realising that she had taken a step towards that familiar power that called to her.
‘I thought you would recognise your own blood, sister ,’ Anya said.
Sister . The ground seemed to quake beneath her, the word somehow cleaving through the walls she had built around herself, shattering all notions of the past and ringing with an undeniable note of truth.
‘ Sister? ’ Thea choked. An icy shiver raked down her spine, her magic winking out around her, the storm circling above ebbing away into the distance.
Thea’s gaze shifted from Anya to Wren, the three of them staring hard at one another, like bolts of lightning meeting to strike the same point.
Shadows deepened and swirled, caught in the current of a windstorm.
‘ Beware the fury of a patient Delmirian… ’ the Daughter of Darkness murmured, before taking her general and vanishing into darkness.
A soft cry wrenched Thea from her trance and she threw herself towards Wren, who was kneeling in the mud. Thea skidded to a stop beside her, Cal there instantly as well.
Thea’s skin crawled at the sight of her sister, pale and shaking, soaked to the bone. Wren reached for her. There were no signs of blackened veins or leaking shadow. The half-wraiths hadn’t got their talons in her. Wren was herself, but clearly in shock. Thea realised that she probably was, too.
She wrapped her arm around her sister’s shoulder, needing to reassure herself that Wren was truly there, truly whole.
Teeth chattering, Wren started to babble. ‘I… Farissa and I… We had nearly fixed the tear, but there was a swarm of wraiths on the other side trying to force their magic through. Farissa got knocked overboard, and without her help, I… I couldn’t hold them off.’ She sniffed.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Thea told her.
Cal looked on, horrified.
‘But it is, Thee… I couldn’t hold them off, couldn’t fix the rest of the tear. And when they burst through, I used my magic. I didn’t mean to. I remember Hawthorne saying it attracts them, but —’
‘It was your only option, Wren. You were defending yourself.’
‘That doesn’t make it alright. I should have let them have me, rather than let them through.’
‘No. That was never an option, do you hear me?’ Thea spoke fiercely, fury pulsing alongside her uncontained magic now. ‘They can’t have you. They never will.’
Cal stepped back, fear etched on his face.
But Wren looked at Thea, the horrific truth dawning there. ‘Thea… What she said… What she called you…’
The term echoed in Thea’s mind, but she wouldn’t – couldn’t – say it aloud. Instead, she tasted another phrase on her tongue.
‘ Beware the fury of a patient Delmirian… ’ Bile burned the back of her throat. ‘It was never me,’ she rasped. ‘It was her.’
Flower necklaces in small hands.
The whisper of a storm in the wind.
‘You can feel it in your bones, can’t you?’ Wren said quietly, her voice quaking. ‘That what she said was true.’
Thea didn’t want to. But she knew the Daughter of Darkness. She knew Anya. Not just from her visions. But from life before.
In the shadow of a fallen kingdom, in the eye of the storm
A daughter of darkness will wield a blade in one hand
And rule death with the other
When the skies are blackened, in the end of days
The Veil will fall.
The grief and despair on Wren’s face tugged on that thread of recognition that had started to unravel within Thea since she’d first seen the Daughter of Darkness.
And her unmarred eye – which was a unique shade of green that matched both Thea’s and Wren’s.
‘Don’t you remember me?’
Thea did.
They were linked by blood and storms.
It was Anya’s magic that had lured Thea and Wren out of the Laughing Fox in Harenth. It was Anya’s lightning that had called to them.
Anya, the Daughter of Darkness, the enemy to end them all… was the true heir of Delmira.