Chapter Forty-Six
Atreya
I had waited for this day my entire life.
And now that it was here, I would not waste it.
I saw Valos in the distance, Valla and him separated with their own small armies while more skyships poured in from above.
The Sky Elves were taking them down slowly, but there were so many of them and no way for us to keep all of them away from Woodhaven.
Some of them were already launching fireballs over the edges of the ships to rain fire down over the city.
I could hear the shouts and screams of women, children, warriors, and men. This had gone on for long enough.
Valos was mine to kill.
I Hollowed and was immediately in front of him, thrusting my blade toward his gut, but he blocked it and knocked me back with a grunt and chuckled.
“After all these years, I knew it was my wife plotting my demise.” The gleam in his eye before he would always do something atrocious to me was there now, just as it had been all those years ago, and I had to force my body to remain like steel.
This man did not control me anymore. I readied my blade, and he laughed a little harder this time.
“Do you really think you can kill me, Atreya? You have and always will be a weak, worthless woman.”
“I”—swing—“am”—thrust—“not.”
He blocked all my hits. “But aren't you? You couldn’t even take your children when you ran from me.”
I knew he would throw one of the hardest decisions I’d ever had to make in my face.
The only way I could build something to protect them had been to leave them until they were old enough to understand.
But I’d always hoped I would be able to save them.
All of them. But Valla was lost to me. I eyed her in the distance, and she was smiling maniacally as she slayed one man after another.
I’d never understood what had happened to her.
But I would do whatever I could to save her now, no matter what it took.
“I couldn’t, but now Kade and Everhet are safe. And I will do whatever I can for Valla.”
“It is far too late for her. Maybe if you wouldn’t have run off all those years ago, I wouldn’t have had to use her soul to protect myself against your shadows,” he revealed, taking a fighting stance.
“Valos, you didn’t.”
“I did. I sacrificed her to fortify me so no Celestials could get into my mind. How does it feel, Atreya, to know you killed your own daughter? You made me do this. When you left, I always knew you would try to come back to finish me off.” Our blades clashed as he continued, tears trailing down my cheeks.
“YOU BASTARD!” I screamed, and my whole body steeled.
I had survived all these years knowing they were in his hands, but since I had taught my boys to keep their shadows at bay, I knew they would come to me.
Everything they’d endured, Kade’s torment, Rhet’s decisions, they had all been their choices.
Everything Valla had done? It hadn’t been her will, but his, and now she was just a hollow shell under his control.
It made my heart shatter into a million pieces.
“And then finally to complete my plan, I found a small village of Celestials, and you know what I did? I killed them all but a mother and her child, and I used her child against her to do my bidding. Now, you’re all going to die by the very savior you cherish."
I wasn’t paying attention to his words. The last thing this man could ever do to hurt me, he’d done.
He’d killed one of my kids. My little girl.
I had never felt such raw fucking rage as I did in that very moment.
My shadows clouded my mind, my eyes going black, before they rose around me.
For the first time in my life, Valos looked at me hesitantly.
His eyes didn’t gleam with victory. He raised his blade to attack, but I moved quicker.
My shadows snatched it and tossed it to the battlefield.
Chaos reigned around us, but in that moment, there was only him and me.
“You can’t kill me, Atreya.” He smirked, his hand palming the ruby dagger on his hip, thinking I didn’t know his secrets or how that enchantment worked because he had made sure there was no record of it.
That was why he’d kept it hidden in his desk, why he’d tried to burn the library of knowledge all those years ago.
He didn’t want his plans to be ruined or for someone else to come along and have knowledge of the power one could have.
And he was right. Until I destroyed that blade, the same blade he must’ve killed Valla with, I couldn’t kill him, or so the book that Kade had gotten his hands on had said.
Then we would have to kill Valla, as ending the person she was tethered to would only cause her to fall into madness completely, as she wouldn’t have a will to follow.
But Valla was already mad, and it had gotten worse over the years.
My daughter was already gone. I moved, and he thought I was going for him, but I wasn’t.
I sent a tendril of shadow directly into the ruby of the blade.
Valla’s warmth was trapped in the stone, and tears pricked behind my eyes as I made the shadows disperse inside it and it exploded out of Valos’s hand.
He cried out, and I watched as an orb of light floated from the shattered blade and came toward me, swiping my cheek as if trying to rub away my tears, or maybe it was a thank you before it disappeared into nothing.
Valos’s eyes went wide, and then I sent every ounce of shadow I could muster directly into his body, piercing straight through his armor to skin and bones and directly out the other side of him.
His breath shuddered from his lungs as he released a weak laugh.
“You can’t stop my plans. She’ll make her kill all of you, and I, even in death, will be the victor.
Do you hear me!?” he rasped. Blood leaked from his nose and mouth.
“This is my empire! All of it! I-I am powerful! Do you see me now, Father!? I am—” His head drooped, and my shadows released him before he crumbled to the bloody ground.
A sob escaped me as I fell to my knees. But then I looked up and realized I had been so engrossed in the battle with Valos that I had missed the other Celestial Fae on the battlefield. I hadn’t realized she was controlling Emelyn. The Peacebringer —Our savior.
And as I looked across the battlefield, Valla was aiming her lightning toward Emelyn, and then Kade Hollowed and I screamed.