Chapter 19 Nyssa
Nyssa
There is no way I’m killing Dastian to get to Cormac, but I rear up anyway to try and get him to move.
He doesn’t.
Obviously, because he is a pain in my arse.
My thoughts are my own, but my blood is being driven by the snake. By the Wraith Crown… by the Wraith King. I think I have become the Wraith King. Or would that be Wraith Queen?
All of Voren’s undead are hovering like whirlwinds. He seems unperturbed, but I know it’s because they sense what I am. What I have become. They are confused. I snap my jaws. Dastian doesn’t flinch, though the spark in his eyes wavers between amusement and genuine concern.
“Don’t make me zap you, Nyssa,” he warns, holding up a hand crackling with red electricity. “I don’t know if giant metal snakes conduct, but I’d rather not find out.”
I huff, a blast of air that ruffles his hair. Idiot. If I wanted him dead, he’d be past tense. But he’s right. Killing Cormac feels good, but it’s small. It’s petty. The Crown demands something absolute.
The urge to destroy is a cold, rhythmic thrum in my blood, a bassline demanding a drop. Cormac is just a parasite. The engine is the host.
I shift my gaze past Dastian’s shoulder to the pulsating silver net. The vibration of the stolen power grates against my scales. It offends the silence. It offends the dark.
With a whip-crack motion that defies physics, I lunge. Not at the cowering ex-slayer, but to the side, aiming straight for the anchor jar I identified earlier.
“Wait!” Tabitha screams, but she’s irrelevant.
My metallic head smashes into the jar of teeth.
The sound isn’t a shatter; it’s a scream. The glass explodes, and the dull silver thread snaps with a backlash of force that sends a shockwave through the room. The syphon net convulses, the captured light turning violent as the weave unravels.
Pain—white-hot and blinding—tears through me. My form destabilises, metal melting back into flesh, scales retracting into skin. I hit the cold stone floor hard, human again, and absolutely furious.
“No!” Finnian roars and lunges for the pit.
“Don’t touch it, you idiot!” I yell, though it comes out more like a croak. My ribs feel like they’ve been used as a xylophone by a troll, and the floor is uncomfortably hard against my cheek.
He doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t. Arrogance is a hell of a drug, and he’s overdosed.
Dreven slams him into the stone floor with his shadows. He makes a wet thud that brings me a vicious amount of joy. “Leave it,” Dreven commands, voice like a closing coffin lid.
“Take the power,” Voren says, his gaze boring into mine as if he knows who I am now.
“How?” I ask even as a vortex of pure white power swirls around us.
“I told you, you need me,” Tabitha says, losing her Taye persona again, now that Cormac and Finnian appear to be out of commission.
She leans down and, with magic, pulls on a thread.
She snaps her wrist, and the vortex obeys with a sickening lurch.
It doesn’t dissipate; it condenses. The wild, white storm spirals down into a spear of blinding light, aimed directly at my solar plexus.
“Brace yourself,” she advises, sounding like she’s telling me to mind the gap rather than prepare for a cosmic infusion.
The light slams into me.
It’s not warm. It’s not gentle. It’s like being kicked in the chest by a horse made of pure electricity.
My back arches, a scream tearing from my throat that I can’t even hear over the roar in my ears.
It’s not just power; it’s history. It’s centuries of stolen strength, every drop of blood and sweat the Order filched from my line, rushing back home all at once.
It burns through my veins, scrubbing the insides of my skin with wire wool. I taste copper, ozone, and ancient rage.
“Hold it,” Voren commands, his voice cutting through the static. “Don’t let it tear you apart.”
Easy for him to say. I’m currently being inflated like a cheap balloon at a kid’s party.
Dastian is crackling somewhere in the periphery, from the sheer volume of energy, while Dreven’s shadows pin my limbs, so I don’t thrash myself into a concussion.
The flow finally snaps off. I collapse against the stone, gasping, my skin feeling too tight for my body.
“Well,” I wheeze, staring up at the cracked ceiling where dust motes dance in the settling silence. “That was entirely unpleasant.”
Tabitha brushes invisible lint from her coat. “But necessary. You are anchored now, Nyssa. No more phasing.”
I flex my hand. Any godly light that had been shimmering is gone, and I’m just me.
Except superpowered and with a snake for a soul.
All the cuts and bruises I had are gone, signifying rapid healing, and I close my eyes, lying on the cold stone just to breathe for a minute.
“No. More. Power. Transfer. Shit!” I grit out. “I am done with being mauled by electricity. Do you hear me? If I’m destined to be any-fucking-thing else, fuck off. I’m not interested.”
“You will pay for this!” Cormac wheezes.
I crack an eye to glare at him and then preferably kill him, but he is gone, along with Finnian. I sit up and look around. “Where did they go?”
“They legged it,” Dastian says, kicking at a pile of dust where Finnian had been groaning only seconds ago. “Rude. I didn’t even get to properly traumatise them.”
I scramble to my feet. I expect the room to spin, but my balance is perfect. Better than perfect.
“Shadow slip,” Dreven growls, his eyes scanning the dark corners of the ruined chamber. “They used the chaos of the transfer to mask their exit.”
“Cowards,” I spit.
“Pragmatists,” Tabitha corrects, stepping over the shattered remains of the syphon jar. She looks entirely too calm for a woman who just helped dismantle her colleague’s secret battery pack. “They have safe houses. But they don’t have active power anymore. That doesn’t mean they are helpless.”
I look at my hands. They look the same, but the air around them ripples. The snake braided into my soul uncoils slightly, purring at the influx of juice. It feels like I’ve swallowed a lightning storm and kept it down out of spite.
Dreven steps over the rubble, his shadows agitated. “Cormac and Finnian won’t stay running. They’ll regroup, and they’ll call in every favour the Order has left.”
“Agreed,” I say. “Let’s get back to my cottage for a bit. I need a tea, food, a shower, and for the snake in my soul to shut the fuck up.”
Voren steps close, his presence is cool against the frantic energy buzzing under my skin. “About that. What aren’t you telling us?”
I glance at him and then avoid his gaze. “Nothing.”
He grips my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Don’t lie to me, slayer.”
“I’m not.”
His grip tightens. “You shifted into a twenty-foot snake, Nyssa. You have to know why?”
“Do you?”
“You tell me.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” I say, pulling my chin from his grip. “I don’t know shit.”
“You are lying,” Dreven says. “You avoid eye contact when you are lying.”
“And you know this how?” I snap. “You don’t know fuck all.”
“Temper,” Dastian says, keeping his eye on Tabitha, who is merely standing around waiting for… something.
“We know you better than you think we do,” Dreven replies. “What do you know about the shift?”
I don’t know why I’m not telling them. It seems counterproductive to keep secrets at this stage of the game. With a deep inhale, I let it back out and say, “I know why the crown is so happy to be in my soul.”
“Clearly,” Voren says. “Tell us.”
“I am the Wraith King,” I say, lifting my chin defiantly. “Or rather, Queen.”
Voren’s eyebrows shoot up as if he had no idea.
Dreven simply rumbles, and I shudder as I recall that the former Wraith King was his father.
Dastian snorts in amusement and then lunges forward. It distracts us enough to turn to see him gripping Tabitha by the neck. “Ah, ah, ah,” he murmurs. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Tabitha doesn’t look frightened, just mildly inconvenienced. She pats Dastian’s hand as if he’s a petulant child.
“I was merely securing the exit,” she lies, smooth as silk.
“Bullshit,” I say, stepping over the rubble. My body still hums with enough voltage to power all of Galway for a week, and the snake in my soul is settling in for a nap after its little rampage. Lucky fucker. “You were doing a runner.”
“And leave you unsupervised with god-level power and a chaotic impulse control disorder? Hardly.” She extricates herself from Dastian’s grip with a sniff.
Voren is still staring at me. It’s unnerving. “Wraith Queen,” he repeats, testing the weight of the words.
Dreven looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. “You’re my father’s successor.”
“Okay, let’s not make it weird,” I snap, holding up a hand. “I didn’t ask for the crown, and I certainly didn’t ask for the heritage complications. Can we focus on the fact that we just blew up the Order’s dirty little secret and two very pissed-off ex-slayers are currently plotting my demise?”
“They won’t be back in a hurry,” Tabitha says. “But they will be back.”
I round on her. “Look. I don’t know where you fit into all of this, but clearly, you are afraid of the Devourer, as are the rest of us.
It poses a very real and dangerous threat to every realm.
Some are gone already. I won’t let this one be next.
So you are either standing with me, or you are in my way. Which is it?”
Tabitha meets my glare with the sort of detached calm that usually precedes a detention. She smooths the front of her coat, looking entirely out of place amidst the rubble and swirling dust.
“I stand with order, Nyssa,” she says, her voice clipping the air. “The Devourer is the ultimate entropy. You are the only weapon capable of putting it down. Therefore, I am with you. Do try not to make me regret it.”
“Ringing endorsement,” I mutter. “I’ll try not to disappoint you.”
Dastian snorts, though he keeps a sparking hand hovering near her shoulder just in case. “We can take some time at the cottage, but after food and rest, we need to move out. Things are escalating.”
“You think?” I mutter, but there is no anger, only frustration that every time we take one step forward, we are thrown three steps back. It’s starting to piss me off.
“Cottage,” Dreven repeats. He grabs my arm. “We regroup. Then we try again.”
I nod because there is nothing left to say.
I’m all out of sass, and that’s more concerning than turning into a giant serpent.