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As Sylas reached out with one hand toward the living enchantment, his red magic flaring to life, I tensed, my body and mind alike priming me for what was to come.
The moment his magic connected with it, a tremor rocked the chamber and a surge of violet light burst from the enchantment and launched upward—straight through the stone, as if firing a signal flare into the heart of the Maven Coven estate above.
Moments later, the air shimmered at the edge of the chamber, and two figures began to phase in.
I didn’t get to see them because Vorzyr and Nyx stepped forward defensively blocking my view, but their yells of protests made it clear it was my parents.
I saw Ariana move to call her power, but she stopped in the next beat, remembering my warning.
“I need you here,” Sylas reminded her also, and then she came and knelt down opposite him on the other side of me.
Magic flew everywhere in the next moment.
A bellow tore from Vorzyr and he was shifting into dragon form, the secret space thankfully large enough to be able to accommodate him.
Then dragon fire, Nyx’s magic, and my parents’ collided in a furious storm of battle.
I heard Sylas begin the spell, the incantation echoing off the walls.
Electricity shot through my body.
“Now,” I heard Sylas say to himself, as he briefly broke his chanting to push his magic into me.
Death magic.
Another jolt, and then my body was burning all over, then convulsing.
And then—everything went black.
He’d killed me.
It had worked.
Sylas had stopped my heart.
I found myself surrounded by darkness, no path that I could see.
Just a void.
It wasn’t the Valley of the Dead.
He’d told me I wouldn’t actually pass through, I’d just be in between life and death.
I caught sight of a red shimmering band wrapped around my wrist—a literal tether from him.
A flash of light in front of me drew my focus and I found myself stepping forward.
With every step further that I took, that light grew more vivid.
And then a blurry gray sea of faceless figures forming a wall of sorts extending what seemed to be forever in either direction came into view.
That was the Valley of the Dead.
Those shadowed figures caught my eye, reaching out to me.
They wanted me with them.
They wanted another to join them.