Page 19

“We’ve been following your lead this whole time,” I said, raising my chin in defiance. Pink light burst from within me in a menacing fashion. It made Torrhen squirm, I noted with satisfaction. Even Brandon took a few steps to the side, unaccustomed to so much brightness.

Hrista, on the other hand, seemed equal parts irritated and bored. “No one has been able to get close enough to kill you, so I figured I might as well let you stew a little before I end you myself.”

“Sister, no…” Myst managed, a single tear escaping her eye. “What did you do to Regine?”

“Got her out of the way,” Hrista replied. “Not much else I can do. Otherwise, I would’ve had you both destroyed ages ago. I knew you two would be dumb enough to follow me out here.”

The more she spoke, the clearer it became that she did not value her Valkyrie sisters. Not one bit. It told me she cared even less about us, the living, and I doubted she gave even the slightest damn about the clones either. To Hrista, beings were either useful or a nuisance. Torrhen had chosen to be the former, while Brandon had risked being the latter.

“You knew we’d be coming,” Brandon cut in, not really surprised but definitely upset. Darkness burned off him in black wisps of anger, spreading and covering his silver and steel armor, then the bits of leather and his bare arms. Bit by bit, it took over, leaving only his strange eyes visible as he readied himself for a fight. “You knew I would bring them.”

“Of course,” Hrista said, slightly amused. The black mist under her control stopped mere inches from my boots. It had to be related to Haldor’s darkness somehow. Its effects were similar, as far as I could tell. I’d only caught snippets of their magic and their capabilities, and it was difficult to form coherent observations without the Berserkers and the Valkyries filling in all the necessary blanks. There was so much we did not know yet, and that was where Hrista had already beaten us. “Why struggle to chase you around when I can just let you be yourselves? The living rats came in looking for their friends and for the truth. What’s the harm in giving them both before I kill them?”

“Torrhen, you betrayed us,” Brandon replied.

“Torrhen did what was best for him,” Hrista shot back before the Berserker could open his mouth and defend himself. The third eye glowed when it looked to us this time. “You should have done the same thing, Brandon. Yet you insisted on thinking yourself smarter than me. You and Haldor, for that matter. Two fools.”

That caught everyone by surprise—except Torrhen. He’d either known or was just excellent at hiding his expressions. “What are you talking about?” Brandon asked, taking a step forward. The black mist covering the grass trembled at his approach, like a live organism reacting to his close proximity. Regine hadn’t moved a single inch, but I’d seen the blue fires burning in her eyes and taken it as a sign of welfare, despite her hopefully temporary paralysis.

“He was always a little too soft on you,” Hrista sighed, leaning against the wisteria-covered railing. “Never followed through with his threats despite your numerous shortcomings and betrayals. Case in point—here you stand, Hammer is still intact, and Haldor… nowhere to be found.”

“You know where he is, don’t you?” Brandon muttered, and I sensed the humor in his voice. He’d figured something out, and he was making the most of this difficult moment. “Let me guess. You know where he is, but you don’t know where he hid Hammer. You gave him leeway on that issue—figured he’d do what he was told—yet Haldor went behind your back, and Hammer is out of your reach while your other Berserkers are doing what, exactly? Torturing Haldor? Trying to get the information out of him, perhaps?”

Thayen gave me a curious look. “Where is he going with this?”

“Oh, I’m going somewhere really good with this,” Brandon replied, almost laughing. It made Hrista and Torrhen turn sullen, but neither said a word. “It means Hrista here no longer has leverage over me. Say what you will about Haldor, but a Berserker of his skill and expertise would’ve caught you all by now, twice over. He never really tried too hard.”

I began to piece together a new perspective from what Brandon was saying. “Haldor never really wanted to catch us,” I whispered. “He made it look like he was, but…”

“Not really,” Hrista said, pursing her lips. “That, I saw coming. I allowed it to happen. I just didn’t think he’d be—”

“Brave enough to play it all the way through,” Brandon chuckled and drew his twin swords. Darkness bounced off the blades with obsidian shimmers, their sharp edges hungering for violence. “Caught you by surprise, huh?”

Hrista waved him away. “I don’t care for him much, anyway. I don’t care for you, either. Did you think I’d put all my eggs into one basket, you fool?” She smiled brightly, and the whole fake Shade seemed lighter and prettier, if only for a breath. “I chose a different path long ago,” Hrista said, turning her attention to an increasingly devastated Myst. “I’m stronger and smarter than all of you put together. But Edda… Edda thought herself a better leader, that self-absorbed idiot. Well, here we are, in a world of my own making. I’ve done so much, learned so much!”

“You should give the Spirit Bender some credit,” Thayen muttered, drawing from what he remembered of Visio and what he’d learned from Brandon. Out of everyone in our crew, he was the best equipped to discuss the First Tenner with Hrista.

“I absolutely credit him,” Hrista hissed, giving Thayen a contemptuous snarl. “You’re one of those responsible for his destruction. Don’t think I’ve forgotten, and don’t think I’ve forgiven, either. But yes, I’m here thanks to Spirit. I learned much from him, and he would’ve learned so much more from me. You see, I’m like a sponge. I absorb knowledge and information, I filter it and jumble it together… and I make new things with the old. This here,” she said, pointing at the black mist on the ground. “That’s Haldor’s proprietary poison, imbued with death magic, making it particularly toxic to both Valkyries and Berserkers…”

Suddenly, the mist reached Brandon’s leather boots. He didn’t stand a chance. His swords fell to the ground, as he joined Regine in perfect stillness. “No…” I breathed, realizing what this meant. He was paralyzed. Rendered useless. Vulnerable.

“I have my fingers in so many pies,” Hrista went on, smiling at me. “So many things to do. My plans are complex and stretch across dimensions. I’ve spent years, centuries, weaving them, putting every piece in its rightful place. Millennia passed in this realm as I waited for the Spirit Bender to come back to me, only to see him destroyed not once but twice by you Shadian bastards.” Her smile faded, lips twisting with disgust. This was personal.

Allowing my inner light to intensify, I briefly focused on the black mist near my boots. It seemed to pull back from me, reacting to my power. She’d frozen Regine and Brandon with it, and Myst knew better than to fight her on this. But I needed a solution to this problem. I needed to understand what Hrista had been doing and why she was so determined to kill me.

“You talk a big game, but it’s hard for us to understand the exquisiteness of your actions unless you tell us what this is all about,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. It was beginning to feel like a showdown, tension rising and crackling through the air between us. I doubted I’d leave this place alive if I allowed Hrista to do as she pleased, so it was important to keep her talking while I scanned our surroundings and figured a way out. Besides, she owed us some answers. I was afraid, but the thought of giving up now was unacceptable, especially with Brandon unable to fight. I had to hold on long enough for him to recover. Regine, too. “What’s the point, Hrista?”

“You know what? I’ve changed my mind. You people don’t matter enough to warrant a response,” she replied. “I’ve had my fun watching you, but you’re too boring to be allowed to live. I’ve had a little charm put on Brandon for the past day or so, and I’ve seen enough to confirm that you truly are a waste of a soul.”

She’d been watching us. Listening to us. That meant she knew about my private moments with Brandon, too. The thought made me shiver. “Did he know?” I asked. Hrista shook her head. “So, you’ve been spying on us.”

“Just to make sure you’d be coming over. It was only a matter of time.”

“And the clones?” Thayen asked, moving closer to my side. I knew Jericho and Dafne were ready to dragon out, but we couldn’t be sure what we could accomplish against someone like Hrista. Torrhen was perfectly capable of killing us on his own now that Brandon and Regine were down. I wasn’t sure Myst would be enough. We needed more time. “What purpose did they serve? Why did you make them?”

Hrista offered a careless shrug. “You ask questions as if you expect to receive answers. They serve a purpose. Obviously. Everything they have done has been for a particular reason and with a precise endgame in mind. Even the shimmering portals. Each one had to be opened in those specific places. There’s not enough time for me to explain everything to you. You’re going to die today.”

“What did Isabelle’s clone steal from our Shade?” I asked, unwilling to let her get to the murderous part. Glancing down, I noticed the black mist still hesitating in my presence. It would ripple and try to get closer to me, but my pink light kept pushing back. This wasn’t new, but it did feel different. Had I evolved, perhaps? My light felt stronger, more intense as it buzzed through my veins. This place was supposed to dull us down and drain us of our life force, but there had been plenty of circumstances where I’d pushed myself beyond my known limits. Was this proof I’d crossed a certain threshold, perhaps? If so, it meant Brandon had been right. I hadn’t tapped into my full potential just yet, or maybe I was just starting to now. “You had her with us for two months. What was it she took that you so desperately wanted?”

Hrista and Torrhen laughed and exchanged glances. It was funny to them, and I would’ve allowed this to get to me in any other circumstance—but our survival was paramount. Let them giggle, I thought, keeping an eye on the black mist as it enveloped Regine and Brandon’s boots. Inching closer to them, I made it pull back. There were only a few feet left between Brandon and me, so I wondered what would happen if I kept moving. The black mist seemed… afraid of me. Did Hrista know?

“Okay, you deserve to know. I imagine you’ve been racking your brains over this long enough,” she said, casually coming down the curving steps. The mist trembled in her presence, pulling back to reveal the white stone and the grass as she walked. “It’s an object the witches have had for so long, I’m not sure any of them even remember it.” She brought a hand up, showing us the tiny cube I’d seen Claudia’s double carrying. “It’s a remnant of the Black Witches, but they never understood what it did, mistaking it for an artifact.”

I’d never heard of it. And the Black Witches had been extinct for ages. It just went to prove that Hrista had been around for quite a while, traveling between realms without any limitations and without anyone knowing. It made her whole “web of plans” statement even scarier because it could absolutely be true. If all of this had been years in the making, what were our chances of stopping it?

“It’s the size of a game die,” Thayen muttered. “Isabelle had it inside her. Well, her clone. And Claudia’s doppelganger killed her for it.”

“Of course. Isabelle’s clone thought she could outsmart me,” Hrista replied. “I told her to get out and bring it over, but she insisted on pissing me off.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Jericho scoffed from behind us. His voice was a low growl, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he’d slip out of his special uniform and go full dragon. He had to be aware that it might not do anything against the Valkyrie, but what other choice did he have? We couldn’t throw a flare out for Mom, either. It would just draw her into this trap.

“No, just a silly clone,” Hrista retorted. “I made them. I own them. I control them. And some had the audacity to demand rights. That was foolish, which Isabelle learned the hard way.”

“What does the artifact do?” Myst asked. She’d heard enough to understand that Brandon had been right all along. He was vindicated. Unfortunately, he was also a prisoner of Hrista’s black mist. I took another discreet step, pushing the liquid darkness farther back. Hrista clearly hadn’t noticed, otherwise she would’ve thrown something else at me, but she was so consumed with gloating that she didn’t even notice my slow advance.

Hrista gave her sister a dry half-smile. “There was once a Black Witch named Kedra. Vicious little thing, that one, and overly ambitious. Spirit introduced us. It didn’t take long for me to see why he’d taken a liking to her. Spirit had a way of finding powerful women and drawing them to him, I suppose. Consider me the most powerful among them. As for Kedra, she managed to convert an entire world—a whole realm—into dark energy. The kind you see in Purgatory. It was an incredible and unprecedented accomplishment, to say the least. Most would have deemed it impossible.”

“The living shouldn’t be able to manipulate the powers of light or darkness,” Myst murmured, genuinely shocked.

Torrhen flashed her a grin. “Well, beings of light can’t manipulate darkness, either, yet here we are,” he replied, nodding at Hrista. Indeed, she was special. Unlike the other Valkyries, she had power over the black mist, over the darkness, but she also had power over the light. It didn’t make any sense.

“I’ve come a long way, I know,” Hrista giggled. “Anyway, Kedra was a badass. A talented badass. Alas, her ambition was her undoing. After turning an entire realm into dark energy and compressing it into this dice here, she swallowed it, thinking all that power would become hers. Imagine a world with its natural elements, with its people and animals—imagine it transmuted into pure dark energy. The mere feeling of that much power inside her… whew! She didn’t make it. Her body was not made to withstand such a thing,” she added, drawing our attention to the dice. I took another cautious step toward Brandon. Only a couple of feet remained, and the black mist was constantly pulling back because of me. “Kedra, the poor thing, was destroyed. Blown to tiny bits and pieces. But the dice survived. I think one of the White Witches found it. No one knew what it did, and that worked to my advantage. At the time I had no intention of using it, obviously. Then and now… two very different Hristas.”

Time was running out. It was evident from the delicate shift in her expression that Hrista was getting ready to wrap things up. She’d had her shot at glory, and she’d taken the stage for her finale number—her ego was titanic. I imagined it was one of the things that had drawn her and the Spirit Bender together. The lovebirds from hell.

“So, it’s true,” Myst said, gradually regaining her composure. This encounter had clearly shaken her. “You’ve forsaken everything. Your nature, your vows, your sisters… and for what? To play god in a foreign dimension? To live with a Reaper? What was the point of all this?”

Hrista lit up like a beacon with pure white rage. “That was the plan until these bastards took Spirit away from me!” She drew a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment as the light dimmed slowly. “But it’s fine. I have better plans now. New angles. A bright and interesting future to look forward to. You wouldn’t understand, Myst. You were always a sheep, accepting what you were told you could or couldn’t do. Not once did you ever consider rebellion. None of us did, I suppose. Not for a long time. It took a Reaper breaking into Purgatory over and over to make me see that there could be a different path… that I had the same strength.”

I didn’t understand the reference. Myst was confused, too. “What are you talking about?”

“You hadn’t been made at the time,” Hrista replied with an eye roll. “It doesn’t matter, Myst. You will never understand.” She raised a hand slowly, and the liquid darkness trickled across the grass and over to Myst, who tried to get away, but Torrhen appeared behind her and caught her wrists for the second the black mist needed to reach her. Myst was paralyzed, like her sister and Brandon. Torrhen gave me a curious glance.

“Would you look at that?” he muttered, while Dafne, Jericho, and Thayen moved farther away from him. He didn’t care about them, anyway. His attention was focused entirely on me, and it made my skin crawl. “Someone seems to have developed an immunity to the black mist.”

“Hm… I figured. Just one more reason to kill her,” Hrista replied.

“Why are you so desperate to see me dead?” I asked, the air thickening around me. My pink light reacted to Torrhen’s slow and cautious approach. I was glowing menacingly, the energies gathering in a heavy ball in my chest, ready to be expelled and destroy everything in their path. I remembered the time I’d been hit with the clones’ black spray—that had certainly affected me. Torrhen appeared to be right. Something inside me had triggered the development of some kind of immunity against the darkness of Berserkers, for it had been Haldor’s blackness that had fueled the clones’ devices, according to Brandon, and it was a similar blackness paralyzing Brandon, Myst, and Regine here, too. “With all your powers and tricks and allies… why am I such a problem to you?”

“It’s your sentry blood,” Hrista said. “It causes a weird reaction with your Daughter genes. Sentries are distant relatives of ghouls and Reapers, and Daughters are products of the Hermessi. There is something about that combination that makes you… special.”

“Special how?” Thayen replied.

Torrhen smiled. “She can’t just sense the shimmering portals. She can open them.”

“Why would you tell her that?” Hrista snapped.

“You’re going to kill her now, aren’t you? It’s courtesy,” Torrhen replied, defending his decision. The certainty of my impending doom made it clear. I couldn’t waste another second.

One way or another, I’d have to get us away from this Valkyrie before she destroyed us. As long as I drew breath, I was a threat to her, and now I knew why—though I still wasn’t quite sure how. This was it. My moment of truth. Surrendering to instinct, I touched Brandon’s shoulder.

The black mist pulled back as if burned by my touch, and Brandon sucked in a breath, suddenly free and conscious. Hrista had failed to follow up on Torrhen’s observation, though I couldn’t blame her. Teeming with insecurities, she’d poured plenty of energy into making this moment count, into positioning herself as the superior Valkyrie, the supreme being that could navigate and control any realm she wished. I felt like I was seeing another side of her personality—the fractured one that had to prove something to everybody. I wondered if I could ever use it against her.

Brandon gave me a startled look. “Get us out of here,” I whispered to him.

“Kill them all! And kill the pink-haired bitch first!” Hrista said menacingly. A split second later, she vanished altogether.

It quickly became apparent that Torrhen wasn’t the only Berserker present. Other shadows emerged from the edges of the clearing, each one bigger and darker than the other, each with furious blue eyes that sought our deaths.

I only had a few seconds to make my move. I’d caught Hrista unprepared with my immunity to the black mist. It proved I could do more for my friends and family. It proved, along with Hrista’s own words, that there was more to me than I’d originally thought. The idea both scared and thrilled me, but I needed to survive now if I wanted the chance to figure out what it all meant later.

And survive I shall.