Page 21

My immunity to the black mist was an ace I had to use fast. As the Berserkers came down on us hard and with everything they had, I bounced across the short grass and tapped Regine’s shoulder, then Myst’s. The light inside me had grown beyond my ability to control it—an apparent side effect of my physical contact with the liquid darkness. But it didn’t matter. Whatever my nature was responding to, it was making me stronger and bolder than ever.

Maybe it was the knowledge of my ability to open shimmering portals that had been the true game changer. Maybe my psyche had taken a leap of faith, and now everything else was just… falling into place, piece by piece.

Thayen used his pulverizer weapon on the incoming clones. The ground shook from their approach. A mass of doubles came from every direction, converging on the villa. Whatever Hrista’s ultimate goal was, she wasn’t here to tell us about it. No, she’d left us here to die. After playing with us, waiting for us to actively search for trouble, she’d decided it was time to end us.

“Jericho, Dafne! We need dragons!” Thayen shouted. They would be effective against most of the clones. It left the two of us with Myst, Regine, and Brandon against Torrhen and about a dozen other Berserkers, each looking scarier than the last.

One of them was tall enough to rival a tree, with massively square shoulders and a cape as black as night. Another was stocky and muscular, with blue fires in his eyes so bright and vicious that it made my blood freeze. They had weapons of darkness—swords, long knives, axes, and even a sickle-sword. They were fast and ruthless, and sometimes it was hard to push back. My light held them back, but never for too long.

Torrhen, in particular, was a persistent foe. Myst drew light from Jericho’s fire, and Regine came to me for hers. Allowing the glow inside me to expand, I set my mind into a sort of meditation. Every thought I had was brought back to the pink light. Every idea, every fear and doubt… it would come back to the pink light, feeding my power and suffocating the horror that had been creeping through my veins since I’d first laid eyes on Hrista.

“Thayen, focus on helping your dragon friends,” Brandon said as he circled our cluster with both swords out. He hacked and slashed at each of the Berserkers who dared get close enough. “We’ll handle these Purgatory fiends.”

Myst nodded in agreement. “Use the rest of your clips and thin that crowd. Jericho and Dafne will soon be overwhelmed otherwise.”

I could already see what she was talking about. The woods trembled as the sea of clones tightened around the clearing. Dafne spat her blue flames that turned to ice, raising frosted walls against the incoming foes. Jericho took flight and circled above, casting fire down on the doppelgangers. The redwoods burned, too, and it hurt me until I remembered that this place wasn’t real. It had to be destroyed. I couldn’t see any other way out of this awfulness.

Thayen turned his pulverizer weapon on a bunch of clones who’d managed to climb Dafne’s ice walls. Poof! Poof! And they were gone, vanished in puffs of shimmering gray ashes. One of the Berserkers got too close for comfort, but Myst was there to slash her shiny sword at him, causing light to dance across the grass. It hit the Berserker in the shoulder, and he cried out, moving back as he cursed under his breath.

“Come on, give it your best shot!” Regine snarled somewhere to my left. Myst was an elegant and ruthless fighter. Her blows were heavy and determined. In a clear contrast, Regine was like a firecracker. Light-footed and fast, she never stayed in one spot for too long. She bolted across the clearing so many times, it left some of the Berserkers standing in irritated confusion.

Brandon was quick to capitalize on that hesitation, driving his twin swords through their backs. Like Myst and Regine, he couldn’t kill Berserkers—the creatures of Purgatory could not kill one another—but we needed them disabled or slowed down, at least, or else they would certainly kill the rest of us.

I focused the pink light into my hands, opening the palms toward Torrhen. He stood about twenty feet away, smiling calmly. “You’ll get tired soon enough,” he said. If there was one thing I was grateful for, it was Haldor’s absence. His shadow hounds would have been too much to bear. I wondered if I could find out where they had taken him.

“You know, you’re pretty pathetic to let a Valkyrie boss you around like that,” I replied. The light poured into my ankles and feet, learning to spread over the grass like Hrista’s liquid darkness. The more I focused, the more I dared to imagine I could do with my power. I held back a smile and focused on the light. It trickled across the flowers and the green blades of grass, hurrying toward Torrhen.

His blue eye twinkled. “Hrista is more than a Valkyrie now, little girl.” He brought out an axe, a monstrous thing with a deep black blade that was three feet wide. I dry-swallowed at the sight of it. He brought the axe down with a grunt, hitting the precise spot where my liquid light had met the darkness, and begun to push it back. As soon as the blade came down, it launched a powerful pulse that smacked into me with the force of a tidal wave.

I heard myself cry out as I flew backward. Brandon moved like a shadow, catching me in his arms. The impact knocked the air from my lungs for a second, my pink glow fading. Torrhen was right. I was already getting tired. I’d put plenty of energy into Regine’s sword, plus the light I’d expelled against the Berserkers to stop them from reaching me. “Are you okay?” Brandon asked, his gaze wandering all over me, checking for obvious injuries.

“Yes.” I nodded briefly, gripping his shoulders for support. For the first time, I had a full understanding of how broad the Berserkers were. Metal covered both biceps, but I caught glimpses of his muscles stretching, taut and firmly contoured, as he raised his arms and reached for the sheathed swords on his back.

“Stay close and use your light wisely,” he said. “You can’t run out too soon. It’s the only thing holding these monsters back.”

It saddened me a little to hear him refer to his brothers as monsters. Unfortunately, he was speaking the truth. The Berserkers in Hrista’s service were determined to kill us. They didn’t value life or the Order that had made them. They had gotten involved in something truly heinous, and there was no excuse for their terrible behavior. Darkness flashed past us. Something big and black grabbed Brandon and pulled him away from me.

I let out a soft whimper and held up my hands, pushing light from both hands and aiming at the violent clash of shadows. It hit them hard and bright, and the Berserkers were equally affected. Brandon shrugged it off quickly, but the other one needed another moment to pull himself together. I knew I’d hurt an ally too, but I couldn’t allow anyone to take Brandon down permanently. Fortunately for me, he’d seen it coming.

He came down on the Berserker hard and without mercy. Both blades pierced the guy’s throat, and he hissed from the pain, the shadows running off him, revealing his paled skin and blackened veins as they dissipated. That was the effect of a dark stab, I realized. There was so much I didn’t fully understand about their light and dark powers, about their weapons and their magic.

I only knew we couldn’t let them take us.

Myst and Regine amplified their blows against the Berserkers, while Torrhen continued to follow me around, never attacking unless I hit first. It always ended in my light pushing him away, but even I could see the glow weakening with each use. I didn’t have much left, and there was no shimmering portal around for me to feed on.

“Thayen, don’t!” I heard Myst shouting, then saw him doing the one thing he’d been warned against. A Berserker had gotten the better of Regine, and Myst was too busy with two other foes to come to her sister’s aid, so Thayen tried to glamor him. The intention had been good. The outcome… not so much.

His glamoring worked, but only for a brief moment, before the targeted Berserker, the stocky and fast one, flexed his muscles. Thayen gasped as blood shot from his nose. He fell to his knees, eyes rolling back in his head. Around us, the battle raged on. Jericho and Dafne were no longer enough against the throng of clones. Thayen was down. Myst and Regine were overwhelmed.

My light was running low, and Brandon couldn’t hold on for much longer, either. The energy I’d felt buzzing through me earlier had turned into something meek and bland and tasteless. Nothing I did brought me any closer to a resolution. This wasn’t a fair fight, and I wanted us all out of this place. I wanted us safe and alive.

“Thayen,” I murmured as I rushed over to him. The liquid darkness on the ground pulled back wherever my boots landed, still very much allergic to me. “Thayen, wake up!”

I tried to slap him back to consciousness, but he was really out of it. He had a pulse and his breathing was steady, but I couldn’t think of any way of bringing him back. If I were to use my healing powers on him now, I’d have little to no light left to fight the Berserkers—and if my light went out, we were absolutely screwed.

Myst finally reached us, growing pale when she saw his face. “Will he live?”

“Yeah. He exerted himself again,” I said, shaking.

“The fool. I told him not to—” Myst screamed as a long blade pierced through her shoulder. It was a weapon of light, much like a rapier with an elegant swirl of gold and steel serving as the handguard. Hrista rose from behind the Valkyrie, smiling as she pushed the sword deeper, its glowing tip inching closer to my throat.

“Myst…” I managed, trying to wrap my head around this new reality.

The illuminated rapier turned black as Hrista’s lips moved. Torrhen was right. She was more than a Valkyrie now. She had darkness and light in her hands and an ability to work with both. And she’d learned death magic from the Spirit Bender. Hrista had said so herself. And I… I was speechless as Myst cried out from the pain her own sister had inflicted upon her.

“Did you think I’d go away without making sure your head came off first?” Hrista snarled as she pulled her blade out of Myst’s body. I caught the Valkyrie, losing sight of Thayen for a moment. Hrista brought the sword down in a bid to hit me, but Myst found the strength to shield me with her forearm. The steel of Hrista’s rapier clashed against the steel of Myst’s armored cuff, sparks flying around us in a shower of light.

I heard Jericho’s spine-tingling growl. The screams of people burning. Brandon’s gasps. The sharp kisses of swords meeting in violent combat. And Hrista was about to bring her sword down once more, aiming straight for my head.

My mind went blank.