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PANDORA

T he Temple of the Veil was an ancient catacomb lined with bones and engraved with dark magic sigils and circles. Flickering black candles hung on the walls, casting dripping, flickering shadows as the cracks in the walls oozed dark magic.

Sybil Shaw stood at the center of a massive dark magic circle, surrounded by hooded cultists chanting in a low, thrumming tone that seemed to echo through the very walls, forcing more and more dark magic out. Beneath her, she straddled a crack in the floor that was filled with dark magic, almost like it was a portal linking the Veil to Kalista.

My heart rate spiked as I noticed it.

At the center of the dark magic circle before the portal started was an altar holding a bloodstone, which glowed with an intense, pulsing crimson light—a bloodstone that had to be Grayson Haven’s. It was drenched in dark magic. There was no soul in it at all, just a harborer of volatile dark magic.

“Welcome to the show, Bones and friends!” Sybil reached over the altar and pulled out the bloodstone as it pulsed with the blood of Grayson, the dark magic from the broken rejected bond between Grayson and Wren and the dark magic Sybil must’ve infused it with. “I honestly thought Rod and his friend would’ve killed you and your mates by now.”

“Shadowheart’s dead and so is Hemlock,” Dex spat, anger vibrating off him as his shadows curled around us.

“Clearly, I’ve overestimated him and underestimated you and your mates,” she cackled. “Oh, well. I have higher hopes for this.” She held the bloodstone up for us to see. “I was thrilled when the rejected bond was broken, and I felt it when dark magic was used to do it five decades ago. The pretty little arctic fox just wanted to be free from the egotistical arctic wolf—but she and her witchy friend didn’t know I’d been in wait for anyone else to use a dark magic ritual that would backfire enough dark magic into the world that I could start Dark Veil.”

Wren gasped, and Damien and Rowan both stepped protectively in front of her.

“Take her away, now ,” Rowan growled to Damien.

Wren didn’t even have time to protest before she was gone.

“What do you plan to do now?” Rowan baited her.

“I intend to breach the barrier between Kalista and the Veil, but you know that, don’t you?” Sybil grinned, and her teeth were completely black, but they hadn’t fallen out yet. “What you don’t know is that I had a lot to do with Roak in Kalista’s Second War.”

“How so?” he asked as Jesper and I carefully moved toward Sybil without her noticing. Dex carried us in his shadows.

“I manipulated him into testing dark magic on all supernaturals. Demons are the best at holding it, though. They lived much longer while infected.” She tilted her head. “Do you honestly think Roak came up with the idea of injecting Grayson’s DNA into people on his own? I just had to have him think it was to change supernaturals into dragons. Of course, he did inject his own DNA into others on his own merit. That, of course, killed many supernaturals, but that was the casualty of war.”

Rowan couldn’t hold back his growl.

“Grayson, though dead, is now the heart of the ritual, necessary to channel the massive amounts of energy required to bridge the Veil and Kalista,” she explained ever so helpfully.

Rowan breathed smoke out as he tightened his fists at his sides. “The bloodstone’s that important?”

Her delusional smile dropped from her face as she tilted her head. “I stored more dark magic in this bloodstone than anywhere else, after all.”

Without that bloodstone, the ritual would collapse.

Nebula had told us as much, and it just made more sense now.

Sybil began chanting, drawing on the power of the bloodstone, which pulsed in sync with an ancient language I couldn’t recognize. As she chanted, red webs of magic emanated from the stone and snaked through the room, wrapping around the cultists and siphoning their magical energy from them as well as the dark magic some harbored, reverting them to useless demons without a lick of magical energy in their souls.

Some infected turned to ash, while others puked and fainted.

“Your sacrifices strengthen the connection to the Veil. The Veil thanks you!” she shouted before laughing gleefully. “I will merge with the bloodstone and become a vessel for your magical essences and dark magic. I will become an immortal, demonic entity able to control dark magic entirely! You will refer to me as the Veil’s Mistress!”

The cultists chanted, “Long live the Veil’s Mistress!”

“This is way worse than we thought,” Sabine groaned.

“No kidding,” Rowan agreed.

Dex deposited Jesper and I on either side of Sybil.

“Now!” Jesper shouted to everyone as he held both magical artifacts up in the air. Both pulsed with magic. One relic called dark magic to it, and it wobbled as he tried to hold it steady, and the other siphoned what was called.

“You need help.” Reed ran up to Jesper, rendering a few cultists into slumber as he took the relic that called on dark magic and held it with both hands beside Jesper.

“Thanks,” Jesper told him as he used two hands on the siphoning relic, and he shouted, “To stop the ritual, we must destroy the bloodstone!”

“On it!” Dex jumped into the shadows, navigating around the cultists and made a grab for the bloodstone, seizing it from the altar in a dark blur of movement before he melted back into the temple’s shadows behind all of us.

It disrupted the ritual instantly, and the crimson light that escaped the bloodstone flickered as the power connecting it to Sybil destabilized.

She screamed and stumbled as she realized her power had diminished. I watched her black eyes train on me as realization dawned on her. Her black matted hair floated around her like she wore an actual dark veil.

The three large scars down her face barely illuminated as she grinned. “Do you know how I got my scars, Bones?”

“I’m not Bones. I’m Gravesend,” I said defiantly as I stepped up to her, just outside that dark magic circle. My power begged to be released and devour all of it, but I was able to fight against the instinct thanks to Nebula’s power boost. “And I don’t care how you were scarred.”

She laughed in my face. “My werewolf lover had betrayed me, but you know what? I’m used to being betrayed. My familiar’s soul was sweet trickling down your throat, wasn’t it?”

Rage rippled through me, and I gritted my teeth, barely holding my power at bay. “You don’t get to speak of Nebula at all. He was no longer your familiar the moment you had him killed!”

“You know, Charlotte was such a good girl. She almost had that shadow demon bitch kill you, but fucking Rod infected you, Gravesend,” she spat my last name like it disgusted, her but I smiled at it. “Otherwise, you’d be dead. You owe dark magic your life.”

Demons were dropping like flies around us.

As soon as the relic took the dark magic, the agents, my mates, and the council members decimated the cultists.

None of them stood a chance.

“I owe dark magic my pain, sure, but my life? I owe Nebula my life,” I told her before my power lurched, billowing forth toward her before she held her palms out and unleashed a torrent of dark magic that met my power with fierceness that threatened to overwhelm me completely.

I ate every bit of it, and my power had it killed before it ever entered my body.

Nebula’s power flooded my veins, boosting my own. As my power strengthened, it was like it completely connected to my soul and a huge pulse erupted as a magical blinding light zapped through the temple.

“Holy Fates,” Grimsworn uttered from where he fought off to the side, but I could hear him. “Your power is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Your familiar has truly merged with you.”

Hunter, Bram, and Skel circled me, placing their hands on my shoulders and back before flooding me with their powers as well.

“Nebula’s power should’ve been mine!” Sybil screamed. “How dare you steal from me!”

My power raged against Sybil’s, and tears pricked my eyes as I forced my power to eat every bit of dark magic she hit me with, but it was like she had an infinite supply of it.

Pain exploded from my matebond with Dex, vertically down my throat— his throat, but I couldn’t see him. He was alive, and he got away, but whatever he was harmed with was something lasting in a way that worried me.

I had to stay focused, and I had to trust that he would be okay.

But Dex?—

“Fuck!” Skel shouted as a blade came down his left eye from the shadows, and he stumbled before placing his hand back onto my shoulder. “I’m okay, princess, just focus on the witch!”

Bram’s matebond lanced with pain across his cheek, and my heart ached at how everlasting it felt. “Focus, Pandora!”

Then, Hunter’s shoulder seared with agony as a blade went through it. “We’re okay, starlight. Focus.”

I trembled, feeling their pain through our matebonds, but I tried to focus on Sybil.

She grinned as she noticed me falter. “Mates are a weakness.”

Reed, holding the relic, screamed in pain as his stomach was ripped through by another blade. He stayed upright, but I could feel every bit of his pain. “I’m okay!” he shouted.

“Fuck these things!” Damien tumbled out of the shadows with a shadow demon holding a bloodied tourmalyke blade. He wrestled it out of the demon’s grasp before plunging it through their eye socket and into their brain again and again until their life-force drained. “Wren’s safe with Lachlan, Thorn, and Rhett! Alister and Kian are with me in the shadows,” he called to Rowan before fading out again.

“ No . They’re a strength.” I let out a sharp breath of relief before calling on every spark of magic tied to my soul—my soul eater power, Nebula’s boost to my magic, and all of my mates’ powers that I had access to: vengeance, fear, chaos, and my shadow. I let go of any restrictions and channeled everything I had into the large smoke cloud fighting and eating the dark magic blast Sybil had focused on me.

Her dark magic stream had lessened considerably before finally dissipating with a forceful wave, blasting everyone but her and I away from the center circle.

“It’s over, Sybil.” My power destroyed the dark magic circle, and I stepped into it, standing at the edge of the crack to the Veil.

She let out a weak chuckle, swaying on her feet. “Why do you insist on using my first name? Demons call others by their first name when they’re close, don’t they? Do you consider us close?”

“ Or if you’re not even worth the last name recognition,” I bit out with hate. “Which you aren’t. It’s a sign of disrespect when I talk to you like you aren’t worthy of your last name. You’re nothing more than a pest to me.”

My power swallowed her, but as soon as I delved into her mouth, I noticed her soul was split into different parts inside of her body. Usually, souls were in the center, where the heart beat. But hers only had a fragment of her soul there.

“Last time, you almost ate my soul in its entirety. Couldn’t let that happen again.” Her cracked lips curled up.

“It’s a necromancer trick!” a man with brown hair, green eyes, and glasses shouted toward me as he came out of the shadows with Damien. “She has soul shards embedded in her limbs. It would allow her to be resurrected by a necromancer.”

She let out a weak laugh. “I have necromancer friends who will ensure I come back from this. Necromancers aren’t as extinct as you’d like to believe.”

“Destroy all of the shards of her soul!” the man yelled at me. “Only the tiniest sliver of a soul is rendered useless, and the brain must still be intact. Kill her soul shards and destroy her brain after to ensure she can’t be brought back!”

My power writhed inside of her, consuming what little of her soul was in her heart, and it wound through her limbs and brain until it ate every bit of soul inside her body.

Each part of her soul that was eaten sent waves of agony and darkness threatening to corrupt me.

As I ate each fragment, it lit up each of my matebonds, and my mates pushed their power to me to be able to handle it without losing myself.

The air was thick with the scent of sulfur, but Sybil, deprived of the bloodstone’s power and Nebula’s power, wasn’t as strong as she thought she was.

The ritual started to backfire because she was no longer in control of it. The dark magic, only half-way summoned, screeched in fury as the portal between the Veil and Kalista destabilized. The entire room flooded with dark magic, and the cultists screamed as the spell Sybil had cast consumed them one by one, their life forces and the dark magic in their bodies sucked into the collapsing portal, which pulsated dangerously below Sybil and I.

She furiously attempted to seize back the stone, sinking into a portal that appeared above the one below her before oozing back up behind Dex, zapping him with dark magic as she swiped for the stone in his hand.

But my power brought me with her as I ate away at every piece of her soul and dark magic inside her body. I fell out of the portal behind her.

“Pandora!” Dex tossed the stone above her head, and my shadow struck out, grabbing it and sinking back into my palm, leaving the bloodstone with me.

Sybil’s rage twisted her expression, and her eyes blazed. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with! Return it to me, or I’ll tear you apart!” Her voice echoed, almost demonically, as she fought to regain control of the ritual instead of fighting for her life.

“You only have one shard of a soul left,” I informed her.

“No!” She screamed, her dark eyes flicking around the room to every dead cultist lying on the ground. “You can’t do this, you little bitch!”

“I already did.” I felt the souls I’d freed and the dark magic I’d consumed swirling within me, but my magic only surged in response as my power continued eating away at her. “This is for every life you’ve stolen, every mind you twisted, and every demon you’ve corrupted.”

Vengeance sparked to life inside of me. I’d waited so long to enact it upon this dark magic witch that caused so much fucking pain in my life and my mates’ lives—and Nebula’s life.

Sybil dropped to her knees in front of me, the dark magic in her veins had faded to gray as she weakly smirked up at me. “Do it, if you dare. You think you can handle the two-hundred years of darkness I’ve wrought?”

“With Nebula’s support, I know I can,” I told her as Dex and Damien snaked their shadows around her body. My shadow came out and did the same before another shadow encircled her as Wren appeared next to a fae with long, blue hair.

“I told Thorn to bring me, so don’t be mad at him,” Wren told her mates. “I needed to be here for this.”

Rowan huffed, but he didn’t argue as he stepped behind her with the rest of her mates that were here.

“Your death was only possible because of Nebula’s sacrifice. You never deserved him,” I croaked as I absorbed the last bit of her soul, tearing it from her body.

Her eyes rolled back, but at the last minute, a vampire swooped in and created a bloodstone of Sybil as she broke down into ash. Her body and brain had been completely destroyed.

“Good,” the warlock with brown hair breathed. “She won’t be able to come back with her body reduced to ash.”

My power encircled the bloodstone, stuffing the smallest fragment of Sybil’s soul within it before funneling back into my body, where her soul fed my reserves and the dark magic inside her was destroyed.

The vampire’s red eyes lit up with mischief as he looked at me. “Did you just…”

“I—”

A blast of dark magic erupted from the portal in the floor, sending us all to the ground.

Dex barely snuck underneath me before we hit the ground. “I’ve got you, trouble.”

“Close it!” Grimsworn shouted, and he and the warlock that arrived with Damien, I was pretty sure his name was Kian, used their magic on the portal to close it.

They made quick work of it, and soon, we all stood outside of the corrupted temple with the portal safely closed and dark magic nowhere to be seen. Grimsworn and Kian had also warded the temple off completely, so if anyone came down here, it’d be almost impossible to open.

I dropped to my knees with a tired sob, and all of my mates reached for me at once, helping me back to my feet.

“Are you hurt?” Dad was in front of me, checking me over in an instant, and he only relaxed when he saw no harm had come to me.

“No, I’m not, but…” I glanced at my mates.

Dex had a vertical wound on his neck, and it was still bleeding. Skel had a large gash over his left eye that almost matched the right one. Bram’s cheek was sliced open. Hunter's shoulder and Reed's stomach both bled from where they had been stabbed.

“We’re fine,” Hunter promised, and the rest of them nodded like it didn’t bother them, but I knew it did. I could feel their pain in our matebonds.

I knew how much tourmalyke drained magical energy and made wounds hurt.

“Are you okay?” Reed asked me again. “You don’t need to puke?”

“I’m okay.” I shook my head. “I don’t need to. I think with Nebula’s power boost…I can handle a lot more without puking now.”

My mates exchanged looks of sadness.

“Here. I’m Alister, by the way.” The vampire handed over Sybil’s bloodstone to Dad. “Consider this an official offer to become part of the Supernatural Council to make Kalista united.”

Dad smiled and gave me the bloodstone. “Let Pandora decide. I’m officially handing my seat on the council over to her.”

My mouth parted in shock. “Dad, I?—”

“You’re perfect for this.” He shook his head. “It’s your decision, though, of course.”

“I’d love to,” I told him.

“Speaking of,” Everglow murmured, glancing at Reed. “Once I give up my seat, I’d love for Nyx to take my spot. Think on it.”

Rowan stood next to Alister with a smile before Reed could respond. “We’d love to unite the Demon Council and Supernatural Council.”

“I…yes.” I nodded, glancing at Reed, who also nodded. “It would be beneficial to do so. Especially considering you’ve helped us save the Demon Capital more than once in the past.”

I held out Grayson’s bloodstone and dropped it into Wren’s hand. “This is yours. I’ve already purged it of dark magic when I was fighting Sybil.”

Damien wrapped Wren in his arms and kissed her head as Wren thanked me profusely through her soft cries.

“Thank you,” Sabine told me. “The agent who infiltrated the cult ended up losing their life today, but none of this could’ve been possible without you. I do believe joining with the Supernatural Council is a great move. We’d love some more demon agents in the future.”

I smiled back to her and gave her Sybil’s bloodstone as my breath hitched. “I put the tiniest sliver of Sybil’s soul inside it so she will never know rest. Like what she did to Nebula. This is my revenge for him.”

Damien laughed. “Brilliant.”

“Don’t worry, she can’t be resurrected with that tiny of a shard,” Kian assured us.

Her eyes widened, but then her lips curled into an impressed smile. “Very well. I’ll lock her up deep inside the walls of Apex Penitentiary. She will never see the light of day again, rest assured.”

I was no longer defined by Penny Bones or her abuse or the darkness of my past, instead, I was a soul eater with five fated mates and a best friend who had sacrificed himself to save Kalista from dark magic.