Page 127 of Lady of Starfire (Lady of Darkness #5)

Nuri held up a fist—her left one—and slowly lifted one finger at a time, revealing her bare palm. No red Blood Bond Mark adorning it.

“How did you do that?” he asked in a soft tone that had once made Scarlett tremble.

“Now do you have a preference?” she asked, her fangs snapping out.

“How? That is not possible,” Alaric barked, taking a step back.

“Oh, you know, Gehenna,” Scarlett said, as if discussing some silly antics of a child. “She just loves to talk when given the right incentive.”

“It is not—”

But another crash had him whirling around again. “What the fuck are you doing, Juliette?”

“Distracting you,” she answered.

“From what exactly?”

“Scarlett draining your power.”

“Scarlett cannot—” But he paused then, and Scarlett knew he was feeling it.

The steady pull at his stolen magic. Cethin had taught her how after the Wind Court.

How to steadily use his gift to drain someone, but to make it subtle, she had to go slow.

Her sisters knew. They’d discussed how this would need to go before they’d gone to the Necropolis.

It was why it had to be them. They knew him best. How to get under his skin, keep him occupied.

She felt his magic try to fight back, but Cethin’s magic was stronger. She was stronger.

Scarlett clucked her tongue, still twisting the rose between her fingers as she casually moved forward. “I discovered my brother has a very interesting talent. He can let his darkness seep into someone’s blood just by touching them. Isn’t that fascinating?”

“No,” Alaric gritted out, taking another step back. He bumped into his desk, knocking his glass to the floor where it shattered.

Scarlett continued her advance, Nuri and Juliette closing in on the other sides with blades drawn.

Cethin had explained that power to her after the Wind Court battle too.

When physically touching someone, he could send his darkness into them.

She could do the same with her shadows, but his darkness stayed, mixing with blood and soul.

Marking them with death. A marking of Arius himself.

It poisoned, tortured, and rotted until death was a mercy.

Much like the Wraiths of Death themselves in a way.

She stopped in front of Alaric, her head tipping to the side. Alaric tried to scramble away from her, but her shadows were holding him in place now. His magic tried to claw at them, sink in, devour. Her ice and fire battled back.

Scarlett smiled. Lifting a hand, she reached for him and dragged a single finger along his jaw. Black lines flared out, spider-webbing across his cheek and down his neck. He let out a cry of pain, unable to move away from her touch.

She sent him a mocking pout. “Together we will keep this world safe. Is that not what you desire most, Alaric?”

The black lines were bleeding from his eyes now, and he let out another gasp of agony as she no longer slowly drained his power. She ripped it out of his being the way he had ripped the life forces from Sloan and Finn, tearing away every last shred of magic.

Alaric sank to his knees, a rattling cough sounding as Scarlett let her finger slide away from his flesh, severing their physical connection.

She wished she could drag this out. She wished they could take their time with him.

Spend hours showing him just how thoroughly the students had surpassed their once master.

But he was right. She could feel Achaz getting closer, and the only way to keep him out now was to make sure the Maraans were dead.

She knew in her being the other Lords were gone. Her court and her family would not fail her in this. She wouldn’t let Callan’s sacrifice be a waste in her own need for vengeance.

Nuri and Juliette drew closer as Scarlett reached for a scrap of parchment on Alaric’s desk.

“I do not think I will be ripping your throat out after all,” Nuri commented while Scarlett dipped a quill into a jar of ink and scrawled a single word onto the parchment. “I do not want a single drop of your blood to pass my lips. It is not worth it when the blood is powerless.”

Alaric made some noise of outrage, and Scarlett turned to find Juliette pushing him onto his back with the toe of her boot. Scarlett rolled the parchment around the stem of the rose before ripping a thin strip of fabric from her black tunic. It wasn’t a ribbon, but it would do.

The three of them stood over him, staring down at their former master. His face was nothing but cracked lines of black that bled into his hair and down his neck into the collar of his tunic.

“I could have saved you,” he rasped out. “I could have saved all three of you. My Wraiths. Mine .”

“We saved ourselves,” Nuri spat. “We were never yours.”

His black eyes went back to Scarlett. “He will keep coming for you. He will come for his entire bloodline. He will not stop until there is not a drop of Arius blood left in existence. The gods don’t stop. They never stop,” Alaric managed around a cough, blood spraying from his lips.

“Oh, Alaric,” Scarlett simpered. Her shadows writhed behind her, a mist of darkness. She lowered down so she could speak directly into his ear. “ We are your gods now.”

Her shadows struck, winding around his ankles and wrists, holding him down as Juliette drew a dagger and Nuri bared her fangs.

“After all I did for you three,” he spat, another cough rattling from his chest.

Scarlett’s head tilted to the side as she studied him.

Nothing but a powerless male before them now.

“He is right,” she said. “We should be thanking him.” Her sisters met her gaze, darkness staring back at her.

Her shadows wound up, tightening around his throat, and her lip curled as she peered down at him once more.

“We are exactly as you trained us to be.”

“Ruthless,” Death Incarnate purred, her dagger coming down into his gut.

“Vindictive,” Death’s Shadow crooned, a scimitar slicing deeply across his chest.

“ A weapon ,” Death’s Maiden said, summoning starfire to her palm and bringing it to his mouth.

He thrashed beneath her shadows, his head jerking from side to side, trying to get away from the fire that would end his existence, leaving nothing for the After.

“You are the master of nothing anymore, Alaric,” Scarlett whispered into his ear.

“Not a fellowship of assassins. Not a land of mortals. Not an army of seraphs. Not my sisters. Not me. You are not even the master of your own death. You are nothing. A prince without a throne. A failure. The game is over.” And as her hand slipped over his mouth, starfire seeping between his lips, down his throat, into every vein of his being, she said, “I won.”

She burned him from the inside out, and the three of them didn’t say a word as they watched white flames and pools of darkness devour.

Scarlett knew the moment he was truly gone.

She felt power slam against her soul. Felt a roar of rage and fury at being kept from this world yet again when whatever enchantment Alaric had put on the mirror gate failed.

Scarlett tunneled down into her Chaos, to the very core of it, to the essence that had created this world, and she locked the realm. No one in. No one out. Unless they came through her and her Prince of Fire.

When she opened her eyes, there was nothing but a pile of fine white ash on the floor. Scarlett lifted a hand, dropping the rose she still held atop it.

A rose with a black ribbon wrapped around a piece of paper containing a name.

The name of her final assignment as Death’s Maiden.

None of them looked away when she held out her hands to her sisters, Traveling them out of that underground passage.

Where they left the Wraiths of Death to die with the one who had created them.

They reappeared in the foyer of the Fiera Palace, and Sorin was dragging her into him a second later. She’d had to shut him out to stay focused, and now she breathed him in. Ashes. Cloves. Cedar. Him.

It was over.

It was over.

It was over.

Breathe, Love , came down the bond, a hand taking hers and guiding it to his chest. She could feel it steadily rising and falling beneath her fingers.

In and out.

In and out.

In and out.

She tried to match their breathing, but it wasn’t working. She hadn’t realized she’d started crying. Great sobs that wracked her body. It was over, but so much had been lost. They had won. The realm was saved, but the cost …

She clung to him, his arms tight around her. At some point, he’d lowered them to the floor. She couldn’t hear anything else around them. Sound was muffled, as though she were under water, and he was the only one who could pull her back to the surface.

Because they had won. It was over. But the world was not as bright as it once was. So many stars were gone from the sky. Lights she had known, and so many more she hadn’t. Finn. Sloan. Nakoa. Sawyer. Hazel. Callan.

Callan .

“Love,” Sorin said softly. “I need to show you.”

“I can’t, Sorin,” she managed between a sob. “I can’t right now. It is all too much.”

He shifted some, and then she was being jostled, as if he were going to pass her off to someone. Odd, but she didn’t fight him. Cassius would hold her just as tightly. Cyrus. Eliza. Rayner.

But there was no ash or smoke to fill her senses when new arms wrapped around her.

This was spring rain and pine.

This was—

She jerked her head up, looking into hazel eyes with flecks of green. Brown hair. High cheekbones and a soft smile.

“Callan?”

“You did it, Scarlett,” he said, his voice gruff and hoarse.

“You’re alive?” she managed, reaching up to cradle a cheek.

“Seems that way,” he said with a huff of laughter.

“You’re alive,” she repeated, her own laugh of disbelief escaping. “You’re alive.”

She didn’t care how, only that it was real.

She threw her arms around his neck, and he returned her embrace.

He didn’t belong in her darkness. That had always been truth.

But he had always been a light for her. The first glimpse of the stars in a void of unending dark.

Despite the mess they had become, despite the crowns they now bore, despite the new loves and partners, this would remain.

A bond forged between two kindred souls.

A soulmate.