Page 269 of The Cradle of Ice

But it was enough.

He lunged past Jace and leaped through the air as Graylin thrust for a heart, one that still had hope.

* * *

AFTER ABANDONING HER body in the darkness below, Nyx rode the corona of energy surrounding the raash’ke horde-mind. It was a golden fire around a black sun. And even deeper, hidden in that darkness, a brilliant white star shone.

The horde-mind carried her out of the endless pit and across the dome. Ahead, Kalyx crouched, half tucked into a tunnel. Emerald fire lashed and crackled across its body and wings. Its steel helm shone with a malevolent pyre.

She balked at the sight. It looked far more menacing in this ethereal plane. Still, she urged the horde-mind closer. As they flew toward the bat, Nyx drew that corona of fire to her, lifting it about her body, exposing the ancient blackness below, a lure for a daemon that had not yet been sated.

Kalyx swung his head around, drawn by the rawness of the horde-mind, sensing all that had escaped it before. A savage scream burst from its throat. The power behind it was a menacing gale.

Before, Nyx had used her bridle-song to protect the horde-mind. But she did not now. Instead, she held that corona of fire to herself, a power that was not even her own. It came from the ancient darkness under her. The horde-mind had left itself defenseless, offering one last sacrifice, to atone for the millennia of horror and terror it had afflicted.

Kalyx’s scream struck the horde-mind hard, peeling it away, burning memory and guilt and joy into nothingness. Nyx pictured the Root being stripped of its bronze, revealing its shining heart.

This was the same.

As the horde-mind let itself be consumed, a white star was revealed. Focused fully on destruction, enslaved to one purpose, Kalyx failed to react to something so pure—or perhaps some buried part of it remembered this shining piece of itself, a brother from the Mýr.

Either way, Nyx only needed this moment of distraction.

She gathered all the power given to her by the horde-mind and dove upon that white star. She lifted it and carried it along with her tide. She used every scintillation of strength to push under Kalyx’s steel helm. She drove hard into a skull full of madness and emerald fire and planted a white star at its heart.

Once there, she sang a single small thread, as thin as a hope, and touched that star.

Her song was a simple plea.

Come back to me.

The star exploded, releasing Bashaliia in all his beauty and purity. Nyx was thrown back in a wash of golden fire. Emerald flames were snuffed against bone. As she fell away, she watched Kalyx be burned out of his skull, released at last from his torture, leaving an empty shell behind for Bashaliia to fill.

Nyx dropped again into a bottomless well of blackness.

But she felt no despair this time.

Only hope.

Come back to me.

* * *

GRAYLIN STABBED UPWARD with all the force of his legs. The steel of Heartsthorn sliced high. Its tip pierced through the fur and skin—then Graylin was struck from behind. He sprawled flat, striking his chin hard. His sword flew even farther.

He elbowed hard and rolled upon his attacker.

Daal gasped under him. “Don’t.”

Jace came running up, his Guld’guhlian ax raised high, a bellow on his lips. He swung for the neck of the monster.

Graylin saw something in Daal’s eyes, an urgency, a hope.

With a curse, Graylin shoved up and tackled Jace in the midsection, driving them both back. Jace gasped, the wind knocked out of him. Graylin held him by the shoulders. He stared back, praying he hadn’t misplaced his trust.

Daal still lay under the beast.

Drops of blood from the sword wound spattered Daal’s face in a macabre baptism. Then the monster leaped with a great beat of its wings and sailed low across the dome. They all followed it out.