Page 46

Civil War

My gaze is locked to Reven’s, whose eyes glow faintly as he wields his power.

“Kill me,” I tell him. But my lips refuse to form the words.

“Not yet, princess,” Eidolon taunts. “I still need what’s locked inside you.”

Anger tightens Reven’s jaw, but not the hand at my neck.

“Meren,” Reven growls. Begs. He gives his head a single shake. “Please.”

I’m not doing this, though. I can’t control it.

A dagger of shadow darts out of me like a tentacle.

It’s not me, I want to tell him, but I can’t make my mouth work.

The shadow dagger slashes at him. Disbelief flashing across his features, Reven holds it off.

I told him to kill me. I told him.

Do it.

Wielding the darkness through me like a puppet on strings, more daggers shoot up in the air. Reven manages to hold onto me as he knocks one back.

Another comes for him, and he dodges right, jerking me with him. When he spins us both, he manifests a shield of shadow, and I wince at the sound of the weapons striking in succession, like arrows loosed by a battalion of bowmen. Shadow after shadow the king throws at him. Unrelenting.

One barely misses skewering him.

I think I hear a groan in the background. Are the others coming to? We need help. Now.

Then his expression devolves into a swirl of determination and no more hesitation. He lifts his fist and in it a shadow manifests, so solid and sharp, it’s like a shard of obsidian in his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He plunges the weapon down, aiming for my heart.

A growl the likes of which sets goose bumps rising uncomfortably on my skin sounds a heartbeat before Bene slams into Reven from the side.

I’m thrown to the ground where I go sprawling, and, for a hopeful second, I think Eidolon has been cut off because the numbness disappears, and I can make my limbs move again. But something not of my doing yanks me to my feet, still controlled by my puppet master. My arms are drawn out from my sides as my body floats upward, suspended by an unseen force, my palms with their lavender glow facing outward.

In the corner of the cell, Bene stands between me and Reven, teeth bared, and sandy fur raised along his back.

Reven looks from the Devourer to me, expression tortured.

Both are trying to do the right thing.

Goddess. I’ve set the people I love most against each other.

My head turns against my will, my gaze drawn to Vos and Trysolde who, looking pale and woozy, are at least on their feet on the other side of the cell bars.

“Time to clean out the traitors,” Eidolon speaks through me. I feel him form my lips into a smile that is both conquest and a jibe at both men.

The darkness pulls from the corners and forms into arrows that hover in the air directly before me within the timespan of a blink. Eidolon hurls them at Vos and Trysolde, but Trysolde puts a hand on one of the cage bars. The metal changes the way water does, spreading so fast that the arrows strike a solid, thin plate.

Instead of dropping to the ground, they dissolve.

Trysolde creates spears out of the bars, as if they peel down themselves, spreading out like deadly splayed fingers from each bar.

A spear flashes in the dim light, coming straight at me.

And I think maybe I hear Reven grunt. Only an inch from my heart, the shadows pound the spear into the ground.

Only this time Reven made the darkness.

Bene’s growls cut off so abruptly it’s jarring. The sandy wolf tilts his head at Reven in question.

In that same moment, shadows explode from every corner of the room, this time taking Reven, Bene, Trysolde, and Vos all by the throats and hoisting them into the air.

“No!” Tabra screams.

Eidolon jerks my head to look to the right, where my sister has been cowering with Achlys. Tabra stands now, and strands of her hair that’ve come down from the elegant chignon the servants set it in rise around her in a breeze that doesn’t exist. Her amber eyes light up with a purple fire that consumes them, setting the features of her face to something both terrible and awesome at the same time.

And that’s when I feel it. The draw of her power. As if she’s reached through my corporeal body and wrapped her fingers around my soul. My very essence.

She pulls, not hard and violent, but gentle, a sensation in my chest like Reven brushing his fingers lightly over my belly.

“I can’t stop.” Tabra gulps. “I can’t. It wants you. My power wants you.”

Don’t fear it, I want to tell her. Take me. Take them all.

Eidolon tilts my head down to look and I can see a ghostly copy of me, clothes and all but transparent, drawing slowly away from my body.

“Well, well.” Eidolon smiles for me again. “Finally that power of yours is showing itself. Just in time, too.”

What Tabra is doing to me feels…weird. Like bleeding, but pleasant. I could close my eyes and go to sleep.

“Sissy.” Tabra’s voice breaks in the middle. Tears trickle down her cheeks and she’s shaking. In that moment, I realize that killing me, even if it’s the best for everyone, would destroy my sister. I can’t let her go through that. I can’t make her.

“Domina!” Achlys cries out. She reaches out a single hand, touching Tabra’s shoulder, only to go instantly rigid, her head tossing back and mouth open on a silent gasp before she collapses.

There’s only one way to stop all of this. Remove the threat. And that’s me.

Almost like Tabra’s power agrees with me, it tugs a little harder, and I can see more of my soul outside of my own body, a ghostly reflection of myself. It floats in the air in front of me, separate and yet still connected.

Probably because that coward is running from what Tabra’s doing to me, the cold of Eidolon’s power spiking through me cuts off so hard it’s like a slap to the face.

I drop to the ground and my legs almost collapse with the impact, but I manage to stay standing.

“Meren!” Tabra cries out.

“It’s me,” I say, raising a hand. “It’s me. You’re safe, Tabra. You can stop.”

Tabra can’t stop. I can see she can’t. I can see the panic. Eidolon is gone for the moment, but I’m still dangerous. My first idea was right. Remove the threat completely.

I ignite my power, the yellow glow joining Tabra’s now. The others all watch warily, their expressions somewhere in the range of shock to visibly unsure if they need to stop Tabra or me. I ignore them all and focus instead on the pile of sand near me on the ground. Sand that used to be Hesperia.

Immediately the grains respond to my will, lifting into the air in a tornado because I’m working so fast.

“What are you doing?” Reven shouts.

I flash heat them to a molten mass, which I press and slam up into a thin wall. One that is all the colors of my dominion’s sands.

And not big enough.

“Take mine.” Bene’s voice sounds urgently in my head.

He sheds sand from his body, and I take it as fast as it comes off, heating and molding it around the multicolored glass like a round frame until, fast as a few blinks, I have a surface large enough to walk through.

Meanwhile, I can feel my power dwindling as Tabra slowly draws more and more of me out of my body.

Fear driving me now, I slap a hand to the glass and shove my power into it. Only when the other side clears, it’s not Savanah where I was picturing, it’s…

I gasp, but manage to hold the portal open.

It’s that place I glimpsed before, when I was bringing our allies through to the Crimson Desert.

With longer to look, I can see my window to that place is high on a peak somewhere looking out over lush, flower-blanketed mountains. The woman is still there, with her drained coloring despite her red hair and blue eyes.

She takes one sweeping glance over me, with my soul hanging out like a sheet in the wind, and Tabra with her hands aglow and tear-streaked face. I don’t know if she can see the others.

“Enough,” the woman says, and waves a hand.

My soul snaps back into place, sending a lancing ache through my head for a moment, and Tabra gasps, staring down at her hands that are no longer lit. And into the stunned silence, the woman smirks. “Are you ready to listen to me now?”