Page 76 of Wings of Darkness (Daughter of the Seven Circles #2)

Chapter

Fifty-One

LUCILLE

R onen’s shadows eclipsed everything. They solidified into hands, yanking at my wrists and ankles.

When they tried to dig beneath my skin, I hissed, and he immediately stopped.

It was no use. I’d gotten us into a mess and had no strategy to escape it.

Maybe Alexei was right. Moira’s match had gone to my head.

I’d miscalculated my skill. I was desperate and overeager, and now we’d all pay for it.

“Aspen, I wasn’t told we were having company,” Lilith commented, her tone conversational. She didn’t even acknowledge the power swarming around us. Did she truly not feel the fury clawing through darkness, or was she just that confident?

“I must’ve forgotten,” he replied, sounding off. “I’m sorry.”

While they spoke, footsteps padded softly through the sacrificial hall, barely audible over the drip of my blood draining into the metal buckets.

“You can make it up to me, my darling,” she purred, like a?—

Bile gathered at the back of my throat. Like a lover .

“Kill them.”

A sharp thud sounded to my left where Aspen stood, and more footsteps, but no response.

“Don’t make me ask again. You know how I am when I have to ask twice.”

I hoped her words didn’t have a double meaning. I hoped this witch spoke like a seductress to everyone. If not—if Aspen?—

No. I wouldn’t go there.

“Aspen! Obey—” Her words fell off into a hiss. “Enough!”

A storm erupted around Lilith, the billowing edges skimming dangerously close to the slab.

It wasn’t like any storm I’d ever seen. Rather than black clouds, red smoke roiled, thick and seething.

The tang of copper shoved up my nose, burning and suffocating.

The air screamed—feminine and eerie—as if it carried the cries of the dead.

Lightning crackled within its growing depths, pulsing like a bloody heart, bathing our surroundings in a sinister glow. It radiated menace. Evil.

A knife flew from my left, striking the red smoke and clattering to the ground.

Alexei and Rune flashed in and out of view at the edge of my vision—right where the knife had come from.

And Aspen was gone. Just… gone. Did the others take him?

He wouldn’t have just left. I tried to twist to see better, but the stone yanked at my scalp.

Pain shot through my skull as Lilith’s spell attempted to rip my skin from bone.

Alexei and Rune snuck closer. The beastie nuzzled my palm, nosing into it like she sensed my desperation.

Alexei raised a finger to his lips and grabbed my wrist, but his hand only circled half of it.

Still, he tugged, and I cringed. Frustration wrinkled his brow, and he glanced at me with questions in his eyes.

“You need to kill her to free me,” I mouthed.

Alexei glared at the red storm, twisting a dagger in his hand and preparing to throw.

Static crawled along my skin, the sharp electric smell of ether filling the air.

Red lightning shot over me, forcing Alexei to dive to the ground, missing him by centimeters.

Ronen’s vicious shadows retaliated, engulfing her storm and sending us back into darkness.

He had her. But then it was like watching a balloon slowly inflate.

Cracks formed in his smothering sphere, red smoke seeping out.

All around us, his black wisps lightened to gray, then flocked to their battling powers, flooding the space with light.

They reinforced the cracks and shrank her power. Hope bloomed in my chest.

Alexei stood above me, squeezing his dagger, looking eager to help Ronen. But there was no use. This would soon be over.

Something moved behind Alexei. I strained to turn my head, gritting my teeth as the skin pulled taut. I made it maybe a centimeter before the pain was unbearable, and tears beaded in the corners of my eyes. But I had to see.

The urgency in my mind demanded I try again. At first, the slab gave me no give, but then it released my head, as if Lilith’s hold slipped.

MJ had Aspen by the throat, holding him against one of the dark pillars with a hand over his mouth while Oliver whispered in his ear. I jerked, feeling a surge of energy as I watched Aspen writhe in agony.

What the hell were they doing to him ?

His legs were bent as if the only thing holding up his contorted body was MJ’s hand and the pillar at his back, yet he didn’t fight. There were no blue flames. He didn’t raise his limp arms or kick out. He subjected himself to the pain.

Alexei touched my hand, bringing my attention back to him.

His face softened, on the brink of smiling as he gazed toward Ronen and Lilith.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, then his face fell.

Something unfamiliar tugged on my chest. The faint pressure almost hurt, but not quite.

I glanced down and didn’t find anything but the remnants of my uniform.

“Ronen, stop!” Alexei shouted.

I turned back to the warring powers, and my heart froze.

Ronen knelt before the cracked sphere, red smoke bleeding from hundreds of hairline fractures. His body swayed, arms shaking to hold in Lilith’s powers. Rune growled, running over to him right as his eyes fluttered.

Something unnameable ripped through me. I thrashed against the stone, wild with the need to reach him. Every muscle in my body snapped taut, straining to tear myself free. A sharper sensation wrenched at my chest, and Ronen’s arms fell to his sides.

“Ronen!” I shrieked, raw and feral. My skin stretched, attempting to peel from my muscles as I forced myself to reach him. I just had to. I didn’t know why or how. I didn’t care about the fucking agony of prying my bloody body from the slab. I needed to get to him more than I needed to breathe.

My Infernus raged in my ear, screaming to be unleashed. I didn’t think—just pulled at the first song. Hellfire swallowed my body in black and purple flame. It devoured the slab’s hold on me, burning through Lilith’s spell, or maybe through my blood.

Bit by bit, the stone released me. Fingers first. Then my back. Ankles. I arched my chest, reaching. I was almost there. I could almost get to him.

“Fuck!” Alexei shouted.

I freed the rest of myself with an agonizing yank, tearing the skin from my biceps and calves. A cry ripped from my throat, for the pain and for him . I barely twisted toward Ronen when Alexei crashed on top of me.

Lilith’s red cloud burst through Ronen’s shadows like a bomb.

“Ronen!” I cried as he folded forward, crumpling like his strings had been cut. My Infernus surged toward him, racing to intercept the acid-laced smoke barreling for his falling body.

Alexei’s wings snapped out, encasing me in a soft cocoon. Lilith’s power blasted into us. Alexei bellowed. We were torn from the slab, thrown like dolls. I slammed headfirst into the marble floor, hearing a sharp, wet pop.

Then blackness.

Mist curled around the giant, blue-veined trees of Damatha.

I tilted my head up into the dark canopy and touched the rough bark.

It hummed beneath my hand and glowed brighter, as if saying hello.

I followed the curling mist, passing the vibrant mushrooms and moss that blanketed the ground and trees.

Eventually, I came upon a path of Celestrus.

Their white light and vanilla aroma guided me toward a hidden turquoise pond .

This looked like the scene from my nightmares. But this wasn’t a nightmare. It was a dream-walk.

Why was I here?

“Hello, sweetie,” a voice rasped somewhere near the pond.

I swallowed, stepping out of the trees. “Hello?”

“It’s me, Lucy.” My mom sat at the edge of the water, facing me. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears.

In my nightmare, she always had her back turned to me, and she never spoke. I almost wished for that back.

Her cheekbones jutted from her gaunt face, and her eyes were sunken, ringed by deep purple shadows. Her sweaterdress hung off her like a shroud—no longer hugging her chest or biceps.

Exhaustion dulled her jade eyes, and the silky black hair I remembered now lay completely gray and limp down her back.

“Mom?” I breathed.

She stood and hobbled over to me, wrapping me in her arms.

“What’s happening? Why am I here? I was just in a battle,” I whispered against her shoulder, feeling her ribs dig into my chest. Was this what happened before I died? Some twisted dream-walk illusion to say goodbye? Except I felt normal, and my mom looked like she was the one dying.

My mom took my face in her hands, and I flinched. They were frigid. “You need to listen to me.”

Listen to her? To those fragile, fraying words dragged out on an air of breath, like each one might be her last? She wanted me to listen to that ?

No. This was too convenient .

I stepped back. “This isn’t real.” This was Lilith. She had to be the ominous female voice inside my head. She had infiltrated my nightmares and my dream-walk again. “You’re not my mom.”

“Sweetie, we don’t have much time. I need you to listen to me.”

“Get out of my head, Lilith!”

My mom shuffled forward with watery eyes. “I’m dying, Lucy. My body can’t sustain this form for much longer, and neither can yours.”

“I don’t believe you.” But her face looked so honest.

“I used to call Thumper ‘Crispy’ because of the times you accidentally burned him with your Glory. Would Lilith know that?”

“No.” My knees gave out, slamming into the glowing Celestrus. “No! I’d know if you were dying,” I said in denial.

They would’ve told me.

She followed me down, resting her lifeless hand against my cheek. Pain pinched the lines of her face, but that wasn’t what gutted me. It was the fucking sad sympathy in her familiar eyes. Like she had already accepted her death, like she was just waiting for me to accept it too.

I bowed my head, unable to stand the sight. “Did I do this to you?”

She combed her fingers through my hair. “No, sweetie. This is Michael’s doing, not yours.”