Lyra lands on the balcony, her presence immediately sending Athalda crashing against the wall, held there by an unseen force. As Lyra approaches me, her movements are slow, deliberate. Her head tilts slightly, her eyes—now swirling pools of black shadow that vein out and stretch across her face and neck—scan over me intensely. Streaks of black bleed into her hair from the tips, tracing lines back toward her roots.
I struggle to rise, but my strength fails, and I remain kneeling. Lyra’s expression softens, a rare vulnerability crossing her features despite the dark power radiating from her. She sinks to her knees in front of me and gently cups my face. Dark tears stream down her cheeks as she takes in my wounded state. I reach up to wipe them away, my thumbs brushing her skin.
“My shadow,” I choke out, my voice rough. “I’m grateful...to see you, to touch you one last time.” Each word is a battle as my lungs fill with blood.
She shakes her head, fiercelydetermined, standing swiftly. “You’re not dying,” she asserts, her voice gaining an otherworldly resonance, the one she gets when her dark magic has completely taken hold of her.
“You’ll be better off without him,” Athalda hisses from her pinned position against the wall. Without breaking her fierce gaze from mine, Lyra’s tendrils of shadow tighten around Athalda’s neck, eliciting a guttural choke. “I’ll deal with you in a moment,” Lyra mutters, her voice cold as the shadows themselves. I want to turn to see what happened to Nyx and Samael, but I can’t look away from her. She brushes her hands against her pants—those familiar black leather tights and bodice we used in our training sessions in Zomea. What has she been up to?
She kneels beside me once more, and suddenly Chepi is there, nuzzling against my cheek with a concerned whine. I’d pat him if I could, but my body is rapidly weakening, each breath more laborious than the last. If only I could summon my healing magic.
“Hold on,” she commands me, her voice slicing through the haze of my pain. With a dramatic flourish, she thrusts her arm skyward, unleashing a maelstrom of darkness from her palm. It swirls around us, cocooning us in a globe of shadow more solid than stone.
Inside this dark sanctum, the chaos of the outside world is silenced, as if we’re wrapped in the eye of a storm. The shadows churn violently around us, yet within this sphere, there’s an eerie silence. All I can focus on is Lyra, her hair whipped up by an unseen wind, her eyes—dark pools of infinite depth—locked onto the spear in my chest.
Her lips move in a silent incantation, a whisper to the dark powers she commands so effortlessly. I feel a chill emanating from the core of my being, a creeping frost that spreads from the spear’s entry point, seeping deep into my veins.
As the shadows tighten their grip around the spear, they begin to infiltrate the wound, intertwining with my very essence. Pain and cold intermingle, a paradoxical sensation that’s both terrifying and mesmerizing. Lyra’s shadows, alive with a dark energy, weave through my flesh, beginning a battle against the brink of death itself.
I’ve seen Lyra wield her shadows to heal herself, but never another. Doubt had me questioning whether it was even possible. Yet as her shadows twist beneath my skin, her dark magic begins stitching my flesh back together. I inhale sharp as the spear shatters under the force of her inky wisps, falling to the floor in shards.
I expect my next breath to be clear and strong, free from the pain of the weapon that once impaled me. But as I look up, I see Lyra’s eyes widen in shock. I follow her gaze to her abdomen, where my blood has spattered across her. A wet, crackling cough escapes me as the last bit of life seems to drain away.
“It’s okay,” I manage, my voice barely a whisper as I collapse back onto the floor. The cold stone feels oddly comforting under me.
My body and mind succumb to an overwhelming tiredness, a pull toward sleep I can’t resist. Lyra leans over me, her face etched with panic, her words lost to me. I reach up, my hand trembling, to touch her face—her beautiful face, the last thing I’ll see, and I’m grateful for that.
“Find your light and live,” I whisper with my last ounce of strength. Then, slowly, her face begins to blur and fade from my vision.
Chapter 27
Lyra
I can’t feelthe tether! Colton’s hand falls from my face as life drains from his features. He’s so pale, and now I can’t feel him, can’t sense the tether connecting us. Panic threatens to seize me, my chest constricting so tightly it feels as though my heart is being ripped out.
Desperately, I press my hands to the wound on his chest, pleading for my power to surge into him, for my shadows to heal him. I grab his shoulders, shaking him violently, but he doesn’t respond, and I’m starting to lose it. The safety net my magic has woven around us falters with my heightened emotions, and I let my shadows fall.
“Colton, wake up!” I scream through a sob.
“He’s dead, girl, can’t you see? Dark magic brings only death and destruction,” Athalda taunts from behind me.
Tears blind me as I feel Nyx’s hands, steadying me from behind, but I shove them away, desperate to escape the suffocating grip of sympathy. No, this can’t be happening. The pain is a tidal wave, overwhelming, crushing every breath I attempt to take. I double over, the contents of my stomach spilling out inviolent heaves, each one a brutal reminder of the life draining out of Colton. Nyx’s touch lingers on my back, a futile attempt to comfort me.
I force myself upright, my legs trembling. The room spins chaotically—my shadows pin Athalda against the wall, her eyes wide with fear. In the corner, Samael watches, adorned with the cursed mask of my father, a relic from my past.
My gaze falls back to Colton—his once vibrant eyes now dull and lifeless, Chepi nestled against him, whining softly. A visceral scream tears from my throat, raw and shattering, as a surge of grief wracks my body. My heart doesn’t just break; it detonates, scattering shards of pain through my very soul.
Hyperventilating, I clutch at the air, trying to grasp the remnants of my sanity. I can’t endure this agony. With a desperate gasp, I surrender to the dark magic swirling within me, letting it encase my heart in ice. As the darkness consumes me, I bury my emotions so deep that nothing but a chilling calm remains.
When I reopen my eyes, they’re empty of tears but full of lethal resolve. I’m no longer a heartbroken princess—I am the fury of the night, and I will devastate everything in my godsdamn path.
I tilt my head toward Samael, where Nyx stands, sword drawn. “Don’t worry, dear brother, you’ll get your turn,” I murmur, my voice cold as I stride toward Athalda. Nyx remains silent, and I can almost feel Samael’s jealousy, his awe at the darkness that bends to my will. I withdraw my shadows from Athalda’s throat, allowing her to touch the ground once more.
“Still not strong enough to kill me,” she rasps, laughing. “Oh, I know a place that’s been waiting far too long for you.”
I let a wicked smile spread across my face, and I think I see true fear in her featuresfor the first time.
“You want death and destruction,” I hiss through clenched teeth, unleashing a surge of my dark magic directly into her. Athalda’s screams fill the room as her skin begins to bubble and sizzle, her flesh melting away in a grotesque spectacle.
