Chapter 63

This was wrong, wrong, wrong.

The temperature plummeted as the shadow creature drew closer, cold night air suddenly tainted with a bitter, evil scent that left a stain in my mouth I couldn't quite identify…but was familiar enough I wanted to vomit.

Down to my bones I knew this odd, sweet scent, recognizing the creature's smooth as water movement, darkness writhing against darkness, shadows deeper than night.

Dangerous. Unpredictable. Unkillable.

Older than time itself, something not of this world but of another.

Something that shouldn't even be in this realm.

The rippling dark slithered behind Trubahn, still lurching down the street toward us, his face contorted in terror or pain or both, hands clawing at the air.

Tavion snarled at that gaping, devouring darkness, Raziel crushing my hand as he held me still, a knife gripped in his other, while I scanned the street for Zephryn, and the roofline for any sign of Tristan or Simon.

"Get Anaria the fuck out of here," Zorander hissed as Trubahn jerked to a stop flanked by two of Zeph's flaming footsteps.

"Please." Trubahn's mouth worked not in time with the word, as if his body was struggling to keep up with whatever force controlled him. "Please, help me." His face was stained with tears and blood, furrows dug into his…into his…

I began panting, chest heaving, unable to look away.

"Fuck. Don't look, Anaria, don't look." Zor grabbed my shoulders and dragged me backward, Raziel and Tavion closing the gap.

But not fast enough. A crack of magic, fast and sure, and Trubahn collapsed like a puppet, his ruined, eyeless face still turned toward us, mouth open as if even if death he was pleading for us to end his suffering.

"Let me up there, Zor. There's something moving behind the mage, something I couldn't quite see." But I was too late.

Darkness crashed into our makeshift wall, likely the only thing that saved us as molten, liquid midnight pulled back, regrouped, then lunged again, fast as an adder.

I sent starry shadows spiraling out to meet that darkness, a spear of pure power sharper than the point of a sword, and when the two collided, my entire world shifted.

One moment, I was in a filthy Southwell street.

The next, I stood in a ghostly shadowland, where stone spires rose from the mist like sentinels and the air stank of brimstone. The Oracle waited with a faint smile on her face, her body cloaked in magic, black hair floating around her, buoyed on an invisible wind.

Fear licked up my spine, the air stung my eyes, and when I blinked away the tears, I lost my breath.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Her eyes softened as she surveyed our surroundings, as if they were, indeed, the loveliest thing she'd ever seen. "This is where we came from. A land of mist and shadow. Of peace and silence."

Something touched my arm, and I looked down to see a deep gash carved into my arm, the glint of white bone through red flesh as she stepped away, a shard of black gripped between her fingers. I ran my forefinger along the wound and didn't feel a thing.

"There is no pain here. No suffering. It was a perfect existence."

"If it was so perfect, why did you leave?"

Her smile faltered. "Because of you. You wanted something…better." She surveyed the spikey stones with a kind of sadness I'd never seen from her before, and somehow, I knew this moment wasn't feigned. She was having feelings right now, and something sprang to attention inside me.

Told me to watch. To listen.

Her gaze lovingly trailed over the spiked stones with something akin to reverence. "So we came to the world you now call home. But we couldn't come back."

Her hair rose and fell as she blew out a breath. "We could never return here. This place exists only in my dreams."

"I'm inside your dream?"

I glanced down to my feet, beneath the shifting mists to the smooth, polished stones scattered throughout the dense black sand. Like stars scattered across a night sky, each one glowing faintly from within.

"You are inside my thoughts. Alone, just the two of us." I didn't know what was worse. What she'd said, or that she sounded so…happy.

This was horrifying. Absolutely horrifying if she could trap me inside her head so easily. I wasn't really here, I told myself wildly. I am standing on a street in Southwell surrounded by my friends…

"You are in here with me, where you shall remain until I decide to release you. I brought you here to give you a choice. Embrace what you are and join my brother and me. Truly join us and your friends will survive tonight."

"I accomplished everything you asked. I killed the king, dropped the wall, and restored the magic." I met her devouring gaze. "And I did it all within your timeline. What more do you want?"

"What do I want?" The Oracle's smile grew, white teeth gleaming.

"I began wondering…why are you so insolent? What might explain your continued arrogance? Then I discovered something today." She inspected her nails. "I tried to make the magic heed my call. Do you know what it did instead?" Her smile turned brittle.

"The magic—my magic—refused to obey my summons. Ignored me, the most powerful being in this world. I have rebirthed that power a thousand times over. And never has the magic chosen another."

Fuck. She knew. It was only a matter of time, but…she knew.

"Give me what is mine. Continue to deny me, and I will leash you like a dog. And you Fae are so very easily leashed," she crooned with a smugness that made me want to claw off her face. "No more games. You have given me so very many weapons to use against you, Anaria, and it is time you learned what fear truly is."

"The witches. Your males. These new friends of yours." She flicked a finger up as she listed them off. "So many delicate, mortal lives hang in the balance. So many people will suffer if you do not give me what I want."

"Know this." My voice was as cold and empty as my heart. "You touch one of my friends, anyone under my protection, and I will rip you apart. I will carve whatever beats in your chest out with my bare hands."

"You really are a wicked thing, aren't you?" She shrugged.

"Anyway. I tracked the amulet here. Straight to Trubahn's shop. Imagine my surprise when I found the stone empty. As empty as the mage's head. Despite my efforts to get the truth out of him—and he fought valiantly for a mere mortal—I could not find a single clue in his memories to tell me who, exactly, released Cosimo."

Blood dripped steadily off the ends of my fingers, soaking the black, sandy soil at my feet. "I'll give you a hint. It wasn't me."

Her eyes were fixed on the growing pool of blood as I slowly backed away from her. "Always such a pleasure trading words with you, Princess. But I require your unquestioning obedience for what comes next. No more defiance. No more sneaking through the tunnels to escape my gaze."

Her lips quirked up. "Yes, I know all about the tunnels and the underground portal. The answers they hide."

I swore her eyes grew darker. "The secrets the witches tried to hide, so long ago. I sometimes wonder if I should have destroyed the tunnels and the skulls with them, but…nostalgia, as you know, forces one to make faulty decisions." She dropped her voice. "Let's hope those secrets remain hidden forever, for both our sakes."

"If compliance is what you are waiting for, then it's a good thing you're immortal, because you'll be waiting forever. I do not serve you. I do not serve your brother. You are both a filthy stain on this world."

A feral rage lashed violently inside me, like my anger had become its own master.

"I can erase the witch coven from this world with a snap of my fingers. Your males, your friends, this entire city…gone. Just like that."

I held my breath as Gelvira raised her hand, and within that heartbeat, I saw the truth. She would kill every living thing so long as this world remained hers, even if it was nothing but barren rock.

I tipped up my head, dragging my feet through the sand as I kept moving in a slow circle, my eyes on her face as she slowly stalked behind me. "Then kill me now. I will not help you destroy the world. I will not serve you or your mess of a brother."

We both stopped, my hand still steadily dripping blood.

"You'll have to start over, of course, but that will buy the world some time. A few hundred years. If there are even bloodlines left for you to breed." I took a step back then another.

"Tavion is the last of his line. So is Zor. As for me…good luck getting the High Barrens witches to cooperate now that Vireena is gone. You kill the coven, that line ends as well. You might despise us…but you can't survive without us. You never could."

I stopped and squeezed my bloody hand into a fist. "Without us, Valarian is nothing but barren rock." I looked around. "Kind of like this place. That's what happened, isn't it? You and Corvus sucked our old world dry and had to find another that could sustain you. Which means coming to Valarian wasn't my idea. It was yours."

"Enough," she hissed, taking a step forward. "This is…" She stopped, her anger twisting into confusion as she shoved against her invisible prison. "What have you done?"

"Blood magic." I wiped my bloody palm on my cloak. "Seems like magic works as well in dreams as it does in real life." I bent down and picked up a sliver of stone, one that looked remarkably like black glass, with an edge so sharp it glinted.

"Pain is a strange thing. It can break through barriers…even through veils between realms. Solok once used pain to turn me into a weapon of destruction, did you know that? Let's see if pain can pull me out of your dream as easily as you sucked me in."

"Pain does not exist in this place," she hissed.

"Yes, I heard you the first time."

I grinned. "But you're a liar, so there's no reason you'd tell me the truth, not even here. Besides, I'm not really here, am I?" I raised my hand over my head, sucked in a breath, and drove the sharp point into my thigh.