Chapter 23

Chapter 23

M ariah was falling.

Light and shadows flashed around her. She was nothing more than a mass of brilliant, burning light, both as cold as death and hot as life. She screamed into the void, but there was no one there to hear her.

Until something rose out from that void. Or perhaps they broke from her shoulder blades, something huge and solid and blindingly bright. She couldn’t be sure, but she felt her descent halting, her wild path through the darkness pulled short.

Spindles of silver and gold had spread from her being, winding together as they formed something solid beneath her. She alighted atop the shimmering surface, moving across it as it spanned the cavernous space.

Somewhere in this void, she felt other bridges. All made of silver or gold and other colors, all reigniting after being dormant for far too long. A part of her, a part she’d forgotten and neglected, leaped in joy. Fear and happiness and anger and elation slammed into her from those bridges, and for a moment they wrapped around her, all six making her soul leap and dance in splendid exaltation.

She knew what it meant that those six consciousnesses now brushed against her own. But she couldn’t dwell on it for long; bliss permeated her being for a moment longer before she closed those connections, sending back her own feelings of happiness and hope.

Mariah’s attention refocused on the bridge being built beneath her. The silver and gold threads of magic wove together until they were one, all but indistinguishable from each other. It was so bright—brighter than the others had been—and with each weave, she felt the tugs of fate burning brighter. She welcomed it, reveled in it. Fighting this destiny had forced her into darkness, wallowing in her weakness.

Not now. No more.

She progressed across the forming bridge, fixing her stare on the void beyond. Excitement raced through her like a million torches, lighting her soul ablaze.

Until the bridge stopped forming, and nothing was there to greet her.

Only a mass of writhing, twisted darkness.

She reached a piece of herself toward the void and instantly recoiled. This wasn’t something she knew.

This was something malignant and filled with festering hate, a dark tumor infecting the mind of the one whom she loved.

Somewhere, in a decadent moonlit garden on a different plane of existence, she bared her teeth in a snarl.

The evilness stilled, watching Mariah just as she watched it back. She pulled everything she possessed to her, ropes and weapons of silver and gold coiling like a mass of twisting, winding serpents.

She remembered a time when serpents had almost ended her life. Those were demons of the darkness.

She was a warrior of the light, and she would not be intimidated. She would wield what had once been used in an attempt on her life to exact the retribution singing in her soul.

With that final thought, she unleashed her light upon the darkness.

There was no sound in this void, this plane that existed somewhere between sleep and waking, life and death, the heavens and the earth. But Mariah could feel the battle raging, could feel the darkness clawing back at her light as she blasted and burned and scourged the evil from this place.

Slowly—in what could have taken an eternity, or only a few fleeting moments—the darkness retreated, chased away by creatures of light, an army fashioned from the most feral and vengeful part of her soul.

With one final surge, the wall of darkness snapped and sundered, dissipating like morning mist.

Mariah’s form sagged, exhaustion crumpling her as the last bits of her light chased away the few lingering tendrils of darkness.

With the other side of the chasm cleared, she could see who waited for her at the foot of her bridge of silver and gold.

Another form made of shadows, but these ones were familiar. Comforting.

Home.

Streaks of tanzanite danced within the shadows, the gemstone blue shining brilliantly against the void between their souls.

Happiness cleaved her soul as she raced toward him. Her light refracted off his shadows, a myriad of colors and brilliance arching across this eternal place.

It was beautiful.

She wove two threads of light—one silver, one gold. They wound together until they formed a single rope, a solid mass that could be seen from the heavens far above, in a place that resembled the one of their minds but that they could not yet truly comprehend.

On a swell of power, Mariah pushed that coiled rope of light into the being of shadow and tanzanite. It twisted into him, around him, melding into the very fabric of his being.

Soaring with euphoria, she turned back to the bridge, now spanning between their minds, and sprinted across it, desperate for the touch of the one whose soul she’d now seen. Had now touched.

Whose soul she now knew perfectly reflected her own.

Mariah slammed back into her body with a gasping breath, her hand still pressed to Andrian’s chest, palm slick and sticky with their mingled blood.

She opened her eyes and was greeted by a clear, unclouded gemstone blue. Not a hint of darkness or confusion or emptiness dwelled in their depths. Shadows snapped in the air above their heads, shadows that danced with corded silver-gold light.

She met that brilliant stare, and the world tilted.

“ Mariah .” Her name spilled from his tongue, and the stars pulsed.

It was a whisper. A prayer. A desperate call for salvation. She’d heard her name said like that only once before, just before the Winter Solstice.

He was back.

Andrian was back .

It had worked .

“ Andrian, ” she choked, her voice a sobbing murmur. She wrenched her hand from his chest, grabbing his face, blood smearing across his jaw. Her fingers curled into his hair, long and unkempt after their weeks in this gods-cursed castle.

And then she kissed him.

Moons waxed and waned. Stars rose and fell. Waves crashed against a cliffy shore, the wind whipped across wild plains, and plants pushed forth from the earth before wilting and returning. The sun tracked a blinding path across the sky, shadows forming and disappearing in its wake.

The heavens themselves fissured around them.

Mariah gasped against his lips as his hands tightened on her hips, so warm and heavy and familiar. With the magic coursing through her veins, scorching her soul, she forgot the agonies she’d endured those past weeks. Forgot what they’d tried to take from her. Fire lit her blood, settling low in her core, cataclysmically unbearable.

Until a single, broken thought wandered in, unwanted and unbidden.

His hands had hurt her, too.

She wrenched herself away from him with a sudden jerk. His lips were swollen, and his eyes were wide, his face filled with a clarity she’d not seen in a long time.

But that did not forgive the reminder that had sprung to her mind. No matter how much her body wanted this, how much her soul reveled in the bond now stretching between them, a brilliant bridge of silver and gold and shadows.

Some wounds simply cut too deep.

The scars on her back, while healed, itched under the weight of his stare. The feeling of his hands on her hips had her recoiling, a reminder of possessive touches that had sought to demean her. To make her feel less than human.

She pushed off his lap, staggering to her feet, movements jerky and stilted. Her chest heaved as her feet burned against the ice covering the ground, as the sickly sweet smell of late winter jasmine and early spring crocus burned her nose. Andrian’s eyes widened in a strange mix of shock and surprise, blinking rapidly as if to expel a haze, before finally glancing around at his surroundings.

The baffled confusion that filled his too-handsome face dragged her battered soul through shards of glass.

She remembered everything that had been done to her. But he … he remembered nothing.

Even the things that his hands had done, the new scars he’d inflicted. She knew, she felt, she remembered. But Andrian was blind, helpless in the dark.

Mariah didn’t know which was worse. Which caused her more pain.

He was free, but she was still trapped. Perhaps would be forever. A new, atrocious curse.

Andrian slowly rose from the stone bench, expression still open and cautious and filled with pure, unadulterated hope. Unfiltered hope. Hope that made Mariah want to crumple to the ground.

“Mariah—”

“If you take a single step closer to her, Armature, then these gardens will become your grave.”