19. Nineteen

Nineteen

Sebastian spun a quarterstaff in his hand. Black metal tipped the ends, but the metal wasn’t shiny. It swallowed any light that touched it. Like a black void.

That staff had adorned the wall behind my father’s desk for centuries. A gift from the angels.

But that was a lie. All lies.

My chest vibrated with a growl. It turned into a battle cry as I raised my swords and charged.

“So, you’re not just a traitor, but a thief, too?” Elias met Sebastian first, blocking the staff with his shield.

“Do you even know the power of this staff that your family used as a mere decoration?” Sebastian struck again with a speed that was impossible, even for a hunter. The blow dented Elias’s breastplate. Elias staggered back.

I gasped.

“Arsyn,” Sebastian whispered. “Don’t worry. I’ll kill him this time.” Sebastian’s whisper turned to a scream through clenched teeth. “He won’t be able to hurt you again.”

Elias righted himself and took an unsteady step forward. “Stay away from her. You corrupted her. You turned her from me.”

“You did that yourself when you killed her mother.” Sebastian’s corruption flooded his aura, choking the air like coal smoke. There was no silver left. It wrapped around Elias. Sebastian closed the distance. “Tell me, did you ever love Katlyn?”

“You know nothing of my love. Nothing of my pain .” Elias gripped Sebastian’s free hand. He coughed as corruption sank into his skin.

“Stop!” I pushed Sebastian back and stepped between them. “My decisions were my own.”

Sebastian’s eyebrows knit together. “You defend him still?”

“I …” Sebastian looked hurt . I shook my head, trying to dislodge the corruption.

“Come with me.” He held out his hand. “We have an army now. A real army with more power than we could have imagined as teenagers. We can change the worlds. Like you said.”

“I can’t.” My muscles shook as I willed them to run, to fight, to do anything. Instead, I stood there, paralyzed, searching for my men.

But they couldn’t help me. The corrupt hunters were everywhere.

Shael flung a fireball, but it quickly fizzled out as it touched hunter leathers, absorbed by the blood-soaked threads. Skye sluggishly formed a wall of water. The dark hunters broke through it before it finished turning to ice.

Felix still lay unconscious behind them.

Cyrus fought on the front lines, hacking at the dark hunters. His armor and skin blazed in the dying light. Lines of golden runes. He was still fighting off a dozen or more hunters who’d trained to fight otherworlders their whole lives.

Sebastian’s face morphed into something unrecognizable. Something evil. My reflection stared back at me in his black eyes. “They will lose.”

“No!” I clawed at my scalp as if I could draw the corruption from my skull. “They won’t.”

“Fine.” Sebastian raised the staff. “If you won’t come willingly, then I’ll make you.”

I flinched as he brought the staff down. Blurred shadows filled the space between us, and a dark figure emerged.

The staff cracked against Ari’s upraised hand. A shimmer ran down Ari’s arm and onto the surface of the staff. The shimmer lit up the end of the staff with a pearlescent light before it sank into the black surface, leaving it the matte void it had been once again.

Corruption choked the air, making me cough. Ari stood motionless.

“Ari?”

He released his hold on Sebastian’s staff and turned to me. His movements were slow but measured. Like a hunting panther.

The dim sunlight illuminated his face under his low-hanging hood. Instead of his usual twin flames, dull purple eyes landed on me, struggling to focus. I reached for his hand but pulled away before I touched him. A dark, oily sheen covered his skin.

The corruption in the air was his.

I took a stumbling step back and turned to run. Skye. He was close.

Sebastian smiled and spun the staff in his hand. A thread of black magic wrapped around Ari’s head. “Grab her.”

Ari wrapped his muscular arms around me. I tried to jump back, but he was too fast.

“Ari?” I struggled against his hold. “What are you doing?”

“Whatever I command,” Sebastian said. Panic bubbled in my chest. Ari had never been susceptible to daeva magic before. “Turn her to me.”

Whatever he’s doing to you—fight it!

I reached for Ari’s mind, but where Ari’s presence was usually a ball of lilac energy, crackling and clear, there was only darkness. Clouds of churning black.

I spared a glance across the battlefield as Ari forced me to turn in his arms.

“Cyrus!”

A deep wound slashed across his forehead. He wiped blood from his eyes and met the next dark hunter. He couldn’t hear me.

I reached for Cyrus’s mind with daeva magic, but a wall slammed down between us. A shimmering purple wall. Sebastian had put up a ward around us. I couldn’t alert any of the guys. I reached desperately for the magic, but Sebastian pumped more corrupt mana into the ward.

Sebastian reached for me, but I ducked and squirmed in Ari’s arms.

“Hold her still,” Sebastian commanded.

Ari’s grip was bruising.

Sebastian brought the staff to an inch from my skin. I shrank away from it, pressing into Ari’s firm chest. What was Sebastian doing? What did that staff do to Ari? What was he trying to do to me?

I took a deep breath, desperately searching for Ari’s spicy gingerbread aura.

“Ari!” I lifted my head to gaze into his glassy eyes. “What did he do to you?”

Sebastian grabbed me by my jacket, wrenching my hand towards him. And the staff. “Don’t worry. This won’t hurt. And I’ll return your soul to you once I’ve killed those men who lie to you.”

Soul. Numbness chased electric chills across my body. “You stole his soul ?”

He was going to take mine.

I’d seen that void-like metal before. On the way to the hunter camp at Emerald Lake.

“It’s a reaper blade,” Ari rasped. “There are only a few like it in the world. They steal the soul of whatever it strikes.”

The sounds of battle fell away until I heard nothing but the blood rushing in my ears. Fire rose from my center and spread through my blood. It flooded every sense until there was nothing but rage.

I only heard my heartbeat. And the deafening silence of Ari’s at my back.

Corruption filled me. And this time, I embraced it.

A scream tore from my throat, shredding my vocal cords. My dark power pulsed, spreading across the battlefield like a pressure wave. It blasted through Sebastian’s ward, shattering the magic like glass. People and objects flew through the air.

My feet left the ground as the dark, deadly power built. My back arched as it took over my muscles, my mind, my soul. I barely registered the pain. The feeling of my flesh being torn apart.

It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered.

Ari was gone.