Chapter 2

Abellow of effort escaped my lips as I swung my sword against the solid rock wall, the violent ricochet of the blade bouncing off again making me stumble back a step.

Sweat lined my brow and my chest heaved with every move I made, but I couldn't stop. Stopping meant giving up, meant accepting this cavern as our prison and falling prey to the darkness.

The Shadow Beast bellowed furiously as it attacked the wall at my back, those terrible claws and its awesome strength far more likely to succeed than me, but I needed to at least try. My mind was buzzing with everything Darcy had told me about her escape from Lavinia and the Palace of Souls, the enormous creature who had burst from the ring on her finger somehow one of the least insane pieces of all she'd endured. At first, that venomous monster had driven fear into my heart, but at my twin's word, I'd decided to trust it. The Shadow Beast had been a prisoner to the shadows just as she had, so I wasn't going to hold a grudge against it.

I'd told her about the trials I'd faced to return Darius to the land of the living, but I could tell by the way she was watching me that she hadn't been satisfied by my abbreviated version of that fucked-up truth.

Darcy observed me silently, knowing me well enough to understand that I needed to do this, to throw all I had at escaping before I gave in to the truth of our situation. But the fatigue in my limbs and echoing clangs of my sword against the stone walls were seeing to that. I couldn't find any point of weakness to exploit, no secret lever or hidden passage. We were trapped, alone in the dark of this cursed cave while that fucking star walked the Earth wearing our goddamn faces.

Darius would know. Even before our hearts had become one, he would have known, but now, I had no doubt at all about it. Whatever Clydinius's plan was by impersonating us, Darius would see through the deception and come looking for us. So, I guessed that made me his motherfucking damsel.

I blew out a harsh breath, a lock of ebony hair fluttering before my eyes as I fell still, dropping my sword to the ground unceremoniously. It clattered loudly onto the stone, and I put my back to the wall before dropping down to sit against it, watching the Shadow Beast as it continued to batter the walls and hunt for some weakness in them.

"Enough," Darcy sighed, her voice barely a breath against the thundering assault the Shadow Beast was making on our prison, but it heard her, turning its bear-like head her way and grunting softly like it was asking to keep going. "Maybe see if you can find a crack to slip through in your shadow form?" she suggested, and the beast's long tail thumped twice against the rock wall before it shifted, its body turning into a cloud of near-translucent grey shadow.

I watched as it drifted to the closest wall, tracking its movements as it began exploring the carved rock in search of some tiny crevice it might slip through.

"If this place is entirely sealed, then I have to wonder when the air is going to run out," I mused, my gaze fixed on the shadow as it hunted for some place to escape with no more success than we'd managed with brute force.

"Morbid, Tor," Darcy muttered as she moved towards me, then slid down the wall to sit on my left.

There was a gap dividing us. Just a couple of inches of nothingness, but I couldn't help glancing at it from the corner of my eyes. All the things we hadn't said filled that space, the places where the path we'd always walked together had diverged, sending us on such different routes.

"I shouldn't have tried to force you from that cage," I said softly, not turning to look at her and simply watching as the Shadow Beast hunted for some way to escape.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you lost Darius," she breathed, her hand twitching into that space between us, fingers flexing then falling back against her thigh as she kept to her side of it.

A lump tightened in my throat, the little girl I'd once been weeping softly for the way things used to be even though the woman I'd become knew they'd never quite be that again.

"I got him back," I said, forcing a shrug like it was nothing. Like the decimation of all I was and had been had left no mark on me at all simply because I'd found my way to right that wrong. But I knew that was a lie. On the outside, with only the barest of facts to look at, everything was set right now, but the cost I'd borne to make it so would never wash away. I'd done things, become things, given myself over to the darkness which whispered my name, and I had a price to pay for it.

"You came for me first, though, didn't you?" she asked, and that knife in my gut twisted sharply, but I didn't reply. "You came for me, and I wouldn't leave with you."

"I understand why you didn't. Orion, the Shadow Beast issue…" I waved a hand at the creature that had haunted and corrupted her, turning her into a weapon against the people she loved most. "And it did beast out and attack me like you said it would after all."

"But you needed me, and I wasn't there," she spoke the words I wouldn't because they were petulant and pointless now. It had hurt. It still stung, if I was being entirely honest with myself, but I had to let it go. The problem wasn't Darcy. It was how much I relied on her, needed her, used her as a crutch to help disguise my own weaknesses.

"I couldn't leave you," I said. "I would never leave you behind."

"You risked death to bring Darius back," she said, a bitter note to her tone, and I realised she was feeling something of what I was too. "What you did was so dangerous, Tor. You could have been trapped in death, the cost for retuning him could have been any number of terrible things and-"

"No," I interrupted her, shaking my head because she needed to understand that that wasn't the case. Not the way she saw it. "I didn't risk death to bring him back. I fought it. My heart was ripped clean from my chest the moment I found his body on that battlefield. It broke me in a way I can't even put words to. I was lost, destroyed entirely, and utterly without hope. But there was one simple way for me to reunite with him, Darcy."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

I took a knife from my belt, turning it in my palm before aiming it at my own chest and arching a brow at her as the tip pressed to my skin.

"The Veil is never far away." I shrugged, and she sucked in a breath, snatching the blade from my hand as if I might have plans to follow through on that act now. I gave her an echo of a smile. "There was only one thing that stayed my hand, Darcy." I brushed a lock of blue hair out of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear.

"You wouldn't leave me," she said. Not a question, a fact.

"Two halves of one whole." I nodded. "So, yeah, I did some seriously questionable shit. And I have most definitely stained my soul in magic and bloodshed in countless ways in order to be here beside you right now, with Darius breathing the air of our realm again, no longer lost to the dark. Every risk I took was on me, but I made payment in blood, death, and scars on my soul, while clinging to my own life with all the ferocity I hold in my veins. I refused to leave you, Darcy, so I did what I had to to stay with you and return him to us here. I knew there would be a cost to bringing him back, but the rules of the magic I used were clear. The payment would only ever have been taken from me and him. I never put you at risk, I need you to know that. I wouldn't have allowed anything to hurt you. I wouldn't leave you and I couldn't stay parted from him, so…"

"What was the cost?" Darcy asked, almost like she didn't want to know, and honestly, I didn't fully understand it myself yet, but I gave her what I knew.

"To deny death is to become death," I spoke the words from the Book of Ether, and a shiver tracked down my spine as if an icy wind had just rolled through the cavern.

Darcy shifted uncomfortably, glancing around like she'd felt it too.

"And how exactly do you become death?" she asked, and I couldn't help the smile that tugged on the corner of my lips, no matter how fucked up it was.

"I dunno. But I have never felt a rush like I did while we were fighting our way to you at the academy. I swear I could feel the dead as they passed through The Veil and were hauled into the beyond."

"Tory… I don't think we should keep messing around with ether. Elemental magic doesn't come with any price tag attached, it's pure and natural and-"

"Governed by the stars. Like the one who just locked us in this cave and left us to die," I supplied, and she flinched minutely at the assessment.

"That doesn't automatically make ether better," she argued.

"I know. But I want full use of every weapon available to us, and I'm not going to disregard the one thing that the stars can't influence. Without ether, Darius would still be dead."

"I get that, but I don't trust it. I don't think we should be playing with something we know so little about," Darcy said, biting her lip.

"I've been studying it for months," I countered. "And considering all Lionel and Lavinia are capable of, I know we're going to need it before this war is over. We can't just ignore a weapon as powerful as ether and risk them winning."

"I can see you won't be swayed," Darcy conceded. "But you need to be careful. No more insane risks or walking into death. I need you by my side when we win this thing. I wouldn't survive losing you."

"When am I not careful?" I teased, the tension slicing apart as she let out an exaggerated groan.

"God help us," she said, and I breathed a laugh before reaching for her hand.

"I love you, Darcy. The last few months have changed a lot of shit for both of us, and we aren't the same people we were, but that will never change. I was putting too much on you before, expecting you to put me first just because I always put you at the top of my list, but that's not my choice to make for you. It hurt when you didn't pick me, even if I can understand why. I would have run to the ends of the earth with you and forgotten everything else, Shadow Beast and all, whatever it took to keep you safe, but I get why you chose to stay. I needed you though, and not having you forced me to figure my own shit out in a way that I never have before, because I didn't have you there to help me.

"It made me realise that I used you to help hold me up when I didn't feel strong enough to stand alone, but I had to find a way to do that while you were gone. And I did. Now I know how to wield ether, I have my husband back to fight beside us, and I won't back down ever again. The next time I come face to face with Lionel Acrux, I will see him dead for what he's done. And if the cost of his destruction is the damnation of my soul, then so be it. To deny death is to become death. I knew that when I strode through The Veil, and I hope it means that we can win this war at last and remake Solaria the way our parents wished for it to be remade."

"Hail to that," Darcy said, and I pulled her into a hug, the tension between us finally falling away entirely.

We would always be bonded as one, but the last few months had helped us find a way to stand alone too. It had been hard, and it had hurt, and there were a million things I wished neither of us had had to endure, but it had moulded us too. We had been carved into the warriors I knew we would need to be if we were ever going to win this war. And if we ever made it out of this damned cave, then I knew the world would tremble before us as we began our reign.