Light, words, magic, blood...
The world they knew imploded. Jeren’s cry finally found a way to freedom and Indarin’s echoed it.
But Khain’s shout of rage drowned out both.
Darkness bled to silence. Jeren’s aching body reminded her that she was still alive. Indarin lay across her and even as she groaned, he rolled aside, breathing hard.
“Indarin?”
“Still here.” His voice sounded like he’d screamed for a month. Whereas she felt like a wrung out rag. So weak. So very weak.
All else was silent.
Until she heard a small howl, filled with pain, with loss.
Naul.
Jeren scrambled across the chamber to where the wolf cub nudged at Shan. How he had found his way into River Holt, let alone down there, she couldn’t guess. But she’d learned never to underestimate a wolf.
She reached Shan, shooing the frantic cub gently aside. He slumped face down, one arm sprawled out to the side. Too still.
Oh gods, far too still.
She rolled him onto his back and as she did, his eyes opened, staring at her like a drowning man at the shore. Not a trace of Feyna silver remained. The entirety of both eye were black as oil, and yet she didn’t doubt he saw her.
His lips tried to rise in a smile.
“Jeren.”
“Lie still. Let me help.”
She marshalled her abilities again, ready to heal him, but as she pressed her hands to his wounds, nothing happened. Nothing at all.
“You’ve drained yourself, little one. You need to rest, to recover.”
Her magic swirled inside her. It wasn’t gone. It was just... refusing to be put to use.
Almost as if it was hiding.
In the moment of that realisation, she felt them press close, their bodies cold and smooth, their voices whispering of love and comfort. The Fellna. Only a few of them left now after their battle with the Feyna and the destruction of Khain’s hold on Gilliad.
“No.” Jeren pulled Shan into her arms, holding him back from them. “No. I won’t let you take him. Not again.”
Their hands reached out, not clawed and taloned now, but gentle, soothing. They stroked his skin, his hair. They shone like polished jet as they sang softly.
“What have you done, Shan?” Indarin’s voice sounded hushed with reverence.
“Accepted them. And they’ve accepted me. So much magic in this place. We’ve changed. Joined. And we’re still changing. Can’t—” He grimaced. “Can’t stop it.”
Five voices murmured in response. Only five of them left.
Could she take them all if they decided they wanted Shan? Could she stop them?
“Don’t try,” Shan told her. He reached up and his hand trembled as he pressed it against her cheek to brush away tears she didn’t know she shed.
“You know my thoughts?”
He smiled. Gods, it hurt when he smiled like that. “They can help me, little one. But if it be your will, I’ll die here happily.”
It took a moment to realise that she was shaking her head, little movements, jerks that made her neck ache. What was she saying no to? Letting them help him? Or letting him die?
How could she let him die?
Naul whined again, his cold nose pressing under her hand, his tongue licking Shan’s skin beneath.
How could she let anyone die when she had the power to save them, even if the power was not her own?
“You’ve changed the Fellna?” Indarin murmured. “How? That isn’t even possible. Is it?”
Shan tried to shrug, his body spasming with the pain of doing so. “You lost your magic, but you still managed to exorcise the god of shadows, didn’t you?”
“With Jeren’s help.”
He smiled, his dark eyes finding her again. Love filled them, making that darkness into something rich and all-enveloping. “Yes. With Jeren’s help. She changes things. She changes everything.”
“I didn’t change you.” Her voice broke on a sob. “I didn’t...”
“But you did. From the first moment we met. And now its time again, Jeren.”
She nodded. She didn’t want to but it was the only way. They could help him and she could not.
Letting go was impossible. But she managed it.
The new creatures Shan had created from the Fellna took him from her, and then they were gone.
And so was Shan. A cloud of shadows and swirling deep darkness of a night in between the stars filled the space where he had been. Slowly it crystallised, hardened, with a tinkling sound like the hardening of molten glass cooling.
Jeren shuffled back, and found Indarin helping her to her feet.
And that was when she saw Gilliad.
Her brother lay too still, bleeding from so many wounds, his body broken. But he looked at her, his eyes so bright with pain. She changed her course, heading straight for him.
“Jeren, leave him,” Indarin said. “He’s dying. Let him be.”
She shook him off. “No.”
“You want revenge, I understand that, but this isn’t the way—”
Reaching her brother’s side, she knelt down. He tried to speak, but his voice failed him. He was dying.
“I can’t,” said Jeren. “You don’t understand, Indarin. If he dies—”
“You tried with Shan.”
“Shan has changed. He hasn’t.”
“Or perhaps you have.”
“Not yet.” It was only a whisper. It was another nightmare. Not the worst. She’d already lived through the worst.
Chapter Fifteen
Jeren knelt over her brother’s broken body and tried to summon a single defined feeling. Everything swirled and churned inside her. Gilliad smiled, or tried to. Much of his face seemed to sag away from his skull. There was so much blood. The whole chamber seemed to be swimming with it.
What did that matter anymore? She was getting far too accustomed to blood.
His voice, when he found it, was as fractured as the rest of him. Khain had not left willingly. He had shattered Gilliad’s body as he struggled to hold on.
“Let go.”
She shook her head. “I’ve already lost someone this day, Gilliad. I can heal you. I can help you.”
“Nothing can—help me, Jeren—Too late for that. Too much done.”
“No.”
“No.” He laughed, but that sent him into shudders of agony. “So stubborn. Always so stubborn. Let me go. Please, sister…”
Her magic coiled inside her, waiting, eager now. For Gilliad. She wanted to scream with the horror of it. For Shan, it hid. For Gilliad it practically spilled out of her.
“You can’t die,” she said and poured her power into him, determined to drag him back to health no matter what, determined that he should live so that she didn’t have to become a monster.
Something rose up inside him. For a moment she thought, it was his power rising to meet hers, to challenge it and fight it off, but it didn’t.
It twisted around her magic and for a moment she thought he wanted to live too. Her heart surged inside, buoying her up. He was her brother again. She could hear him, the boy he once was, her best friend.
His hand grabbed hers, the fingers biting into her skin. “I have to die, Jeren. I have to.”
A will far stronger than hers wrenched the control away from her. She scrabbled to hold onto it, but there was no way to do it. Her anger flooded her system, the injustice of it, the horrors she had seen and felt because of him. He goaded that rage, fuelled it, and she felt her magic change. Not healing, not now, but draining what vitality remained to him. Jeren fought for control, but in vain. Her magic slipped through her fingers and into Gilliad’s grasp where it changed, like Shan changed, wringing out the last of her brother’s life.