Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)

by Rebecca Yarros

Panic winds its way around my heart and digs her nails in, but I shove the insidious bitch straight out before she can get a good grip.

I’m not dying on this field.

I careen into the storm with as much grace as a flailing drunkard held hostage by physics, and I lock my jaw, swallowing the scream that rises in my throat.

“We all make our own decisions.”

The flame of perpetual rage that lives in my chest burns hotter.

I’ve always known I’ll die in combat. I just don’t want it to be today.

The scream that forces its way through the tangled mess of my throat shreds my soul on the way out and reverberates off the stone, shaking the foundations of my world until it doesn’t just slow, it stops. I stop.

Outside, the sky darkens further. Sorrengail better take their leader all the way the fuck out, or this will all have been for nothing.

Riders don’t run. We fight.

Pain doesn’t matter if you’re dead.

“As a high priestess, you would have had immeasurable power on the isle. How was it still not enough?” “Why serve a god when you can be one?” Theophanie snarls.

“I love you,” I whisper down the bond, and the ice cracks, but it’s not enough to halt the approaching wave of darkness.

My heart stutters. Use the very thing that’s taking Xaden from me? I never dreamed that taking every possible path to cure him would lead to his choice. The fire devouring me from the inside out threatens to consume my very bones, and for a second, I debate letting it. I couldn’t stop my mother, and I can’t stop Xaden. I can’t save him.

I don’t believe in oracles, but I do believe in signets.

The only thing more unpredictable than the volatile province that is Tyrrendor is her duke. There is a reason reigning aristocracy should never wear black.

Wrath courses like a current under the ice I willingly skate onto, cutting my emotions free like the burdens they are so I can be the weapon she needs. She was the first to choose me, to elevate me above all others, the first to see every ugly side of me and accept it all, and every single person in this fucking canyon will die before they remove a single one of her scales.

A clamoring, consuming emotion pounds at the ice, but I can’t let it in. She has her own path. No matter what I choose, it’s wrong.

In my final act of resistance, I become the very thing I despise. Maybe it’s good that I can’t feel a single damned thing.

Shadow brings quiet.

My soul departs like pieces of ash from a fire, flaking free and drifting away as power consumes the space it once inhabited. I’m no longer on the ice—I am the ice.

No. Wait. I grab for that thread with desperate hands, clawing to keep her as more of my pieces are blown away, lost to the void. She is warmth and light and air and love.

I’ve never felt so strong and so defeated at the same time.