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“You know, you’re not even very scary actually,” the oldest girl said. “I’ll tell my momma not to chop your head off like she always said she wanted to. Kay?”
“I’m here, kitty cat,” I purred as I stalked up behind them. “Now watch me play.”
“Vesper,” Everest gasped, naming the creature who I had never heard named before. “You came.”
With a wrench of effort, I forced the Void to answer my intentions and the power ripped from Everest, slamming into the Sky Witch and evaporating her magic.
“You should never have let me spill your blood, Fury,”
Blood magic. She tugged upon that dark power and it drove pain into my body, tearing through my limbs and trying to force me to submit.
But as I tried to wield his mind again, his mental shields flew up, iron clad and unyielding. I must have caught him unawares before, but now, there was no breaking into his head.
I reached for Everest with my possession, trying to summon my Fearsire to me, but I couldn’t sense her close by.
And as ever, in the midst of war and on the brink of losing everything, I felt nothing at all.
There was something so effortless about her company, despite everything I knew about her and who she was. If we’d been born on the same side of this war, perhaps we could have been friends.
“A Skyforger, a Raincarver and a Stonebreaker cross a battlefield together,”
“If we go after the truth, try to hunt down the keystones and figure out what’s happening to the ley lines together in hopes of stopping that monster from making it to our continent then we’re effectively betraying our homelands.”
“Those ley lines, the monster, the Reapers, all of it could end up destroying the world if we do nothing.”
Do you actually think two enemies could save the world together?”
“No, Sky Witch. I don’t think we could save The Waning Lands together. Not in a world like ours.”
“I think we would have been something in another life,”
“Fuck it.” I tugged her close, hugging her, and after several seconds of her going stiff in my arms, she returned my embrace. I wasn’t one for much affection, but she’d gotten under my skin, clawed her way in there somehow.
“My curse binds you until you set foot on the land of Stormfell,”
“Follow me there, then run. I can’t offer you more than that.”
“What is it you seem to think you see in me, Bastian?” I asked plainly. “Because I have only ever been noted for my worth to other Fae. I have been used, coveted, betrayed in all forms, and abused by all Fae I have sworn loyalty to aside from those who died in thanks for their connection to me. And I can tell you that it has left me lacking in any of the emotions you seem to be seeking when you look at me the way you are now.”
“Have you always been in the habit of spouting bullshit until you believe it yourself?” Bastian growled. “Look at me. Look what I’ve endured and what I’ve lost and yet I emerged from that cavern because of you.
“Enemies don’t kiss the way we did, spectre. Enemies don’t go to the lengths we have to keep one another alive.”
“You’re a Dragon with earth magic, Bastian. Of course they’ll take you back.”
“There is no back for me! Don’t you fucking get that? I’m alone here. Everyone I ever knew died in the time I spent stuck in an unchanging form. I know one Fae in this entire cursed land and that’s you, Vesper!”
“I fell for the confessions of a Stonebreaker before,” I breathed. “He was the man who robbed me of my sisters. So look where that got me.”
“And I will run, spectre. But don’t you go forgetting the other promise you made to me because I will come to collect on it. I’ll claim your death just as you promised me and you’ll think of this moment then.
But instead you chose to cling to it like the loyal servant you were forged into by Fae who never once gave a shit if you lived or died.”
“Look at them, at what they do – they choose only the strongest Fae for their ranks, those with multiple elements, the Seers – anyone who might have a gift that places them above the masses. Of course he wants to claim me too, all they ever claim is power!”
will take you whether you agree or not!”
“It’s not – I’m not, Ever. I’m just trying to protect you,” he implored. “By taking me unwillingly to a man I don’t trust?”
“Solomon Imai holds the ear of the stars and I am a servant to him.” “You’re his minion,” I accused icily. “Serving him blindly, never questioning his intentions.”
“She told you to let go of her, Reaper,”
“Come, silka la vin,” Kaiser commanded and his possession wrapped around my soul, binding me at once and forcing me to walk around Harlon towards him and drop my blade.
froze every hand that touched me with magic, crying out as their nails raked at my skin, the frantic desperation in their eyes telling of how much they wanted to be the one who claimed me. I was a scrap of meat being fought over by wolves and I couldn’t escape.
I said nothing. I’d given her my truth and she’d hurled it back at me plainly enough. She didn’t care if I was alone in this world and I’d been a fool to believe she might have. Everything between us had been based on this end.
She hadn’t thought to dose me with the suppressant since we’d been reunited and in truth I’d tossed the lot of it into the river at the start of my journey to retrieve her anyway. I wouldn’t be controlled again. Not by her and certainly not by the bastard whose cold eyes had just lit with something akin to triumph.
A smear of soot stained her jaw, blood peppered her tanned skin, mixing with the faint freckles which covered her nose. Her full lips were drawn tight, not pliant and wanting as they’d been such a short time ago and her eyes, those grey eyes which refused to meet mine were so much darker than they’d been before. Like a gale had rolled through her and was only growing fiercer by the moment, no sign of letting up at all.
Her hand fell from my arm more slowly, her nails biting into my flesh then fingertips burning a path right down to my wrist, palm, fingers… Then she was gone. A stone fell to the pit of my stomach, weighted there through years of solitude and captivity.
I’d had nothing and no one in that darkness. Until there had been her. Pale pink hair and tempest grey eyes which held all manner of otherworldly power. She’d captivated me in that first look and claimed me with the swing of a golden axe which spelled my freedom.
A Dragon’s roar escaped my lips as the beast within me was released, Vesper and her prince hurling themselves aside with barely enough time to be saved from the crush of my enormous body landing on them.
The Dragons had been lost to our lands a long time before I was born and the Fae here knew of my kind in nothing more than legend and fairytale. The truth was something far more ferocious than any could have imagined.
I was a monster among men, a legend forgotten to time and a beast which would never again be caged at the hands of inferior Fae.
“Echo Fort is falling!” “The sky is burning!”
Echo Fort was falling apart beneath me as I scaled it, the building groaning and quaking in protest to its demise.
The stars had decided that path for me and every Fae here had been told through prophecy that I, the Void, was their salvation.
“Everest,” he sighed, so much relief in his voice that I could almost be fooled into thinking he loved me. But I knew better.
screamed as it poured from me, that power unleashing itself, unhinged and entirely awake. Never once had it felt like this, completely consuming, making me a goddess among Fae. It crashed from me in a formidable surge, slamming into Kaiser and Harlon, guttering Kaiser’s possession over him and the dagger which had been poised to slit my best friend’s throat clattered to the ground. But my power didn’t stop there. It swept out into my father. Then it raced beyond him, delving into the Cascadian army and the Skyforgers above.
Order forms shivered out of existence, leaving Fae naked and confused before their enemies. The Void silenced the magic in the atmosphere, the shock of it quieting the raging barrage of death until finally, I could think clearly again. Because I was in control.
Fury looked perplexed, true emotion rising in his eyes as he turned his gaze on me. “You have harnessed it,”
“You are not my master,” I told him venomously. “You will never control me again.”
