“Thayen, don’t!” I heard Myst shouting, then saw him doing the one thing he’d been warned against. A Berserker had gotten the better of Regine, and Myst was too busy with two other foes to come to her sister’s aid, so Thayen tried to glamor him. The intention had been good. The outcome… not so much.
His glamoring worked, but only for a brief moment, before the targeted Berserker, the stocky and fast one, flexed his muscles. Thayen gasped as blood shot from his nose. He fell to his knees, eyes rolling back in his head. Around us, the battle raged on. Jericho and Dafne were no longer enough against the throng of clones. Thayen was down. Myst and Regine were overwhelmed.
My light was running low, and Brandon couldn’t hold on for much longer, either. The energy I’d felt buzzing through me earlier had turned into something meek and bland and tasteless. Nothing I did brought me any closer to a resolution. This wasn’t a fair fight, and I wanted us all out of this place. I wanted us safe and alive.
“Thayen,” I murmured as I rushed over to him. The liquid darkness on the ground pulled back wherever my boots landed, still very much allergic to me. “Thayen, wake up!”
I tried to slap him back to consciousness, but he was really out of it. He had a pulse and his breathing was steady, but I couldn’t think of any way of bringing him back. If I were to use my healing powers on him now, I’d have little to no light left to fight the Berserkers—and if my light went out, we were absolutely screwed.
Myst finally reached us, growing pale when she saw his face. “Will he live?”
“Yeah. He exerted himself again,” I said, shaking.
“The fool. I told him not to—” Myst screamed as a long blade pierced through her shoulder. It was a weapon of light, much like a rapier with an elegant swirl of gold and steel serving as the handguard. Hrista rose from behind the Valkyrie, smiling as she pushed the sword deeper, its glowing tip inching closer to my throat.
“Myst…” I managed, trying to wrap my head around this new reality.
The illuminated rapier turned black as Hrista’s lips moved. Torrhen was right. She was more than a Valkyrie now. She had darkness and light in her hands and an ability to work with both. And she’d learned death magic from the Spirit Bender. Hrista had said so herself. And I… I was speechless as Myst cried out from the pain her own sister had inflicted upon her.
“Did you think I’d go away without making sure your head came off first?” Hrista snarled as she pulled her blade out of Myst’s body. I caught the Valkyrie, losing sight of Thayen for a moment. Hrista brought the sword down in a bid to hit me, but Myst found the strength to shield me with her forearm. The steel of Hrista’s rapier clashed against the steel of Myst’s armored cuff, sparks flying around us in a shower of light.
I heard Jericho’s spine-tingling growl. The screams of people burning. Brandon’s gasps. The sharp kisses of swords meeting in violent combat. And Hrista was about to bring her sword down once more, aiming straight for my head.
My mind went blank.
Thayen
“No one is going to ruin this for me.”
Her voice cut clearly through my head like a red-hot knife going through a stick of cold butter. The words sizzled and stuck to my brain, echoing with their deliberate cruelty as I tried to figure out what to do next. I’d pushed myself too far.
I knew I’d made a mistake, but Regine had needed me.
My pulverizer weapons didn’t work against Berserkers. I only had my glamoring ability. What else could I have done, besides leave her at the mercy of her foes? I’d made a choice, and it had cost me. But at least Regine had managed to pull through. That much I was certain of. Everything else was a blur. A wretched blur I couldn’t navigate. My body was out. My limbs limp.
The flesh had surrendered, but the mind persisted. The ears… they listened.
“You’re not going to break us!” Astra’s voice made my soul tremble. She grunted, and the sound of steel on steel told me there was trouble afoot.
It was Hrista I’d heard earlier, and she said it again. “No one is going to ruin this for me! No one!” I heard metal meeting flesh, followed by Astra’s sharp whimper. She’d been hurt.
How had I gotten here?
That was a stupid question. I knew exactly how I had gotten here, and this was absolutely not the time for any kind of introspection. My friends needed me. Astra was facing Hrista. Jericho and Dafne were overwhelmed. Myst needed me—did she, though? Or was I fooling myself? Her scream had pierced through the veil of my subconscious, rattling my bones. She was in trouble. I’d made it this far. I’d learned who the enemy really was.
I might have had no way of beating Hrista, but I could not let her kill us. My parents deserved a better son than that.
My eyes peeled open, as if my body had finally responded to my soul’s ardent pleas. I’d been struggling to return to the real world for so long, and it angered me to see it all again. I was late. I knew I was late. Astra’s labored breathing made my head turn slowly. I found her in the grass, lying on her side and bleeding profusely from her thigh. The blood was strange, though. It wasn’t the usual crimson but an incandescent dark pink. She’d scraped her knees before. She’d had cuts. None had bled like this. “Astra… what…” I murmured, my lips dry.
A glowing sword came down, its
