Page 159 of Merciless Is My Crown

Her eyes lifted to the ones behind me. My beloved were my only weakness, and my sister knew it. “You are condemning them to death. Is that truly what you want, Amalla?”

“We are all in agreement. We had our time, but it is now over,” I told her coldly as she took another halting step forward. Gattica hissed out a warning, my darklings closing in behind Gelvira and Corvus, hungry for magic.

“I do not accept that fate. My brother does not accept that fate.”

“That is not for you to decide. That is for our queen to decide.” Saphrax stepped up beside me, what little power he had left flaring for my sister, intending to strike her down, but I held out a staying hand.

“We will die with honor. Not fighting amongst ourselves. We have lived for an eternity.” I gazed out over this ruined world, trying to remember how much life had once thrived here before we’d sucked the earth dry.

“But our time is over.”

Part of me hoped that somewhere at the core of this planet a kernel of life remained. That given time, this world might spring back to life. We would not see it, but that hope…that hope made me smile.

“There is no honor in death. Only life matters,” Gelvira growled, and she launched herself toward me. We tumbled through the wide, gaping portal—one of her making—that opened up behind us, cold and ice snatching at my face as we tumbled through the stars and between realms.

I blinked, staring down at my hands.

One bloody, one clean.

I lifted my gaze to a street filled with bodies—Trubahn’s, shopkeepers’, soldiers’—shadows along the storefronts.

Regular old shadows.

“Turn around. Slowly. Keep your hands up.” Raziel’s eyes were narrowed when I pivoted, his knife raised to throw, Tristan right behind him, his arrow knocked and aimed…straight at my heart.

“Tell us your name.”

“I’m me. Anaria.” My brow wrinkled in confusion as I measured the stark fear on their faces. “Who else would I be?”

My wall was gone. The shadows were gone.

No…I glanced down as something ice-cold coiled around me. My heart stuttered to a stop. The shadows were curled around my feet. Tighter and tighter like they wouldn’t—or couldn’t—let go. I started hyperventilating.

Darklings. My beautiful little darklings.

“Get them off me.” My eyes flew to Raz’s face as I tried to kick them away. “Get them off of me. Now.”

“We can’t. We’ve been trying, princess. They won’t let go.” Raziel and Tristan were as horrified as me, the shadows coiling over my feet and through my ankles, lithe as cats.

The street rumbled when Zephryn flew around the corner barely touching the ground. He crashed to a stop, spraying cobblestones through the air, head weaving back and forth, eyes burning with blue fire, his whole being focused on the unnatural darkness wrapped around my ankles.

He opened his mouth, blue fire building in his throat.

Tristan leapt in front of me, aiming that iron arrow at the dragon’s heart, a lot of good that would do him with those thick scales. And still, Zephryn kept coming.

“Stop.” Cosimo appeared between us. “Stop, Zeph. She is not a threat. The shadows are not threats.” He gave me a sideways glance. “Not anymore.” Zephryn snorted out a puff of noxious smoke.

“Get them off me. They feel like ice.” Oh gods, they were death, rubbing against my skin, wet and cold and slithery, and I couldn’t control my breathing, could hardly stop myself from reaching down and clawing them off my legs as they snaked higher and higher.

“Hold out your hands and call to them.”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Raz stepped closer and the shadows paused, rippled, then expanded until they coiled around my waist. “Look at them. They’re killing her.”

“Call to them, Anaria. They will answer.”

Darklings. The word hovered on the end of my tongue.

“I don’t want them to answer.” My panic grew so intense it became pain trying to claw its way out of my heaving chest. “I want them gone. I want them off me.” I sobbed, darkling, darkling, darkling chanting inside my head like I couldn’t stop myself.

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