Page 114 of Bright Soul

As they fanned out and their shifters prowled looking for weaknesses in our defensive lines, each of the torchbearers began to speak at the same time. In the past, when Myuna wanted to talk to us, she used her discordant voice straight through her victims. These men and women used their own voices, forming a monotone chorus.

“Where is the son of night? All this trouble and Phaeron refuses to face me?”

“Release your hold on these people, Myuna,” Madigan shouted back at the crowd. She flashed a quick look over her shoulder, where survivors were still fleeing through the ocean gate, now a coordinated line with fighters and mer placed at regular intervals to shove civilians along.

A flat chuckle sounded from the chorus. “It seems we have not be properly re-introduced. Myuna has sent me to crush you in her stead,” they said. The crowd tremored and parted for a petite figure.

Cress gasped and I felt her vertigo second-hand before Ben steadied her and murmured in her ear. Across the short stretch of beach stood Carly, a white apparition with a sneer on her face. Myuna’s light glowed from her irises, a subtle difference to set her apart from the blank white stare of the torchbearers who surrounded her. She held a length of pure white light in her hand as if it were a celestial witch staff.

“Carly!” Cress screamed.

It was so unusual to see Carly turn such a hateful look toward her sister. But as Phaeron had said, this wasn’t her, but a twisted version with any good qualities sanded away. Myuna’s ultimatevision was to turn her into another soul-consuming monster and with that came the death of who Carly used to be.

“My lady has seen potential in me above all others. I am an ascendant now, the one who commands the goddess’s legion.” Though Carly’s lips moved, it was the torchbearers who spoke for her. “However, we do not need to fight. Surrender Phaeron and Cress to the lady’s mercy and the rest of you may run to safety.” The crowd gestured dismissively as a unit.

“Carly, this is crazy! You are the one who should surrender to us. We can help you,” Cress called. Tears pricked her eyes even as the shadows around her stirred, ready for the fight ahead.

“I don’t need your pity anymore. I am more powerful now than you could ever imagine.”

“I’ve neverpitiedyou! You’re my sister, no matter if you’re a supernatural or not. Come with us and we will get the corruption out of you.” She shifted to the side, shouting around the bulk of the fighters who moved into position, bracing for a fight.

A cold smile crossed Carly’s face. “Look, now that I have power, here you are begging me to let it go. If you will not surrender, I will take you to Myuna by force.”

“There is no sense in arguing with her while Myuna has her claws in her,” I gritted out. With a nod, Cress called upon the shadows, letting them wrap around her with an unearthly howl.

In answer, Carly pointed with the staff and her torchbearers surged forward, meeting our forces fist for fist and spell for spell. I flared my wings and took up a defensive stance in front of Cress, assuming rightly that several white-eyed shifters would be going for her throat directly.

She threaded her shadows around my bulk, striking at vulnerable openings as a pair of wolves and a tiger shifter maneuvered around the shining surface of my shield and the swing of my club. I was a living wall. No force that Myuna had called up could get past me to hurt my love.

But for every enemy we downed, two took their place. Ben fought at Cress’s back, relying on his old combat training with daggers in hand and blood runes drawn. Cress channeled some of my durability into him, trading to me some of his agility.

If the torchbearers showed any hint of emotion, they might’ve been surprised at the speed I countered attacks and came back swinging, or how spells designed to gouge and burn flesh only grazed Ben.

I tuned out the screams of the dying and of panicking civilians as our allies were inched backward under the onslaught of the torchbearers. It was only when the possessed guardian witch that’d crossed weapons with me twitched and spoke, did I take a moment to listen. “Too cowardly to fight, son of night?” The torchbearers were everywhere, speaking slightly off sync mid-combat.

I didn’t bother trying to find him, knowing he’d be an elusive curl of smoke until it was time for us to trade places. The librarians must’ve finally passed through the ocean gate for him to have revealed himself.

When he’d first suggested the plan we were about to engage in to save Cress’s sister, I hadn’t thought Carly’s corruption would run so deep that she would seem to willingly turn on us. But he’d told me everything to expect. That name,son of night, was all Myuna. There was every possibility Myuna was watching and puppeting this fight through her ascendant, which meant the threats would begin now that she’d noticed Phaeron’s presence.

“Did you know I used to look up to you? I thought you would save me when Myuna first held me,” Carly continued, the confession too raw to be anything but her own. “How foolish of me. Like any shadow, there you are, tiptoeing around conflict. Look at what happens when you pick the light.”

A ray of white radiance blasted from her direction at the back of her forces, reflecting off the lake’s surface. It appeared to be a direct hit, as Phaeron slipped out of his shadow form and crashed into the water. He emerged, sputtering, on the back of a nickering kelpie.

The glance over at him also had me catching a glimpse of the dwindling number of civilians. The other side of the battlefield was full of the drowned corpses of torchbearers who’d crossed the red-scaled mermaid and her forces. But instead of pressing their advantage, they began to retreat toward the water with Willow at the back of the procession of noncombatants.

I fought on. Though the mer had helped, they wouldn’t stop the onslaught of possessed aiming for Cress. It did not take long for Phaeron to emerge at my side, drawing his sword. He dripped salt water, looking pissed but unharmed. “Go,” he said. Black shadows swarmed up his arms, forming talons over his fingers.

“You don’t want to do the honors?” I confirmed.

“You are better suited for the task. I will make amends with the girl when she is back to her senses.”

I nodded and sucked my quartz club back into my arm, reforming it into the tool I needed. I flared my wings further, careful of where my allies were standing, and lifted off the ground with a heavy flap. Phaeron moved into the place I’d been after a second flap took me airborne and sailing over the heads of the combatants.

Carly realized what was happening when I landed with a thud before her, letting my weight knock her off balance. She bared her teeth and turned the staff toward me, shooting a superheated wave of light at me. My obsidian body sizzled and heated, but stone could be heated hundreds of times without sustaining any damage.

I took a step forward and she scrambled back. Whipping the staff, her next attack was a spinning disc of white light, which I deflected with a lift of my shield. “You cannot harm me. I was tempered to fight the Hungering Darkness, whom you are not,” I rumbled.

Her breathing quickened, a glimpse at the scared teen girl under the overwhelming influence of Myuna’s magic. “Get away from me,” she yelped, this time without a monotone echo.

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