Page 115 of Bright Soul

“It is for your own good,” I answered, grabbing her wrist and smacking the staff out of her hand with a bash of my shield, before I purposefully dropped it on the sand. A set of quartz handcuffs emerged from my hand, sealing around one wrist. We wrestled for her other hand before I managed to grab and secure it. Carly screamed at the top of her lungs when I grabbed her and took to the sky.

The screaming faded as the air thinned. I sped through the sky as fast as my stone body would allow, pumping my wings with urgency. My destination, a single containment room and the young man waiting to see if he could do anything to help her return to herself.

Carly whipped her head around suddenly, hitting an unnatural angle that caused her neck to crackle.“Unhand my chosen ascendant now,”she said in the fully wailing cacophony of Myuna’s rage-filled presence.

I met her glowing white eyes. Here was the moment Phaeron knew he was not strong enough for. “Or what?” I asked.

“I flood her with my power,”Myuna answered with a flourish of light pulsing from Carly’s body for a moment.“To your simple mortal mind, she will die. She will become something greater than Endaeron ever was, capable of consuming even your rock-encased soul.”

She inspected my expressionless face, the threat hanging between us. Then I said, “Bullshit.”

The answering bellow was deafening.“Do you not care for this girl at all? Would you not mourn if she died?”

“There’s no need for mourning,” I stated. “You are not powerful enough to do more than bluster.”

“Hmm. The prophecy only concerned the son of night, his mate, and his daughter. It never mentioned a man of stone impervious to magic. Who are you?”Myuna asked.

“My name is Geo.”

“Geo. I look forward to consuming you whole.”Her presence left Carly, who fell into a limp faint in my arms.

40

CRESS

When Geo carried Carly away and she screamed, so did the torchbearers. It was the scene of a horror movie with the gore washing into the lake as the water flowed over our feet. With the retreat of the mer with who they thought was Willow, the dry stretch to the ocean gate closed and splashed eddies of pinkish foam over the battlefield.

When the echoes of screaming faded, the torchbearers dropped weapons and spells, eyes glazing over to blank, zombie-like stares. Phaeron placed his sword aside and grabbed the soul of the nearest one, untying it from Myuna’s control.“Do you see what to do?”He asked in Soiluirian.

Braza answered with affirmative from my lips.

“Madigan!” Phaeron shouted. The woman’s red-clad head turned his way. “Carly’s lost control!”

“Arms down,” she shouted. Her fighters echoed the order and took the cue to stop fighting, watching with unease as the torchbearers that were still alive went limp, and some collapsed bonelessly with their purpose gone.

I let Braza take control for now and she turned on her soul sight. While I was disoriented by the sudden double-images overlaid behind everyone, their souls appearing like auras except larger and with more vivid and varied colors, she knew exactly what she was looking at and what to do. While she worked, my suppressed thoughts came back up from where I’d buried them during the battle.

That’d been my sister saying those awful things. I couldn’t get her hate-filled stare out of my head, aimed directly at me. Even though I knew, logically, that she was as much a victim as the torchbearers we’d had to kill, it hurt. She’d suffered and become this shade of herself…a servant brainwashed to believe Myuna’s side was just.

“If we can remove the seed of corruption planted in her soul, she will return to the girl you know,”Braza said privately.

“That’s a big ‘if.’”Though Lucas had been able to save the less afflicted souls, who knew if he was powerful enough to erase the full and malicious intent behind Carly’s deep corruption.

Phaeron had been able to confirm that Lucas had rescued those people from unnatural status, returning their souls to the state they’d been in before encountering a dread goddess. There were no others with magic twisted into a new form, like Lucas, but also none so deeply changed as Carly.“If she remains unnatural, then what?”I asked.

Braza sighed deeply.“Another big ‘if.’ She may have to be contained in a library, depending on if she develops a hunger for souls. Otherwise, she would be monitored for the rest of her life and fed bits of powercore energy to stave off any possible cravings. In the best possible scenario, Lucas removes Myrna’s influence completely and Carly becomes fully human again.”

After the pain of having her soul warped by Myuna…well, I hoped my sister would be okay as her normal self.“Now that I have power, here you are begging me to let it go,”she hadsaid. But I didn’t know if that was her deepest wish, twisted by corruption, or a true reflection of how she felt within.

“While there is no harm in speculation, we have one last fight ahead of us,”Braza said, cutting into my thoughts. Our allies helped move the unconscious torchbearers we’d saved first, dragging them away from the lake. Then came the dead, pulled out of the water before they could sink into the waves.

Though many of us had been hardened against such a sight after the awful fights that’d occurred with countless unnatural creatures over these long months, fighters and medical personnel alike wept over several of the fallen. The air had changed. We were all that was left in the whole of this pocket dimension, other than Myuna. And I was afraid more would be sacrificed to see this through to the end.

I looked around for my men, coven mates, and friends. Phaeron was a few feet away, wringing water out of his hair. For a few moments, I saw him with Braza’s soul sight and paused.Son of nightbecame a lot more literal all of a sudden.

Phaeron’s soul was a rich, velvety black, with a flicker of white that arched toward the top. The patch of Endaeron looked like a crescent moon at the right angle and I expected the piece of my soul we’d swapped with his mating bite would look the same way. Yet instead, I saw my light coming through in pinpricks, like his soul had been carved from a starry night.

I blinked and the sight was gone. He’d noticed my stare and tilted his head. “What has you so spellbound, my heart?” he asked.

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