Page 105 of Iridian

I stood up, tried to silence the voices, just for a moment. Just until I got to her.

It worked.

“Baby, what are you doing?” I asked, though I knew.

She looked at me and she wasbright. Not just her aura, but her brightness slipped through her eyes, too. I saw her light. It was the most beautiful light of all.

“I’m drawing the circle. They’re not going to knock you out, not before we’re done here,” she said, and her determination had always fascinated me, but now it did so more than ever. We were surrounded on all sides, but she couldn’t care less about the screaming and the shouting of the crowds, about the IDD soldiers—or my brothers who were trying to get to me.

A command sent to my soldiers, those who remained—which was really merely a thought. All I did was think about them pulling up a new ward around us, locking us in, and it was done.

Colorful magic exploded around us, rose up in the air into a dome. My brothers were pushed back by the strength of it—they couldn’t even fight the soldiers anymore, couldn’t get close.

At least for a little while. Because that ward camefrom me,and regardless of the fact that the curse amplified my power, I was spent almost completely. The fighting, the trying to keep up with both the voices and my own self, it had exhausted me so thoroughly.

No more.

Rosabel was right. The time to do it wasnow. I watched as she continued to draw the shapes with her blood, and she’d remembered almost all the details. I reminded her of the rest, and she had the circle ready for me within minutes.

Then she stood up and put the bracelet around my wrist.

Whatever it was about us, whatever had happened on the Drainage in the Iris Roe, it had connected us. I never lost power over my soldiers whenshehad the bracelet. It was like we were one and the same when it came to magic.

“Go!” she said, pushing me into the circle. “Go ahead, Taland. Do it. Set them free.”

Tears in her beautiful eyes.

I reached for her cheek. “Don’t cry, sweetness. We made it.” Because even if we didn’t, and even if I felt like I was about to tear myself wide open, I hated to see her hurting. Worried.

I hated it more than anything else.

“We’ll make it once we’re done here.” She held my hand with hers, turned her head and kissed my palm, and just like every other kiss she’d ever given me, it imprinted on my skin. Made me alive.

I smiled. “Then let’s get done here fast.”

The memories of the soldiers were inside my mind forever and I lived them as if they were mine, as if I wasthem,as if I’d been with them right under their skins at every moment these memories were created. I knew how each one of the hundred and twenty ordinary men had turned into weapons, had linked themselves to one soul without fully comprehending what they were doing. Regret gnawed at all of them. Not a single soul wished to have done what they did, to have agreed to work with Titus, who’d promised them so much. Who’d promised not only to take all their problems away, to ensure their loved ones lived healthy and wealthy lives, but he’d promised them immortality, too.

Now, it was time I undid that curse he’d sold to them as a gift.

I’d thought this through for days without realizing it, and then for only hours deliberately, so I knew what to do, at least. I finally saw all the pieces of the spell with which Titus had ensnared the souls of these men, had turned them into what they were today. I collected pieces of it in their minds, their memories. I remembered the words they’d heard exactly as he’d said them.

Now all I had to do was reverse it.

I winked at Rosabel to tell her that I was okay, even if I wasn’t, not really. I didn’t know what would happen to me here and now, if I would survive it, if I even had the power to see all ofit through. After all, there were a hundred and twenty souls here, inside me, that didn’t belong in this time or place.

“Don’t die,” she told me, but she smiled. She shone even brighter when she smiled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, and for once I really prayed that I wouldn’t. Because it was over. The Council was gone. There was nobody out there who was coming for us anymore. We could be free for real, she and I.

If everything went right, wewouldbe.

So, I began.

My brothers called my name. They screamed it at the top of their lungs. The crowds did, too, except theycheeredit.

The moment I began to whisper the words of that curse in reverse, the souls felt it,knewwhat I was going to do. They let go of me, stopped pulling me down, stopped screaming at me to help them, save them, set them free. Stopped pushing all their pain and their misfortune to the center of my mind.

Titus had silenced them, had shut them off completely, hadorderedthem to never let a single thought or word escape into his mind.