I turn to Constantine, rage filling my veins. “You’re a monster.”
“You were the only thing powerful enough to stop me then,” Constantine growls. “But I’ve spent two decades consuming the magic you carelessly leave behind. And I will not be stopped anymore.”
“You destroyed my village,” I say, anger replacing disbelief. “You killed my parents.” I nearly choke on the word as memories flood through me of a family now lost. “Why bring me here? Just to torture me all over again?”
“You need to awaken to what you’ve forgotten, little mage. Awaken to your power. Use it,” he taunts. “So that I can consume it all.”
He takes a step toward me, a darkness slithering over the grass between us. I jump back as the ground itself begins to shake and shudder. Thunder booms again, this time ripping the sky right in two.
I’m thrown sideways as the ground lurches.
Oliver and Constantine stumble.
I’m ripped out of Eldevain and plunged back into the library. And for the first time in my life, there’s no portal bringing me through. Only a destruction of a world and an Extrication of anything remaining from the other side.
Back in the library, a rush of relief courses through me, and I look frantically around for Aries or the others. When my eyes land on the infant Paige, I know I’m still stuck in this memory world instead. My heart squeezes at the sight of her grief-stricken face, and I want desperately to go to her, to comfort her after all she’s just been through.
Before I can get to her, another figure is there, cradling her. Protecting her as the books fall from their shelves. It’s exactly as I saw it when Athenaeum showed me this memory just before I took my vow. Seeing this moment once more hits me hard, and my eyes burn with tears as I imagine what it was like to arrive here—to a world I didn’t know existed—just moments after losing everything I’d ever known. Even as an infant, it must have been devastating.
Terrifying.
But Hoc had become a light in the darkness. My new home.
All this time, I’ve wondered just what my powers are. What I’m capable of. And now, I’ve been granted a front-row seat to witness it in action. Somehow, I’d re-set my world moments after Constantine had destroyed it. Almost as if I possess the power of creation itself.
“The stardust of creation itself,” Constantine had called it.
But he’s wrong.
I’m not creating, I realize as I think back to the grassy meadow.
I’mre-creating. Back in time to a version of the world that didn’t actually include the people I’d been so desperate to restore. My power is a gift and a curse, it seems. A power Constantine wants to consume.
“Now, do you finally understand?” Constantine demands.
“I can re-create worlds that have been destroyed.”
“Yes, little mage,” he replies, tone eager. He’s a cat toying with a mouse before he consumes it.
Delighting in the game and not just what happens once he’s won.
He hovers close to me, watching as my memories wash over me like an ocean. The parents I loved. The older brother I adored. All gone. I let the fury build inside me, using it, letting it fuel everything I possess. This time, when I unleash it on him, I won’t hold back.
Across the aisle, the memory of my arrival into the library continues to play out. Hoc hurries off, carrying my infant self toward the safety of his office, and beyond that, his private apartment. Around him, the other creatures that have managed to escape run amok while keepers yell from elsewhere to contain them. In the chaos, my eyes catch on a shadow slithering along behind Hoc, and I gasp.
The shadow is one I recognize all too well. It’s the same shape and form as the one that stalked me in my bathroom just a few short weeks ago. With the same sort of movement as the darkness Constantine wielded on my homeland.
With disgust, I realize the two are the same. It was him all along.
I whirl on him, rage and fury only growing. “You came into the library the same day I did.”
“I came,” he agrees, his lip curling with fury. “And I licked my wounds. Growing slowly stronger and smarter about this prison you trapped us in.”
“You were the shadow that stalked me here all along.”
“I took the form you reduced me to,” he snarls at me. “And I have bided my time, consuming what crumbs you left me these last years, waiting to rebuild my power and planning my escape.”
I stare at him, shocked at the truth. “You’ve been here all these years. Trapped.”