Page 156 of The Seeker
It didn’t matter what he did. He crushed them under his hand, but more came. They covered him. Covered hisreshon. Covered the mound. The insects swarmed over everything before they began to eat Rhys alive. He screamed but he did not let go. They crawled into his eyes and mouth, devouring him from within.
Meera opened her eyes. “NOW!”
She gripped Sari’s hand and ran to the front porch. Bozidar saw her and looked up.
“Somasikara.”He grinned.
Meera and Sari shouted the final lines of the spell.
“Ya kaza pure anán
Atam sukha misran.”
Return the rage given, bind darkness within. Meera ripped the vision of horror from the mind of her mate and flung it toward the fallen angel.
“Ya kidin ruta a briya
Vash livah a suf ó silaam.”
Yoke pride to the soul and bring on the end. She arrowed her magic directly into Bozidar’s heart, using the black hole she’d woken in herself to tunnel into the light of his being. He was a star, but even stars could be swallowed.
“Zimya dawan, Bozidar!”she cried.“Da’anamé!”
She didn’t plead for his submission, Meera demanded it.
Bozidar’s eyes went wide. The arrogant grin fell from his face. He dropped Damien and Ata, who were both struggling to use their swords, and his shoulders hunched inward.
“What have you done?” His glorious countenance turned grey.
“Do you need to ask?” Meera watched in fascination and horror as a black mark bloomed on his chest and spread. It traced the lines of histalesmand slowly covered his body. Bozidar’s eyes lost their focus and turned inward. The angel began to groan. Then he began to keen.
“Get away from him,” Ata yelled.
Damien and Ata dragged away any singer or scribe near the angel. Rhys was on the ground, and he wasn’t moving. Patiala knelt next to him. She looked up at Meera with tears in her eyes.
“He’s not dead,” Meera whispered. “He is not.”
Now was not the time for fear. She opened her mouth and sang a song of victory as Bozidar fell to the earth. He writhed on the ground, curling into himself and wailing like a wounded animal. He gnashed his teeth and snapped at them, but he could not move.
“No!” he wailed. “What have you done?”
Damien limped up the stairs to Sari. “What do the Fallen dream of,” he asked, “when they are locked in their own nightmares?”
“Whatever it is,” Ata said, “they fear it.”
Meera kept singing even when her father appeared behind her. Maarut laid a hand on her shoulder, and Meera reached up and squeezed his fingers, realizing too late he was missing one of them.
“Don’t stop singing,” he whispered. “I’ll get Rhys.”
Maarut walked down the stairs to his mate. With the gentle hands of a father, he lifted Rhys as Patiala held his head. They brought her mate up the stairs and disappeared into the house.
Bozidar lay curled and twisted on the ground. Meera descended the steps of the old house and walked over to the monster. Ata, Damien, and Sari walked with her.
His face was inhuman. Ugly and twisted. Frozen in nightmares. He didn’t taunt or mock them. Black veins marked his skin, and his eyes stared into nothing.
Meera turned to the bloody warrior at her side. “Ata?”
“You can kill him with your voice, but not without killing your mate. That was the sacrifice Akune and I didn’t know that heaven demanded. Even knowing that, Akune wouldn’t have hesitated,” Ata said. “Not if it meant killing the Fallen and freeing their children. He believed, even when I didn’t. That was how we found peace,Somasikara. We made the Fallen fear humanity. Even the humanity of their own children.”
