Cole slammed the door shut behind them, but it was so old that the hinges fell clean away. Eirwen caught it before it could fall, kicking it backwards down the stairs and sending a flurry of shades spiralling to the ground.
She wheeled back to Onyx. The stone was glowing. Softly, faintly, like the embers of a fire.
Onyx was cursing under his breath, squeezing out his blood. It ran in dribbles.
“Onyx!”
“It’s not enough,” he hissed. “It needs more.”
He picked up his dagger again, placing it to his flesh. He paused above his wrist.
“Eirwen,” he started.
“What are you–”
His face tightened, the words shrivelling from his lips.
“No,” she said. “No. No, I won’t let you.”
“It might not kill me, but if it–”
A triumphant crash from the door. Two shades broke through. Cole pushed back, delaying a third. Eirwen sprinted towards one, striking it under the ribs as it raised its axe, seizing the falling weapon from its hand and chucking it into the writhing mass of bodies congealing at the entrance.
The tendrils stopped glowing. Eirwen glanced behind her. A shade had Onyx pinned to the floor, his bloody arm far from the stone.
“On–”
A hand fastened around her ankle, yanking her to the ground. An ugly, twisted face rose over her. She snatched a dagger from her belt and drove it up through the soft, guarded flesh of its chin, straight through the roof of its mouth.
She rolled it over, twisting her blade clean, and stabbed its chest for good measure.
She climbed to her feet. Three were on Onyx now, and Cole had thrown himself at the others, slashing so wildly his blade looked more like silver light. A mass of hands and teeth rushed up to greet him.
She could not save them both. She’d be lucky to save herself. And the sun stone…
She could feel its feeble, humming heart, the faint remnant of life. It pattered through the stone, against the organ swelling in her chest.
“The blood of a king…” she whispered. She looked down at the giant crystal heart, and wiped her dagger clean. “Maybe you’ll accept the blood of a princess instead,” she said. “Or the blood of a queen.”
Onyx let out a yell, a scream, a desperate cry–
She slashed her arm, long and deep. There was no time to wait.
Her blood splashed against the crystal, and light crashed through the chamber, hot and blinding. It struck the searing pain in her arm. She was conscious of someone screaming, followed by the sensation of dissolving, and then–
Nothing.