Page 154 of Master of Storms
And then suddenly the spell broke.
One moment it was sucking the life from his veins, and the next thing he knew, power was pouring back through him. He went to his knees with a shout as his head exploded.
And then it was gone.
Ishtar was gone.
The pain was gone.
The spell gone.
The world went white and silent, his ears ringing as the spell ground out. He found himself staring up at his mother, who gaped at him from Elin’s body.
“No!” she screamed, staring at the circular object in her hand.
It was mere gold again, but the emerald in its heart flashed, and suddenly it was sucking at them. All of them. The spell had been broken, but now it demanded its due. Asoul.
“No!” Amadea dropped the key, murderous intent filling her expression as she ripped at the dagger sheathed at her belt.
“Do it!” he yelled to Malin, staggering to his feet and wrapping his arms around Elin’s slim body. He wrestled the dagger from her. “Get Elin out!”
Pebbles skittered across the ground toward the key. Dirt flew toward it. The emerald darkened, until it was a gaping black hole of magic. Deprived of magic, it sought to drag the entire earth within it.
“Do it,” he screamed as his mother tried to headbutt him.
Árdís stepped forward, both hands aglow. “You should have died when you had the chance, Mother.”
Green light smoked away from Elin’s body. She threw her head back and screamed.
Malin continued chanting, reading directly from the book in her hands.
“Let go of me!” Amadea raged, driving her elbow back into Marduk’s solar plexus.
“Never.”
She screamed and fought like a wildcat, until his arms were bruised and bloodied. Malin’s chanting grew louder. The light springing from Árdís and Ishtar’s fingertips formed a net around the former queen.
“I will see you all dead!” Amadea screamed.
“Alas, you appear to be stripped of all your weapons.”
She started laughing. “All but one.”
What did she mean by that?
He gave her a sharp look, but Rurik stepped forward with the knife forged of raw matter.
A Sumerian blade woven of a hundreddrekisouls.
One that would cause no harm to a physical body, but would slice straight through a soul.
This was the dangerous bit. Because the knife would not differentiate between Elin and Amadea’s souls.
“Malin?” Marduk yelled.
Her voice rose. A silvery form began to slip from Elin’s body—a startled wisp of a blondedreklinglooking around her in shock as Malin’s magic drew her sister’s soul from her body. Elin’s soul flew toward the necklace Malin held and vanished inside the gem.
“Done!” Malin called, sinking to her knees as the strain of the spell struck her down.
