Page 94 of Curse of Darkness
“No. Never.”
“He rides the night like a merciless hunter,” he quotes gently. “And his touch brings ruin.”
“The only ruin you’ve brought was within me. Against that wall.” I close my fingers around his hand, letting the power of the lands bubble up within me.
I wasn’t imagining it. There’s something there in the air between us. The scalding heat of light and power within me meeting the chill decay of death. Push too far one way and the world will be obliterated in a scalding wave of fire. But if we lean too far toward his magic, his power, then the creeping chill of nothingness will silence all kingdoms.
“Vi.” The shock and awe in his voice tells me he feels it too.
The power wells inside me, wanting to dosomething. Anything.
It spills from us, golden light tying us in threads. Burning through my veins like dark flames.
“What was that?” Thiago rasps, yanking his hand from mine.
A perfect rose glistens on the bush.
One of crystalline perfection. Translucent, with petals that look like they might shatter at the merest breath of wind, and yet when I reach out to touch them, my nails scrape against living, breathing glass.
“A melding.” I can’t help staring at my hands, because that power… wasn’t wholly mine.
I reach for him again, but as our hands touch, all I can feel is the physical impressions of it. Whatever just happened, the link is gone. Faded.
“And so the Light sang into the glorious Dark,” I whisper, remembering one of my favorite passages from the book Lucere gave to me. “And the Darkness sang back, and together, they fused to create a glorious act of Creation. Something beyond life. Something beyond death.” I pluck the rose from the bush, lifting it to my nose. It smells like midnight and sex, like velvet and moonlight, all woven together in a heady mix. “Something beyond forever.”
“What does that mean?” Thiago breathes, placing his palm squarely against mine.
“It means that you were made for me, and I for you. And together….” I twirl the rose, still breathless with its beauty, “maybe we can do wondrous things.”
20
THIAGO
The following three days pass in a blur as my friends help me reorient myself with the world. It’s as though I never left. There are endless meetings, arguments about supplies for the warfront, questions about what Adaia is up to. Thalia enforces a strict dinner time in which we all come together.
Me at one end of the table. Amaya at the other.
She won’t look at me.
She won’tlookat me.
And maybe it’s better this way, because every time we eat, I have to curl my fingers into a fist so tight my nails threaten to break the skin, just to remind myself that I am me.
That I’m nothim.
Nobody asks about what happened to me. Not even Vi.
It’s as though I simply closed my eyes and went to sleep for several weeks, and returned to find mayhem.
Inside, I feel it though.
Every meeting is a means of going through the motions. I can’t stop myself from feeling distant as they argue over inconsequential things. Inside, there’s a scream trapped deep in my throat. An itch beneath my skin. A knife of pain slicing through my nerves.
“Do you think you can silence me forever?” whispers Death, during the middle of one such meeting.
“Preferably.”
It surges within me angrily like a sudden lump in my throat. I force it down, focusing on swallowing, on—
