Page 108 of Curse of Darkness
Seeing the pain on his face.
Knowing this is the only vengeance I can offer my mother.
Hearing the whisper of those souls in my head and heart and feeling the Darkness within me exult as it slowly becomes whole.
Shoving my hand into his chest, I close my fingers around his heart and jerk him close to me. “For my mother,” I whisper in his ear, right before I tear his heart from his chest.
Shadows bleed from him.
Hundreds of them.
All the little pieces of Death’s soul, stolen from others.
I drink them in, the shadows winding through my skin, their whispers filling my ears until they echo with one voice, a single word spoken from a hundred throats.
“Finally,”whispers the voice inside me.
The voice that’s been there all my life.
“There’s just one little piece missing.”
I let the brittle mess of dried skin and bones that was once my father drop to the ground and turn.
There it is.
One last piece.
One last sliver of my soul.
With it I will be whole again.
Staring at me with wide, scared eyes—eyes so eerily familiar, it takes me a moment to realize I’ve seen them in the mirror every day of my life. She curls her arms around the grimalkin, her face paling as I take a step toward her.
Amaya.
“No.”I won’t let you do this.
But as the Darkness overwhelms me, all I can see is that one final piece of Death’s soul deep within her.
The world becomes still and dark. Silent as the grave. Sound rushes past my ears like a howling wind; only it’s like no wind I’ve ever known. It streams toward the blot of shadow in front of me.
Something darts in front of me, a palm slamming against my chest.
“No,” Vi whispers, and suddenly I can see her eyes as she comes into focus. Her face. The fierceness there. She’s radiant in this darkness. She gleams like the captured light of a star. “No. Not her.”
The world collapses back in upon me.
Blues and reds and stormy grays. The sky. Vi’s roses, blooming now as her thorns bury the mess of flesh that was Malakhai. A kaleidoscope of color, as though I stepped from the shadows back into the real world.
But it’s the green I notice most.
The green of my daughter’s eyes.
Not a blot of shadow.
Not a sliver of Death’s soul.
My daughter.
