Page 165 of Curse of Darkness
“This doesn’t have to end this way. You can spend the rest of your days within the tower at Clydain—"
Her head whips toward me. “Never!”
Plucking something from within her gown, she casts it on the ground between us.
Flames leap up around her, searing a rune into the air.
“I would rather die than see you defeat me,” she hisses, and then a portal suddenly appears.
Grabbing her chain-mail skirts, she stalks inside it.
“Vi!” Thiago yells.
I lunge forward, trying to follow her, but the portal snaps shut.
In the distance, magic rumbles through the Hallow.
Vibrations echo out from it as though it’s been activated.
I snatch for those threads of power, but they’re gone. Obliterated. The Hallow powering down.
“She used the Hallow portal.” Plucking up the object she cast down, I realize it’s a circle of stone that’s been chiseled from one of the sentinel stones of the Hallow. I never even realized that was a possibility. Maybe it was something the crown taught her.
“Curse it,” Thiago swears. “Where did she go?”
I look toward the northwest.
There’s only one place shewouldgo.
“Eidyn.” She went to Eidyn, to the battlefront. “She’s going to kill Thornwood and take control of her army.”
Thiago slams his fist against a tree, then turns back to me, his teeth bared. “The Hallow will take too long to repower. Here. Wrap your arms around my neck.” His wings snap into being, and he flares them wide. “I’ll fly us back to Briar Keep and we can use the Hallow there and—”
“Wait.” I splay my palm over his chest, feeling his heartbeat kick beneath it. And then I reach for the power of the Hallow.
Wells. They are wells of power.
And this one is currently sucked dry by mother’s portal. It will take an hour or two to repower.
But there are the threads of the leylines seeping out from it.
Other wells of power igniting along their gleaming web.
I pluck at their power, siphoning from them and channeling it all into the Hawthorne Castle Hallow. Using the piece of stone she used to anchor myself to the Hallow.
“I don’t think I can take us all,” I tell Theron.
He nods, stepping back and bowing his head. “I’ll get myself home.”
“You’re injured.”
A swift smile. “But not dead, my queen. Now go. Go and stop that bitch.”
The ground rumbles beneath us.
“Vi?” Thiago places his hand over mine. “What are you doing?”
I look up and realize I’m glowing. “Be ready. I’m about to drop us at Eidyn.”
