Page 99 of A Court So Dark
“No!” I tried to crawl forward, a hand reaching out toward the dark, shapeless miasma that floated in the air, pulsing as the light tried to pierce through the shadows, poking, jabbing, fighting.
My friends and others stood around me, palms or knuckles pressed to their eye sockets as they tried to clear their vision, tried to get a glimpse of this incomprehensible situation: the Seelie and Unseelie King incorporeal, locked in a battle of wills while all we could do was watch.
My heart ached with desperation.
The shape throbbed, a giant heart, ten feet off the ground.
Legs wobbling, I stood and stumbled under the large mass. If I released what little was left in me, could I tear them apart? I wanted Kalyll away from Mythorne’s evil, even if he was the one willingly trapping the Unseelie King. To hell with preventing war. We needed to get the fuck out of here.
I raised my hands, determined to try what little I could.
Someone swept in from the side, wrapping their arms around my waist and scooping me off the ground. The next thing I knew, I was being carried away and delivered behind the safety of a tree.
“Let me go!” I pounded on Jeondar’s chest, smearing my fingers with blood. He was wounded, but I didn’t care.
“Kalyll wouldn’t want you doing that, Dani.”
“He’s not the only one who gets to decide.” I shoved him hard.
He staggered back, pressing a hand to his chest.
Walking drunkenly, I rounded the tree, heading back. The shape had shrunk considerably. A moment ago, it had been as big as a car, now it was half that size. Abruptly, it shrank further, right before my eyes, turning no bigger than a transfer token.
Before I could take another step, all that was left was a pinprick, something so impossibly small that it could hardly contain a dust mote.
“Kalyll!”
The pinprick expanded, becoming so giant that it seemed to envelop everything around us. I felt Kalyll in the brush of that power, his energy, his soul.
I reached out with everything that made me who I was and tried to snatch him from the air, lure him to me, but he slipped away like water draining through tightly cupped hands.
“Please, no, no.”
A loud boom reverberated through the air as the energy that surrounded us, unable to continue expanding, ruptured. There was a flash of light that quickly dissipated, then we were left under the dark evening sky, while the shreds of shadows scattered in every direction, the only remnants from the explosion.
I cried out, desperately batting at the air, hopelessly trying to capture the little bits that floated in the air.
“No. Come to me. Where are you?”
I caught a bit of shadow no bigger than ash fall and zealously hugged it to my chest, but when I looked, there was nothing there.
“Oh, God! Please.” I whirled and whirled looking up at the sky as the dark snowfall peppered my face. “Pleaaase. Not Kalyll too.” Tears slid down my cheeks.
Arabis limped to my side, her eyes wavering.
“Where did he go?” I demanded.
She only shook her head, reached out a hand as if to comfort me, but I batted it away. I didn’t need comfort. I needed Kalyll.
I stood in the middle of the clearing and screamed his name at the top of my lungs. He was out there. He had to be.
The dark sky and trees and people around me spun. My legs trembled. I had so little left in me I collapsed to my knees, crying. I stared at my hands, at a tiny dark flake resting between my knuckles.
The nonsensical idea that this flake was a part of Kalyll assaulted me. That powerful male couldn’t be reduced to little more than dust. He was bigger than life. He was my everything.
“Dani,” Cylea’s voice called from the side. “We… need to leave.”
“No!” Was she out of her mind? We couldn’t leave.
