“More blame. You don’t even realize your deflection is a double-edged blade. Killing yourself as much as you tried to kill me.”
“Enough of your judgmental words. I can hardly stand to look at you.”
Auster’s blue lightning broke across his fingers, and I formed a wall of light to deflect his first attack. Then we unleashed our centuries-worth of anguish. We attacked using the shards of our ages long friendship. The love we once harbored for each other turned into knives to bleed each other dry.
I needed the turmoil of him out of my bones, drained from my blood, once and for all. I didn’t want to emerge from this battle unscathed when in some ways he was right, and I did blame myself for what he became. With every collision of our magick, I mourned him. Perhaps if I’d been honest sooner, tried to explain in another way why I chose Nyte, but it didn’t mean I abandoned Auster, things could have turned out differently. I never wanted to choose between them. I didn’t want to believe Auster wouldmakeme choose.
Tears swam in my eyes, but my movements never faltered. We staggered over the debris of the Nova castle while the night darkened and thunder boomed across the sky with every strike of our power. As if the world were mourning with us. Two lifelong friends turned enemies and only one could emerge from this fight. I wasn’t giving up my second life to the one who took my first.
We were a devastating dance of storm and starlight, and our magick was the song building toward a desolate, tragic ending. As we edged closer to each other, Auster was faltering. From the beginning of our fight he wasn’t as strong as he should have been, and I could see the panic in his eyes as he wondered why his magick wasn’t conjuring as strong as I’d expected.
But his will to survive drove his reckless madness, and his next strike hit my shoulder, sending me sprawling. The strike itself wouldn’t have been enough to wound me except the ground was a deadly plane as well. Something impaled my side and I cried out.
Auster marched toward me, pulling a knife with a blade of dried crimson blood free. It had to be Nyte’s, and Auster was more than capable of killing me again.
I scrambled to my feet. Adrenaline drove me to grip the wood lodged in me and pull without thinking. The pain threatened my consciousness, but I blinked the darkness away, stumbling over broken stone and wood to gain distance. Time.
Lightsdeath was a pacing white wolf inside me, but I wouldn’t let it out. Notyet. This fight meant too much for me to not be aware of what I was doing. After all we’d been through, I needed every memory from our beginning to our end.
“We could have had everything,beeneverything,” Auster said, clinging to his hatred.
“Your jealousy ruined us,” I said through a pained breath, clutching my bleeding side.
“I was jealous, yes. How could I not be?I, not he, was perfect for you. You stood to gain everything: love, a powerful bond, and a long reign over Solanis while I lost everything.”
“You were a High Celestial with power over your own province, which I could never take away. You could have found love with someone else. Power drove you to madness.”
“Not power itself. The fact you handed it, on a damn silver platter, to the one who had terrorized our land after you spread your legs for him,” he seethed.
Those words seeped into me like poison and I lashed out. The flare of light from my palm slammed into his chest while he was caught unawares and he went flying back. His wings unglamoured to catch him in time, sparing him from injury like that I’d sustained from a tumble to the ground.
Auster retaliated with two fingers pointing toward me, and strokes of blue lightning surged toward me. The attack was so weak that I barely used any of my own magick to smother it. Auster stood there in fury and confusion, glancing down at his hands.
“Something wrong?” I taunted.
His jaw locked and he summoned lightning over both palms. He couldn’t hold it for long and it faded out.
“What is happening…?” he muttered to himself.
“The nightmares didn’t go away, I see. You’ve been taking that sleeping tonic every night, haven’t you?”
Confusion deepened the furrow of his brow. A breathy laugh broke from my lips.
I said, “I didn’t think it would work. Or at least I thought you would surely start to feel it before it could truly affect you.”
“What are you talking about?” he snapped.
I relished the triumph that straightened my spine.
“The nebulora I added to your sleeping tonic. I tested it first at the wedding feast you forced me to attend in the castle, putting drops in your wine to see if you would detect the taste. You didn’t. So I met with your courtesan and bribed her to add it to your sleeping tonic ever since. It’s been slowly numbing your power.”
When that revelation sank in, it was like every display of fury he’d shown before was nothing compared to what snapped his resolve completely now.
Auster’s roar of outrage and disbelief rattled through me, and lightning exploded from him.
I managed to form a shield of defense before it hit me, but it shot far and wide. Hitting distant buildings to crumble his once prosperous land further and striking the heavens to break a violent rainstorm.
His power snuffed out all at once and I released mine. Auster couldn’t summon his lightning again; that explosion of violent anguish was the last of his reserves, but he wasn’t giving up. Not even close.
