She’d always known better, but his heart pounded with renewed fear when he noted how her eyes were locked onto the shadowy man, the silver in them swirling frantically. “He doesn’t want me,” she said and pushed Reeve away from the circle, farther from where Syphon had come to a stop.
Syphon clamped down onto one of the vines with a hand of too many fingers, and there was a terrible snapping and slithering amongst the tendrils as a form was lifted out of the brambles. “I think I’ll start with this one.”
Charlie’s eyes were closed, her head lolling to the side, and blood prickled up on her skin where the thorns had stabbed her. The vines began to squeeze.
“No!” Celeste stepped forward, and of course Syphon called back his arcana—that was what villains did, attacking those who were helpless to manipulate those who would do anything to help—and he left the girl tangled up but still breathing.
Reeve eyed the place he could sever Charlie from the vines. If he was quick and his aim was true, he could release her and fling her from harm’s way, and then—Celeste’s hand wrapped around his atop the Obsidian Widow Maker’s pommel.
There was a coldness then, a faint hovering of dark arcana that weaved through the warm, spring air. Celeste pressed herself up against his side. “I love you, Reeve,” she said, voice too low and solemn for the meaning of the words. He’d longed to hear them, to speak them, yet they were tainted then with a downfall he would do anything to prevent. “Please, remember that, no matter what happens.”
Murky shadows encircled Reeve’s limbs and his chest. Too quick and familiar to be shrugged off, noxscura laced itself between his fingers and tightened, and the sword slipped from his grasp right into Celeste’s waiting hand. In an instant, his arms were wrenched backward and bound behind him.
“Celeste?” he croaked, struggling against the magic he had come to trust, gazing up at the woman casting it on him as it dragged him to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not glancing back. “It’s the only way. I have to give him what he wants.”
Celeste wielded the Obsidian Widow Maker in two hands, gripping the hilt and using all of her strength to hold it aloft. The blade pulsed with a black light, so like her flame in the greenhouse, and Reeve’s chest pulsed in kind. It was still beautiful, that dark light, just like her.
She ripped the blade through the air, and shadows erupted from the obsidian steel, no divinity left within, only noxscura. Cobbles burst in the wake of the arcane blast, Briarwyke’s circle split right in two, and the dilapidated well was completely destroyed. In its place, a hole was left, darkness beyond.
Reeve would have been impressed if he weren’t so terrified of what he knew she was about to do. “Celeste, no, please!”
But she was already running. He struggled against her magic, calling up Valcord’s light from deep in his chest, but he had lost Sid, and she was stronger now than she had ever been.
Then Celeste dove into the darkness and was lost.
CHAPTER 29
KNOWING WHEN NOT TO LET GO
Celeste had never allowed noxscura to take her so fully, but she knew the well’s bottom was quite a long way to fall, and she wouldn’t survive the landing without a cushion. That was one thing shadows were good for, especially when they had been so entangled in her life and learned that she craved soft and buoyant things to see her through.
Because the shadowshadlearned even if Celeste hadn’t noticed—they were almost as good as she was at absorbing the realm around them, but they were slightly better at bouncing back.
Celeste landed gingerly on the rocky ground, but when her arcana cleared, she was only an inch away from the crackling dome. She knew when she saw the ring of light shimmering above in the caverns, that the noxscura pit was directly under the well in Briarwyke’s center, and when Reeve had sliced through the arcana suspending the water, she knew too there would no longer be a barrier to it, but it was still a shock to be inches away from disaster.
She scrambled backward, the fear that flooded her veins intensifying when she looked upward to see Syphon swooping down the destroyed well. Being followed was exactly what she wanted, but there could be no one else—the risk was far too great when pure noxscura killed almost everything it touched, and she had made a vow. Even if it were only to herself, she would keep her promise to protect.
Ripping her arm through the air, she sent more shadows to the surface, obstructing the hole and sealing herself in the depth of the cavern with Syphon. If her hold binding Reeve didn’t last, that barrier would.
“What in Empyrea do you think you’re doing?” shouted the sword.
“Crickets, you’re heavy,” she grumbled back, taking up the blade with two hands again and watching the tip wobble. The noxscura within her locket went wild.
Syphon coalesced on the other side of the dome. So close, his features were quick this time to fall into place, more authentic than they’d ever been with the divine glow lighting him from beneath. No more was he mostly haze and a collection of maybe-man-like bits, reminiscent of those she’d known, but wholly himself. He had a face now, he had a body, and though it was all too big and monstrous, it was complete, the dull orange and green and blue lights of the sieves he’d absorbed contained within.
But there was still something he wanted, needed even, and only she could give it to him.
“I was beginning to worry,” said Syphon, tipping his head. Raven hair brushed over his shoulders, mesmerizing in its movement, and citrine eyes sparkled with the radiant light below. “But I should have known you’d come—your sister was wrong about your loyalty, you simply place it where it is deserved.”
Celeste’s gaze fell to the dome of crackling arcana, the brightness of the golden light there meant to be protection—a brightness she could feel the ghost of inside herself. Her stomach tightened around that feeling. It had been love that put the protection there years ago, the love of someone who wanted to keep Briarwyke safe.
But the dome had been damaged since, and she understood now: the blade she’d seen in pieces within the Fitzroy Manor had done that, but that weapon hadn’t been strong enough to completely break through. It had been foolish for Fitz’s father to try and access the noxscura with an inferior weapon some forty years prior, probably prodded on by an overzealous blood mage. They had only proved to crack the shield and allowed the dark arcana to leak out, slowly infecting the town ever since.
The curse on Briarwyke was real, the village left to suffer through the poison that was noxscura. Poison that only Celeste could risk enduring. But even if she could seal the shield’s cracks, the pool would be left, a constant, deadly threat, forever sought out by arcane users for selfish purposes. Users like her sister, the secret of why she’d brought them to Briarwyke and toiled for so long now painfully obvious.
“What are you going to do with the villagers?” Her voice shook, but she pushed the words past the lump that threatened to keep her quiet forever. She needed to know because so often things went wrong, and she had surely used up all her luck the previous night when things had, for once, gone right.
