“I can stop them,” I whispered into his neck. “I’m not sure exactly how, but I know I can.”
“Good.” He didn’t question me, didn’t disbelieve the outlandish statement I’d just made.
Rearing my head back, tears welled, burning, stinging with the truth. “But I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“Why not?” He searched my eyes.
“Because I don’t know what will happen to you,” I admitted with a sob.
He smiled, like I hadn’t just told him what weighed in the balance. “It’s too late for me.”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “No, that’s not true. I need you.” My tears dotted the ground.
“You have me. You always will.” He placed his hand over my chest, above my heart. “If you can stop them, Ro, you have to do it, no matter what happens to me.” The muscle on his brow twitched, a flicker of pain evident.
Overwhelming sadness consumed me. “Don’t make me,” I whispered, my lip trembling uncontrollably.
His manly hands cupped my face. “I love you, Ro Collins. From the moment you shot me with an arrow, until my last breath, until we’re reunited with the gods.”
“I love you, Dae.” I launched onto his lips, pouring everything I had, every part of me, into that kiss.
“Guys,” Tio said.
Breaking our kiss killed a part of my soul, but I turned to look. Tio pointed northward.
From the depths of the northern trees, a single man emerged from an impending cloud of darkness. Marvoe strode toward us, hands outstretched at his sides. Dark magic curled like a wall ofwaves behind him. What I’d felt before nearing the Black Pool paled in comparison to the solid wall of death that loomed before us.
Receiving whatever combination of power Evenita had given me opened my magical senses, allowing me to feel the scope of its raw, malicious power on a new level.
It almost drowned out the energy that radiated from the forest around me, the life that lived in every leaf, every branch, and patch of soil.
Almost.
Dae stepped in front, sheltering me behind his broad, solid body, and threw his hands out before him. The tendrils of magic that Marvoe wielded curled in on themselves at Dae’s command, shrinking back ever so slightly. Marvoe halted a couple hundred yards from us at the edge of the small clearing, still obscured by green forestry now rotting beneath his putrid magic, a smile growing on his corrupted face.
“You can’t stop this,” he bellowed. “The darkness will spread over every part of this land, consume every creature, feeding it with more and more power as it grows. The darkness is everything.” He stepped forward, the inky ocean advancing a step with him.
Dae shuddered, his arms shaking as he tried with all his might to stop the encroaching darkness. When he reached his limit, he dropped to a knee, still attempting to hold his ground. Marvoe moved again, the booming force of the dark magic pushing back against Dae’s instruction. His other knee hit the ground, his body buckling from the overwhelming control Marvoe had over the magic.
“That’s enough of that,” Marvoe said. With the flick of his wrist, Dae’s arm snapped at an ungodly angle and he cried out in pain.
“No!” I reached for him, but Marvoe moved his hand, and Dae’s body tumbled and rolled toward him, like being reeled in on a fishing rod. Marvoe could control the dark magic within Dae, and his body was now a puppet. Dae screamed with every roll against his broken arm until he stopped within the confines of the dark magic.
I couldn’t get to him. The moment I’d touch it, I’d die.
“I never should have let you go,” Dante appeared beside me, heaving in his beastly form, malice dripping from every word as he shouted to the poisoned man. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Marvoe chuckled. Laughed, as if Dante said something heartwarming and entertaining. “You know, I heard you can control your shifting now. Why don’t you say that to me again as nothing but a man.” His eyes darkened. He mimicked plucking something from the writhing veins around him. Swirling up at his command was a trail of shadow. Marvoe flipped his palm, so it faced the sky, and the darkness gathered until it changed from a shapeless entity to shiny solid. An obsidian crystal hovered there. “This will require no blood.”
Dante’s body phased. Red light was being sucked from his body, the silhouette of his beastly form in a flickering state lifted from the man’s shape within. Then, traveling on the wind, the vermillion aura retreated into the black crystal, like the stone inhaled the magic. Marvoe must possess transference magic.
A surge of red light wrapped around Marvoe, and before our eyes he shifted into a terrifying black creature, more mutant and disturbing than anything that should exist.
Dante studied his arms on his now involuntary human body. Marvoe had siphoned his magic and fed it to himself.
“Let’s see if yours feels any different,” Marvoe glanced down the snout of his awful maw toward Dae, who struggled to lift from the ground, which told me the dark magic was pinning himin place. Sweat danced across his brow, and my heart ached for his pain.
As Marvoe lifted the obsidian crystal, I fired.
