‘I wish to do as the rest of the darksouls did,’ Ezer said. ‘I wish … to give of my blood to the One who remade me. As my first act on this side.’
‘You will learn fast,’ he said, and smiled as he reached for the ceremonial knife. The one that had cut through countless darksoul hands earlier.
The one that was impeccably, perfectly sharp.
‘Would you join me?’ Ezer asked. ‘It feels as if all of this was set in stone, long ago. The Acolyte … and the daughter spared just for him.’
Erath obliged, his depthless eyes soft as he got down on his knees beside her. As he bowed, his hand outstretched for the blade to cut across. He bled shadows, tendrils that pooled beneath his hand and then regathered again. Just like the wolves when Arawn cut them in the woods.
And as Erath handed her the blade, and she held out her own hand, as if she would slice it …
Erath’s words from earlier came back to her.
I swung the blade.
He did not stab his predecessor. Which meant … he hadn’t gone for the heart.
It was just as Arawn said, when he’d tossed her a dagger in the woods. A lifeline against the shadow wolves.
Go for the throat.
So she did exactly that.
She was faster, stronger, than she’d ever been before. And perhaps it was because she’d been touched by the One, given a tendril of new power when she made her choice. Perhaps it was because, deep down, her soul knew this was her last chance.
But when she sliced that blade clean across her father’s throat …
Her magic unfurled within her.
She had only a second before his shadows recoiled enough to heal him.
She lashed out with a fury she’d never known. Apowershe’d never felt before now … but it had always been there, writhing within her.
Magic to match his own.
His shadows tried to heal him, but her own stood in their way.
He was older, wiser … but she had been reborn.
She put all of her fury, all of her past, into her power. They had grown wings like birds, and they soared against his as she screamed, her body filling with newfound magic.
His life faded just like the wolves in the woods.
‘Styerra,’ Erath said, as he lay there on the dais floor. A sad, struggling thing. ‘Let me … be with her now.’
She knew what he meant.
And it was with a smile on her face that she knelt as his side and whispered, ‘You willneversee Styerra again. Not in life, and not in death.’
She reached out to the ring he kept on his hand, the one that matched her own. And she did what Ervos had done. And pried the ring of finding from her father’s hand.
He was too weak to fight her now.
And with a sigh, a rattling breath …
Erath died.
The shadows slithered away from his body.
