His breaths came in deep heaves. ‘Aya.’ She shook her head, her knife-hand trembling.
‘No,’ she gritted out. She would not do this. She would not let this be her fate: a murderer, dooming those she loved to die. She would not be a bringer of death and destruction, no matter what her nature demanded she be. ‘No.’ Aya reached within herself, leashing that light that danced across her skin. Forcing it down, down where it could not hurt him.
The Vaguer started toward her, his black eyes wide.
‘Aya.’
She didn’t understand Will’s broken plea, didn’t even have time to question it, because her rage pulsed, and she flung a hand toward the Vaguer, ice exploding from her palm and hitting him square in the chest. He landed hard in the sand, his rattling breaths filling the air with signs of death.
‘Release me,’ Aya ordered, fighting against her invisible bonds. ‘Release me from this and I’ll heal you.’
A laugh erupted from the Vaguer, the sound weak and broken and so unlike his gravelly voice, she knew it didn’t come from him at all. ‘You don’t see it, do you?’ The voice still wasn’t his, but the words flowed from his lips as he struggled onto his arms, his hands reaching for his throat, his eyes bright with pain and something else, some gleam of terror that had Aya’s heart stumbling. ‘Your true nature always decides. You cannot escape what you were destined to be.’
Will coughed, and Aya whirled to face him, the air leaving her lungs in a panicked rush. Because that was blood dribbling from his mouth, blood soaking his black shirt, and even though she had not moved …
Somehow her knife had. It was buried in his chest, and Will was falling just as her mother had. Aya hardly noticed her body could move as she stumbled toward him, her legs giving out entirely as she scrambled across the ground.
‘No.’ Not real, not real, not real. He was an apparition, just like her mother; a hallucination brought on by the raging power inside of her.
But she could touch him – could feel the firm lines of his body as she tugged him to her, could feel the warmth of his cheeks as she cupped his face. ‘No no no no.’
She tugged the blade from him and laid her hand on the wound, willing her healing power to rise. A dull light flared in her palm, and she pressed it to his blood-soaked skin.
‘No. Please no. Will, don’t leave me.’ Her begging was a broken sound as she clutched him to her. ‘Please don’t leave me.’
Will’s mouth moved, but no sound left his lips.
He stilled, his gray eyes fixed on her face, glassy in death.
Aya screamed, her fingers digging into his arms as she clutched him tighter.
‘What would you give to right this wrong?’ the voice called to her.
Anything.
She would give anything.
She might have even said it aloud as she bowed over Will, sobs racking her body. Her grief spiked, sending the wind around her whipping as lightning flashed across the sky.
‘Let go,’ the man wheezed, the voice his own. He thrashed on the ground, as if fighting against his next words. ‘Let your power rise,’ the lilting voice said from his lips. ‘Let it remove your pain.’ She could feel it doing just that: her anger, grief, and hate swirling inside of her until she could taste it, until the sweetness of vengeance consumed her. She lifted her head from Will’s chest to see something shimmering before her like the desert haze. Beyond it, something moved slowly, getting closer until she could make out the outline of a body.
‘You can undo death. You can create life.’ The voice was a whisper in her very soul. Aya stood as the storm raged around her, her gaze fixed on that shimmering wall that had appeared, its essence nearly close enough to touch.
She would bring him back.
She would bring them both back.
And she would rip open the world to do it.
‘That’s it,’ the voice hissed. ‘Give yourself to your true nature.Step into your power. Seize all that the gods you worship refuse to give you.’
Perhaps the voice wasn’t the gods’.
Perhaps it was her own.
Another pulse of rage radiated through the air, and the veil around her thickened. She could see it more clearly now, the shimmering glow that gods created. That separated the realm from the Beyond. Aya grit her teeth as her power built, her hand tightening on the knife she didn’t realize she still held. She let her power rise until her pain was a distantmemory, until her mind could remember nothing but her need for retribution. She was drawn to that shimmeringsomething, intent on destroying it entirely.
Her rage was a living thing, spooling from her like fire as it crackled across the veil, searing it with heat. Aya stepped closer, her body buzzing as power emanated from her. She raised her knife, her power rallying with the motion and spreading across the blade, ready to slice through the veil.
