“You missed,” Aethel sneers, drifting closer to me, her spectral form vibrating with glee. “Pathetic.”
“She missed because you don’t exist,” I remind the dead queen, shoving my will against her spirit until she flickers like a faulty bulb. “Focus. If fragments mean nothing, we need him whole. And if we need to kill him while he possesses a creature, we require a vessel that won’t disintegrate the moment he enters.”
Tabitha stiffens, her gaze snapping to mine. “There isn’t a vessel in the mortal realm capable of holding the Devourer. Even a god would burn out in seconds.”
“Then we build one,” Dastian suggests, though he looks less than convinced by his own idea.
“Or we find the one thing he wants more than the realm,” I say, looking at Nyssa. The realisation hits me with the heavy, final thud of a coffin lid. He doesn’t just want to eat her. He wants towearher. She holds the Crown. She holds the light. She is the only container strong enough to hold him without shattering, thus bringing him back to life. He doesn’t want to devour worlds; he wants to rule them.
Chapter 33
Nyssa
“Me.”
The single word is not as shocking as one might think. It makes a sick kind of sense. It makes everything else make sense. It isn’t devouring this world because it’s waiting for me to possess sohecan rule it. As me. A woman. With no dick and tits.
I wonder what he will make of that…
My overactive, over-tired imagination runs wild for a moment, but then Voren snaps his fingers under my nose.
“You have figured it out?”
I jolt back to the situation at hand. “Err, yeah. He thinks he can stuff his world-eating void into my body to become the ruler of the universe.”
“But only if the First Law is passed. It’s why he’s waiting,” Voren murmurs.
“Yeah, figured that part out as well,” I say cheerfully. Too cheerfully. Which doesn’t hide the absolute fear that rushes through me now that the initial surprise has worn off.
“You currently have no authority,” Tabitha says. “The First Law suppressed your power.”
“Must we in front of the ghost?” I ask sarcastically. I don’t really want that bitch knowing all my problems.
Tabitha shrugs it off. “You are missing the point. If you don’t pass the test, you will never have those powers returned. You will never be able to hold the weight of the void.”
I catch the look that Dreven shoots Voren and Dastian.
“Right. So, my options are to pass the test and be possessed or fail, and we have a Devourer on the loose, probably mightily pissed off, and the world will end.”
“Pretty much,” Dastian mutters.
“Have I mentioned lately how much I hate you all?” I ask and sit back down, dropping my blade onto the floor. How did this become my life?
“There might be another way,” Voren says slowly, eyes fixated on fresh air.
I’m guessing he’s staring at Aethel.
“She can’t help. She’s useless,” I spit out, purely out of spite.
“Actually, she might be able to.”
Silence.
“Oh, yes,” he says. “We will figure out the way.”
“The way to what?” I ask, thoroughly lost.
“He is suggesting, albeit in a very Voren way, that we find a way to bring Aethel back, have her regain her powers, have the Devourer enter her and then you stab her in the face again,” Dreven says. “Am I right?”
