He doesn’t stop there, continuing to goad and prod at her while her expression becomes stormier and her responses less coherent.
All the while, Koda’s bliss power quietly warms my palm and my nightmare power grows, dark wisps building in the air.
“The demons of Pyra-Mortem adore me!” Esta shrieks over the top of Koda’s voice.
“No!” he shouts back at her. “They adored you when you weren’t a threat to them. Now that you’ve revealed your true agenda, they will plot and scheme against you and you will always have to watch your back. Just wait, Esta. Crone will be the first to turn against you.”
The threat of Crone’s betrayal seems to be Esta’s breaking point. After all, she must know that there’s truth in it.
Just as she lets out a scream and the light around her builds, I push forward, striking hard with my nightmare power.
Esta is so focused on Koda that she manages one, wide-eyed blink before my power hits her chest. As soon as Esta’s thrown backward, Koda adds his power to mine. The nightmares spiral higher until the mist around us turns black and the entire space is shrouded in darkness.
Extending my left hand, I direct my power like a spear into Esta.
Striking at her heart.
At her energy and her mind.
At the fears that must exist within her thoughts, beneath her confidence and rage. Just like with Crone, to defeat her, I need to find her deepest fears—the fears that will bring her crashing to her knees.
I focus on the pulse at the base of her neck, the same way Roman taught me to. Even if I can’t touch Esta, I should be able to sense some aspect of her fear now that I’m no longer injured.
I’m shocked when images immediately race through my mind—her deepest memories—far more easily than when I found Arga’s fear.
She’s small, maybe no older than five years, running through the rooms of the Cathedral, trying to keep up with her older brothers and sister. Their bright hair flashes in the distance as they disappear down the hallway ahead of her. She’s puffing, her little legs unable to run fast enough, and she’s forced to stop, coughing and trying to catch her breath.
She calls out to them to wait for her, but they ignore her, and within moments, she’s alone.
I sense her fear as she hovers in the opulent living room, surrounded by luxury, but she doesn’t want any of it. She wants their attention. She can’t bear to be left behind and forgotten.
They are always forgetting her.
“Come back!” she screams, her young voice shrieking through the room.
I snap back to myself with a jolt, extricating myself from the memory, although it lingers within my mind. Unlike Arga, who broke and buried his fears so deeply that I nearly lost my life finding them, Esta isn’t hiding her fears from me at all.
She snarls at me, her bright power sparking around her fingertips, cutting through the darkness of my power. “Do you think I care if you know what I’m afraid of?” she asks, as if she reads my surprise. “You can use it to strike at me, but you will never kill me.”
She’s right, and it’s no wonder she didn’t hide it, but even so, my power builds, raging through the air around us. I might not be able to end her with my power, but Icanhurt her.
I fill the darkness with ghostly images of her body lying dead in a field of ash, the dirt creeping up over her. She doesn’t flinch—she smirks, even—until I extend the image to reveal the demons of Pyra-Mortem walking around her, and then over her half-buried body as if she doesn’t exist. They’re stomping on her, oblivious of her presence. As if she’s nothing.
That’s when her face drains of color and she loses her shit with a scream that tells me she’s not so immune to her fear as she would have me believe.
She doesn’t want to be forgotten and alone. And now it’s driving her to steal the throne and seize all of the glory and attention that comes with being Queen of the Underworld.
It’s time to hit her with the harsh truth: She will never wear the crown.
CHAPTERFIVE
Power blasts from my hands, another explosion that hits Esta so fast that it takes using my demon vision to pick up the streams of cobalt bliss within the dark swirl of my nightmare power.
At the same time, Malia draws her hands across the air in front of her chest, a sphere of crimson flames building between her palms. In a flash, she releases the stream of fire, which blazes within my demon vision.
Our powers collide with Esta’s chest at the same time.
My nightmares are a wash of shadows, Malia’s power blazes within it, and Esta screams and stumbles backward.
