Moonlight floods the ground around them, and I shudder to see it.
“Damn.” My curse is breathless. Even now that I know sleep will kill me, all I want to do is lie down and close my eyes.
Ace’s growl brings me back to myself. Beside him, Ruby glares up at me, an accusing look. As if she’s trying to tell me that she didn’t survive the fight with Arga only to die here.
I meet Roman’s eyes. I know what I have to do.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
“Conserve your power,” Roman warns me, his normally stormy eyes dull and his shoulders hunched. “Only use as much as you need to.”
Breathing heavily with effort, I draw on the darkness that dwells within me, digging deep and welcoming the icy flow. There was a time when I pushed my darker instincts away. I feared and hated this aspect of myself. Now, it scares me more that I can’t immediately sense its depth and strength and that it takes longer to bring it forth.
Until I realize that what I need right now is not the trained and polished power that allows me to harness fear.
I need the raw anger that filled me when I first used my power instinctively; when shadows grew, darkness gathered, and I drew the light from the very air around me.
My bond with Reaper stings again and from far away, I sense her voice. Hear it in the whisper of the lavender-scented breeze. I’m not sure if she can somehow lend me her strength through our bond, but I feel stronger.
As though they sense their mother, my wolves tip their heads back and howl, a low, mournful sound that also gives me strength.
“Get ready to run!” I cry to my pack.
With a low cry that draws on my own wolf’s strength, I raise my hands and release my power into the air ahead of us, casting darkness along the path through the trees.
Immediately, my mind is sharper, my thoughts clearer, and my power builds upon itself.
As soon as the darkness spears across the ground, creating a safe path through the light, my sisters race past me, both of them shifting into their wolves as they run. Koda is hot on their heels, and I take off after them, conscious of Roman keeping pace a step behind me and my demon wolves darting along the path with us.
With every breath I take, I extend my power, filling this strip of land with a wash of fear that would normally hurt my pack and is instead protecting them.
I’m crying with effort by the time we hurtle into the clearing where Jareth’s cage glints.
My power extends up to the side of it, maintaining a safe path to it, but I draw to a stop, my hands raised a few paces from its side, worried that I won’t be able to sustain the darkness for long enough.
“Let me help you.” Roman’s breathing is shallow, his hands planted on his knees as he nearly doubles over with exhaustion, but he rises up and strikes a rune against his wrist.
The elaborate, glowing text rises into the air above our heads, each line of it expanding and seeming to adhere to my darkness. A weave of dark threads spins above us until a canopy forms, a combination of nightmares and rune magic giving us protection from the moonlight.
My sisters shift back to their human forms, and Koda and my demon wolves stay close, all of them huddling beneath the sphere of nightmares.
I take deep breaths then, allowing myself to double over. My heart thumps inside my chest from exertion. A sprint like that wouldn’t normally make me puffed, but I feel like I just ran a marathon.
As my dark power continues to swill against the side of the cage, Jareth emerges from the moonlight filling the enclosure, darting so quickly toward the glass that both of his fists thump against it in a loudthud-thud.
His crimson skin appears bloody in the moonlight, his four horns glint, and the dark markings stand out even more starkly on his bullish face. He presses his palms to the inside of the glass before he reaches up toward the darkness as if he wants to catch it.
“Daughter.” His snarl quickly becomes a deep laugh as he lowers his focus to me. “You are sickly. This world has fed on your energy and left you a shell of your former self. You will not live much longer. I, on the other hand, am both imprisoned and protected by my cage. This metal keeps my energyin, while it also keeps the effects of the light magicout.”
Taniya strides right up to the glass, planting her palm where Jareth’s hand rests. She’s breathing as heavily as I am and her features are pale and drawn, but anger burns in her eyes. Her wolf’s claws slowly extend and she drags them down the side of the glass with a screeching sound that—to my surprise—makes Jareth flinch. “Don’t underestimate us. Our hearts are strong. Unlike yours.”
Jareth’s features twist. His breath mists the glass as he presses his forehead against it, his horns butting up to it. “I chose to cut out my heart when I left Nova’s mother.” His large, black eyes swivel toward me and he grins, his razor-sharp teeth white in the moonlight. “I cut out my weakness and left it behind.”
I narrow my eyes at him. He’s trying to hurt me again. He destroyed my mother when he left her and now he’s calling her—and me—a weakness. But it also reminds me of the message his soul gave me, that his heart is missing, too.
As he continues to stare at me, frosting up the glass, I wonder if there’s a shred of soul left within him that is trying to speak to me now, still trying to give me the most important message despite the darkness consuming him.
My face falls as a deep realization hits me. “You left your heart on Earth. It wasn’t taken from you. You gave it willingly.”
