Her dark-blue eyes glint, but this time, there’s a hint of gold instead of black. “They already love me,” she cries. “They adore me.”
“Theyfearyou!” As I shout, I allow my arms to tremble as if my power is reaching its limits. “But only because of our father’s strength. Only because you take his form, and not your own.”
“Liar!” She screams so loudly that she goes red in the face, and there’s a moment when I think she’s going to resist her fears, but her shrewd gaze passes across Koda and me, and there’s no way she could miss the sudden trembling in our arms, the way our teeth are gritted with strain, and the waning of our combined powers.
All deliberate moves on my part.
Beside me, I sense Koda catching on and reducing the flow of his power despite the great well of it he still controls. It’s the slightest weakening, but it has the desired effect.
She will see her chance to win.
Iwanther to see it and think she can end us already.
“My true form can crush worldsss,” she says, drawing out the ‘s’ at the end in a sudden hiss. “I will destroy you. I will tear you to shreds and rip you to piecesss…”
She flings her arms to one side, taking hold of our warring powers at the same time. I deliberately let go of the energy I was pouring at her and Koda does the same, so in tune with my thinking now that I can only assume it’s because our powers are linked.
Gold and cobalt and black energy explode across the ground, where Esta flings our shields before she draws herself upright. “The demons of Pyra-Mortem will see me as I truly am, and they will love me,” she says.
Scales form across her face and rush down her arms, replacing the mottled patches of red, leathery skin, replacing our father’s power with her own. Her irises turn pure gold and her pupils become serpentine while her height increases until she’s towering over us.
A forked tongue darts out from between her lips.
She remains humanoid, but her true form has the characteristics of a snake, and somehow, I’m not surprised. She is the serpent hiding in the grass, waiting to strike at my ankles when I least expect.
But now I have another problem.
I hoped that if she took her demon form, I would instinctively take mine, but the shift eludes me. Beside me, Koda is also on the back foot, a genuine flash of concern passing across his features.
We’ve achieved what we needed, but now she is at her strongest, and somehow, we have to kill her without destroying ourselves.
CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE
Just as I gather my power again, a new scream rings out from the crowd. “Esta! Stop!”
Carys stumbles along the nearest walkway, clinging to the railing, mere paces from the battle between the souls and the bats. The fierce flying beasts are tearing through the souls with their talons. When I fought the soul in the Forbidden Lands, my hands went straight through its body, but it seems that the bats are its natural enemy. Their talons are impaling and clawing at the souls, knocking them off the stands and back to the battleground, where Reaper and other bats are ending them.
Carys leans against the railing, breathing hard, her lank hair falling across her face, but her shout has distracted Esta enough that our sister turns away from us momentarily.
“I feel sorry for you, Mother,” Esta shrieks. “You loved all of your children except for Koda and me, and now you have nobody left to loveyou.”
Esta twists her hands in the air and, with a wrench, Koda’s soul lifts from his chest like a shadow of himself.
“No!” My scream mixes with Carys’s cry.
My power blasts from my hands, a shot of nightmares directed straight at Esta’s face, but to my horror, it bounces off her skin.
Oh… fuck.
“I told you, Nova…” She laughs at me. “You can’t kill me.”
Carys jumps from the stands, falling to her knees in the dirt, her black dress puddling around her. Her palms press to the ground before she pulls a knife from her boot.
When she looks up, tears stream down her face. “If you want another soul, Esta,” she shouts, “take mine, not your brother’s.”
Panicked, I try again to hurt Esta, my nightmare power as sharp as a blade as I fling it at her in a sustained blast, but it pours off her torso and vanishes into the air. All the while, she drags at Koda’s soul as he shouts and fights back with his power, his roar of pain threatening to break me.
Esta doesn’t even bother to look at Carys, but she does deign to reply. “Your soul is pathetic, Mother,” she calls. “Koda’s is strong. How happy will I be when I control his bliss?”
