As though this had been their plan all along.
Severin emerged from the trees as well, moving toward Orin’s fallen form with unhurried grace, each step measured and purposeful. He held a dagger that gleamed with strange light. A dozen others fell into step behind him, forming a protective barrier, their movements synchronized as though they’d rehearsed this moment countless times.
“A traitor’s death,” Severin said, stopping and looming over Orin. “As planned.”
Thalia remained frozen, staring in horror at her father’s crumpled form.
Nova broke into a sprint, shadows gathering around her?—
I didn’t think. Couldn’t afford to think.
I just ran.
My arms closed around Nova from behind, dragging her back even as she screamed and fought against me. Even as her shadows lashed at me and I felt that terrible new side of my magic stirring in response. I managed to resist its pull, but the contact between us was agony—my power wanting to devour her every shadow, every cell in my body screaming for me to just let go and let it take what it wanted.
But I held on. Held on and held back with everything I had.
“Let me go!” She thrashed in my grip, tears streaming down her face. “Orin—I can save him—let me GO!”
“You can’t.” My voice was strangled from the effort of trying to restrain both her and my own power. “Nova, there are too many, and if you?—”
“I don’t care!” She was nearly sobbing now, still struggling with a strength born of desperation. “I have to try, I have to?—”
She broke free for just a moment, stumbling forward.
Desperation flooded me as well, and my power responded without my permission. An odd, purplish light exploded from my hands in a wild, uncontrolled burst. It slammed into Nova, spiraling through her shadows and pulling them to a center point in front of me, into a small galaxy of writhing darkness, and then into…nothing.
With no real effort from me, the shadows dissipated.
Only that odd, dark violet light remained, crackling around my fingers.
Nova stumbled, knocked off balance by the force of…of whatever the hell I’d just done to her.
The fear in her eyes was more pronounced now. Undeniable.
“You did it again,” she whispered.
We stared at one another for several horrible, uncertain seconds, until our attention was jerked back to Orin and the Order members?—
Just as Severin’s dagger descended in a smooth, practiced arc, impaling Orin’s heart.
TWENTY-ONE
Nova
Thalia let out a soft, guttural cry—a raw, broken sound, a mixture of grief and confusion and anger.
I made no sound at all. I couldn’t breathe. The world tilted and spun.
Nothing seemed to make sense.
Orin’s eyes stayed open, moving between my face and Thalia’s. In the end, he ended up locked somewhere between the two of us. Unseeing. Unfocused. A man caught between worlds, between duties, between the two people he’d tried desperately to protect until the end.
He went still.
The entire world did.
And in the stillness, the helplessness, I felt like a child again. Like I was back in the gardens of Rose Point, trying and failing to take a commanding hold on death. To will the flowers back to life. To stop the inevitable decay of everything I loved.
