“How are you here?” Nimh’s eyes drop to fix on her protection stone and then lift to meet my gaze, wondering.
“Magic,” I whisper.
“Oh, gods,” Nimh moans, her eyes focusing again on my face—focusing on the place that’s burning nearly as badly as my palm. Her hand lifts, but she halts the movement before she can touch me. Her fingers hover helplessly for a moment before a drop of blood from the gash on my cheek spatters against her skin. She stares at the crimson staining her fingertips. “You’re hurt.”
“But alive. Nimh—we can stop her. Take your crown back, and Inshara can’t go to the cloudlands. Youdon’thave to become this thing.”
Her eyes travel over my features as if memorizing them for the last time. “I am the destroyer,” she whispers. “I am the Lightbringer.”
“You canchoosewhat that means!” I try to catch her wandering gaze, try to keep her eyes on mine. “You canchoose, understand? This power is yours—you choose what to do with it.”
She opens her mouth, but whatever retort she had planned dies on her lips as she looks at me, an agony of indecision. Then I see her eyes widen, and the mist raging around us goes still.
For a moment, I want to throw my arms around her, hold her tight, relief that she’s chosen humanity over destruction making me giddy.
Then I see the hand curled around her ankle.
Touching her.
Inshara.
I’m paralyzed, the world crumbling around me. The mist falls away, the terrace and the city below it utterly silent save for the rasping of our breath. Inshara is alive—though when I see her face, my breath stops, for her manic smile stretches a fraction too wide, and her eyes flicker and glint with iridescence as if they’re windows to the mist-storm raging inside her soul.
She jerks at Nimh’s leg, pulling her down onto the ground where she crouches. Nimh cries out in horror and pain, and the sound goes through me like a knife.
Then, slowly, Nimh begins to glow. She’s like a sunrise come to life, gold suffusing her features. She’s utterly beautiful, her power on full display, and the thought of that power drained from her is unbearable. Her light catches the mist in the same way the dawn catches the clouds, growing brighter and stronger every second.
It’s Inshara who speaks, who breathes the word: “Yes.”
In that one syllable, all her mist-touched madness is there for the world to see.
Nimh is trying to pull away, struggling against the other woman’s iron grip—the grief in her face breaks my heart, for she knows what Inshara has done to her, that she’s witnessing the last moments of her own divinity.
The aura of gold swells and flares around the pair of them, and Nimh cries out again as the light begins to flow from her to Inshara where the other girl holds tight to her, as if she’s dragging that light from Nimh.
I can’t bear to see it, but I can’t look away. The knowledge beats through me like a drum: this is the end of Nimh, and all I can do is bear witness.
But I love her, and I cannot stand to see it.
She gasps for breath as her light dims and Inshara’s light brightens, and I watch helplessly as Inshara strips Nimh of her divinity.
Inshara gives Nimh a ruthless shake, making her cry out in pain. “It’s all mine, more than it was ever yours,” Inshara snaps. “Iam the one the prophecy chose. Iwillbecome the Lightbringer. You were never destined for anything—you wereneverenough for this world.”
Nimh goes still, no longer struggling, as her own fears and doubts come spilling out of the woman draining her of her power. Her eyes are dull, focused somewhere beyond Inshara, beyond me, beyond the very stone itself. For a moment, all is quiet. Then, she whispers a single word into the swirl of rising mist around them: “No.”
Inshara tightens her grip. “What was that?” she asks.
Nimh’s gaze snaps up, meeting Inshara’s with a new, blazing intensity. “I saidno. I am my people’s goddess, and you will not stand in my way.”
Inshara’s sharp intake of breath is audible. Nimh’s gaze is unwavering, defiant. And slowly, the balance shifts. Now Inshara grows dimmer as Nimh grows brighter. She claims her divinity, pulls it back and wraps it around herself, as stunning as any royal robe I’ve ever seen.
“How … ?” Inshara demands, teeth gritted as she tries to regain the upper hand.
But Nimh doesn’t answer, all her focus on the struggle between them. She’s stronger. She’s fighting, and she’s winning. Inshara abruptly releases Nimh, scrambling backward.
Finally, Nimh’s light settles back around her, like she’s slipped into a familiar garment. Inshara’s breathing hard, gasping for breath and staring at the goddess whose power she failed to banish.
We’re all frozen in place. I’m afraid to breathe, afraid even to blink, for fear I’ll wake to find my Nimh dark and broken under the triumphant stare of her enemy.
