But not dead. Not yet.
Dyna kneeled beside him, hot tears rolling down her cheeks. “You will not do this to me, do you hear? I won’t allow it.”
She raised her hands over him and called on her Essence once more. It was spent, but she had enough. She would make it enough. Green light reappeared in her palms, throbbing through her with a strength that wasn’t her own.
Dyna closed her eyes and gathered it like a blanket; letting it fall over every wound she could feel. Her power sunk into skin, weaving through the crevices of muscle and tendon. She took in the pain, as it in turn took from her. Power leached from her life force, mending cuts and broken bones. She guided every strand of torn flesh and wove them piece by piece.
Her body bowed from the strain. She grew numb and heavy as weakness found her once more. The light behind her eyelids faded, leaving pain radiating all over her body. An arm wrapped around her when she slumped and pulled her close.Cassiel.His fear faded with a sense of wonder and shock. Dyna let him gather her against his chest, too exhausted to move or care.
Lucenna gasped, and Lord Norrlen murmured in his language.
“Look,” Cassiel murmured in quiet awe. “Look at what you did.”
It took every ounce of will to force her bleary eyes open. Zev’s wounds had healed into fresh scars. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths, and his pulse was strong where his wrist rested beneath her fingertips. Rawn and Lucenna were also healed. Both stared at her with wide eyes, their shocked expressions splattered with blood. Then they glanced past her.
The containment dome had shattered, and the fjord was completely black. For a moment, she thought it had been destroyed, that the water had evaporated to nothing but an ashy bed. But it was hundreds of grindylow corpses, burned to charred husks. The few left alive peered out from the surface, only their glistening eyes visible, as if they didn’t dare to reveal more than that.
Lucenna conjured electricity in her hands. “Unless you want to become fried fish, I suggest you retreat.”
They hissed and sunk back into the water.
Dyna’s vision dimmed. “The scales…”
It’s what they came for and nearly died for. Had it all been for nothing? By the grim expressions of her companions, she knew the answer.
Lucenna raised her hand, and the forgotten rowboat lifted in the air by a cloud of gold pixie dust. It was the last thing Dyna saw as she closed her eyes and let sleep take her before the sense of failure could.
* * *
It was frightfully cold. Ice spilled in Dyna’s veins where there had once been a fire. It bit into her skin as she shivered. Snow whipped past her face, and the wind howled where she stood barefoot, completely alone on the hill in the dark. Only the full moon overhead bore any light.
Dyna’s heart pounded in her chest to find herself in this place. On this hill that she recognized. In the distance came a familiar roar, and her heart quivered.
“No.” The faint cry shook on her lips. She didn’t want to relive this dream. She didn’t want to experience the crushing weight of it all.
Something ran past her. A child. His red ringlets bounced in the moonlight as his tiny body ran across the hill for the dark forest in nothing but his nightgown.
“Thane!” Dyna ran after him. She must keep her brother safe. The Shadow was coming.
The snow numbed her feet. No matter how fast she ran, her brother fell further out of her reach.
“Thane!” Her scream echoed in the snowstorm, clashing against the barren trees. “Come back!”
He stopped by the forest edge and peered at her over his shoulder. The wind swept through his red ringlets, exposing his face. But he had no face. It was nothing but a black, mangled hole.
She lost her footing and collapsed in the snow. When she looked again, her brother was gone. He had long left the world of the living, and Dyna sensed she’d reached the threshold of the dead.
“Why are you here?”
Dyna whipped around.
Lucenna stood on the hill, watching her impassively, in nothing but a thin black dress. The storm beat against her, though it didn’t seem to bother her. “Why did you leave North Star?”
She shook her head. “I cannot tell you.”
The sorceress cocked her head. In a blink, she changed into the image of her father.
Dyna gasped and shut her eyes. “Please, not his face.”
