Always.
Prager snarled and hissed. Her power flared.
Farris howled.
His body convulsed, his paws scraping on the stone. Black tendrils erupted from beneath his fur, not his natural shadow, but the corruption Prager had forced into him. She was calling it back to her, trying to reclaim what she'd planted during his torture.
The darkness stretched toward Prager. She wanted to finish forging their bond, to turn him into the creature who would steal shadows and feed them to her insatiable hunger.
“No—” I raced forward.
Lore shouted and sent wind and rain and a wall of ice at Prager, but it slid around her without causing harm. Damn shield. I'd given everything to destroy this woman. Dorion launched a blast of fire, and Laphira used a siren's call to try to lure Prager into lowering her shield.
Our magic peeled off her as if we wielded nothing.
The Iskar Cor burned hot in my hand.
Desperation clawed at my throat. Everything we'd worked for, everything we'd sacrificed, and still she stood untouchable. But when the Iskar Cor grew hotter and whiter, I finally understood.
“She's drawing power from the old wound,” I cried out. “The same break in the world that scattered the talismans is feeding her strength.”
Farris’s guttural groan of pain rang out. His shadow wrenched toward her, dragging his body along with it. He fought, his claws scrambling for purchase, his muscles trembling.
The corruption fought against his will, trying to override the forgiveness he'd just found.
“Farris!”
His gaze met mine. And by the fates, he didn’t beg. He showed me complete trust.
Laphira’s voice rang out, her hands cupped over her heart as her siren song swelled.
Dorion let loose another arc of fire, this one blue and solid and beautiful. It struck Prager’s shield and a crack fissured across it.
Lore hit her left side with a cyclone carrying water and flame in its teeth.
I threw lightning at her. Pulled in shadows and begged them to help, but I wasn't sure what I should ask them to do.
Despite the crack, everything we threw her way still slid off her.
The fused talisman screamed in my hand. A buzz climbed up my arm.
Sacrifice.
That’s what it had been built with. Not blood or pain, but the willingness to give everything for love. The Iskar Cor had been waiting for someone who understood the difference.
Blood mattered. Truth mattered. But love, real love, never came free.
“I see now,” I whispered. “Everything comes at a cost.” I stepped toward the pool. “Kinart loved me without condition, and I never honored what that meant.”
Churning wind and rocks and dirt into a tornado in front of him, Lore turned to me, panic in his eyes. “Reyla? What are you doing?”
Every bit of me had been worn thin, but I was burning just the same. “What I should have done before.”
He reached toward me, but I stepped away.
Farris’s front half had already started to fade. His legs, his muzzle. All of him was being sucked into her evil.
She'd tortured him until he nearly broke, nearly agreed to become her shadow collector. Now she was trying to drag himback to that moment of weakness, to complete the corruption she'd started.
