Screams rent the peaceful ambiance of city. The Aeternalis has stepped to the edge of the balcony, revealing his presence to the kingdom beneath the glow of the morphellia blooms. He looks horrific, illuminated atop the temple like a monster spawned in the pits of nightmares. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to, as his appearance sends the kingdom into a frenzy of fear. It descends like a poisonous cloud, the crowd around Zenni and me beginning to churn like a merciless wave.
Everyone pushes in their attempt to flee, scrambling over one another with tight screams and gruff panic. The wall of people pulls tight like a rubber band. It wobbles and sways in momentary suspension. Then, it snaps.
A surge of bodies slams into me, knocking Zenni and me sideways. Instinct has me reaching to steady to her. To keep her on her feet, before she is swept beneath the wave of panic and trampled to death.
Zenni’s eyes flash to mine, and I know I will see her expression in my dreams for the rest of eternity. For the moment I touch her, the tiny glow at her heart flutters toward my fingers.
“No, no, NO!” My scream is lost to the roar of panic, as Zenni’s magic skates up my arm and sinks beneath my skin. I claw at it desperately, blood blooming beneath my nails as bodies careen against us. But no matter how hard I scratch, it is already too late. Euphoria slides through me, easing every hurt I’ve ever had. There is no pain, no regret, no shame. Only pure power.
And in that power, I feelher.Faintly, but there.It settles into the pool of my magic, and for a moment, all I can breathe is her biting humor, her insatiable curiosity.
“Zenni,” I cry, my voice tight with panic as I shake her in my arms. “Zenni, I’m so sorry.”
The crowd careens into me, and I lose my footing. Together, Zenni and I tumble to the ground. I curl myself over her shell of a body as we’re pummeled by fear and bodies.
“Please, please, please,” I plead to everyone and to no one at all. There has never been anyone to hear my cries, and there certainly isn’t now.
My shadow rises above us both, emboldened by the taste of Zenni’s magic. It shudders and writhes, the cast of its darkness growing as I open my eyes to meet Zenni’s stare. Dread and guilt wind around my heart at what’s contained in that stare. Cruelty. Madness.
Emptiness.
She was my only friend at a time I deserved none. She was hope in an endless thrall of darkness.
And now, she’s gone forever.
Zenni snarls and slashes out at me, dragging her nails over my cheek hard enough for blood to pepper her face. She licks at it frenetically, eerie laughter ringing from her mouth. The sound ofit—the deranged mania of the Strayed—snaps the last tether of my restraint.
It isn’t fair.Noneof it is fair.
Not Celie. Not Zenni. Not all the children in between.
Destroy it all,my shadow whispers above me; in me. It rises in my chest and bleeds from my pores. It leaks from my tear ducts and bursts forth from my lips. It seeps into the well of my magic, staining the light of possibility with the inevitability evil. And it finds no encumbrance, as every barrier I’ve tried to build against it crumbles in the wake of my despair.
Screams, that seemed so distant only a moment before, become intimate, their sonance a deep reverberation through my ruined heart. My shadow spears for their fear like it is sustenance; it drinks their screams; it writhes in their terror. Bodies begin to fall around me, the sickening thuds echoing through the malignant hunger ballooning in my chest.
More,it begs.Take what has been stolen from us. Gorge yourself on theirs and we will never be empty again.
“Willa!”
The deep voice is accompanied by tendrils of warm magic. They seek to soothe my rage, my suffering. They do not understand there is nothing left of me to soothe; nothing to temper the vengeance, to cease the harrowing violence.
“Willa, come back to yourself.”
Hands cradle my face, but the touch is so far away. I cannot reach it from where I drown in the darkness, cannot feel anything but the press of shame and hunger. The warm magic tries to slide between my ribs, and the shadow erupts in response.
It will not be mollified. It will not be caged any longer.
It billows from me in wave after wave, drinking in fear and pain and panic. And I am powerless to stop it, because how am I to stop something that is of me?
The evil, the darkness—it is all made of me.
I am the blight on the universe, far worse than any plague.
Sudden, blinding pain shoots through me. It radiates from my back, through my spine and stomach, the agony enough to drag me back into my body. And I am thankful for the pain, following it back from where I’ve broken to find my humanity.
I want to cry as the shadow relents, but neither sound nor tears come. And when I open my eyes, the sight before me only buries my sobs further beneath the horror I’ve unleashed.
For lying in a deep pool of his own blood, eyes wide and unblinking—is Sam.
