Wren gasped, and Damien and Rowan both stepped protectively in front of her.
“Take her away,now,” Rowan growled to Damien.
Wren didn’t even have time to protest before she was gone.
“What do you plan to do now?” Rowan baited her.
“I intend to breach the barrier between Kalista and the Veil, but you know that, don’t you?” Sybil grinned, and her teeth were completely black, but they hadn’t fallen out yet. “What you don’t know is that I had a lot to do with Roak in Kalista’s Second War.”
“How so?” he asked as Jesper and I carefully moved toward Sybil without her noticing. Dex carried us in his shadows.
“I manipulated him into testing dark magic on all supernaturals. Demons are the best at holding it, though. They lived much longer while infected.” She tilted her head. “Do you honestly think Roak came up with the idea of injecting Grayson’s DNA into people on his own? I just had to have him think it was to change supernaturals into dragons. Of course, he did inject his own DNA into others on his own merit. That, of course, killed many supernaturals, but that was the casualty of war.”
Rowan couldn’t hold back his growl.
“Grayson, though dead, is now the heart of the ritual, necessary to channel the massive amounts of energy required to bridge the Veil and Kalista,” she explained ever so helpfully.
Rowan breathed smoke out as he tightened his fists at his sides. “The bloodstone’s that important?”
Her delusional smile dropped from her face as she tilted her head. “I stored more dark magic in this bloodstone than anywhere else, after all.”
Without that bloodstone, the ritual would collapse.
Nebula had told us as much, and it just made more sense now.
Sybil began chanting, drawing on the power of the bloodstone, which pulsed in sync with an ancient language I couldn’t recognize. As she chanted, red webs of magic emanated from the stone and snaked through the room, wrapping around the cultists and siphoning their magical energy from them as well as the dark magic some harbored, reverting them to useless demons without a lick of magical energy in their souls.
Some infected turned to ash, while others puked and fainted.
“Your sacrifices strengthen the connection to the Veil. The Veil thanks you!” she shouted before laughing gleefully. “I will merge with the bloodstone and become a vessel for your magical essences and dark magic. I will become an immortal, demonic entity able to control dark magic entirely! You will refer to me as the Veil’s Mistress!”
The cultists chanted, “Long live the Veil’s Mistress!”
“This iswayworse than we thought,” Sabine groaned.
“No kidding,” Rowan agreed.
Dex deposited Jesper and I on either side of Sybil.
“Now!”Jesper shouted to everyone as he held both magical artifacts up in the air. Both pulsed with magic. One relic called dark magic to it, and it wobbled as he tried to hold it steady, and the other siphoned what was called.
“You need help.” Reed ran up to Jesper, rendering a few cultists into slumber as he took the relic that called on dark magic and held it with both hands beside Jesper.
“Thanks,” Jesper told him as he used two hands on the siphoning relic, and he shouted, “To stop the ritual, we must destroy the bloodstone!”
“On it!” Dex jumped into the shadows, navigating around the cultists and made a grab for the bloodstone, seizing it from the altar in a dark blur of movement before he melted back into the temple’s shadows behind all of us.
It disrupted the ritual instantly, and the crimson light that escaped the bloodstone flickered as the power connecting it to Sybil destabilized.
She screamed and stumbled as she realized her power had diminished. I watched her black eyes train on me as realization dawned on her. Her black matted hair floated around her like she wore an actual dark veil.
The three large scars down her face barely illuminated as she grinned. “Do you know how I got my scars, Bones?”
“I’mnotBones. I’m Gravesend,” I said defiantly as I stepped up to her, just outside that dark magic circle. My power begged to be released and devour all of it, but I was able to fight against the instinct thanks to Nebula’s power boost. “And I don’t care how you were scarred.”
She laughed in my face. “My werewolf lover had betrayed me, but you know what? I’m used to being betrayed. My familiar’s soul was sweet trickling down your throat, wasn’t it?”
Rage rippled through me, and I gritted my teeth, barely holding my power at bay. “You don’t get to speak of Nebula at all. He was no longer your familiar the moment you had him killed!”
