ButIunderstood that the succubus was getting stronger. And the next time it took over would be the last.
She had not even touched the pain that was seeded in this very tower. I ran past the first level, making the deadly mistake of glancing into that first room.
The portraits still hung, undisturbed. But I could still hear the echoes of my friends’ pain.
We bounded up the next set of stairs.
With the witch at the top already vanquished, the magic of the tower did not try to hold us back. Or maybe it recognized me from before, sentient in some way I did not understand. I did not question it—I just kept moving.
I was too much of a coward to look inside the next room, where those terrifying fanged creatures had nearly takenParys from me the first time. Where Lyrena had made her first sacrifice. Once, those had been the horrors to haunt my nightmares. How small it all seemed, now, with the entire realm hanging in the balance. I would not even know what to say to that female if I met her now.
One more flight of stairs. Mya struggled behind me, not used to the exertion. But I could not stop for her. Not when I was so close to the end.
I braced myself for the remains of the witch—whatever might be left after nearly a year. But when I pushed the door open, the circular tower room was empty. No marks on the ground from her eerie distended nails. No evidence of the fight that had nearly taken my life, nor the succubus that had stolen into the witch’s mind.
A large, gaping window overlooked the valley below, its open face drawing a straight line across the sand to where the goldstone palace protruded from the mountains themselves.
I stepped up to the edge and what I saw nearly ripped my heart straight out of my chest.
The horde waseverywhere. The succubus had taken the entire valley.
The terrestrial army still fought. I could see their greens and browns mixed in with the black of the succubus. But there were no reserves lying in wait. All of our forces were engaged. If it was this bad in the Effren Valley… I should go to Camlann, just for a moment—
Mya’s hand gripped my shoulder. “Stay.”
It was too fast for her to have used her ethereal powers. She’d understood on some other level. One queen to another.
“What do you need to do?” she asked, her pale blue hand remaining in place on my bare shoulder. Monitoring the darkness.
“I have to let the succubus in.” I expected her to jerk back or argue. But she only nodded. And stayed.
The cost of uniting the Sacred Trinity was my soul. But that cost had not been paid when I’d used the grail to drink from the waters of the lake. It would be paid here, now. To save my kingdom, to pull the succubus from this realm and seal them in their own forever, I would have to give up the shreds of myself that remained.
I opened my mouth to say goodbye, to thank Mya for the understanding she’d given me unconditionally. But she shook her head. Those words were not needed between us.
Standing over a battlefield that stretched across two realms, where every being I loved fought for their lives and those of my subjects, I closed my eyes and sank into the darkness.
I let myself feel every terrible thing that had ever happened to me. The years of torture. The male who’d used me again and again for his own power. The mother who’d hated me, feared me and what I might become. The father who’d abandoned me. The brother I’d lost. Charis and Carly, murdered. The betrayals of those I’d thought would protect me. Parys. Excalibur sinking into Arran’s chest, his blood coating my hand. The witch I’d slaughtered in the Spine, who’d known all along that this was how it would end.
It hurt in every limb. Every finger and toe, the veins, the sparks of life in my brain. It hurt so fucking much.
I hated them. I hated what they’d done to me. All of that torture, all of that pain, it had given me no choice. The darkness that lived within us all had no choice but to grow inside of me in response to that pain.
The succubus bathed in it, luxuriating in the anger and hate. The blood and vengeance that I craved… it craved. We became one.
Shadows whipped from my freed hands, stretching out across the valley.
The shadows—they were tendrils of the void, pulled from the space between realms and used as a weapon in this one. I’d never dreamed of such a thing. But the succubus inside of me was infinitely creative, and with my powers at hand, it wanted to conquer the world. This realm, and every other.
Agony. Fear. Pain. The taste of them fed my shadows.
Come, the darkness called.
But not to me—to them.
It rose in my throat, leaking from my ears, my eyes, my nose. Black poured from my body as those shadows expanded, swirling down into the valley, into this realm and through to the next.
Yessssss. I could taste the pain. It was delicious, better than any liquor.
