The geometric patterns contract. The white light dims. The corona folds inward, compressing, shrinking, until it’s just a sphere again—crystallized, beautiful, finally dormant.
I catch it as it falls. My hands are shaking so badly, I almost drop it.
“It’s done.” The words are barely audible. “It’s sealed.”
“You’re still bleeding.” Auren’s voice cracks. The ice dragon who controls everything, and his voice cracks. “Tamsin, you’re still—I can’t lose you. I can’t. Not now. Not when I finally?—”
“Finally what?” I try to smile. It feels more like a grimace.
“Finally realized I love you.” The words come out raw. Unpolished. Nothing like his usual careful precision. “You’re dying in my arms, and I never told you?—”
“You just told me.” I press my bloody hand against his chest. Feel his heart racing beneath my palm. “That’s enough. That’s more than enough.”
“It’s not.” He pulls me closer, his forehead pressing against mine. Cold against heat that’s fading too quickly. “It’s not enough. We were supposed to have more time. We were supposed to?—”
A shadow falls over us.
I flinch, expecting Ulrik—but Ulrik is still collapsed on the floor, stripped of power, barely clinging to life himself. This shadow is different. Familiar.
Zyphon materializes from darkness, his obsidian form veined with glowing purple cracks. Blood drips from wounds he’s sustained fighting through the battle outside. But his eyes are fixed on Ulrik with hatred burning in their depths.
“Finish it,” I whisper to him. “He’s yours.”
Zyphon doesn’t need to be told twice.
He moves with terrible grace—darkness within darkness, shadow consuming shadow. His claws rake across Ulrik’s exposed scales, finding the seams my fire burned through. The Shadow King screams.
“Three centuries.” Zyphon’s voice carries through the throne room. “Three centuries of this curse eating me alive.”
Another strike. Ulrik’s blood sprays across the cracked obsidian.
“You designed it. Crafted it. Called it art.”
“It was art,” Ulrik rasps. Even dying, he can’t help himself. “The most elegant curse I ever?—”
Zyphon’s claws tear through his throat.
The Shadow King’s obsidian eyes go wide. Something shifts in them—surprise, recognition, acceptance of an ending he thought would never come. His massive form shudders once, twice, and then goes still.
Eight centuries of power. Gone in a heartbeat.
The Shadow King is dead.
THIRTY-EIGHT
TAMSIN
I’m floating.
That’s what it feels like—floating in darkness, disconnected from my body, from the pain, from everything except a distant awareness that I should be more concerned about this than I am.
Voices reach me through the haze. Auren’s, desperate and commanding. Aisling’s, sharp with professional focus. Others I can’t identify, a chorus of concern that seems very far away.
“—too much blood loss?—”
“—the Crown drained her life force?—”
“—need to stabilize her before we can move?—”
